Applying for college can feel like a monumental, overwhelming task - and that’s because it is! There are so many deadlines, details, and steps that could be missed even by someone with fantastic Executive Function skills - but does it have to be? And then, once you get there, how do you set yourself up for success as a college student with EF challenges? I wondered how I could use the platform of Focus Forward to help those of you out there find some resources and strategies to make applying and going to college a little easier. Luckily, my colleague at Beyond BookSmart knew someone at McMillan Education, an organization whose goal is to help make the process of applying to college a little easier and less stressful for everyone. Rachel Leja, an educational consultant at McMillan came to my rescue! We met on a sunny morning just last week to have a chat about all things college - both before and after acceptance. Keep listening to learn how you can make the most of this next chapter and if your kiddos are too young to be thinking about college, tuck this episode away in your back pocket for the future. It’ll be here waiting for you!

In the meantime, here are some show notes related to the episode:

Guide to Colleges for Students with Learning Differences (check your local library or school counseling office)

https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Colleges-Students-Learning-Differences-dp-0593517407/dp/0593517407/ref=dp_ob_title_bk

McMillan Education

https://www.mcmillaneducation.com/

WISE Advice on Educational Planning - McMillan’s Podcast

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2134583

Students with Disabilities Preparing for Postsecondary Education:

Know Your Rights and Responsibilities

https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/transition.html

Self-Advocacy for College Students

https://www.ldonline.org/ld-topics/self-esteem-stress-management/self-advocacy-college-students

7 Ways to Support Your Teen During the College Application Process

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/7-ways-support-your-teen-during-college-application-ellis-mba-phd/

Contact Us!

Reach out to us at podcast@beyondbooksmart.com

IG/FB/TikTok @beyondbooksmartcoaching

Transcript

Hannah Choi 00:04

Hi everyone and welcome to Focus Forward, an Executive Function Podcast where we explore the challenges and celebrate the wins you'll experience as you change your life through working on improving your executive function skills. I'm your host, Hannah Choi. So I was talking with my children's former second grade teacher recently and she was telling a funny story about how the stress of applying to college was affecting her and her daughter, who is a senior in high school. Another friend of mine, Bonnie, who you might know from my tip of the day about body doubling on Instagram. She shared with me that she was wondering how she could support her son, who is a junior in high school in the college search and application process without actually doing the work for him. There are so many deadlines and details and steps that could be missed even by someone with fantastic EF skills, throw in a neurodivergent brain and it is bound to be an extremely challenging experience. But does it have to be? I wondered how we here at Focus Forward could help my friend and my children's teacher find some resources and strategies to set their kids up for success during the stressful time. Luckily, my colleague at Beyond BookSmart knew someone at Mcmillan Education, which is an organization that does exactly that - make the process of applying to college a little easier and a little less stressful for everyone. Rachel Leja, an educational consultant at Mcmillian. Excuse me, Mcmillan came to my rescue. We met on a Sunday morning just last week to have a chat about all things college, both before and after acceptance. So keep listening to learn. And if your kiddos are too young for this info at this time, just tuck this episode away in your back pocket for the future. It'll be here waiting for you. Or listen anyway, just because you're a Focus Forward super fan. I'm just kidding. But speaking of our amazing fans, if you listen to us on Spotify or Apple podcasts, could you please do me a big huge favor and give us a five star rating, we will love you forever for it. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And don't forget to reach out to me at podcast at beyond booksmart.com If you have any topic ideas that you'd like us to cover. Okay, now on to the show. Well, hi, Rachel, thanks so much for joining me today.

Rachel Leja 02:33

Hi, Hannah. It's nice to be here.

Hannah Choi 02:35

Yeah, I'm so excited to to talk about this because my kids, my daughter is in ninth grade. So this is going to be something that is coming up for us. So it's good to kind of figure things out, things have changed since I went to school some number of years ago, we won't count that. And so would you introduce yourself and explain why you are here and what your background is?

Rachel Leja 03:05

Sure. So my name is Rachel Leja and I work for Mcmillan Education. We are an educational consulting firm out of Boston. And I work with students that have learning disabilities or neurodivergence of some type. And my background is in special education teaching. I started my career at the Landmark School in Beverly, Massachusetts, where I fell in love with all things executive functioning. And I took what I learned there, and I transitioned to a therapeutic day school in Connecticut, where I imparted a lot of that wisdom and honed a lot of that work, especially with students as they were applying to colleges. And after I left the teaching world, I've joined Mcmillan and much of my work has been with students. I work with school aged students as well for school placement, but I do a lot of college work. And a lot of my work revolves around students that have a neurodivergence, and specifically some executive functioning deficits. So a lot of my work is focused on helping them manage the process and also bolster those skills during that time.

Hannah Choi 04:06

So you have you have such a great background for that you have like the the teaching sort of student support side and the kind of knowledge about the whole application process. So it's like, yeah, really great combination.

Rachel Leja 04:17

Sort of a convergence of all of my worlds.

