If you’re wondering what it takes to prepare your children at a young age for a successful academic future at a University, This episode is for you. If you’re in the process of helping your teen with a college or university application, you need to listen to this episode BEFORE you do anything else. My guest is here to take all of the mystery and guesswork out of the college or university prep process.

Joel Butterly is the CEO of InGenius Prep, a trusted counseling resource for helping kids prepare early for their favorite University and helping teens and parents successfully navigate the application process.

If you would like to learn more about InGenius Prep or receive a free consultation, click here.

You can listen to Inside the Admissions Office podcast produced by InGenius Prep here.

Special thanks to InGenius Prep for sponsoring The Fatherhood Challenge. To learn more about InGenius Prep or to claim your free consultation, click here.

Special thanks to Zencastr for sponsoring The Fatherhood Challenge. Use my special link https://zen.ai/CWHIjopqUnnp9xKhbWqscGp-61ATMClwZ1R8J5rm824WHQIJesasjKDm-vGxYtYJ to save 30% off your first month of any Zencastr paid plan.

Transcription - How Dads Nurture Future Scholars

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If you're wondering what it takes to prepare your children at a young age for a successful

academic future at a university, this episode is for you. If you're in the process of helping

your teen with a college or university application, you need to listen to this episode before you

do anything else. My guest is here to take all the mystery and guesswork out of the college

university prep process. And he will join us in just a moment so don't go anywhere. Before we begin,

I'd like to thank our proud sponsor of this episode and the Fatherhood Challenge in Genius Prep.

In Genius Prep is the world's premier admissions consulting firm proud to be officially recognized

as the country's top college admissions consultants, helping students prepare for admissions

to top schools through individualized educational programs that increase chances of admission

by up to 10 times. In Genius Prep students work with former admission officers to differentiate

themselves from other competitive students in three areas colleges evaluate students in academics,

extra curricular activities and personal characteristics. Just this past admission cycle,

Genius Prep students have secured 110 offers from Ivy League schools, 268 offers from top 20 schools

and 904 offers from top 50 schools. In Genius Prep students success lies within the fact that

Genius Prep is an all in one consulting firm offering every service of family needs,

whether it be test prep, tailored candidacy, building mentorship, academic mentorships,

the leadership and innovation lab, soft skills courses, writing courses and other customized

programs to develop their application persona to the most effective and authentic extent to share

with colleges. Just click on the link in the episode description to book a free strategy call

with one of Genius Prep's college experts or you can visit ingeniousprep.com. That's ingeniousprep.com

and let them know you came from the Fatherhood Challenge. Welcome to the Fatherhood Challenge,

a movement to awaken and inspire fathers everywhere to take great pride in their role

and to challenge society to understand how important fathers are to the stability and culture of

their family's environment. Now here's your host, Jonathan Guerrero. Greetings everyone. Thank you

so much for joining me. My guest is the CEO of ingenious prep Joel Butterly. Joel, thank you so much

for being on the Fatherhood Challenge. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. So Joel, what is your

favorite dad joke? You know, I have so many and they're all so equally bad. The one that comes to mind is

what do you call a factory that produces decent products? A satisfactory.

Thank you for sharing that. Very welcome. Oh boy, there's no way I would have figured that one out.

Well, Joel, please start by sharing the story about why and how you started ingenious prep.

Yeah, sure. So, you know, there were kind of a couple, a couple motivating factors. One of them

was I got to law school and within moments had ascertained that I did not want to be a lawyer.

So there was a quick rush out of the legal door. But perhaps more importantly, you know, when I was

applying to college, I thought I was a very strong applicant and that's certainly, you know, what I

had been told. But I kind of fundamentally lacked the guidance and resources necessary to really

distinguish myself in the competitive admissions process. And so what I did is the same thing that many

students do, which is that they sort of look around at what other people are doing and they say,

I'm going to do the same things, but I'm going to do it better. And in admissions, it's all about

standing out. And if your strategy starts with, I'm going to do the same things everyone else is doing,

you're not going to stand out. And so the idea behind ingenious was to combine kind of two elements.

