Planning and paying for college is truly a family affair. And it’s really interesting because the parents have financial and emotional skin in the game and the students are trying to actually for the first time break away and sort of leave the nest, if you will. So it’s a very emotional time. And it turns out that both the parents and the students want the inside scoop on the college that they’re going to go to. But there’s always been this sort of dearth of information in the market around that. Parents talk to their friends and students talk to their friends. But now, students can go to a third party, somebody they don’t know, no real personal connection.
John Hupalo: Joining me today in My College Corner is a woman who co-founded a near-peer company to allow students to do that. Sophie Smith, welcome. We want to hear a lot about College Contact.
Sophie Smith: Thank you so much for having me, John. I’m excited to share more.
To see the full interview:
JH: I introduced you as a co-founder. Tell us a little bit about your co-founder.
SS: My co-founder is Leah Guesman. We met in our undergrad studies at the University of Virginia. We actually met in our sorority. The company was founded in my dorm room during the height of COVID in 2020. I’m sure you know the story. We had thousands of high schoolers reach out after a TikTok video went viral. Interestingly, Leah was one of the first people that I called when we had that blow up. She worked with me as a mentor. She was one of our top advisors for a few years. And so I brought her on as co-founder towards the end of our undergraduate studies. And she’s been absolutely instrumental to the success of College Contact, runs all of our operations as well as some of our sales, and really is my right-hand man.
JH: I want to go back because I love origin stories and particularly origin stories like yours. John Katzman from Princeton Review started his business in his dorm room and I talked to him about that. You’re a college student. You’re not thinking, I don’t think, going to UVA, I’m going to start a business while I’m here. How did that actually happen for you?
SS: I always was an entrepreneur since I was little. I was starting companies and doing nonprofit work. But I never imagined in a million years that I would be a full-time CEO and founder this early. I thought it was going to happen later in life. But a happy accident happened in my dorm room. This was during the height of COVID. So everyone lost their jobs and internships, unfortunately. I had also lost mine and so I was working for an older girl in my sorority at the time. She had asked me as my little job to go recruit high schoolers for this program she was running to build leadership skills within high school communities across the country virtually. I, as a stringent little 19-year-old, was like I don’t want to go recruit high schoolers. I just got into my dream school. I don’t want to go backwards.
So I thought I could check the box and post a video to my 10 followers on TikTok which were my parents and probably my sisters at the time and got a call from her the next day. She was frantic. She said we had 800 people sign up overnight and they’d all put me as the referral. I don’t even know 800 high schoolers. I went back to that video, because that’s the only thing I had done, and saw that the video had gone viral. There were thousands and thousands of comments from students, really worried and stressed out about their future and asking things like will this program help me get into my dream school? Will this program help me along the way to my eventual career path?
And so really, spending time reading through those comments really broke my heart and encouraged me to post a second video, talking to the students, telling them it would be OK. I got into my dream school. And made a small offer to help anyone that needed help. That small offer turned into 5,000 high schoolers emailing me asking for help. And the vast majority, like 96% of them, wanted to pay me, a 19-year-old, to help them get to their dream school.
JH: Your passion and your composure to be able to seize that moment and say here’s an opportunity, that’s sort of the definition of being successful and having impact. That happened right out-of-the-box for you. Was that in your freshman year?
SS: Yes, freshman year. I think I had just turned 20. I was very young, not even a full year into my undergraduate process. So the natural next step was I can’t help 5,000 students. I’ve got to start recruiting some folks to help me and that’s when Leah joined and some other college peers and that’s really where the near-peer model was born for us.
JH: And it’s organic for you. It wasn’t like you went there trying to create it. Which is why it’s authentic and why it works. Your viral video worked because it was authentic. And your business is working because it’s authentic. I went on the website and was just completely blown away. It says “college counseling that actually counts” and “our college students help you get into college, get connected, and thrive once you’re there”. The dream of an entrepreneur is to have an elevator speech. There’s probably no better one than I’ve ever read than that right there. But the essence of it seems to be our college students help you get into college, so you bridge that. Is that the essence of your business model?
SS: Yes. So what we saw that was happening when we were talking to families, and parents in particular, was there seems to be a huge gap between college admissions advising today. There’s a lot of individual folks that do it. They’re great. We love them. They charge very high prices. And so, from an economic standpoint, there’s kind of a gap there for students and families that can’t afford or don’t want to pay hundreds of dollars or even thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars for these services. And then there’s the problem in high schools, where the guidance counselors don’t have time. They’re normally serving 400 students at once. And then there’s the problem of even if you do have help, you have to then make a decision. That’s a huge financial decision for a lot of families. A lot of schools across the country are charging hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to college now. And so for a family to kind of make a decision blindly or just off of the tour or just off of what they’re reading online, it’s difficult.
So what we wanted to do was bridge that gap and allow families access to boots on the ground. Trained and certified undergraduates that are there to help their students achieve their specific dreams. What we do is highly personalized. It has that social-emotional component to it. It has that insider information component to it. And then it also has the tangible aspect of helping you write essays and fill out applications and craft a story that’s really going to be compelling to the admissions officer at the end of the day.
JH: Yeah, and all that done, I think importantly, I’m going to say it this way, with people within the same generation, right?
SS: Right.
JH: And so there’s a trust factor there. It’s where I started. You know, parents talked to parents and students were talking to their friends. But now there’s this like independent voice, trusted voice.
When we first met and I thought about your business and what you were doing, I thought this is very cool but how do you control the quality? How do you know that these undergraduates are actually going to give good advice? Can you hone in on that a little bit?
