From Robotics to Cornell: A Father-Son Blueprint for College Success with Aarav & Ritesh Kumar

Parents, is your teen college ready? Are you feeling overwhelmed, stressed out, or excited about your teen applying to college? Do you know what colleges are looking for? And if your kid gets in, do you know what you'll pay for it? College admission has never been so competitive or expensive. Shellee Howard will take you on a journey to help you and your teen get college ready. Now here's your host, Shellee.

Well, hello parents, this is Shellee Howard with College Ready and Parents, Is Your Teen College Ready? coming to you again, but today Hey, I have two special guests. I have a father-son duo, two very, very important people to CollegeReady. And wait till you hear their story. It is one of inspiration and impact, and I'm not going to ruin it for you. So let's go ahead and start from a student's perspective. Go ahead and introduce yourself.

Hi, I'm Arav. I went to the Peddie School in Hightstown, New Jersey. I've been with CollegeReady since the summer before my senior year, and they've helped me apply to about 20 schools. And I've gotten into most of the top engineering schools and have decided to commit to Cornell Engineering for mechanical engineering.

Woo-hoo! I love it. And Dad, please introduce yourself. Yep.

I'm Ritesh Kumar, Arav's dad. Arav is my elder son. I have a younger child, 13 years old, going to 8th grade.. And I'm sure just like Arav, our team is going to help Anaya too, get into a wonderful college. My profession, I am a management consultant helping pharma companies. I have a degree in chemical engineering, and then I also did MBA from Duke University. Again, very happy that Arav was part of Shellee Howard's team. It really helped him a lot, and I look forward to kind of wonderful time that Arav is going to have at Cornell. We are busy this summer. Getting him ready to go to Cornell and enjoy his college years.

So good. Did you hear that? So I, I'm impressed. Let's just be honest. Like you, you conquered it. What other schools did you apply to? I think that's important for other listeners to understand because what you achieved is phenomenal, but where else would you have applied?

I applied to most of the top Ivy League schools and all of the top engineering schools like MIT, Stanford, Cornell, Georgia Tech, Michigan. I think my focus was like, I knew I wanted to be an engineer, so I focused heavily on, um, ed schools, but there were also, I, I wasn't so locked in on doing engineering, so I did apply to other liberal arts schools and Ivy League schools. And yeah, CollegeReady helped me a lot, helped me figure out my plan for what I was gonna do early decision. I ended up applying to an EA school and then applying to several public schools as safeties, like my state school Rutgers, um, University of Florida.

So good. And so Dad, I— go ahead. Just interject right on in.

Yeah, no, I think a couple of things to add to what I was saying is since he was applying to a lot of top schools, it was really important to understand from engineering perspective what could be the, uh, his reach. So what could be the target and safeties? And that's where figuring that out in terms of local college and Rutgers, he got into the Rutgers Honors Program, even applying to Texas A&M and he got in there, uh, having that Also very important was, I think, when he was applying early, that you can apply early to one private, but also figuring out which are the early public schools, like Georgia Tech he applied to. He got into Georgia Tech. So it was a big relief from that perspective, knowing early in January that you have these wonderful schools there. So really figuring it out, putting it on paper, which good schools you can apply to, knowing his background and his passion for robotics and engineering.

So helpful. So let's talk for a moment, moment. Well, you have a younger son, like let's just get into your own family. What would you tell your little brother knowing what you know now? What advice would you give the younger you, the next generation? What would you say to them?

I would honestly say just be true to yourself and understand what your passion is and just really go after that. Like doing what you think other people expect from you and just doing, just just not doing what you want to do is going to hurt you. And you should just, like, I was very passionate about robotics, building things, and I've been building Legos since I was so young, and I just, I pursued that. I love playing sports. I played football in high school. I wasn't the best player, but I pursued that and it made me happy. And I wrote one of my best essays about that. It's just the things that you do that make you happy, that make you who you are. Those are the things that really make you, you, and that's what colleges want to see.

So good. Dad, from a parent's perspective, can you add to that?

