Edtech Insiders

Democratizing High-Touch College Admissions with Perry Kalmus of AKALA

May 04, 2023 Alex Sarlin Season 5 Episode 27
Edtech Insiders
Democratizing High-Touch College Admissions with Perry Kalmus of AKALA
Show Notes Transcript

Perry Kalmus is the co-founder of Akala, which is leveling the playing field for college admissions by providing best-in-class college advising to learners who would not have been able to afford it through technology. Before Akala, Perry ran the Princeton Education Network for over a decade together with his co-founder Barbara - who is also his mother. Together, they have helped over 15,000 students achieve their dreams of attending college.

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Alexander Sarlin:

Welcome to EdTech insiders where we speak with founders operators investors and thought leaders in the education technology industry and report on cutting edge news in this fast evolving field from around the globe. From AI to xr to K 12 to l&d, you'll find everything you need here on edtech insiders. And if you like the podcast, please give us a rating and a review so others can find it more easily. In honor of it being the first week in May, which is college decision time, we wanted to talk to somebody who's really thinking about the college admissions process through a new lens. Perry Kalmus is the co founder of a kala which is leveling the playing field for college admissions by providing best in class college advising to learners and families who would not usually have been able to afford it through the use of educational technology. Before a caller Perry ran the Princeton Education Network for over a decade together with his co founder, Barbara who is also his mother. Together, they've helped over 15,000 students navigate the process and achieve their dreams of attending college. Perry, Welcome to EdTech insiders.

Perry Kalmus:

It's great to be here.

Alexander Sarlin:

It's so nice to have you and welcome to our co host, Jess Stokes, founder of Wonder Academy. Great to have you here as well.

Jess Stokes:

Thanks for having me.

Alexander Sarlin:

So let's jump in Perry, I want to start by talking about your background in admissions. You've been in the tutoring and higher ed admissions field for a long time. It's a topic we do not talk about very much on this show, even though it's so important to so many people. Give us a little bit of your background on how you got into this particular, you know, part of education and edtech.

Perry Kalmus:

Yeah, I've been around college admissions, actually, most of my life, my mom actually started a company back in 1994. That started off with sa t. And really, it was actually built as an alternative to back then boutique. You know, companies didn't really exist, I think now everyone in their mother has a 1600 is a $500 an hour tutor. But back then that was not really a concept and, and my mom was looking at the pedagogies of the Kaplan's in the Princeton reviews of the world. And she couldn't believe how little academic integrity there was to their pedagogies. And so she started one of the first really boutique companies and Princeton, New Jersey, that quickly expanded, you know, as people said, Well, can you also help with the college applications. So it quickly expanded into the college admissions realm. And for me, you know, I went on to graduate from Williams College, and a decade later, and immediately she and I broke off, she had a different company with a different partner. And we started a new company, which is called the Princeton Education Network. And that company started in Princeton, I expanded it to New York, and then LA and the global. And we very quickly became sort of the IT company amongst, you know, celebrities and CEOs and international business leaders. And while that lifestyle was wonderful, and sometimes I wish I'd go back to it, it ultimately wasn't as fulfilling. And I noticed, you know, my mom had done so much professional development work in like the Abbott districts in New Jersey, which was, you know, some of the worst performing districts in the state. And she was really her happy as there. And so I said to her, I said, Look, you know, could we scale what we do in college admissions, so that we could get to that group of kids, you know, which really is where you're the happiest. And the thought became, yeah, we could. And so kala was born. And we applied to an incubator at Google and wanted GSV. And what was crazy is we actually didn't even have a product and and they were kind enough to take us, but that really helped us build and launch that platform that was really going to solve the sort of big massive problems in college admissions prep, which I'm happy to dive into later. But like the sort of the big three are kids think about college too late private capitalists, there's costs way too much. And school counselors are spread way too thin. And then I always add in the last problem is that family stress around this, this topic is just at an all time high and and extremely dangerous.

Alexander Sarlin:

Yeah, it's such a great story. So you know, we won't ask you the names of any of these celebrities or CEOs. But I can imagine this is a very ritzy crowd that you were working with, for quite a while. And then you looked around and said, you know, from Princeton to, to Avid let's think about the kids who can't afford this. And that is such a, you know, that's such a great move for the world and very few people in your position, do that kind of shift for a lot of reasons. Let's back up for a second. And just for the listeners who might not know a lot about this crazy world of college admissions in the US, let's just do like a little bit of overview. You know, we have this weird system in the US That's where there's a, you know, a very small number of hyper selective schools, and getting into them is this huge deal, it's incredibly hard, they're more selective than almost anything else, you know, in the world, they're single percentage admissions. But if you get in, the likelihood of graduating is very high, the likelihood of getting great jobs is very high. And that's actually even more true for black and brown students. So you know, the difference between getting into a really selective school for those populations is enormous. And then there's 1000s of colleges, right, that are non selective. And the problem is that, you know, there still can be great schools, but they tend to have much lower graduation rates, and they have less of an advantage. So there's this huge fight for these limited spaces in those selective schools right there. Tell us a little bit more about that family stress you just mentioned and like, what that world looks like?

