College Readiness CURRICULUM

How it Works

THERE ARE TWO PARTS TO COLLEGE COUNSELING SERVICES

A College Counselor may work with students on College Readiness Assignments, which focus on preparedness steps before the College Application Process and are not associated with school-specific application requirements. Other counselors may work only on College List Generation and Application Tracking, with a focus on time management and adherence to deadlines. Still others may focus only on college financing.  Some providers cover the entire process. CounselMore serves all types of College Planning operations. Below is a description of how CounselMore supports the College Readiness phase. To learn about how CounselMore supports the College List, Application Tracking and other  part of a College Planner’s practice, see here.

Scenario 1: The New IEC (Independent Educational Consultant, Edu Consultant, Private College Counselor)

Sarah left their high school counseling job to start a private practice. They know college admissions inside and out—15 years of experience. But when their first paying client asks, "What's included in your comprehensive package?" They freeze.

They know what to do (help with essays, build college lists, advise on testing strategy). But they don't know:

• How many assignments comprehensive packages typically include
• How to sequence the work across junior and senior year
• What deliverables justify $6,000-$15,000 fees
• How to prevent scope creep when families ask for "just one more thing"

So they build it from scratch. They spend 40 hours writing custom assignment instructions for one student. Then the next student needs everything recreated because their timeline is different. Within six months, Sarah is working 60-hour weeks for 12 students, exhausted, and unable to scale.

Scenario 2: The Experienced Counselor

David has run a successful practice for eight years. He has 35 active students and a waitlist. But he's stuck. He can't hire help because his entire process lives in his head. Every student email goes directly to him. Every meeting requires his presence. His "system" is his memory and his inbox.

When a family asks, "Can you show us your process?" he explains it verbally—but he has very little written down. No documented steps to follow. Nothing another counselor could follow if he wanted to bring on an associate.

David makes good money, but he's trapped. He can't take a vacation without student emergencies. He can't scale beyond what one person can manage. And he's recreating the same explanations, reminders, and workflows for every single student.

Scenario 3: The Multi-Counselor Practice Without Standards

Lisa founded her educational consulting firm six years ago and grew it to a team of five counselors. On paper, it's successful—they serve 80 students annually and generate strong revenue. But beneath the surface, the practice is chaotic.

Each counselor operates independently with their own "system":

• Counselor A uses Google Docs and sends families 30+ separate documents throughout the process
• Counselor B prefers email-only communication and rarely documents anything - relies on AI tools to ship meetings notes, that appear opened but not read by anyone - including the counselor.
• Counselor C built an elaborate Notion workspace that only they understand
• Counselor D texts students directly (mixing personal and professional boundaries) repeats: "Each student needs different things..."
• Counselor E (the newest hire) is copying whatever the others do, creating a hybrid of all four approaches. Eagerly and repeatedly edits their student tasks,
• Manager of the team - suffers from having no visibility on equity of services across customers or accountability across counselors. 

The problems multiply:

For students: Siblings working with different counselors get completely different experiences. The family with a senior and a junior says, "Why does Emma get weekly assignments but Noah just gets occasional emails? Are we paying for the same service?" Or same company but different counselors deliver wildly different levels of customer satisfaction.

For counselors & Managers: When Counselor B goes on personal leave, no one can cover her students because nothing is documented. Another Counselor, Lisa spends 15 hours reverse-engineering what Counselor B told each family just to maintain continuity. Lisa is conscientious and makes it work but management knows Lisa is not happy with the unexpected increased workload. She will need a raise to continue or will leave the company. The loss of a trained employee will create a new deficit with new-hire and new employee onboarding/training. 

For the business: Families ask, "What's included in your comprehensive package?" Lisa can't give a consistent answer because each counselor defines "comprehensive" differently. Counselor A delivers 25 structured assignments. Counselor D delivers 6 casual check-ins. Both charge $12,000. Each Counselor cannot be a service-model or a company spokesperson without consistent messaging on product. The Counselors insecurity shows up in their response to each potential parent/customer. Any customer hesitation is now reinforced.