One of them is sort of best in class advising. And so for that, we use a very large team of more

than 150 former admissions officers from all of the most selective schools. And they provide advice to

students. And then, and then a pool of resources such that students can actually carry out that advice.

Things like research opportunities with professors, internships, we have a startup incubator,

soft skill classes, writing classes. The idea is to is for students to have not just the advice

as to what they should do, but also the resources to actually do it. So I'm assuming there's also

ongoing support for this because these are all great ideas for standing out, but I know most people

wouldn't have a clue where to begin how to even tackle any of these tasks. Yes. So there's a, you know,

it's definitely a relatively involved program. So we have families that start with us as early as

seventh and eighth grade, although the kind of average is 10th and 11th. And so they're working with

us over the course of say one to three years on average. And all of these things are sort of part of a

a long counseling process that's that's sort of built into our curriculum. So there is guided

ongoing support and the support they're receiving. These counselors are people who I'm assuming really

understand the application process from an admission standpoint on a very intimate level.

Yes. So when I say former admissions officers, I mean that these are the individuals who are actually

working in the admissions office reading and evaluating applications and deciding who gets in and

who doesn't. So we have over over 150 close to 200 of these folks right now. And so these are people

who, you know, maybe they worked like the Columbia admissions office the prior year and they read

thousands of applications and chose which students got in which didn't. And so from our perspective,

you know, if you're going to pay for services in this particular industry, it doesn't really make sense

if to do so if that those services don't involve the viewpoint of somebody who actually worked in

admissions because the truth of the matter is that just getting into good schools doesn't actually

mean that you know why you got into a good school. Right. A student could get in for a myriad reasons.

And the admissions officer would look at them and say, oh, you didn't you didn't get in for

normal reasons. You got in for this reason. But a student might be sitting there thinking that

their experience is typical of other applicants when it's not. What can dad start doing with their kids

right now at an early age to help them develop the skills they need to get into a good university and

do so without compromising the the parent child relationship. One that I think is equal parts kind of

my parenting philosophy, but joined with the observations that I've had having seen tens of thousands of

you know young young young children middle school and high school kids is that students really do need

to be exposed to some amount of failure from a relatively young age. Something that is that is

kind of pervasive today among students that we work with them and how talented are hard working

now is that they have no ability to risk or sustain failure in such a way that precludes them from

taking risks. So you know just a simple example is we I mentioned that we have a startup incubator

where students will kind of ideate, launch and build companies and nonprofits. One of the most

challenging parts of it is convincing students to take the risk of kind of putting themselves out

there such that they can either succeed or fail. Students are so used to being in a in a world where

if you just do exactly what is instructed you're fine you can't fail. And that's of course not the way

the world is. And so I think that that's something that you know I personally will spend a good deal

of time on with my son and daughter so that they understand that it is okay to fail and that it is

desirable to take some risk and risk failure. Beyond that you know early years is mostly about

interest exploration and soft skill development. If a student kind of rolls into middle school and

high school with a really solid really strong abilities in in in academic writing, close reading,

public speaking and time management they are going to be miles ahead of the of the competition.

And then interest exploration is just the best case in areas that a student comes into

high school knowing what they're really passionate about because admissions is all about

delving really deeply into that area of passion that area and developing an expertise around that

passion. And so the best way that that fathers can you know help their their children with this is

to expose them to different disciplines like oh here's a documentary about World War One like

let's watch this together do you like it do you not like it. Here's an article I read you know in

wired about you know a new scientific breakthrough you know what do you think of it. Ultimately

school does not prepare students well for interest exploration because the this subjects that are

studied in school are sort of a blend of different things you know history even at the high school

level history is kind of an amalgam of like five different subjects sociology anthropology political

science history etc. And so it's very very helpful if students have some exposure to the actual subjects

which usually means a slightly more advanced level of content and that will do wonders for them in high

school. That's fascinating advice in the home school world for example this this strategy is a very

very common thing exposing killed children at a very early age to different disciplines different

subjects and different experiences but this is something that everyone can do whether you're a

home-schooler or whether your kids are associated with a local school district it really doesn't matter

this is something any parent or any dad can do with their children absolutely and I you know I