Yeah, absolutely. And as Aarav said, one of the things that I wouldn't say I wasn't very happy about, but wasn't very supportive of, playing football, let's say, right? So I wasn't, but Aarav wanted to and he pursued that. And as he said, not the best player, but he was very committed to it. And some of his essays and everything reflected that. And in fact, his personal statement, Arav, if I'm not wrong, was on that. And I'm pretty sure that would stand out. So as he said, it's pursue your passion, follow that. But other thing I'll say from parents' perspective, it is a lot of work. If you're applying to so many colleges, junior year can be, oh my God, so you have to keep up your grades, right? I'm sure all these students are taking challenging courses. You have to keep up your grades. That's super important. And then you have to prepare for all these— figuring out colleges, which colleges you want to apply. It is a lot of work. So getting— being very disciplined, organized, and getting some help and support. Asking for help is always good, whether it's your parents, your friends, external supports. It's— it can go a long way. So plan ahead. Don't leave it to the summer before your senior years. That will go a long way.

So good. So let's talk about your experience with CollegeReady. Remembering back when you started, how were you feeling? And then how was CollegeReady able to really change that for you?

I think one of the things that I was most scared about that summer before I had to apply to all these colleges was like, I have no idea who I am. I don't know what I have to write about. I don't like, my mind was like a blank slate. I had no idea, like, how are people able to come up with such amazing essays and stuff. I think the, the, the one thing that I really loved was one of the first few activities that I did with College Ready is that Deborah had us, uh, me and my parents list out like 30 things just about me in, in kind of order that they thought applied to me. So just list out like things that he's interested in, characteristics that Arv has. And it's like, after seeing what I wrote and comparing that to what my parents wrote, it kind of really gave me a good view of like who I am, like what I can write about. And it was just like all the activities activities we did on like dumping all these ideas about on what to write for my like personal statements or in supplementals. And just, yeah, I don't know. I was scared. I've, I've never been like the greatest writer and it's just like support that I got, like editing my essays and writing my essays and like exactly like colleges look for like exact, um, everything like college, college really, really, really helped.

Wow. That's pretty, pretty profound, right? Now you know who you are. What a great gift to go into the world. Dad, you want to add to that?

Absolutely. I think I still remember the exercise that Ara was talking about. I still remember we were, I forget where we were driving to, but a long drive where we were comparing notes. What did Ara write? What did Momo write? What did I write? And where we were kind of common grounds versus how they were different and That conversation itself starts giving rise to several stories that eventually become part of your essays. And again, I didn't participate in all the conversations that Aarav had with Debra, but as a parent, I used to get all these summaries, right? It's after every test, I could actually get a summary and I could see the topics that were discussed and everything. So as a parent, I was in the know without being in the room. What was going on and there were progress being made, some discussions, helpful discussions and things like that is happening. So again, I was in the know without being in the room. I, I really like that. Again, didn't see a lot of things that Arif and Deborah, they were working together, but I saw a lot of frameworks and templates. I remember you guys have a massive Excel where a lot of things gets organized, which eventually gets part of the Common App and all that stuff. So it helps, it helped like Arav organize his thinking. So not just knowing your stories, but how do you start organizing in a way that eventually become not just your stories, but you have to write your, what do you call, activities, honors, so many things goes into kind of application and there is no mess. So that wonderful Excel template was also, I think, very helpful.

Thank you. I spent a lot of time building that. I appreciate it.

Yeah, and I think it works. Sorry, then. Yeah, wonderful.

So good, right? The whole idea, having 4 young adults of my own, is I painfully had to go through it with each of them. So I came at it as a perspective from a parent's mindset, and then my kids had their, their take on it. Let's talk a little bit about that activities, honors, and awards. People want to know, what does it take to get into a school like like you're going to. Can you share maybe what, what was some things on there that either easy to come by or that you had to really think about and kind of into your strategy?

