Vitamin OC Episode 3: Kaplan Educational Group Founder Greg Kaplan

In this episode of Vitamin OC, hosts Joanna Weiss and Whitney Gomez engage with college admissions expert Greg Kaplan, who shares valuable insights on navigating the college admissions process. The conversation covers the importance of parental support, understanding college fit, helping students discover their passions, and the need for balance between academic pressures and personal growth. Kaplan emphasizes that college is a stepping stone rather than the ultimate goal, and he encourages parents to foster a supportive environment that prioritizes their children's well-being and growth.

Takeaways

• The college admissions process is more competitive than ever.
• Parents should encourage their children to pursue their own interests.
• It's important for students to see college as a stepping stone.
• Parental support should focus on the journey, not just the outcome.
• Students need to know that their parents are in their corner.
• Exposure to real-world experiences is crucial for student growth.
• Summer should be a time for both relaxation and enrichment.
• Not everything students do needs to be for college applications.
• Reading for pleasure is essential for developing comprehension skills.
• Parents should create a supportive environment around college admissions.

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Transcript

Welcome to Vitamin OC, I'm Joanna Weiss. 

And I'm Whitney Gomez. Every week we bring you your recommended dose of civics and civilization in Orange County. 

And today we are here with our wonderful guest. We have a very insightful and professional college counselor, Greg Kaplan. Greg is the founder of Kaplan Education Group, and we are so honored to have his years of expertise navigating the college admissions process with high school seniors and juniors and anyone as young as I don't know, we'll talk about it, maybe middle schoolers here in Orange County. But we're so grateful for your time. Thank you for being here. 

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here too. 

And Greg is the author of two amazing books, both of which I've read and both of which I can strongly recommend. The first is Earning Admission. And this is your kind of opus on how to prepare your child and put together their application. And the second in which I noticed a really big change in tone, Greg, from the first, the Journey, talking about how kids can be successful in their lives, not just in college admissions. So I'd love to talk to you at some point about that progression. 

While you do have some wonderful advice about how students can earn admission and navigate in the college process for students, what we'd like to talk with you about today is your insight and how to help parents navigate the process of college admissions. We know that through Whitney's experience too, that you have some great advice there. And so I'll let Whitney ask the first question. 

The first thing that we'd love to hear from you is how we can strike the balance between trying to help our kids do as best they can while maintaining sanity in the family and the household and supporting our kids in a way that isn't overly stressful and competitive.

I think that is the biggest challenge in 2025 is how do we push kids to be the best versions of themselves and help them define that while recognizing how competitive of a process that this has become. I think as parents, we all have to recognize that the process that your kids are going through is completely different from when the three of us applied to college. And what I always tell students is that the schools that you may be striving to get into were my backups 20 years ago. And today, I never would be admitted. And so it's taking this process for what it is. The college admissions process, in theory, measures growth. And what we always have to be looking at orienting this process to is how can we support our kids to grow in a healthy way that allows them to discover what makes them tick. Gone are the days where you need to be an extremely well-rounded applicant who plays a varsity sport, is on student council, plays three instruments, is working towards the cure for cancer.

There are so many incredibly gifted kids out there today that at end of the day, when they are reading an application, what they are looking for is how can we create a class that's well-rounded, full of superstars chasing their own interests and their own potential. So as a parent, as a way to probably strike the balance between wanting the best for your child and also allowing them to grow up in healthy way, it's letting them be in the driver's seat. It's encouraging them to strive for what makes them tick and then working to support them to find opportunities and to grow and to grow in a way that allows them to say, I love this, I don't love this, but it's they need to be, it needs to be their passions, not ours or our goals for our kids, but rather what are they interested in saying, hey, is this something you'd like to try? And it's okay if they say no, but then the answer needs to be, well, why is that? What about this isn't appealing because it needs to be a conversation rather than barking orders. whether it's less of a, and I think, you know, Whitney, we were both at an event where that this tag phrase that I love is 'less of a manager and more of a mentor.' 

Good. That's really interesting. Thank you for that. And you mentioned that sometimes it's about helping the kids understand what they're looking for. If you would, give us an idea of being in a room, first time meeting with parents and students, and you're looking at the student's credentials and the parents perhaps are saying what colleges they're thinking would be applied for the child. You're maybe not seeing that same connection between the schools that they would want to apply to and the students credentials. How do you navigate those tougher conversations with parents? 