would say that about 10% of the parents that I speak to parents of you know younger children

middle schoolers even early high schoolers that 10% can answer the question what is your student really

passionate about and the reality is that 100% of them have the ability to ascertain that and it's

not just by asking the student what do you like it's by actually actively working with a student to

figure out okay like well what are the things that you don't like who can strip those away and of the

things that you like how do we you know so if you like biology okay well what area within biology

like you like marine biology do you like evolutionary biology and so it's an active exploration

that that you're undergoing and one thing I would advise you know parents fathers to kind of be

cognizant of is students should be able to determine what they don't like very very quickly that is

you know 30 seconds to 30 minutes they'll figure out that they don't like something to figure out

that they really do like something and a really passionate about it that can take months and so

you know you find the things that they like and then you delve deeply into those things until you

figure out which one they love that brings to mind something that I know for me could potentially be

a struggle maybe other dads out there would struggle that with us as well you have your own personal

bias that you might bring to this experience so you're exposing your kids to all these other

experiences all these other topics and subjects but you have your own passions and being able to

yes expose your children to your own passions which you should but not to let those completely

dominate to where you are projecting your your own will onto your children and not giving them a

chance to really experience or decide for themselves what they're passionate about yeah I think

that is definitely always a risk I think particularly with fathers there is a kind of natural inclination

to want your children to sort of follow in your footsteps that's not always true but it's

more true fathers than mothers for my observation you know my my advice is just you know most of these

students the ones who are are kind of led by fathers that they really respect and admire and those

are almost always the fathers who let the students be themselves don't force them to do things are

supportive or you know are kind of uplifting they tend to end up doing what the father does

the the and and that is a fairly or at least studying something that's relevant to what the father

does I don't have data but it's you know these students you know the fathers and finance and

you know the the the it's very it's very obvious to which ones have a good relationship with the

father because the ones who have a good relationship with the father they say oh I'm interested in

business or I'm interested you know I'm interested in finance or I'm interested in this or that

and it's obviously something that you know the the student is proud of that they that they would be

kind of pursuing it and then there's the ones the students where there's kind of an obvious

tension between the student and the father usually because the father is extremely disapproving

and and a little bit overbearing and in those cases the student usually chooses the thing that's

going to most annoy the father which is you know the father says something like this and says

well I want to study you know medieval Russian literature or something like that like that so I

would say you know if you're doing if you're if you're if you're you know doing a good job of letting

the students sort of be themselves and and and explore and you're giving them the opportunity to

to pursue other interests beyond the things that interest you more often than not you will find

that you have greater level of conformity to your interests than if you push too hard.

Let's talk about middle schoolers what can a dad of a middle of a middle schooler focus on to make

sure their child is Ivy League material. There's a lot of noise made I mean everywhere in the media

in in like you know by other companies in this industry about how convoluted and complicated

the the admissions process was I think that the the there was an article it was either the Atlantic

or the Wall Street Journal that was you know the title of which was sort of like the the most

complicated admissions year of all time something like that that was this year and there are a lot of

nuances there are complexities but fundamentally I I I firmly believe that the admissions process

is actually pretty straightforward and that 80 to 90 percent of how decisions are actually made

revolve around just two variables and and this is quite consistent both anecdotally and from

the sort of data analysis that we've done so getting into an Ivy League school getting into any

selective school but but the let's just say Ivy League is really about these two things the first

is are you academically qualified whichever one knows about you have to have good grades great test

scores when people don't understand as the grades and test scores are kind of a binary variable they're

not a they don't they don't exist on a sliding scale meaning that you either are qualified or you

are not there's no such thing is like if there's no school where if you have a 15 50 you are less

academically qualified than this than if you have a 1600 on the SAT in both cases you're qualified

it doesn't matter whether you're applying to UC Berkeley or to Princeton the you know it your qualified

and so the important thing to understand there is you don't necessarily have to be number one

you have to be above a certain threshold and what that threshold is depends on the school that

you're applying to and for your GPA it also depends on the high school that you're at for like an

average competitive private school if you're in the top 10 percent of your grade academically