Perry Kalmus:

Yeah. So I think first and foremost, especially for like an international listener who might be listening to this ago, I like what is going on in the United States, because it's so foreign to them. literally, figuratively, but you know, I think a good way to think about the higher education system in America is the product being sold, right. So when you're abroad, the product being sold tends to be a pathway, you go at 18, to be a doctor to be a lawyer to be a banker, etc. So therefore, the mechanism to choose students is really just grades and scores. And it's like, whoever it's merit based. And that's pretty much it. For a small subset of schools, there is an essay you have to write, but that's about all there is, in the USA, the primary product being sold is actually not a pathway, you of course, you have your major, right, like you could go into computer science, but you know, I think there I read somewhere, it's like some crazy statistically, 90 95% of people do not end up in a job in their major. I'm an example of that. I'm an education, I was an economics major. Right. So, you know, I think that people need to understand that the primary product being sold in the US is actually the experience, you can go see a football team or a concert or a play. And as a result, schools need kids who do all of those things to provide that overall experience. And for the highly selective schools, the demand is so high, that it just started to drive the need to look beyond just grades and scores, and actually beyond even just those roles, like the football player, and the concert pianist, and etc, you know, to go to much deeper levels and goes, you know, what we call now it's sort of known in the industry is the holistic admissions approach, right? And the holistic admissions approach is utterly insane, right? Because it's great, it's wonderful, it's really taking into account more than just grades and scores. You know, you'll often hear kids say, I'm so much more than my grades or you know, whatever. But it creates levels of complexity that are really wild, you know, because now you start looking at all kinds of things like gender and race and geography and interest and perspective and political persuasion. The list sort of goes on, on and on and on. And so you know, what's your economic background and all kinds of different aspects. And as a result in the highly selective space that drives complete and utter insanity. And you know, the other interesting thing about our education system, at the higher level is another part of that experience that we sell, is diversity, right? There's very few places on Earth, where you can go and have a white kid in front of a black kid and cover the French kid in front of a Buddhist in front of it. And you could just go down the list of diversity. And for us, its diversity of wealth, geography, religion, political persuasion, perspective, etc. It's really an interesting experiment in education. And our thesis, of course, is that when you throw people have so much difference in the same room, that that's where the magic will happen. And so how does it play out? Well, at the selective schools, it plays out, as you might imagine, as we've heard, right, like parents going crazy to try and get their kids into the schools. You know, I guess a good way to think about it is schools are not really trying to find well rounded kids, that is sort of a thing from the past, right? That's like the 80s and 90s. Now they're trying to find well rounded classes. Right. So that has forced, and in my opinion, unfortunately, so it has forced an insane level of specialization amongst kids. Right. So families are then at the wealthy end of the spectrum at the selective end of the spectrum are hiring people like me as early as grade seven, and we're guiding all that decision making all the way through high school so that they're the best possible applicants by senior year with super unique, interesting and specialized stories to tell. So that a school says, ooh, we need a kid I'd like that to fill this vertical in our school so that we have this well rounded class, at the non selective schools, you actually are still getting that same experience. It's just that the schools are not as competitive admissions rate wise and the problem. You know, as you mentioned, you know about getting a job, right? When you go to Harvard, it's just there, it does carry a name, for better or worse, and it might be easier to get that job. You know, for the kid who arrives at the less competitive admissions ready College, completely clueless about her future, that can be a very costly four year mistake. And you know, you have this degree, it doesn't produce great hiring outcomes. And now you have all this debt and no job, you know, but I do want to sort of flip that and caveat and say, that doesn't mean that these non selective schools are not amazing. They're actually incredible institutions, especially and you'll hear me talk a lot about the word preparedness, right? If you have a sense of direction for where you want to go in life, you know, the lack of selectivity of a school is irrelevant, really, a lot of that lack of selectivity, by the way I do want to mention is really driven by two things. One, you know, on the state school level, states have mandates to take kids from the state, so they tend to have higher acceptance rates. But also, it's driven by a really dumb magazine, called US News and World Report that decided to start breaking schools, and we've proven as a society, we can't handle those rankings. And, you know, just a school may be less selective, oftentimes, because us new set, oh, they're not as good, right. But I like to, you know, give just a couple of examples. University of Indiana, right has an 80 something percent acceptance rate. But the Kelley School of Business is a top five undergraduate business program, right. And I don't mind the rankings on the individual industry, because I think that can be a little bit helpful, like, oh, they have a really good program. And ex, Indiana also has an amazing program in real estate. But I also wanted to give examples, like I just found out about this school, actually, it's in Vermont, it's called Champlain. And it's one of the best universities in the world for gaming. Right? So turns out, you don't need to go to Yale to be a gamer. In fact, no gaming institutions really care that you went to Yale. The last sort of example, and then I'll stop is that, you know, I always tell people, I'm gonna give you a statement, but I'm only gonna give you half of it. And I want you to raise your hand if you think I'm crazy. And I'll be able to zoom with, you know, 150 families. And I'll say, your kid just got accepted to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and you're a fool for sending them there who thinks I'm crazy, and people are raising both ads, the raising feet, right? Like, they're like, that's the most insane thing I've ever heard. And I say, look, the rest of that statement is, if your kid was an artist, and the dream was to go into animation at Disney, or Pixar, one of those companies, you'd actually be a fool to send your kid to one of those schools, if they also got into a school like either Champlain, which I just found out about, or a school in the middle of nowhere, Florida, that I'll guarantee almost no one listening to this podcast has ever heard of, which is called Full Sail University. Sounds like some, you know, I don't even know like at one of those Ponzi scheme type education institutions, right. But it turns out full sail is the Harvard of animation. And when I'll never forget, I was at Illumina pictures, and I was pitching, you know, every company and their mother has a venture arm now. So I was pitching them on this concept. And I usually do this bet with VCs. And I'll take that $100 Bill, and I'll say, I bet you've never heard of this school, and it's a Full Sail University. And while I was in the middle of the pitch at Lumina, which is one of the top CGI houses in Hollywood, I sort of realized where I was, and I was like, actually, I'm gonna change my bet, I willing to bet that at least 25% of your workforce went to a school that nobody else has ever heard of called Full Sail, and they gotta goes 25. That's the only place we hire. Right. And so, anyway, I think that as long as you are prepared, the non selective schools in this country are incredible. But you do need to be prepared. And that that's sort of what leads to the bad outcomes of dropout rates and not getting jobs and whatnot. So much to dig

Jess Stokes:

into there. I want to go back to your point about specialization. So you're talking about all of these options that maybe families don't traditionally consider. And this parental and caregiver obsession, maybe with the top tier, and you worked with families in some of the wealthiest neighborhoods around the world in the country. And we'd love to get your perspective on the relationship between wealth and college admissions, and specifically what some of these high touch services look like as we think about this obsession with specialization.