It is a tough conversation. I think it comes from a good place. And I really want to preface that, that who wouldn't want their child to go to an amazing school that in theory you think opens doors for career outcomes. But when I have a family in my office who says it has to be, and I use that word intentionally, has to be, or they must go to the school, Stanford, Harvard, Penn, whatever. My response always is why? Why does it have to be the school? Because I want to understand what they're chasing. In this era marked by AI and globalization, and there's so much in the press right now about challenges that young recent college grads are facing to launch their careers, I think it's easy to think that, gosh, if my kid goes to insert fancy school here, that that's the antidote of the silver bullet. But we also have to take a step back and say for the kid that has to be the next Elon Musk or tech entrepreneur, whatever it may be, or find the cure for cancer, become a plastic surgeon, something to come back to Newport Beach and be able to live independently. Let's take a step back and say, okay, what are the paths to do that? There are more graduates working in Silicon Valley and big tech who graduated from San Jose State University than from the entire Ivy league put together.

And for those who insist that their child become a physician or other form of healthcare provider, it's let's take into account the fact that med schools do not give a prestige boost for where one goes to undergrad. So what is the right fit? Because I always ask a student for the first time, excuse me, in a specific order, I always end every consultation with two questions in the exact same order. First, where do you see yourself in 10 years? Because I want a kid thinking about where do they see themselves when they're 25, 26, 27. And then the follow up question is, and then when you think about college, what comes to mind? College is a stepping stone. It's not the end all be all destination. And I think we'd have a lot less anxiety about our kid's going to be okay if we actually started thinking and addressing how can I support them to reach their long-term goals and recognizing that this education should support that rather than be the magic bullet that will provide that answer.

Good, thank you for that. Let's talk about when you meet with students. And the first couple of meetings are usually family meetings. And then at some point, you get your hands on the kids alone. What do you hear from the kids that we as parents are telling them and doing wrong? And what do you wish we were saying to them? And how do you wish we were managing this process with them?

I love that you're asking me this question, Whitney. I thank you. I think you're the first person to ever ask me this question in either a public or a private setting. I think a lot of kids, when they are candid with me and they're working on an essay and they're feeling that it's not where it needs to be, that's where sometimes I see breakdowns where it's, I'm not going to get into the school and my life's going to be over. Or 'Mom and Dad are going to be . . . they want me to go so bad. Mom and dad went here.' Or they know that they're really pushing or they're doing everything they can. Parents need to let their kids know it's going to be okay. And that as parents, we are more concerned about how you're treating this journey, hence the title of the book. It is the journey and how you go through it as the reward. Are you putting effort in? Are you giving this your all? Are you actually reflecting on how you are growing in the essay? Are you learning how to advocate for yourself through this process? If you get into that school, that's wonderful. But if you go through this process in a healthy way, you should grow as a human being because it is designed to ask you the questions that the colleges ask are like, okay, who are you now? And who do you see yourself becoming? is If you put the effort in and you try, are you doing your best? and why have your back? Or am I chasing the outcome? I think kids need to know that their parents are in their corners because you guys are.

So long as you're putting in the effort. We as parents work so hard to make these investments and to be able to so kids can have every opportunity. It's why people relocate to Orange County. It's because the schools are wonderful . . . the opportunities. It's a great place to grow up and raise a family. But they also need to know that if whether it's Santa Barbara or UCLA or San Diego State that it's if you're growing that's what the education is designed to measure. So it's going to be okay. I think if we focus too much on the outcome, then it's easy to become very reliant on someone who does what I do, which is like, let's just get to that opus of an essay and we don't care what it looks like as long as it gets you in. That's the wrong message for a child. And I do see that more than I'd like to. 

This is really great advice that I hope we have a lot of listeners pay attention to. But one of the things that you've mentioned several times is that this is a growth journey and that you're supposed to identify growth. One of the ways kids can grow is by developing a passion. And every now and then you've got kids who don't have that passion yet. Do you have any suggestions for parents helping children navigate what their passions might be? 

I think the first thing, and that's also a great question, would be to recognize that there's a lot of parents who have yet to find their passion as well. So that word does get thrown out as a buzzword almost. It's like, what's your passion? Do you have a passion project? Everyone's on their own trajectory and that comes sooner than later for others. I discovered that for what I guess my professional passion as a third act after not enjoying being an investment banker, after truly not enjoying law school. And then this came along and I'm like, wow, this feels very right. And so it's to recognize that a lot of us are on our X act in life. It's about exposure. It's not that you need to go figure out this, like, you like video games, therefore maybe it's coding.

How can we get you out in the real world? We're seeing, I see it lot now, particularly for younger students who are entering high school, how the pandemic, I think, has affected young people, particularly in elementary school. I think so many, so much of the conversation was for the COVID kids who were in high school. I see longer-term consequences, I would say, for students who were in elementary school, who were feeling probably that when the socialization and a lot of those key life skills that socialization that comes through education manifests itself.