you're probably academically qualified for most schools or like the most highly selective schools

including most of the Ivy League and that's a very rough shorthand but you know generally speaking

holds true that's variable one variable two is and this is really where most of the heavy lifting is

done because at schools like Harvard and Yale anywhere between 60 to 80 percent of the applicant pool

is academically qualified and of that population fewer than one in 10 is actually admitted

so variable two does much of the heavy lifting that is basically are you an expert at something

have you identified a passion or an interest as young as possible and have you developed that

passion or interest to the point that you can rightfully be called an expert for your age group

so the reason that I went through this long explanation is that that that sort of creates the

framework for for for fathers in terms of how to help their students in middle school it is interest

exploration and it is soft skill development reading writing public speaking time management study skills

and throw that in there the the and then in high school it is about taking that interest that you

have ascertained in middle school or before and developing the most sophisticated comprehensive

extracurricular profile you can so probably not necessarily going to this level of detail but assuming

that the kid is interested in public health first thing might be students start to public health

group at their school shows leadership it's not super unique a lot of students do stuff like this but

it shows leadership in its related to your interests then they do community based opportunities they

they they volunteer for you know local hospital volunteers in EMT etc then maybe they work with a

professor they write a research paper of of of their own maybe they submitted for publication

maybe they start a public health organization of their own kind of within their in their community

that's what an expert looks like so you sort of it's sort of these stepping stones in increasing

complexity but that's what fathers should be focused on most most of all the soft skill development

followed by interest exploration and then an extracurricular enhancement i'm backing up just

a little bit to something you said helping them get published write a paper and actually get

become a publication my my wife post phd is is at that point where she has been working really

hard to try to get her material published this is why I'm fascinated by this because you are

starting very very advanced skills very very early in their lives before they even get into an

Ivy League school before they're even ready for a phd program yeah yeah um so my my my my also wrapped

up a phd has gone through the somewhat our juiced process of getting your dissertation wow um the um

yeah so so just to be clear you know when high school students are publishing they're not publishing

in in professional journals that is that is that is that is it would be I think far too tall in order

for basically every high schooler um the uh normally what they're doing is they're submitting to

peer-reviewed journals that are uh that are peer-reviewed by high schoolers college students more

most often college students are phd candidates and so there are a few of these like we we work with um

the journal of student research the national high school journal of science the um scholarly review

and they're all they're all you know reputable organizations that publish work from uh mostly high

school and college students um and and so that that's sort of what you'd be going for it's not

enough to just sort of throw your your you know research paper any you know like on Facebook or you

know on medium.com any place where you can just pay to play that's not really going to confirm much

of an advantage um but if there's a selection process and a review process um then um it can be

quite valuable how do you balance getting your child into school activities or extracurricular

programs they enjoy versus pushing them into activities that will help their academic success

and do so without straining relationships. What I would say is if if if sort of a college what's

called a college counseling approach whether that's done by you know a professional firm or by parents

uh if done correctly most of the students time should be dedicated to uh well time other than studying

will be dedicated to extracurricular activities that relate directly to their area of passion um the so

you know they'll still play sports they'll still may play music maybe um but the you know the the

thrust of what they are spending time on outside of um outside of schoolwork um are going to be these

extracurricular activities related to passion so that is to say maybe they would prefer to play video

games but this isn't going to you don't you really very rarely have to push students to do something

that they hate unless what they hate is studying um the there's not really a simple and there's not

really a kind of a a great solution so what to do if a student really just despises studying or

like really needs help in biology and won't work to work with like a tutor or something like that

unfortunately those are circumstances in which I have found that it's less about trying to get the

student to enjoy it and it's more about having helping them understand what are the consequences in

their you know their life if if they went when presented with something they don't want to do but

that which will help them in life they consistently back down um the so I think that that sort of like

the outcome analysis is pretty important there but for the most part the the balance should be simple

because the best thing they can do is find something that they really love doing and then do a lot

more of it um the yeah hopefully that answers the questions it does I think that's very very helpful

I always love good stories especially when they're true please share some success stories with us

about parents kids or teens that ingenious has helped to become successful sure one of our one of the first

that I was super proud of this is I mean this is back in this company and just started I think it was