Yeah, no. So some of like my top activities were like, did FIRST Robotics from like, been doing it since I was in like middle school, but I did it all throughout high school. And so that was like my number one. I, I did Boy Scouts. I was, I was nearing my Eagle Scout when I had applied. Also something I'd been doing for a long time. So it's not like, again, I was just, I was going for things that I was passionate about, things I'd been doing for a while. And then I had football, I played varsity football for 3 years. So some of the specific things that like I strategically put in my activities was definitely internships and certain community service things I did. So with, with the internships, I did an AI internship the 2 summers before applying, and that definitely helped me a lot. I got a lot of experience. Additionally, I ran a 2-week summer, summer camp on teaching little kids robotics. I mentor my old robotics team of a bunch of middle schoolers and I decided like, why not like, open this up to other kids in my community. It's just like, I love working with kids. I love, I love robotics. I love teaching. So it's like, it just, it was just another thing I was passionate about and really it allowed me to do more service and help my community and definitely One of the things that CollegeReady really helped me with as well was like all of my community service. And so like I was able to submit for the Congressional Award and the Presidential Service Award thanks to like excellent guides that I had on the, on CollegeReady. And that really helped me as well because I hadn't done a lot of community service with Boy Scouts and I had done a lot of other community service with school and tutoring and stuff like that. And, and all of that really just made up my activities and honors list. And like I guess some honors that I had was I, I got a perfect score on the PSAT. SAT, so I had the National Merit Scholarship semi-finalist. And that's another big thing, especially for people in their junior year, is that because of that, a lot of schools gave me like a guaranteed admission. For example, Texas A&M admitted me and gave me a full ride scholarship because of that National Merit that I had gotten. And that really helped me because then it was like, oh, I already got into a safety school. Now I can focus more on these top schools. And that's one of the reasons why I applied to so many of the top engineering schools focus less on safeties because I had already gotten in. That's another huge opportunity.

So good. So good. Dad, you want to add in to what he humbly shared? Yes.

Now I think there are a couple of things which Arav said it first, but one thing, if you read his activities, honors, and even some of his essays, it will clearly come across as this is a person or kid who is very passionate about robotics, whether it is participating in competition, being to Houston for Worlds competition, but also taking it all the way to kind of middle schoolers, third, fourth, fifth year. He would actually, in middle of his exams, come and actually help these teams. In Robbinsville, where we live, some of his efforts have led to many new FLL teams being kind of formed, right? So you can see through when the high school because of funding issues, stopped the robotics program. Yeah, kind of start in our garage kind of PC program and things like that. So some of those initiatives, right? So you can, it comes across. So having kind of story to tell was definitely helpful and probably it was coming out when anyone read his applications. Then apart from that, I agree with Auro. I think there was, I think as soon as we joined your team, identified maybe there's some more community services we can put into the plate and then there was a clear path to Basically, how do we get there? Right? And I worked very closely with Tabra and everyone to make sure that he got where he can, just to make sure that everything is ready for the college applications.

Wow. So powerful. When you think about what you accomplished, do you think that the vault kept you really focused and centered and knew your direction? What do you think it would have been like without College Ready? Or The Vault and just navigating this on your own, how do you think that would've been?

I think it definitely would've been a lot harder on me and like just my dad and my family because it's like College Ready really gave me easy access to people who, who will happily read over my essays and give me constructive feedback. And it's like that kind of load off my parents who are working, like I have to ask them, could you read over this? Could you read over that? And it also kind of gave me an organized, like, on how I should get essays in and like how quickly I should submit my early application. It was like, I should have this done when I should have that done. What— I'm not the most organized person myself, but it, it, it like, that really allowed me to be organized and get everything in on time and get everything done and get everything in cool, like a lot of quality. And one, one thing I wish I had done is started college ready earlier, honestly, like there's a lot of more resources that you guys provided that I unfortunately could not take advantage of, like so many community service opportunities and just like all the passion, like the big on passion projects as well. I wish if I had joined a year or two earlier, I would've been able to have like, I don't know, spent more time on a passion project and create a story. At the end of the day, like I, I did get a lot out of it and I got a lot of So good.

Satish, you want to speak to that?