But we need to get kids out there doing things. So it's okay to do something that has no bearing on a college application, i.e. if you're going to go shadow someone for a day to see what it's like to be working in a hospital or to see what a lawyer does at a large law firm, that's great. You may not write about that for a college essay, but not everything needs to be about college applications. Sometimes we just need to get out there. And these kids are so screen- focused today that those in real life experiences sometimes take a backseat to those experiences that we all benefited from just by virtue of the way we lived as kids, which was much more in person. And so I think it's, always tell folks like, hey, if you're interested in a certain field, it may not be a college essay experience, but that's okay, go do it. And let's prioritize growth experiences, even if there's a college admissions experience that would be more valuable.

Thank you for that. I got some great advice. I have a friend who has three kids and her youngest is the same age as my oldest. So she knows everything and is constantly guiding me in the right direction on things. And she said to me, going into the college admissions process, do not talk about names of schools with anyone, family members, friends. It's not your school. It's not your process, your journey. Let your child share what they want to share with the people they choose to share things with. You don't want Aunt Sally calling and saying, did you get in to Johns Hopkins? And the kid having just been rejected from Johns Hopkins, you know, you want to let your kid release information. And that has been really helpful because when people ask me things that just say, we have a family rule We don't talk about names. And that's been very freeing for me. Are there other best practices for parents similar to that that you can tell us to just kind of make a rule in the family that you don't talk about college admissions except for two hours a week? Or what guidelines do you have for those of us trying to, again, create the right constructive home environment for the students?

Back to a question that I briefly already touched upon is the 'where do see yourself in 10 years?' The number one answer I get from kids today which is so different from when I was their age. The first words out of their mouth for 99 % of them is employed. These kids today, Gen Z, is the most pessimistic about their future with it respect to economic conditions and I think there's gone is this idea: I'm a millennial or for Gen X or a boomer that, okay, if you go to college, you're going to be fine. You'll be to afford to buy a house. You'll get a job and you'll build your life. That promise, I think, there's no illusions about that. That may or may not exist today for a lot of young people. And so I think so much of this conversation, it's not just about when you're going through the process, but you have to check yourself. Because I think about so much pressure. My mom didn't get to go to college and she grew up in an abusive household and there was so much 'You need to go to.' It was those types of schools. It was like, 'Which Ivy are you going to?' Not 'are you going to go, but which one?' Because I think there was so much fear that my mom was not able to launch a career or ever live financially independently. And there was a lot of, I would say, women of her generation that that was the case. And so it was such an obsession within my household growing up as a kid that you need to go one of these schools in order to be okay. And so I think by the time you actually have that conversation and you go through that process. There may have already been so much internalization of the high stakes nature of this process that I think we need to start talking in middle school and in elementary school. When I have students who come to me who go to the various private schools or public high schools, and there's so much obsession with 'am I picking the right high school?' It's like, you can't go wrong as long as you grow. And so I think we need to take a step back and ask, like, you're going to be okay, but you're going to be okay if you actually figure out what you enjoy to do and you develop the skills to be good at it, and there's an opportunity to do it. Because I think there's so much we associate with Johns Hopkins. We associate Penn, Harvard, at UCLA with financial success, but we don't talk about as much is all of those folks like my best friend from Penn. I don't think he's had a full-time job that's lasted more than six months and he's working on a PhD right now. And I think that's fantastic, but Penn wasn't the magic bullet for meaningful employment at X digit salary. So I think that would probably be, it's like, you're gonna be okay if you believe it, but please do not confuse admission with long-term success or stability because that is not the case. 

Okay. That's important for everybody to know. We are going through some rougher economic times and our kids are feeling that pressure, as well. So they do look at the right school as being that place that will set them up for life, which isn't always the case. One of the things that parents particularly this time of year are navigating is trying to decide summer plans for their kids. And their kids likely, if they're at some of the high schools around here, have been coming off of AP exams, they studied for finals. Do you have any specific advice for kids, perhaps even maybe juniors going into their senior year of summer ideas of maybe enrichment? But also should we care less about enrichment and really take the time to really focus on themselves and some of those developing them, other skills that might serve them well. 

Before you answer that, let me just say I have two types of friends. One that's like, 'They're done. it's over. Exams are over, we can relax.' And the other that are like, 'I've got a list, you're done, I own you now.' And I'm not gonna tell you which type of parent I am. Let's just set that by the wayside. We do want to help people figure out what's good for the summer. We're trying to create balance, create a constructive environment. What should they be doing? 

There's not a right or wrong answer. That's the beauty. is You don't even have to put yourself in either tribe. You can be a little bit of one at some part of the summer and a little bit of the other. Summer, we should recharge. Kids today, 55 % of college bound high school seniors today have straight A's. And these kids who think that if they get one B that their life is over.