2013 maybe 2014 um and uh there was a student um I'm not gonna obviously won't use his name um but his uh

his parents had you know recently immigrated from um a relatively um impoverished country

they were trying to make it running a very small pizza parlor um and he was working kind of nonstop

weekdays weekends um uh or week nights weekends um you know to to help the parents make ends meet um

and he had pretty good grades um the and he had a quite a relatively low kind of SAT score all things

considered it was I think a like a 1200 or something like that which is not not in the grand scheme

of things low but low for the schools he was interested in um and in the end he he he ended up getting

into Yale with a full scholarship which we were you know ecstatic about the the the we wow

spectacular um outcome um so so so that was that was great um another one that comes to mind we

had a student um the he was from california um he's really interested in being a doctor he joined

our startup incubator and he wanted to create a non-profit related to water filtration so

one of the things that he had read at the start of our program was um that when there are natural

disasters many of the deaths in some cases the majority of the deaths are not the result of the

natural disaster itself the lack of access to a clean water and food um and so he wanted to partner

with NGOs that worked in these disaster areas to to offer water filtration devices so he raised

money he purchased industrial strength water filtration devices he sent them over to these NGOs

in the process he actually saved human lives like we got pictures of people whose lives oh wow

you know on unbelievable um so impressive um he unsurprisingly ended up he got it got into Harvard

and Stanford I think he went to Harvard um the but but that you know obviously these are not

that's not a common achievement obviously um but this was not a student if you met the student

so this is a smart student is a good student um but this is you know this was not necessarily someone

that you would expect to have such a tremendous achievement at a young age um and so that was

really remarkable um I could go on but those those two come to mind immediately let's go on to stats

do you have any stats that reflect a difference in results of those who choose ingenious versus those

who don't is there a good age to start working with a child yeah that's a great question and I have

very very strong opinions about it um the so um the way that companies market themselves

in in this industry um is they say okay this is how many Ivy League admits we had this is how many

top 10 top 30 top 50 top 100 etc and there are several problems with that and and we we do that too

the the we just don't do that exclusively but the there are problems with this in my mind the the

the essentially being number one you do not know how many students they worked with so if they have

10 Ivy League admits and they had a thousand students that's not necessarily all that good um

the the the other hand if they had 10 Ivy League admits in 15 students that's spectacular um the

but you don't know that and the companies don't disclose that and so that that's problem number one

the second problem is that companies will often kind of hand pick students based on their grades

and test scores because those are the students who are likely to succeed in the admissions process

and then um and in turn the company can sort of take credit for this work that the student is already

done um I don't I personally feel like that is kind of a violation of the educational mission um

of companies in this industry like the goal here yeah an agent the goal is to be like an educator um

and that just doesn't square with my understanding of what it means to be an educator but it's still

exceedingly common um and and so you also don't know that and so the way that we kind of internally

the way that that I think of this and the way that we we think of you know sort of results and how

to know the the difference is that we compare our student population to a population of students who

didn't work with us but who have comparable grades and test scores and so what we do is we literally

buy applications um and we have a data analyst who makes this comparison between those applicants who

didn't work with us and those who did and what we find is that students who work with us on average

are seven times as likely to get into a top 10 school and six times as likely to get into a top 30 school

um which when you're when you're thinking about it you know at any of these schools you might

your probability of success might be somewhere between five and 10 percent right the the which

means that if you apply to like five reach schools and there are those schools are all five to 10

percent probability says you're being rejected by all of them um if you set up a or sex

topple though those numbers um multiply by six or seven um the uh all of a sudden your probability of

getting into at least one is extraordinarily high and so it's the difference between being overwhelmingly

likely to be rejected by all versus being overwhelmingly likely to be admitted by at least one um

the so so that's sort of how I when I think about how good is the service is the service valuable

that's what I'm thinking about is what is the improved probability that improved likelihood

that you succeed um and it's uh and and so hopefully that kind of catches on in the industry but I