Perry Kalmus:

Yeah, well, I think for me, the traditional relationship with wealth and admissions is really it all comes down to access right first you have access to life experiences travel, you have access to opportunities that are going to make you a more desirable and An applicant for these competitive colleges, and you're doing things in your life that are going to develop those core soft skills that the colleges want to see. But you also have access to people like me, right? who are experts in the field, who give you a massive advantage over your peers. And, you know, for anyone that questions this sort of industry, right, the college admissions expert, is or in a college admissions consultant, I always say, look, in tech, we always talk about the CAC, right the customer acquisition costs. And I say, when I was charging in 2016, my last rate was $25,000, to get your kid into college, obviously cost prohibitive for most of society. But I tell people, like if I'm charging that amount of money, like I could have a CAC of $10,000. And it would still be a great business. But do you know what the average customer acquisition cost is in this business? $0? I have a word of mouth. Yeah, yeah, it's all word of mouth. It's a true statement. Prior to 2016. We've had 15,000 Kids come through the Princeton Education Network, which is the former company, we never had a sales team. Never once, we never once made an outgoing sales phone call. It's all incoming, because you're at the end of the day, you're never going to trust me to get your kid into Princeton, if I didn't get your friend's kid into Princeton. And that's how you know that what we do works, right? Because if these kids aren't getting into these top schools, then no one's ever gonna hire you. Why would you give that amount of money away. And so, anyway, I think that, you know, the biggest relationship between wealth and admissions is just access. Because you know, at the end of the day, for someone like me, if I can pick you up in seventh or eighth grade, and I can help mold you into that amazing applicant. And where, as I mentioned, before, you know, most of your peers are thinking about college too late, right, that's one of the big problems that we're trying to solve with a college that kids are thinking about it in the back half of grade 11. But you've been building your entire profile all along the high school journey, in all of those different holistic pieces that the colleges are going to want to see, you now have extracurriculars community service, summer experience, you now have a massive advantage over your peers to your profile looks so much stronger, you know, and then it goes even deeper than that, right? Because it's access to the expertise of knowing what colleges want, and don't want, right. So, you know, in the scramble of sort of misinformation, and also just a straight lack of knowledge about the entire college admissions process, most kids are going to end up doing what their peers do, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, doing something is better than nothing. But so many kids are gonna come up with they're gonna do debate, right? And I love to be it's amazing. It's great skills. It's very similar to sports, though. Everybody does sports, right? Tons of people do debate. So you can, of course, come to me and do debate, but like, you're not really separating yourself. So for me, if you have access to me, I get to say to you, listen, you could do debate, but how are we going to layer things on top of that, so that when you get to senior year, and all your friends have only just done debate, you've done all these other things, and you've separated yourself to be able to gain admission into the schools. And so that's the kind of access that we're trying to break through, you know, it's been so exclusive in the past, right? That's what we're trying to break through with a column.

Alexander Sarlin:

Let's talk about that. Because I'm sure people are wondering at this point, okay. This is a $25,000 service, it goes from seventh through 11th, or 12th, grade, multi year includes all this different types of advising not only, you know, grades and tutoring and keeping that stuff up, but also, you know, a specialization and all these ways. And now you're saying, hey, we want to expand access, let's make this less exclusive. And that's what a call is all about. What does that look like?

Perry Kalmus:

Yeah, our thought became, could we use technology to scale what we do? Right? Could we use a, you know, tech enabled guidance, if you will? First and foremost, I do emphasize, we are a blended model. We do not believe in the tech only solutions that are out there, frankly, because, look, we're well aware of who we are in the world. We're not cool, right? We're not a video game, right? We're not a sport, right? Nobody wants to do this kind of stuff, but they know it's a necessary evil in the world. And so therefore, you need that human component to be able to help guide you. However, technology can really help. So everything about a collar is organized into the categories colleges consider when evaluating a candidate so all the things I just mentioned, the summer experience, extracurriculars, community service, etc. But what's so cool about a college is that everything's customized to the kid, the kids school and the town in which the kid lives. So, a lot of times a kid will arrive in grade nine, right? And they don't know what they want to do at all. So we have them take a quick survey. There are a lot of companies out there that will give these 85 Question service 100% of students hate those those surveys. So we said aren't, can we do a teen friendly version of that, right? So ours is just 24 photos, you pick a category that interests you, let's say you select history, up will come all the clubs at your school, that have anything to do with history. And that level of customization is so awesome for these kids. Because they're sitting there going, you know, when you arrive in high school, you kind of hear the buzzwords do extracurriculars, that's insane. Like, there's so many things, right? If you just Google extracurricular, it's gonna be like a billion pages, right? So this is saying, Hey, you're into history, let's take the noise that you've heard and just scale it down to these five clubs at your school, that have anything to do with history, right? Or you're into business, here are the three business clubs at your school. And then we take it a couple steps further, we give you videos whenever they're available on like, what is the debate club? Or what is Model Congress. And then if it's available, though, it's not for every school, we give you the actual contact information for the club, so that you can have almost no excuse to not get involved, right? It can't be like, Oh, well, I couldn't find them. No, here's an email, go find them. And so same thing with community service will tell you all the kinds of options that you could go in where you want to help the world. If you love animals, you could go volunteer at a dog shelter, you could volunteer at the local zoo, you know, whatever the case may be. And that's really that level of customization that normally we would give to really wealthy kids, right? And then, you know, we take it a couple steps further, you know, we have a very cool curriculum, sort of seventh eighth ninth grade, very centered around exploration, right, what is out in the world. So we have these cool TED Talks and YouTube videos that you could select within your category. So if you're really into art, here's a bunch of TED talks about art. And you could start to discover, like, what are all the options in the world? And then we're partnering with this really cool company called Gladio, which is a big career exploration site. And now we're going to start pairing with okay, you're into art? What is a potential career in art look like? What are the different options available to you? And then we have a college major feature. And so you can sort of say, Okay, well, you want to be in the business of art. I'm just making it up. You want to be in the business of art auctions. Cool. What are the skill sets required to work in the art auction field, right, and then once we know those majors, then we can find the schools that do the best job at those majors. And so now we're starting to get kids onto the right pathway much earlier, which then feeds into our sophomore year. You know, most kids, as I mentioned, don't think about college until the back half of grade 11. Our kids by the end of 10th grade have their entire college list ready to go. It's obviously fluid, people can be adding and subtracting schools in their junior and senior year. But you've done the exploration over the course of your sophomore year, you've explored 5060 different schools, and you've picked your sort of core 15 that you're going to end up applying to. So now you're not arriving in Junior, you're freaking out, right that you've got to like, oh my god, I gotta find schools and junior year academics are so hard. And I've got to take the LSAT. And that's where the stress starts to come in. Right? We're removing that stress by and I keep using this word, making people prepared. Right? If they're prepared, it removes all of this stress. And so in our junior year, and this is an upsell for us, we this is the one part of the process that we just can't really scale. But in our junior year, we actually if they elect to use us, we actually have them start writing their college essays, because most schools don't change their props, right. And why you last year change their prom for the first time and I don't even know 30 years, right? So you have a pretty high likelihood that if they use the prom last year, they're gonna use it this year. And therefore you could start writing those essays in your junior year, so that you're not arriving in senior year, whereas most people are trying to write 15 applications in a month. Right? You're already done. Most of our kids who use us for the essay service our senior year, don't they have nothing to do? I cannot tell you how many calls I get where kids are like, Are you sure there's nothing to do? Because my friends are wigging out. And I feel like I should be. But I'm not. And so that's sort of how the akala process works. And yeah, that's because of this technology. This platform. It allows us to scale to so many more kids and be able to offer the service and just a little bit of background. We were b2b for a while selling to schools and then we pivoted and the pandemic, the pandemic sort of put a kibosh on that temporarily and so we've been admitted to a b2c model, which is $75 a month. So you know, if you were to hire a private college counselor, it's often for one year and you're lucky if you could find them for a $10,000. Here, you get to really spread out the cost over time. So it's a much more approachable model for a lot of people. But for those for whom $75 A month is too much, we launched a very cool model last year, which is focused on offering our callers an employee benefit. So companies can provide it to their employees, kids. And that's how we've been able to march down that economic spectrum and work with families, you know, immigrant families who you know, a lot of them struggle with English, they've never even known anything about this system. Therefore, navigating it is not even a it's a non starter for them. And so we can help them navigate that process. And so that's sort of our two big models right now.

Jess Stokes:

All right, let's get to that point where the student is fully prepared for the application process, we've got all of our ducks in a row. Now let's think about the financial aspects of actually paying for college or post secondary education pathways. So one of the unusual aspects of our higher education system is that universities have highly differentiated pricing, there's the sticker price, which may be exceedingly high. And then there are a huge number of financial aid adjustments that change the price for students as well as access to resources like Pell grants and other federal loans, blind admissions and scholarships. Perry, tell us a bit about the variable cost of college for the different audiences that you serve, and then how you help students and families navigate this complex landscape.

Perry Kalmus:

Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing that most Americans need to hear is that the sticker price is rarely paid by almost anyone, right? So it is very much like a car sales parking lot, right? It's like the sticker price. But then you start negotiating down. And as you know, depending on your economic situation, very few people pay that full sticker. So it should not deter anyone from applying to a college when you see 80,000 $90,000 A year, because very few Americans will actually pay that that's sort of a reserved for most international kids to pay that. But, you know, for us, it really comes down again to this word preparedness, right? If you start early, and you're made aware of scholarship opportunities, Merit aid opportunities, you can dramatically reduce the crippling cost of college, we have our students look at scholarships very early, like ninth grade, right? With all these, there's amazing sites out there going man, I'll give shout outs to these sites, as I love them. I don't know anyone at that, but I do love them going marry bowl.org, my scaly, fast webs another good one, then there are really cool sites like res.me, right, where you literally get money just for doing the things you're doing anyway, in high school, right? Like, they'll literally say, hey, you know, if you get an A in math, or a B, and math, you will get $500 towards tuition at University of Texas at Houston. Right. So if there's a school that you're interested in, that's on res.me, you could get like free money for just existing right as you already would. And then there are amazing new models out there for financing college like income share agreements. Now, the problem with them is that, you know, oftentimes you have to be sort of projecting in a field that tends to pay really well. So you know, that's their model to be able to actually get that money back. But if you aren't one of those fields, that can be a really interesting way of paying for it. And then there's interesting strategies, right to lower costs, like going to community college for two years, and then getting those sort of Gen Ed requirements out of the way and then transferring to a four year you know, out here in LA, there's a nickname for him, it's actually called the Persian move. So the Persians out here figured out 30 years ago, they were like, wait a second, I can go to Santa Monica Community College for two years. They have a direct relationship to UCLA and USC, which are, you know, again, we hate these rankings. But if you were to go by them, their top 25 schools, and I can waltz into those schools, so I don't have to have all the high school stress that all my friends have. I could just work hard for two years at community college, and then I walk up when was the last time anyone asked you guys, hey, did you go all four years? Right? Nobody asked that question. You just get to put on your resume that you now graduated from USC. And that's also an incredible option for kids to be able to pursue. So, you know, as we talk about finance, it's really about getting way ahead of it. Because when you get way ahead of it, you don't miss these huge opportunities, scholarship, deadlines, marinade, deadlines, FAFSA, and so many people missed the FAFSA deadline. And so when you are prepared and you've been doing this for years, that just makes the process so much easier, and most importantly, so much cheaper and less crippling on the student