SS: Great point. What’s really interesting and this ties back into our origin story is that when we started we didn’t have time to think about any of that. We just started helping kids because they needed it. And what we saw was proven in front of our eyes that our results were beating admissions standards across the board, across the country. We had close to a 90% acceptance rate into students’ number one choice. Unheard of at the time.
And so we really did some digging and thinking like why is this happening with college students and not trained professionals? And what we really started to realize was there’s a component to this near-peer model where when you have the boots on the ground approach we really understand what’s going on at that school at that particular time. So you are understanding the cultural environment of the school, what teachers are talking about, what professors are discussing, what’s intriguing at that point in time. And so we help students craft narratives that speak to the cultural environment of the school at the time, as well as what you talked about with that trust factor. We’ve seen that students are able to open up more to someone that’s close in age and we’re able to really get to the nitty gritty of what should we write this essay about? How can we pull forward your story in a really authentic way and show who you really are? It’s hard when you have that gap with someone a little bit older and it just feels like a homework assignment.
In terms of the certification process, all of our mentors go through a training process with them. So they’re upskilled on everything. Within the college admissions landscape, they know everything from building college lists the correct way, writing appropriate essays, supplements, personal statements. We also teach students about school profiles and helping families navigate class schedules, as well as resume building, interview best practices, and everything like that.
JH: How many mentors are there currently in the program?
SS: We run a pretty competitive, tight ship. We get thousands of applications all the time. But we actually just hit 300 mentors. So we’re about 331 the last I checked across 100 different institutions. We have a sub 10% acceptance rate into our program.
JH: Sophie, that’s awesome. It’s easier to get into Stanford than to become a counselor or mentor in your program. Let’s just talk about the business part of this for a moment. So who pays and then, importantly, how is it that you’re able to sort of connect and then maintain those connections between the student and the mentor?
SS: So we run two programs. We have a program directly available to families. Parents can pay for their students to get advising. It’s kind of the traditional advising model where you buy a package and then we give you advising hours. We’re definitely on the lower end of the spectrum. We believe college is expensive already. We don’t want you to have to break the bank before you get there. So we’re more on the affordable side. And then we also sell directly into school districts and high schools so that we can support large cohorts of students across the board and really lift up those guidance counselors that have really high caseloads of students.
In terms of the connections piece, we actually have a fully accessible platform where students can actually take a matching quiz and get matched to the right mentor for them. Once they get matched, they can actually book meetings with their mentor on the platform. They can send messages back and forth. Everything’s recorded in there, so it’s safe and then accessible for counselors or parents or friends, if they want to see. And there’s a lot of other resources on our platform. Some of them are actually tools that you’ve helped us integrate.
JH: Yeah, we were really excited to be able to partner with you because we think you’re on to something big. And part of it is the way you and Leah have been able to position the business and market it. I think one of the brilliant things I saw, you were doing something with these beautiful pantsuits. You haven’t seen people wearing pantsuits at all. And then all of a sudden, it’s there and now it’s like part of the brand. Am I right about that?
SS: Yes. We found these bright blue electric full suits on sale and we ended up buying them and it was one of the best decisions we made as a company. Our brand colors are blue and white, and we wear those everywhere at every conference. Every speaking gig. And so now people kind of know us as the blue suit girls. But yeah, going to the dry cleaner a lot.
JH: That means you’re talking to people a lot too. When we first met, you talked about how you were able to get some viral TikToks now and again, and how effective you are on that Channel, which makes a lot of sense. But like going to that extra place now and there it is. It’s like you said I don’t even have to look and see what it is, I know it’s you and Leah doing something somewhere, and there’s always a big crowd. And you’re getting some great awards and acclamation for the business you’re putting together. It’s really pretty straightforward. Is there anything else that we missed in this conversation? How do people find you?
SS: I just wanted to say that I think what we’re doing is really special because we’re solving three big problems when you think about it. Families are really stressed out and they want the best for their students. But there’s so many options out there now. It’s overwhelming. And sometimes you just want to be able to get on the phone and talk to someone. And so we want to be able to offer that.
But the other end of the spectrum is all of these current undergraduates that were training and paying, they’re able to use those funds to support themselves in school. So there’s a workforce training readiness development component to what we’re doing. We’re really bridging two problems and creating like a three-way win for everyone involved.
But if you’re interested in learning more, you can definitely reach out to me. Our website is yourcollegecontact.com. And my e-mail is sophie@yourcollegecontact.com. I’m always happy to talk to anyone that needs support and share more about what we’re doing. But we are on the road to make this a success and we appreciate everyone’s love and support. As a young founder, it means a lot and we’re excited about our future.
JH: Well, you guys are rock stars. You’re doing really great work in a place, frankly, where there needs to be some work. There have been some near-peer models before that actually didn’t really work out that well. And I think it’s because there wasn’t this passionate connection of the founder to the model. John Katzman told me he started counseling his fellow students in his room and that’s how he started Princeton Review. And similarly, you took advantage of an opportunity and grew it into something that’s really spectacular. We wish you all the best. We’ll check in again with you soon to see the progress you’re making.
SS: Thank you for letting me come and great to talk to you as always and excited to share an update.
JH: Thank you so much, Sophie. I know you’re so busy. I can’t thank you enough for taking some time to be here. So that’ll do it for this edition of My College Corner’s “Ask the Expert” today with Sophie Smith, the co-founder and CEO of College Contact. I have to tell you, if you like this near-peer model as much as I do, go check out yourcollegecontact.com. Check out My College Corner’s LinkedIn page as well, our Facebook page, and our YouTube channel. We love sharing this kind of information with the audience.