Yeah, no, I think, I think one of the strengths for College Readiness clearly is the organization, making sure that kids stay focused, organized, and prepared as soon as the applications need to be submitted. And that Excel that I was talking about, I saw that. I think it has a tons of stop there, but also the whole process of how you submit the essays, the review— reviewer provides the comments and things like that. How do you organize activities on Vault? I think that was the right— it's where you do that. I think that was— and, and Arav would review all that stuff with Deborah and then share with, with me to have a look at it and things like that. And it seemed like, yeah, you're staying on track. The one thing I'll say from parents' perspective Just having, having someone work with your kid keeps them on track, right? That, okay, I need to get my essays, activities list done by then and by this timeline. There is a timeline in place. Without that, I, I don't know. Can we be looking up over, over their shoulders all the time, making sure that they are on track? It would be very challenging.

Absolutely. So let's talk a minute about your future. You're gonna go to college. Right. Dad was telling me before the call, like what the summer's all about. What are you most looking forward to now that you've learned over this 4 years that you can take into university?

I think, yeah, like I was saying earlier, like the biggest things that I've learned is honestly just again, like what I'm passionate. Like there's a school where I can, it's, it's, it's quite, it's not very interdisciplinary, but I can explore different things and that's definitely something I want to do. I want to. 'Cause I'm, again, I'm not 100% sure if I want to do engineering. That's just what I thought I want to do. That's what I think I'm strongest in. But it, I'm definitely going to bring that mindset with me to college. I want to explore other things. I want to explore all the cool classes that they have, and I want to, um, maybe something else interests me more. And just even outside of just like majors and academics, like intramural sports and joining robotics teams at Cornell, like want to just keep I want to just keep doing what I'm passionate instead of what other people expect of me.

So good. What about you, Ritesh, as you think about, do you want to go to college? Are you looking to do a do-over? Are you, are you good?

No, I'm, I'm good. I think I wish Arav all the very best. Now he just turned 18 and he's an adult, can make his own decisions. But we'll make sure that now he's a As he is saying, he really is— what excites him is learning new things. He really enjoys learning, and nothing better than Cornell, which actually gives you a lot of opportunity to explore different areas and things like that. So that would be wonderful. And again, it's a wonderful school, too many opportunities, and I wish him he makes not just studies, but he is able to make friendships that last lifelong and, and pick up a few, few interesting areas that he pursue all his life as well. So all, all, all good. Means he's— luck to Arif, and we are looking forward to him starting his college.

Okay. It's the best part of the podcast. What inspiration or what final words can you say to families who are thinking, should I do this alone or does it, does it make sense and would it be helpful to hire CollegeReady? What would you say, Arif?

I think the biggest piece of advice I would give is just like not to overthink it and just start early. Like, as I was saying, I wish I had started earlier. There's a lot of resources that CollegeReady has and they're all pretty like awesome. So the earlier you start, the more meetings you can get in with your advisor, the more you learn, the more community service you can get. And it's just like, it's opportunities that you can just open the website and it's there for you. Like they're gonna give you these opportunities that otherwise would take a lot more time and effort out of work for parents and in academics. And it's just, it's helped lighten the load a lot, allowed me to focus on school while also writing my college applications and getting help. I, my dad can definitely say more about that.

Ritesh, you want to share?

Yeah, no, absolutely. As Arav said, I agree. If I can go back in time, starting this earlier, as Arav said, he started the summer before the senior year. And I think if you ask me. Best time is to start even before the junior year, right? So, and there are so many wonderful resources. It will kind of keep you organized. It will keep you on track. So as I like what Aravind said is don't overthink. Sometimes you just have to make that call, but I think there are a lot of wonderful resources as well as wonderful people who are there to help and support you. Better they know you, better they'll be able to help you bring out your own stories because it's application processes. Even very similar students might have very different outcome based on what— how they're telling their stories, how— what stories are bringing out. So your advisor, if they know you better, they understand what you have done, they will help you bring out your own stories.

So good. So listeners, as you are hearing from a father and son who have gone through the process for the first time, Just know I'm gonna have in the show notes, we're offering a complimentary discovery call so you don't get stuck without having support, and those will be in the show notes. So until next time, parents, you've got this.

Thank you.