Alexander Sarlin:

that is a really good answer. Because I think when I hear you talk about all of these options I love raised on me as well, you know, all of these different tools, all of these different strategies. I've never heard that the Persian move, what a cool idea. You know, this is something that so few people have access to, you know, we're in a country where the ratio of guidance counselors are college counselors to students is 400 needs students, for every one college counselor in a school. That is so ridiculous. And there's very little talk within the existing school system of how this whole world works, including, by the way, something we haven't talked about, which is the increase in test optional admissions. That's like, Ben, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that as well. But you know, I have so many thoughts, I can imagine. But so there's these research about first generation college students, and they don't have context about you know, what college admissions looks like they don't know about merit based aid, they often choose to stay near their families, to try to go to school locally, for a variety of reasons, sometimes for work reasons or for family. There's so many sort of different aspects of people's lives that affect this huge choice. And I'd love to hear you just sort of talk as you're doing this customized mode, where you're really taking into account each kid their school, their location, you know, how they work their family, you know, how do you help them navigate things like that, you know, not having a college counselor having to, you know, decide whether the LSAT is really important or not whether to go far away for school or not? How do you help them with these really tough decisions?

Perry Kalmus:

Yeah, first of all, I always like to point out when whenever we're talking about a Cala and we bring up the 400 821 number, we always point out, that's actually the good news. As horrible as that number is, by the way out here in LA, it's actually 1000 to one which is Oh, wow, crazier, but even the 1000 to one is the good news, because what that number does is it actually hides a very dark truth about our education system, which is that that one counselor is not usually a dedicated college counselor. They are, as we have in this country, guidance counselors and guidance counselors are tasked with 1000 other things to do mental health testing, you name it. So not only do they not have the time, but they also, frankly, are not qualified often to give the guidance. You know, I love NASDAQ, and I'll give them some loves. But I will also criticize them a little bit. You know, NASDAQ is the National Association for college admissions counselors. And you'll see them brag like, oh, this year, I think we got to like 8000 different schools represented or something like that. But there's like 36,000, high schools in America, like, most schools are not getting the professional development they need, they're not able to get to a knockout conference. And so, you know, for us, that's the biggest problem we're trying to solve. Right? Kids are not getting any of this guidance. And it's so the college admissions process is so nuanced, and complex to figure out. And when you have a scenario where most kids have no access to guidance, it becomes almost impossible to navigate it successfully. And again, I keep going back to it, it all comes down to preparedness, if you have kids who are exploring their futures much earlier in the process, they can gain exposure to how the system works. And they can make much better decisions. When they reach the finish line there are you actually hinted at a very big problem in this country, which is, some kids are forced to stay super close, because the families don't want them to go far. I always talk about this example, we have this girl in Boston, charter school super underserved, like, I mean, just came from a horrible situation. And she gets a full ride to Holy Cross University, which is just an hour and a half away. And it was too far, and her parents wouldn't let her go. So this is something that happens all the time. But with us, one of the cool things about a call is that parents are on the platform with the kids, we believe in the it takes a village mentality, the parents have to we need to get the buy in for the parents, as much as we're able, we can't always get it all button as much as we're able. But when we're starting in seventh and eighth grade, and the parents are discovering what the kid has discovered, right, so the kids going, Oh, my God, look at this career in art, or look at this career in marketing, right. And the parents could sit there and go, Oh, wait a second. So my kid could go work for $15 An hour and we would love that money right now. But if we could just get my kid across the finish line here in this marketing degree, or this art degree or whatever it is. Now they're making 80 grand a year and it goes up to 200. But if you start educating them on that early, they get much more on board with this idea that kids should go to college. Right. And so that's how we help them to sort of navigate the process but most of our kids are arriving in grade 12 fully prepared with complete information. show that it might be college. And also, by the way, you know, our shirt says I don't know if you can read it says college we get you in. And then after the scandal we added ethically, we always say that's really a marketing message, right? Ultimately, we view ourselves as a Pathways organization. And it might be college, and it might not be college, it might be vocation, or trade, or nowadays is coding boot camps, whatever. And we just want kids to be able to arrive and make that best decision for themselves.

Jess Stokes:

Let's pick up that point, because that's exactly where we want to take this conversation next about the Navy, non traditional post secondary routes. And your thoughts on that. There's a lot of buzz about what is the future of this four year college pathway that has been such a default for many students so curious how you advise the families you work with, and the recommendations of alternative to degrees that you tend to recommend.