Hannah Choi 04:19

Yeah, that's really neat. I love that. Cool. Great. So could you tell me a little bit about McMillan and maybe how like, just how you guys approach supporting kids when they're applying to school? Sure. So,

Rachel Leja 04:36

Macmillan education, like I said, we are located out of Boston, but we have consultants kind of all over. I'm actually in Connecticut. We have about 18 or 20 consultants that work with all types of different students and learners. We have folks that specialize in things like international placement or athletic recruiting. And like I said, I work with students with learning disabilities. So we all kind of have our own well, areas of expertise and we assign students kind of based on their background coming in to work with counselors. And our job is to really help students to break down the college process itself. For all students, not even those that are, you know, in addition to those that struggle with executive functioning, most students find the college process overwhelming. So really spending the time to break that down into meaningful chunks. And to help students really execute that application process. So everything from college search, to standardized testing, to pressing, you know, send on those applications very soon, is really what we do with students.

Hannah Choi 05:37

That's great. I have a friend whose son is a junior in high school, and she just said to me the other day, I, you know, I want him to take ownership of it, because it's his college experience. And it's his, you know, it's his high school experience, and his, you know, it's his life. And at the same time, she's like, I feel like I need to support him as well. So it sounds like the services that you guys provide, probably make it so that parents can learn support, but also take a step back a little bit and give some of the ownership to the kid.

Rachel Leja 06:13

Yeah, absolutely. So you know, part of our process is meeting with everybody. First, we have a meeting where we talk with students and parents, and we get some insight about kind of the student's goals wants, you know, hopes for the future, but also the same from the parents. And then usually, it's largely hands off with parents, and it allows them to kind of step back and be a part of those more fun parts of the process, like going on college tours, or, you know, kind of talking about the things that their kids are excited about about college and not having to worry about some of those, like, you know, the the little tasks that can be lagging and aggravating, and then lets us kind of, you know, be those people and instead kind of helps students stay accountable while keeping peace at home.

Hannah Choi 06:58

I mean, I see that a lot as a coach, you know, just getting be allowing the parents to step out of that, like you said, like that sort of naggy role. And it's different when it's not someone in your family, when it's when it's someone outside your family. Working with you and supporting you with that kind of stuff, it it, it hits differently than when is your parents. Right, right. You know, did you did you do this? Did you do that?

Rachel Leja 07:19

Right? Yeah. And one thing that's you know, we always say is that we are truth tellers. So we are here to just share the information that we have with students and families and sometimes utilizing that objective data can really help to clarify things for students and for parents. And so, you know, that's, that's also part of our process with students and families.

Hannah Choi 07:39

Okay, so if you're working with a student who has, you know, a disability or ADHD or something like that, how do you support them? And how, what are the kind of the progress that what are the steps that you take? Yeah, to support them through that?

Rachel Leja 07:54

That's a great question. So we use in our college planning, what we call our WISE method of educational planning, which is broken into four steps. So already, we're breaking a larger task down for all of our students. So that first step is really the "wondering" phase, like, you know, thinking about what's my ideal college, what's available out there, what am I interested in. In that "investigation" phase, where we are really digging deep on colleges and looking into services, requirements, things like that, that "seek" phase, again, we're really doing a lot more of that kind of deep work. And then "endeavoring" is really just, you know, putting those applications together. So throughout those phases, for all of our students were utilizing this process and through the platform that we have called the owls nest, students are assigned tasks throughout that process that align both with the college process itself and with our wise methods. So that's one way that we kind of helped to break down and keep students accountable throughout the process for each of those tasks. The college process itself requires a ton of executive functioning skills. And even for students with strong executive functioning skills, the sheer amount of information and deadlines can be really overwhelming. So by breaking it into those meaningful and manageable chunks, that can help to increase clarity and productivity and also help students to manage the stress of the college application process. So my job is to just really help kids to get out of their heads, externalize some of their thinking, put things on paper, have conversations in a way that helps them to really wrap their brain around what they're looking at and what they want. Because it's it's such a daunting process. So my job is to help kind of make that process a little bit less mysterious.

Hannah Choi 09:47

Yeah, it's something that I've been that has kind of been trending for me lately is this idea of the strategies that that people with executive function challenges use can be used by anybody and and like you said, you know, it's this breaking things down and making things more accessible, making things easier that benefits everybody, regardless of any, like ADHD diagnosis or any other diagnosis, like why not take advantage of all of these strategies that are really helpful? Right? Yeah, I love that the students can have a place that they can go to see what their next steps are. So it's the accountability is on them to do it. And yet that you give them some autonomy to say like, Okay, I need, I need to, I need to make this choice to log into this account and see what the next steps are, and and figure out when I'm going to do that, and how I'm going to make that fit into my busy schedule. So I love that you, you, you give them you support them with the tools that they need to, to work towards that independence, and you give them the opportunity to have some autonomy, about around how they're going to approach it and when they're going to approach it.

Ace Your Freshman Year of College