In this 30‑minute presentation Shellee Howard, founder and CEO of CollegeReady, explains why she created her college‑consulting firm, how it operates, and why parents should consider it for their teens. She begins with a personal story about her firstborn’s dream of becoming a brain surgeon and the challenges she faced navigating college admissions and financing, which led her to earn a master’s degree and become a certified consultant. Over 16 years, CollegeReady has helped a limited cohort of 20 students per grade, generating more than $20.3 million in scholarship awards (beyond need‑based aid) and guiding students into academically, socially, and financially optimal schools. Howard outlines the modern admissions landscape—higher GPAs, perfect test scores, multiple essays (average five, up to 18 at some schools), and the critical need to select the right college to avoid debt. She introduces the proprietary CollegeReady portal that provides individualized timelines, to‑do lists, reach/comfort/safety school lists, and real‑time communication. The presentation details the firm’s end‑to‑end services: academic strategy, Passion‑with‑Purpose project development, essay coaching, testing plans, application management, internship and extracurricular guidance, leadership tracking, financial planning (FAFSA, CSS Profile, EFC reduction, merit scholarships), and interview preparation. Howard describes three program tiers—Silver (DIY online resources), Gold (one‑year, one‑on‑one coaching), and Platinum (full scholarship and interview support). She emphasizes CollegeReady’s unique data‑driven approach, including school‑specific GPA, test‑score, cost, and scholarship information not found on public sites. The talk concludes with a call to action for families to visit college‑ready‑plan.com, read testimonials, and consider the firm’s comprehensive, debt‑free college admission solution.
Chapters
Hello, my name is Shellee Howard and I am the founder and CEO of CollegeReady. We've been helping students get in to college and get out debt-free for over 16 years. This all started with my firstborn. He had big dreams, big hopes, big wishes. I remember one day he came home in 8th grade and he says, Mom, I know exactly what I want to do when I grow up. And yes, I was shocked. I told him, there's a lot of adults who still don't know. And he's like, I know, Mom. I want to be a brain surgeon. And I smiled and I held my breath. And then he left. And I'm like, I have no idea how I'm going to get him in there. And even if I do, how will I ever pay for it? That is why College Ready was started. I won't bore you with the details, but what I will say is when he was giving his speech for graduation, He thanked me for all my help and dedication. I spent 20 to 30 hours a week helping him prepare because unfortunately no high school is ever going to do it. What's one-to-one custom to your student? He had no idea at 17 years old how he was going to do it. And so I went back to school. I got my master's degree. Then I became an independent certified college consultant from UC San Diego. Then I started touring 25 colleges a semester. 16 years later, our students in the last 2 years have earned well over $20.3 million in scholarships. Now keep in mind, that's on top of need-based. We only take 20 students per grade. So if you do the math, we beat the stock market. We know how to get students in the academic fit, the social fit, and the financial fit. And you put it all together and you have dreams that are completed. My son got a full ride at USC and then Harvard matched it. So he got a degree pre-med from Harvard, graduated, went on to UC San Diego Medical School, and is now an orthopedic surgeon at UCLA. So just my firstborn, I learned a lot of very important things. As parents, even if you went to college, it's nothing like it used to be. I'll tell you, these kids work way harder than I've ever seen any student do before them. It is now a 5.0 GPA possibility. A perfect test score, community service, leadership, extracurriculars, letters of recommendation, and a yes, the essay. But the important thing to realize is there are a lot of essays. Back in the day, there was 1 or 2. Now there's an average of 5, and it goes on up to— one school had 18 this year. 18 essays, one school. So picking the right school is the critical piece. If you don't want to pay full price and you don't want your child to go into debt, picking the right college is critical. And that is how we help your family. Let me share my screen and show you what we do, because sometimes it's easier to explain than me just verbalizing. So the nice thing about College Ready is we've been doing this for so long and we have so much skill that we absolutely understand what it takes to get in. So here is a little presentation that I put together that will give you a better idea of how we do it. The College Ready Plan has been helping students be successful. Every one of our students got into their top 3 schools this year. We have been making students successful for a very long time. College mission has changed, and it's changed some for the good, some not so much. We also help the family lower their expected family contribution while helping your student earn merit scholarships, and this is how we do it. So why does it have to be so hard? I will tell you, because these students are amazing. They are getting out of high school with college credit. They are doing Passion with Purpose projects. That is like starting a new business. Students are amazing. This is not something that the colleges dreamt of. This is what students are learning. So parents have a lot of questions: when and where to start the planning for college? Does this process have to feel overwhelming? No. How do I make my students stand out? That is my job. I'm scared I will let my child down. What if I don't know how to help them? Or worse, what if I do it wrong? You only get one chance at this. How do you start a Passion with Purpose project and why is it important? It is the thing that got my son into Harvard. It is that important. What if I grew up in, in I didn't grow up in this country and I don't know how the system works. That's okay, because it's changed so much it wouldn't even matter. How do I find the best fit? Academic, social, financial, even athletic. Even if they get into college, how can we pay for it? And this is why College Ready is on a mission to help over a million families get into college and graduate debt-free. We are here to support you and your family. Remember, there's an academic process. How will they stand out? It starts with their GPA, then testing, then service, extracurricular, leadership, letters of recommendation, the interview, essays, and standing out. Why would the admissions person take their application versus somebody else's? Now there's the financial piece. Testing equals money. Your expected family contribution. How to create the FAFSA correctly. The CSS profile. How is that different than the FAFSA? The 529. Will this reflect your— will this reflect on your retirement? What about cash, insurance, debt? Oh my gosh, this is where people are freaking out. So take a deep breath and know we've got you. Here's what you get with the College Ready Plan. We have an academic strategy and timeline, Passion with Purpose standout strategy, essay strategy and timeline, testing strategy and timeline, application strategy