I that's from my perspective really the the only thing you should concern yourself about from an

outcome perspective um because everything else can be sort of manipulated in terms of um the

when good age to start working with us a student I mean the the the kind of my blunt answer is

earlier is generally better for college preparation the absolute earliest that I imagine being

truly valuable is seventh or eighth grade um I do not think that doing things in sixth grade or

elementary school uh that are related to college admissions are particularly useful like you can do

soft skill development at those ages but you really can't do much in the way of you know extracurricular

enhancement etc um it is more expensive to start earlier um the right so if you're working with a

farm the longer the service goes the more expensive it is that's that that's the nature of the the

the kind of nature of the beast I would say that there's in terms of best bang for your buck probably

tenth grade honestly um the which is to say like you know if if I were to put this in terms of increased

probability of success what we find is that students who start work with us just on twelfth grade are

about two to three times as likely to get into a uh into a top school um students who start with us

in eighth or ninth grade or or earlier um are closer to nine times as likely um and students who

start with us in tenth are about seven times as likely and there's a pretty steep drop off between

tenth and eleventh for a variety of reasons but so if I if I if I'm a parent and I'm trying to think

about this in terms of how do I get the best bang for my buck I'm probably going tenth grade um

the if I'm thinking about this in their respective how do I get the absolute best outcome I would start

earlier I would start in eighth or ninth grade um the that's probably the the the best best case

scenario um and you know I would say it's it's it's it's always worth it to get to get advice from

my perspective or at least to get get good advice um that it's always worth uh the the investment or

it's often worth the investment obviously depends on the organization um but you should never feel

like you're just it's too late because even if it's twelfth grade even if it's you two two months

until the applications are due you still have time to do some uh to to to make a really big

difference to double or triple your probability of success can ingenious help students who are

interested in applying to a university outside of the United States oh yeah absolutely so we

have a lot of students the UK's become quite popular so we help a lot of we have a whole UK division

we help students apply to universities in Canada we've helped students apply to universities in

France and China and Korea um in Australia and New Zealand um so so yeah all over the place I'd

say that you know the US is by far kind of the most popular um and then uh UK and Canada and then

the rest how can dads learn more about ingenious listen to the podcast or ask questions our website

ingeniousprep.com um the you can contact uh one of our colleagues on on that website um you know one

of those little chat boxes um you can also reach out and request a consultation which is basically

we'll sit down and we'll talk with you and your child um about you know what what what what they've

done what they should focus on how they can sort of best improve their their chances of success and

we'll also talk through kind of our our programs and services um and we also have we have a a kind of

ongoing podcast um the inside the admissions office um with noelle um the and that can be found on

any any place where you listen to your podcasts um the so it's it's it's I think it's available

at all kind of major outlets just to make things easier if you go to the fatherhoodchallenge.com

that's the fatherhoodchallenge.com if you go to this episode look right below the episode

description I will have all of the links and references that Joel just mentioned posted right

there for your convenience Joel as we close what is your challenge to dad's listening now my challenge is

mostly can you take the time and have the patience um to slowly mentor your students starting from a

young age you know maybe five six years away from the college applications um with an eye towards

building you know a candidacy for this the student that is rich in both academic accomplishments and

also extracurricular accomplishment um you know what I find is that it takes it's relatively it can

be slow moving can be a bit frustrating you don't see much in the way of like tangible outcomes

immediately like that's just the nature of this is that the tangible outcomes they come much later

um but the foundation it happens much earlier um and so kind of taking taking that as a as a challenge

I think and it's something that I challenged kind of myself with all the time with my son um you know

it's it's it's very hard to sit there and try to help try to see if does he like to tinker with things

is he you know does he have kind of an engineering mind or does he prefer to analyze like logical

problems and and does he have a more analytical one um and it can be a bit frustrating it can be a bit

boring um but I think uh that that in the long run is very well worth it. Joel this has been a very

helpful conversation both for me and I know for dads listening thank you so much for being on the

fatherhood challenge thank you so much and thank you so much for having me thank you for listening

to this episode of the fatherhood challenge if you would like to contact us listen to other

episodes find any resource mentioned in this program or find out more information about the fatherhood

challenge please visit the fatherhood challenge dot com that's the fatherhood challenge dot com

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