Collegewise is reaching higher one year after being acquired by Singapore-based A-Star Education Holdings, formerly ChangedEDU Holdings, for an undisclosed sum.
The Irvine-based company, which calls itself the country’s largest private college counseling organization, invested $1 million last month in a five-year partnership with Reach Higher, an education initiative started by former First Lady Michelle Obama.
The partnership also closely follows Collegewise’s acquisition of Fanwood, N.J.-based test-prep and college counseling firm Ivy Educational Services in August.
Chief Executive Joel Block said it wants to make additional investments this year and open more offices abroad to expand its footprint.
That aligns with its focus on international business, both U.S. college applicants wanting to study overseas and people living abroad planning to enroll in U.S. schools—a focus it wants to strengthen.
Reach Higher aims on getting low-income and potentially first-generation college students to continue their education after high school, whether in a professional training program or at a university.
The partnership helps Reach Higher give students access to counseling resources that may be financially out of their reach. Collegewise declined to disclose its counseling pricing. The Independent Educational Consultants Association estimated in a January study that the average hourly rate for a college consultant is $200 and comprehensive package fees for firms in the West are about $4,000.
First-Gen Students
The benefit for Collegewise is exposure to a wider demographic at a time when schools, particularly in Orange County, are enrolling more first-generation students.
For example, half of the 2018 graduating class, or nearly 5,000 students, at the University of California-Irvine who received bachelor’s degrees were first-generation students, while California State University-Fullerton reported 56% of bachelor’s degree recipients were first-generation students.
Collegewise Chief Academic Officer Arun Ponnusamy said that as more jobs require college degrees, the admissions process will only become more competitive.
Counselor Gap
“Most of the colleges have kept the same number of entering freshmen, so there’s more students clamoring for the same number of spots,” he said. “The growth towards advising is starting to boom domestically, and these aren’t Type-A families who are saying, get my kid into Harvard or Stanford.”
It was estimated five years ago that there were fewer than 2,500 full-time U.S. college consultants. Now that’s reportedly 7,500 to 8,000, according to the Independent Educational Consultants Association, which also found that most families seeking college consultants have household incomes of $75,000 to $100,000.
But the number hasn’t kept pace with demand. The national average is 500 students per counselor, and in California it’s about 1,000 students per counselor, according to Ponnusamy.
“[Counseling] is still a person-to-person process, but the reality is in the state of California, budget cuts to education means counselors are pretty quick to go,” he said. “College counseling isn’t rocket science, but what sets us apart is we’ve gone out of our way to understand what are the best practices and advice.”
The organization employs former admissions officers at the University of Southern California, California Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Stanford University, Yale University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It also includes officers from specific schools, such as the former director of admissions of UCLA’s School of the Arts and Architecture, who helps Collegewise students craft their admissions portfolios.
Block said its acquisition should help boost the company’s position in that regard by being better able to promote and retain counselors.
“What’s really exciting for me is as we get larger, it’s going to allow our people more mobility, so maybe someone shifts from the counselor to the talent side, and we’ve already seen that shift occur,” Block said. “The other thing is we want to impact as many lives as possible, and you can do that through a partnership like Reach Higher.”
Founded in 1999 by Kevin McMullin, Collegewise has grown to more than 20 offices in 12 states, including two in Orange County. It also offers online counseling.
Block said its expertise in education attracted A-Star Holdings, which gives it the financial backing to grow in Southeast Asia, Europe and Africa. In fact, it bought a Singapore counseling firm after the acquisition, giving it a physical presence in that target region. A-Star financial partner Verlinvest SA, a Belgian investment firm created by the founding families of global brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev, committed more than $300 million in capital.
“We have a two-prong growth plan,” Block said. “One is heavy growth in the United States and [in] Asia. There’s more students looking to go international, so for us to find a partner who has resources on the ground was a great opportunity. Families want the best for their child, and because we’re so large now, we have kind of the full breadth of knowledge on the university systems.”
