Shellee Howard, founder of College Ready, recounts her personal path from growing up in Laguna Beach, a small Orange County community with limited college counseling, to navigating a self‑directed college application that landed her at San Diego State. She describes a chaotic college experience—changing majors five times, taking winter and summer courses, and graduating in four years—prompting a vow never to let her future students endure the same uncertainty. After a brief corporate sales stint at Procter & Gamble, she earned a master’s certification in college consulting from UC San Diego. Howard then applied her learned strategies to her own children: her son earned admission to seven Ivy League schools, attended Harvard pre‑med debt‑free, and is now in medical school; her daughter attended the University of Alabama for nursing, also debt‑free. These successes illustrate the broader problem of students lacking clear college‑planning strategies. Howard founded College Ready seven and a half years ago to provide structured guidance that helps students gain admission to their target schools and graduate without debt, leveraging her personal lessons and proven family outcomes.
Chapters
Hello, my name is Shellee Howard and I'm with College Ready. I actually founded College Ready 7.5 years ago, and I'd like to tell you my story why. Many years ago, I graduated from Laguna Beach High School, and I find myself back in beautiful Orange County. The nice part about growing up in a small community is that we had a very tight bond. On the other hand, we had a very small community with not a lot of help when it came to college. Years ago, we had one college counselor in our high school, so I remember going home to ask my parents if going to college was a good idea. Since neither of them had attended, my dad said, "I think it's a great idea," and my mom says, "I'm not sure." So I decided I'm going to give it a shot. I didn't take an SAT. I didn't take all of the preparatory classes. Back then, I just applied, and I applied to two schools: San Diego State and University Colorado thinking I was either gonna surf or ski. That was not a good strategy, but that's the plan I had. I ended up getting into both colleges, and I ended up going to San Diego State. I did graduate in 4 years, but I did make a lot of bad choices because I didn't have a lot of direction. I changed my major 5 times. I had to go to winter school and summer school, and I pledged at that time that I was never gonna put my own students through this. The nice part I can tell you is I did graduate in 4 years. I did start my career with Procter Gamble in corporate sales 4 days after, and I did enjoy having the full college experience. As well as since then, I have gone back to school to UC San Diego and got my master's certification in college consulting. So now I want to tell you my story as it pertains to my children and why College Ready. So the nice thing is I have 2 children. I have a son who's 24 and a daughter who's 20. And my son was the first to go through the process with me. And the reality is he came home from 8th grade and said, "Mom, I'm super excited. I can't wait to go to high school." And then he follows up with, "And I wanna be a brain surgeon." Like any other parent, my eyes opened big and I was thinking, how in the world am I going to get this for him? But I put on my mom hat and I figured it out. So what we did is we went over to the local high school that summer and spoke to the college, uh, high school counselor. And the counselor immediately said, "Why would you spend all that time and money going into medicine when you just can't, you know, make that much money anymore?" And I could see my son's dream was just crushed. So we gracefully bowed out, and as we were walking out to the car, I remember my son saying, "Mom, now what are we gonna do?" And I said, "Don't worry about it, we will figure this out." The nice part is, is we did figure it out. In 4 years of him going through high school, he was standing up to give a salutatorian speech, and people around him were going, "I had no idea this kid was so smart." He got into 7 Ivy League schools, and several of them debt-free. He ended up going to Harvard pre-med, and he graduated in 4 years completely debt-free. It was a fantastic education for him. He's now at the University of San Diego, first year medical school, trying to be a surgeon. It's a great story and one that he should be very proud of. I also have a daughter who's 4 years younger, and her dream school was University of Alabama. And why is that? Wanted the full experience of college, and they have a wonderful nursing program. So she ended up going to her dream school completely debt-free, and the beauty of that is she got into the nursing program and she's well on her way of making her way into her dream career. So why do I tell you my story? Is because it is not that uncommon. There are so many great students who just don't really know what plan or strategy to use. So I would love to help you as I have hundreds and hundreds of students get into college and graduate debt-free. I would love the opportunity to help you out. Thank you.
