General description
Three stages of the OFC Approach
Bio of Keith Berman, CEP, founder of Options for College
Options for College is a full-service college counseling and consulting company located in the Chelsea region of Manhattan. Keith Berman, began OFC on the heels of his graduate school work at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, MA in 2005. Within its first year in Cambridge, OFC was featured as one of Boston's premium services in Boston Magazine's Wicked Good Fun edition after a first year that saw 100% of its students accepted to their respective first-choice colleges.
From there, OFC has expanded to encompass school and business consultation projects, seminars and workshops, and a growing, diverse group of students and families looking to find wonderful experiences in college and graduate school.
In late 2006, OFC moved its offices to New York on the heels of Mr. Berman's certification as a Certified Educational Planner from the AICEP, the only CEP specializing in college placement in Manhattan. In 2007, OFC took on four major consultation projects that built on its three-stage approach to the admissions process.
Options for College provides comprehensive guidance through the college application process. The biggest testament to our approach is not only that students receive wonderful acceptance from "reach" colleges, but that they are much more self-aware and prepared when they arrive, ready to contribute and be a part of college life (please read our testimonials).
For students who are sophomores and juniors, Options for College helps work with you to find opportunities that both expand your interests, and give you experiences and credentials that will be important to you as a college student and applicant. This comprehensive approach, which incorporates academic, admissions, and practical knowledge, occurs in three stages.
Three stages of the Options for College approach
Collection: In this stage, your family and you work with the counselor to discuss your accomplishments, your aspirations, and your hopes in order to form a clear idea of who you are, who you want to be, and what you have to contribute to a college community. Students take six or more classes, play a sport/instrument, participate in extracurriculars, and meet all family commitments, and yet often still are not confident that have done anything extraordinary. This stage is about being your own advocate, about realizing that you are unique and have something to contribute the no one else does. Practice interviews, collecting transcripts/scores, looking at summer activities, and creating resumes and activity sheets are typical activities in this stage, the focus of the first three sessions.
Selection: Once your counselor and you form a clear idea of who you are as an applicant, you then work together to select colleges and universities that will help you reach your academic/professional aspirations, that match your strengths, and give you a community in which you can best grow. The counselor will create comparison lists with you, complete with profiles of each school. Schools on the list tend to provide mostly challenging and exciting colleges that provide you with practical and personal opportunities; while these are sometimes called “reach” schools, really what they present is additional resources and a stronger community that not only match who you are, but who you want to be. You will also receive advice on how to best visit and interview with colleges. OFC students have applied to business colleges, art programs, music conservatories, and liberal arts colleges successfully. Selection is usually the focus of session four .
Application: By this stage, your counselor and you will already know what your strengths are, what experiences have been significant for you, and where you are interested in applying. This is the stage in which these ideas are put onto paper. You will work with your counselor through each step of the application process, writing personal, clear statements that adhere to the standard of the best application possible. It is a testament to the pride our students take in their written work that nearly all of our 2006 students agreed to share their materials in the sample writing book we compile each year, standing behind the strong statement they made about who they are. This stage may include getting an expert to help you compile your art portfolio, advice on from whom you should get recommendations, and/or a professional musician listening to your latest piece for your recital. This stage not only encompasses sessions 5-10, but also the phone and e-mail support you receive; typically, the counselor commitment to you ranges from about 50-100 hours, meaning whatever needs to be done is done thoroughly.
It is difficult to imagine, in the adult world, taking eight classes, practicing your favorite sport five days a week, holding down a job, and working in a community service project, yet so many students do all these things as a matter of course and do not necessarily feel that they are accomplishing great things. The Options for College approach helps students reflect on who they are and what they have accomplished, so that admissions officers can understand why they are valuable people in a college community.
Families and students in the end not only have a wonderful set of options for college, but also an understanding of how they earned them and how they might go about continuing to make contributions to the world around them in college. When a student takes a personal inventory of who they are, and writes a strong application that reflects on their experiences and personality, the student is more prepared for college, and a much more successful applicant. It is this idea that is at the heart of the success of the Options for College approach.
Keith Berman, M.Ed., M.S.Ed., CEP
Mr. Berman is a Certified Education Planner (CEP) by the American Institute of Certified Educational Planners. He has served as the Interim Director of College Guidance at the Rudolf Steiner School, the staff consultant at the Yeshiva University High School for Boys, and the staff trainer for The Princeton Review -- India. Mr. Berman founded Options for College in March 2005 in Cambridge, MA.
Mr. Berman is a Roy E. Larsen Award recipient from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and has held several admissions positions at Ivy League institutions. He worked for Yale University as a Senior Interviewer, and a three-year member of the Undergraduate Recruitment Office. He also held an Interviewer position at the Harvard College Admissions Office, where he interviewed prospective students and participates in undergraduate admissions committee meetings. He has also won awards from Harvard University, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, Americorps, and the New York City Teaching Fellowship.
Mr. Berman has helped students domestically and from seven countries worldwide, find the right college and make the most effective application possible. He is a member of the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC), and the Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA), as well as the American Institute of Certified Educational Planners (AICEP).
Mr. Berman’s article entitled Putting the “counseling” back in college counseling, illuminating the Options for College approach to college counseling, was published in the January 2006 edition of Education Update (in which he also wrote an article on the college interview process, Preparing for the college interview: an insider’s view, in the February issue, and The good news about college admissions in June). He was quoted in the March issue of Boston Magazine, which listed Options for College as the premier option for parents with college-bound children. He has also been quoted in the Boston Globe, the Harvard Crimson, and the Columbia Spectator.
Mr. Berman gives frequent group presentations. He has presented on the role of the SAT on college admissions at the Newton Public Library, given a presentation to British students from Hurtwood House and Eton College on the role of the A-levels, GCSE, and other aspects of the British school system as they are translated into an American college admissions file, and has a number of talks planned for 2008.
He earned his B.A. as a double major at Yale University and his M.Ed. from Harvard Graduate School of Education. His other experiences include being a school teacher in the New York City public school system, earning an M.S.Ed. at Bank Street College, and being a researcher at a Washington, D.C. education think tank, developing a national testing project and working on technology and special education issues of national importance. He also organized and executed recruitment efforts for the American Institutes for Research at Yale. Mr. Berman grew up in Irvington, NY (Westchester County), and has lived in Washington, DC, Cambridge, MA, and New Haven, CT. He currently lives with his wife in New York.
Contact Mr. Berman directly at: kberman@optionsforcollege.com.
General Contact
You can get general information at: info@optionsforcollege.com, or by calling 914-357-0781.