Perry Kalmus:

I love alternative pathways, I think that they could be the right solution for a lot of kids in this country. I think where we are headed the place where this is just my hypothesis, I have no sort of backup for this. But except the backup is that I have started to see actually wealthy parents push back on the price of college. Right? That's been a recent trend in the last sort of five, six years where wealthy parents are going well, I don't want to pay that. Right. And so we're, I think we are headed and look, there are phenomenal benefits to the four year college experience. It's exploratory, it's a time to make mistakes, it's a time to, you know, discover, but not at the tune of $400,000. Right, like discovering other ways. And so I think where we are headed is actually that person move I mentioned before, which is I think we're headed to a place where it's like, hey, go get your sort of like Gen Ed requirements out of the way you don't need to pay $90,000 to take Psych 101, right. Like, that's like a ridiculous concept. And I think that kids are going to start to do that, and then transfer into your Harvard's and your Princeton's, or whatever school really, because I think that's ultimately, this price thing of college has gotten to the point where it's like, it's almost laughable, right? Like 400,000? Like, how are you supposed to make that up right over time, if you're not like an AI banker, or like a Google employee, right. So that's where I think we're going but the the alternative pathways, you know, coding boot camps are really incredible. You can pay 2030, I actually have a student right now is trying to transfer into a graduate program. And he went to a coding boot camp, he paid $25,000, he walked out making 80k. Like, that's a great deal. But I think kids just have to have an understanding of what are the options to them. You know, for us at UCLA, we always like to say we're trying to end we're not trying to get kids into college. Right? That's a lovely bonus. But it could be like I said, any of these other pathways. We're just trying to end one question, if I can make sure that every grade 12 student in America could not come to me in grade 12. And when I started inquiring about the did you do is write your community service, your extracurriculars, your summers, all these things? And if they cannot come to me and say, Why didn't anyone tell me to do this stuff? Yeah, then we will have changed the world. Right? That's, that's how I look at it. And so I just want kids to be able to, I don't care which way you go, you can go anyway, there's amazing ways to matriculate into adulthood. But I just don't want you to feel cheated by the system, which is what most kids do right now. And when you talk to adults, they say, oh, man, I wish I had this when I was in high school. Like, I could have done something totally different, right. And so most people actually feel cheated by the system, even if you've made it to a comfortable place, you know, where you're like making good money, but you don't love your job. And they're sitting there going, oh, gosh, I wish I had explored in a different way. And so that's how we view alternative pathways. We'd love them. And I think it's a phenomenal new solution, right? Like a lot of these are new, a lot of them are old, right vocational school, trade school, but it's as long as kids discover them that I think that's the most important part. A couple of

Alexander Sarlin:

three lessons that I'm hearing in your answers Perry that are so interesting, you know, one is obviously preparedness right? start much earlier, give students and families the information they need to actually navigate this insane process that's actually starts in middle school and starts in seventh and eighth grade. And obviously, you're using technology to really spread that word and make it accessible, make it customized, allow people to find you know, the clubs in their schools and the community service opportunities in their towns. It's that's a really exciting use of tech. Another thing that strikes me is I don't know if you know that company outlier.org But that is a company that is also that basically trying to institutionalize the the Persian move right To take the entire first year of college and offer it online at very low cost, so that people can jump into their second or even their third year and in, you know, cut the cost of college enormously. And I think the whole edtech world has a lot of opportunities to offer some solutions to that. And the third that I think is so interesting, when you say talk about wealthy parents starting to push back against the cost of college, you know, we reported just a couple of weeks ago, how the Ivy League schools are now, you know, at $80,000 a year. And I think there's a lack of understanding between the high school world where as you say that NASDAQ is so it doesn't get to enough schools, that people in schools, there's like this tiny sliver of College Counseling, if you get it at all, and then this higher ed world where they're like, we're just going to keep pumping up tuition, we're just going to get, we do not need to really make major changes, because we're always a selective, we've never have to worry about it. Those two worlds have so far apart. And what it strikes me as part of what you're doing with a college is really trying to make them not that far apart so that people in high school, and families and schools and companies that are with employees, with kids at that age, really understand this insane world that is waiting for them, you know it right in a few years from them this, all these pathways, all these colleges, the colleges have crazy price differentiation, they're going to look at everything about you and want you to be specialized. There's so many landmines there, that families, so many, and it's like you're using tech to try to say instead of 25 grand, you know, maybe this could be accessible for a much more reasonable price. And there are alternative ways to get in front of people. It's a really exciting, you know, idea. Is there any of that resonate with you? Or like, what would you add to those three lines?

Perry Kalmus:

Yeah, 1,000%. I think what I would add to it is, you know, one of the things that I mentioned before we hate these rankings, because and we also hate, by the way, the way that kids approach college admissions, right, they say things like, you know, you say, I gotta come up with 15 schools, I need my reach schools. What is that message sending? That's saying you're not worthy of that school? Right, but you should try. Right? Then my target schools, which is like, well, I guess if I have to, right. And then the safety schools, which is like, Oh, ugh, nothing worked out. I guess I'll go there, right. Like, this is not the right messaging for kids. You know, for us, we try and walk people off of these rankings. And you know, I do it by we usually play a few games. One is that Full Sail game I played earlier. The other one is, I will, you know, this, this really works well with, with families north of the Mason Dixon Line, right? So I say to them, Hey, I'm going to name a school right now. And I'm gonna guarantee one of two things. One, you've never heard of it, too. You've heard of it, because you're a huge college football fan, but you still don't know where it is. Right? And I say, Auburn University. Now, almost nobody north of the Mason under 5% know that it's an Alabama and maybe under 20% have even heard of it, right? And then if you look up its quote, unquote, ranking, right. And its high acceptance rate, which is up 70 80%. You'd be like, I'm never sending my kid there. Right. And when I'm on these zooms with families, I see all this like head nodding like yeah, I would not send my kids, right. And I say, but I'm also pretty sure that there's nobody on this call, who would mind if their kid went on to become the CEO of the biggest company on planet Earth. Turns out, Tim Cook from Apple didn't go to Harvard, or Princeton, or Stanford, he went to Auburn. And so you don't need to go to Princeton and Stanford to be successful in this life. Mark Cuban the big shark from Shark Tank, like he went to University of Indiana, I mentioned before that Kelley School of Business is pretty darn impressive. So that's sort of one way that we like to message to kids. The other way that we'd like to message kids is to let them understand the big picture that there's actually a lot of strategy that can be put into and again, this is the stuff that well, only the wealthy could access before that now we're giving to everybody, which is, you know, let's say you're in a field where a grad degree would probably be a good idea, right? Computer science, business, law, doctor, whatever, if what a lot of people don't realize that the grad school is played by the same rules as the undergrads, okay, the selective ones, right? And the rule is any decision we make, how is that going to affect our ranking? That's it, it's like, and they will all deny that, and it's all bullshit. Sorry, my pardon my friend, but they will all deny it, and they're lying. Right? So one of the big indicators of your ranking is the average GPA of the undergraduate like, that the kid had at the undergrad. Right? So I'll play another game with families and I'll throw up a list. It's got about 80 schools on it. And I say to them, Go down the left column. There's 22 schools. Tell me how many schools Do you recognize the average answer out of 22 is five to seven. So the average person is hasn't heard of two thirds of these schools right to three fourths. And I asked people, where do you think I got this was from? And just I did this game just yesterday, by the way to a group of 30 Country Club executives who want to offer this to their employees. And I said, Where do you think I got this list from? And they gave the answer that almost everybody says, well, that must be the list of US News, best schools. And then I went back one slide, I said, go down this list of schools and tell me how many you've heard of, and everyone was, like, 100%. I was like, that's the list of US News. Best schools, right? Heavy quotes for sarcasm. But this list, you only know 1/3? Where do you think I got it from? And they say, We don't know. And I said, that's a list of schools, where kids went to undergrad, who this year, I'm giving you real time information. 2020 to 2023 were accepted to Harvard Law School. And people were like, what? And I'm like, Yeah, you haven't even heard of two thirds of those schools. Right. And so letting people understand, you know, you don't need to go to the fancy school. In fact, oftentimes, it helps you not to go to the fancy school, because if you go to a school where you're going to thrive, and you're going to do really well academically, and you can get that three, nine, that four out, now you have the shot at Harvard Law School. If you have a 3.3 at Harvard, I will be the first to tell you. Harvard's rigor is extremely strong. And that's probably a Forero at a lot of schools in this country. But do you know what? It's not take it to Harvard Law School? It's not a four. Oh, exactly. You know, if you have the three, nine, the Foro at Harvard. Yeah, that might help you to get into Harvard Law School, but the three threes not getting into Harvard Law School. And so you know, that's how we view it. I think a lot of the three lines you were saying are spot on. But it really is just about making sure that when you have complete information, this doesn't have to be a stressful process. Right? You could do all the things incrementally over time. Right? And suddenly, you end up at the finish line, you're like, Oh, that wasn't so bad. That's how we like to view it.

Jess Stokes:

What is the most exciting trend that you see in the Ed Tech landscape right now that Alex's listeners should definitely keep an eye on?

Perry Kalmus:

Yeah, I think that? Well, it's an interesting question. I know the trend. I'd like to see, I think the trend that sort of keeps scaling up in popularity right now, because it tends to play in the corporate space on corporations and lots of money. And then in the venture world that brings returns and whatnot is the upskilling trend, right? So, and I love upskilling I think it's amazing. But to me, it's the VC community at the Education tech community almost giving up on the high school student. Right, I'm actually giving a talk in Minnesota next month. And the title is why the workforce actually begins in seventh grade, right? Like, so many of these kids will never have the opportunity to be upskilled if they never make it into that job market. Right. So, to me, we've got to get to these kids earlier. You know, I think the Gates Foundation put out an interesting statistic a few years ago, they said, in 2025, which is only two years away, we're going to have 11 million jobs available in the United States, and we will not have the people with the degrees to fill those jobs. That's not going to upskill is not going to solve that. Right. And I always point out this is we do not have a number of people problem, we have a number of people with degrees problem. And so we need to be drilling down much earlier to get to these kids so that we don't lose them before they have an opportunity to even be upskill. So I do love the upskilling. Just to be clear, I think it's great guild education, all those companies are doing really incredible things in the upskilling world. But the other trend I would like to see really, frankly, is the more blended model. You know, I think for me, we shouldn't be trying to achieve scale in education, from a number of like one product can reach a lot of students. I think we should be able to try to scale one teachers impact honest on a student, right, or their students, but the actual impact is what needs to scale right within the student. And so, you know, I think for me, yeah, there's a guy out there from the Harlem Children's Zone if you know Geoffrey Canada, right. And he always utters a statement, and I love it. You know, Geoffrey Canada, for those listening is from if you ever see the documentary Waiting for Superman, he's actually the one who coined that term. They're Waiting for Superman, and he's never going to come. Right. Geoffrey Canada founded the Harlem Children's Zone, he has another phrase the others that I love, because we are a similar one, which is whenever you're wondering what to do an education, just do what the rich people do. Right? They're always gonna do the best version of it for their kids. And he's right. You know, they're always gonna hire people like me to get their kid into college and they're gonna Go to these camps and these academic, you know, tutors and whatnot. So if you think about what those things are, they're all high touch. And it's got to be now high touch is tougher to scale. So that's why I think if technology can be used if the trend can be like, Hey, how do I transform this teachers impact on one student, or the 40 students that they teach. And I could do that times X number of teachers, that's how we can achieve the sort of massive scale that I'm talking about. There's another great guy's name's Clarence Otis, Jr. He's the former CEO of the Darden Restaurant Group, one of the biggest restaurant groups in the world. And he talks about the concept of creators of opportunity, you need sort of two groups of people to sort of make it in this world, you need creators of opportunity. And then you need the preparers, the ones who prepare you to take advantage of those opportunities, when they present themselves. And the prepares in this country, we already have that they're here, they're teachers, right? And they're amazing. They are primed to be able to deliver this kind of preparation for kids. And I think that that's where technology needs to focus, how can I make this teacher so much more impactful on each kid. And then if I could do that times the number of teachers, then I will have achieved the big goal. So.