and timeline, research internship strategy, extracurricular activity strategy, College-ready, debt-free financial strategy, leadership timeline and accountability, where to find the perfect college for your student. What about career choices and future plans? Yes, I can tell a student if a robot will be doing their job in 5 years. How to decrease the expected family contribution. We are certifiers for the presidential and congressional awards. Our students can earn a bronze Silver, Gold awards, how to get off the waitlist, financial negotiations. We do it all. How are we different? We're the only college consulting firm that I've ever heard of that does it all, because that's what it took to get my son in and out of Harvard without any debt. That's what it took to get his younger sister in and out of the University of Alabama with zero debt. That's how it took my stepson to get in and out of college with a broadcasting degree. And even the baby of my family, she chose to go to AAU and get an international degree in Prague. There is nothing we can't help you with. We focus on the student, on the parent, how they will stand out, and ultimately when they graduate from college How will they be set up for their future without massive college debt? I have so many testimonials. Please go to my website, college-ready-plan.com, and read all of them. I am so thankful for my amazing clients. The next thing I'll share with you is our portal. This is the thing that people hire us for because this process can be extremely overwhelming. This process doesn't have to be overwhelming at This process can actually be fun. And so I want to show you what does that mean and how do I do it. Our student portal is how you do it. It is a proprietary software that was built because I had done it wrong, or maybe not wrong, but not the best way with my firstborn, because we had spreadsheets that had spreadsheets that had more spreadsheets. That is how crazy it was. So I'm just going to give you a real brief look at how we help students navigate this process, and I'm going to share my screen. I think once you see, it becomes a lot less overwhelming. So here you can see Vincent. He's my fake student. Your student would have— and you would have— your own portal, password protected. We've set up a, a standout strategy We meet with students virtually all over the world. They have their to-dos. They know exactly what to do in order, why they need to do it, how they need to do it, with a date they need to do it by. They can have a conversation right in here with us. We set up their testing strategy. We help them to understand what to-dos, how to move, make movement, Every detail we have thought of. We even help them to have a Reach Comfort and Safety school list with everything they need to be successful. Every school has different requirements, has different applications, has different ways you can apply. All of this means potential mistakes. When you look at social media and everybody's freaking out about not getting into college, it's because they didn't know all of this. Knowledge is power in this process. We give you the links so there's no mistake. We outline how to get these scholarships, how to get the interviews, the kind of resume, the letters of recommendation for every school in the world. We can even tell you exactly what it takes to get in. Without making this video way too long, I just wanted to give you an Yes, Stanford was a very popular school this year, as usual. And this information is not on U.S. News and World Report. This is not on Google. This is who got in last year. This is the real information— how long it took to graduate, who applied, who were admitted, who enrolled. We can tell you the average GPA. We can tell you the student GPA, what their chances of getting in We can tell you the average test score and the score your student needs to get. We can tell you the cost of attendance and how it breaks down. We can tell you if they are generous or not generous. We can tell you all of the different opportunities. We can tell you, does this school match your student's fit? If they want to go into business, this is not a good undergraduate program for them. Then we can show the student how the essays work at every college. So at Stanford, you can see there are 5 application essays, 8 supplements required, and 2 optional. Students see optional, they don't do it. Stanford is like, I guess the student doesn't want to go here, and they put them in the wrong pile. Students don't know how to do this process, and because they've grown up with texting, they're going to do the least that they can. Not that they're lazy, that's just what the norm is. So we even go and show you the potential for applying to scholarships. We can help you research schools to know which is the best engineering school, which is the best business school. We have all of that data right in here. For your student who doesn't know what they want to do after high school, We help them. They start with assessments, but they don't just do the assessment. We meet with them and we explain what they've learned from the assessment. What is a good fit? What is not? How much money that career will make, how much it won't. This is the depth of the program, and I haven't even scratched the surface. So please know that all of this is what it takes to get into college. All of this is going to set them up for future success. Now, there are 3 different programs that are available to your student. There's the Silver program. That is the baseline program. That is a do-it-yourself online program. I have created videos. I've created worksheets. I've given you my intellectual property. You will learn how Create a Passion with Purpose Project, and you will learn how to lower your expected family contribution. Your student will start with their personality traits, their gifts, their talents, their core values. I've done all of this so at a very low cost you can have the foundation. If you want to need— want or need help building the structure, the standout strategy, the thing that's going to get you in, then you're going to want to do one of the other two packages. The Gold Plan is a one-year program, one-to-one, where we meet with your student and walk them through their custom strategy. And the Platinum Plan is the one our students use to get all of the huge scholarships. I teach them how to interview. I teach them how to ask interview questions, how to respond, how to hold themself online. We do from A to Z. All you have to do is give hugs and high fives. We even record every meeting so you can hear your student speak to an adult about their future. These programs are all outlined for you, so I'm not going to go into the details, but you will have them in front of you. I highly suggest at minimum understanding the importance of the silver package. And then if you and your student just feel like you need support, you don't know who to believe, believe 16 years of experience, believe somebody who has a son who went to Harvard and is now an orthopedic surgeon. You don't want to just leave this to the internet. Or to your 17-year-old, you would never allow them to buy a house. This is a similar cost. I want you to know we take this very serious, but we have a lot of fun along the way. Your dream is our dream. Let us help you go and achieve it. Thank you, and we look forward to meeting with you soon.