So this is a very stressful time. There's so much stress. These kids need a chance to reset and balance. And I think there's, we should say there's a couple of things that we should always focus on in a summer because:

One, summer is a chance to do things we just don't have time to do during the school year. And I think we should say, like, if we can allocate part of the summer to focus on college, part of it to grow as a human being, I think I'm always focused on the numbers of this process because they are so inflexible with these incredibly bloated applicant pools. When I share with families that a hundred thousand people applied to San Diego State last year, I think it gets real because people realize, gosh, the schools that I took for granted when I was my child's age, no longer like we cannot take them for granted. So if there's an opportunity from a passion exploration for a student who's interested in potentially becoming a physician to take a public health class at a local community college, that's not material that's ever going to be covered at their high school. And it may be much less work in an online asynchronous class as a way to enhance the transcript because it is so competitive for a kid who's not feeling the most confident about their transcript. It's a great way to get a boost saying, gosh, I may have gotten a B.
in that AP in my AP class at my very demanding high school. And it's like, look you can get A's in college. And it's a really great confidence boost. Great. Show them that they can achieve, help build that confidence. And then for the one that doesn't know how to stop, it's like, okay, you can add to the transcript. 

I think summer is the best time to do test prep for a rising junior or a student who's very advanced in math and has completed algebra two or integrated math three.
Because when else are you going to do that if you want to apply to a private university or out of state public university that's very selective and requires a test? We can't fight this process. We can opt out of it. But the rules are what they are when it comes to grades and test scores. And so I always like to mind that. It's something that requires planning. And I think for students who are growing up in Orange County, where we have a reputation for having more sometimes than we need, and there are so many who struggle to meet basic necessities, from a service standpoint to develop perspective and give back, a lot of kids will actually understand what gratitude is when they realize that, you know, it's so easy growing up in a place like where we live to be like, just, this is how life is. And I'm not grateful for it because you never had that exposure to what are the challenges that are being faced in other communities that colleges expect kids to work on when they're there. So I always like to focus on service opportunities because it's sometimes so hard to fit in with sports. This is the time to volunteer.

And then to look for anything that's not a pay to play camp. Colleges cannot give a benefit if the the price tag is the barrier to entry. So it can be a great from a growth experience, but let's get involved in real world communities and in real world challenges. And it could be from a service job. I love a college essay where you address the challenges or you learn how poorly service workers are treated or people who have an accent are treated. Those are can be sometimes the most profound essays coming from a kid growing up in a very well to do community because it shows so many different layers of perspective. It's like you understand the flaws of where you live and that you're actively seeking to address and compensate for them. That is powerful, particularly for someone who grows up in a place like a Newport Beach or Laguna Beach or communities that have reputations for entitlement. 

I feel like we could talk to you for three hours. And we know you have students to get back to. So our last question for today is, is there anything that we didn't ask you that you wish we had asked you? And is there any closing message that you want to put out there to parents like us who are navigating? 

As a parent in this digital screen era, it's what should my child be reading for fun?

Reading comprehension has become the most challenging part of the ACT or SAT to improve upon for students. And I was reading a really interesting statistic in the New York Times that in 1973, only 11 % of people in high school surveyed said they had not read a book for fun in the last 12 months. And that's now at 60%. And I see it with the test scores. I see it in the quality of first draft essays, and I see it in the perspective gap. When these schools are asking you and trying to measure how have you grown as a human being, where's your trajectory, sometimes understanding different people and different perspectives is so critical. And I think when we look at a a more macro societal level, when we talk about like the fraying social contract or our ability to get along or speak past closely held political divides, reading books, and I just read Demon Copperhead, which is set in rural Appalachia. It's the retelling of David Copperfield. It's set in pill addicted rural Virginia. And that's not a perspective I'm gonna get living in Orange County. It's not a perspective I'm gonna get interacting with the folks I interact with on a daily basis. But I'm so grateful that I read that to just understand what that voice may sound like, because I do think that engenders a little bit more empathy in me. And that's what I want for all of our kids.

Wow. Well, I love that you provide not only college counseling services, but you are a really great family therapist and a really wonderful human being who encourages people to pursue their passions, be as well developed and well-rounded as they can, not just for the college admissions process, but for themselves and for even the betterment of society. You have a really great perspective and we're so happy that you've shared that with us today. Thank you for being here and we hope to have you back.

Today was talking about the parents for the parents, but we'd love to have you back talking about students and ways that they can help with their success next time. 

Thank you so much for having me. I'm always excited to share and be a part of this. And I think it's great that you are trying to impart a dose of civics and just community, because that's what makes this place so special. And we all have room to grow. And thank you. 

And to our listeners, thank you for joining us for your recommended dose of civics and civilization. And we'll see you next time.