Alexander Sarlin:

So just putting together those two trends, you're saying that upskilling is something people are paying a lot of attention to, but it's sort of at this moment, at least feels like a negation of the traditional high school pathway and says, We've got to take adults who are already, you know, close to these work and skill them into the jobs rather than actually, you know, thinking about how to improve or change the high school system, it very interesting point. And then the other one is, you know, blended learning and how to scale the impact of teachers. It's really interesting. I mean, it strikes me as you know, I wonder if there's a way to put these together, right, because it shouldn't be true that upskilling has nothing to do with high school. I get why people say that, but it's so silly, because, you know, I think we mentioned the, you know, the third line, you know, one of the things the themes of this conversation is that kids in high school are just not told what they need to know. Right? They do not know, the college process. They don't know what the careers are, like, they just don't know what the world is like outside of high school. I mean, I remember being there and I tutored for years, and I kids knew nothing about the real world. And upskilling is basically here are the skills of the future. Here's where the world is going. Here's, you know, here's what machine learning is all this stuff. Phyllis should be in the same conversation. And you're right, they are absolutely not. And I wonder if that could be done through educators, it could be do done through some kind of blended model. It's really exciting to think about. And then just to wrap up, you know, you've talked about a lot of different things. I love these quotes. What is a resource could be a book, a blog, a newsletter, anything that you would recommend for people who are listening who want to dive deeper into any of the topics we discussed today?

Perry Kalmus:

Yeah, I think on the college admissions side, I love there's a podcast called your college bound kid, I think they give some really phenomenal insights into the admissions process. There's a great book that everyone should educate themselves on to really understand the challenge ahead of underserved kid in higher ed. It's called the privilege poor by Anthony Jack. And it really dives into just how insane I mean, the the example that I give, and I, it's like the most tragic example ever, but like, you know, the Hispanic girl who, you know, a lot of these prestigious colleges will have these excepted student days where like somebody in LA, the schools in New York, but like somebody in LA, and some huge mansion is going to host this, like accepted students thing, right? And they roll up to the mansion, and they're, you know, 1985 Honda Civic, and it's beat up and whatever, and the parents won't get out of the car, you know, and the kid says, why won't you and she said, you know, sweetie, we clean these people's homes, right? Like, and like, this kind of, like tragedy that people go through is like, so it's real, right? And then when they get to school, and like kids are like, I'm just gonna go go to Starbucks. And like, dude, the $6 coffee is not realistic for that kid. And so you know, and they can't get home on vacations. Anyway, he jumps into all that I love that book. I think it's just a really great thing. I also love a book. And this is just to get people off of the rankings as well, which is New York Times guy, Frank Bruni. It's called where you go is not who you will be. And I think, you know, to really let people know, you don't need to go to Harvard like you're fine. Right? Like and we most of us did not. And we all ended up in great places. And then the last one, Oh, also, just because I hate the rankings. And if you don't believe me on the rankings, you don't have to believe me. You can. You can believe Malcolm Gladwell, which I think has more credibility. I do and he's got a great podcast called Lord of the rankings where he has She did an expo Ze, to show you that the rank is really we're just a marketing gimmick by a magazine to try and sell more magazines, you know, US News was a distant third to Time and Newsweek. But they said, they came up with this thing, and it just took off like wildfire. That's the extent of it, you should not put any weight in it. You know, I always tell people, I'm like, you know, I have this Indian student who is in Central Jersey, where there's a lot of Indian families, and therefore, a lot of Indian restaurants. And I said, What's your favorite Indian restaurant? He gave me the name. I said, What would happen if you walked in there? And the owner said, I'm so happy you're here. Listen, I wanted to give you this list of the top 25 cars in America. What would you say to him? You'd be like, Dude, you're your restaurant owner, like stay in your lane, right? So you need to view the US rankings. Similarly, it's a total absurdity. It's like, you know, and the schools are manipulating the rankings. And so I love the lord of the rankings. Go listen to Malcolm Gladwell. You don't don't listen to me on it. And then the last one, I will tell you is a very cool website called less high school stress.com. And this guy just goes into a ton of different things about why how to lower stress, but one of the ways he does it, he's he does these lists, and that you can go on and see like CEOs that didn't go to Harvard and their company. So those are some resources that I really love.

Alexander Sarlin:

Fantastic. We will put links to all of those in the show notes for this episode. Really, really cool suggestions. I've never heard of that. Malcolm Gladwell podcast, definitely want to check that out. That sounds so interesting. By the way, you know why it took off because nobody knows anything about colleges. That's why there's no information anywhere. So when you've decided to rank them, everybody's like, Okay, finally, some way to figure out this insanely complicated world anyway. 100%, correct.

Jess Stokes:

Yeah. Perry, it was so wonderful learning from you today. I think what stood out to me most is that your Northstar is to give students ownership of their story starting really well, even before they're teenagers. And we're not defining the start of their lives as where they go to college, but really helping them write that narrative, and then choose a school that aligns with what they want, instead of taking all of the resources that the adults in the world have decided, are the right pathways for them. So I'm just so appreciative of the work that you're doing to inspire and empower kids to truly own their post secondary pathway.

Alexander Sarlin:

Thank you, Perry. It's been really inspiring. This is Perry Kalmus, founder of a collar which is leveling the playing field in access to college admissions guidance that was previously only available to the wealthy. You mentioned the the scandal in passing that was the varsity blues scandal, if anybody needs to Google that one because that is really interesting. Thank you so much for being here with us. And thanks Jess Stokes, founder of Wonder Academy for being a terrific guest, co host. I'll see you all soon. Thanks for being here. Bye guys. Thanks for listening to this episode of edtech insiders. If you liked the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the EdTech community. For those who want even more Ad Tech Insider, subscribe to the free ed tech insiders newsletter on substack.