The breaking point: A student applies Early Decision to the wrong school because Counselor C thought Counselor A had explained binding commitments (they hadn't). The family threatens legal action. Lisa realizes: We look like a professional firm, but we're actually five solo practitioners sharing brand, office space or just an idea.

What the team needs but doesn't have:

• One standardized curriculum all counselors deliver (with room for individual style, but consistent core structure)
• Documented process families receive regardless of which counselor they're assigned
• Quality control (Lisa can review any counselor's student records and see the same workflow, not five different systems)
• Seamless transitions (if a counselor leaves or goes on leave, another counselor can pick up exactly where they left off)
• Defensible service definition ("Here's what comprehensive means at our firm—20 assignments across 5 phases, delivered by any of our counselors")

The hidden costs:

• Client confusion creates service recovery work (Lisa spends 10 hours/month addressing "Why is my experience different from my friend's experience?" questions)
• Inconsistent documentation creates liability exposure (no record of what was promised or delivered)
• Inability to onboard new counselors efficiently (each new hire invents their own system, perpetuating chaos)
• Team resentment (counselors doing 2x the work of colleagues but being paid the same)
• Revenue leakage (can't scale beyond 5 counselors because more counselors = more chaos, not more capacity)

What happens when Lisa implements CounselMore Curriculum:

• All five counselors deliver the same 20-assignment structure
• Families get consistent service regardless of counselor assignment
• Lisa can review any student record and see standardized progress (Assignment 3B complete, Assignment 4D in revision, Assignment 5C pending)
• When Counselor B goes on leave, Counselor E seamlessly takes over her 16 students (same curriculum, same portal, same workflow—just different counselor providing feedback)
• New hires onboard in 2 weeks instead of 2 months (here's the curriculum, here's how we deliver it, here's our quality standards—go)
• Team meetings focus on strategic challenges, not "What did you tell the Johnson family about testing strategy?" operational firefighting

The transformation:

Lisa's firm evolves from five individuals sharing a business name to one cohesive practice with documented standards. Counselors retain their individual coaching styles and relationship-building approaches, but deliver services through a unified structure.

Families know exactly what they're getting. Counselors know exactly what they're delivering. Lisa can finally scale beyond what five individuals can manage independently.

Pull from a routine of pre-written client-ready student character preparation tasks

Supplement to your CounselMore account (not sold separately).

What Counselors Need (And Don't Have)

A repeatable, documented process that:

• Shows students what to do and when (without 47 reminder emails)
• Creates accountability through structured assignments (students click Done, you get notified automatically)
• Prevents time leaks (no more "I already explained this three times")
• Enables scaling (hire an associate, hand them the curriculum, they can deliver your service)
• Protects scope (when families ask for extra work, you point to the defined curriculum and bill accordingly)

The invisible cost of NOT having this:

Most counselors waste 10-15 hours per student on:

• Writing the same email explanations repeatedly
• Chasing students for updates ("Did you finish your essay?" "Have you visited that campus?" "Did you request recommendations yet?")
• Recreating instructions they've given before
• Trying to remember what they told Student A vs Student B vs Student C
• The relentless feeling that something has been forgotten, it will show up later and embarrass the counselor.

For 20 students, that's 200-300 wasted hours annually—hours that could be spent advising, not administrating.

And underneath it all? A quiet erosion of confidence. The constant sense that success isn’t sustainable because the system depends entirely on you.

The business impact:

Without a documented process:

• You can’t price confidently (you don’t know how many hours comprehensive services actually require)
• You can’t delegate (everything depends on you personally)
• You can’t scale (20 students becomes the ceiling because you’re out of hours)
• You can’t step away (students don’t have written guidance — they need you to answer everything)

"I’m a happy customer! I signed up after years of creating my own systems and decided i needed help scaling up for more clients."

-Katherine Johnson, Discover College Solutions

 BUILD ?    OR    BUY ?

view within the counselor's portal

This is a sample of one of the assignments as it appears in the Counselor's portal.

view within the student's portal

Assignment as it appears in a Student/Parent Portal

Immediately upon purchase, Assignments will appear in your account.

• Each Counselor instruction includes a demonstration video.
• Sign up for the corresponding live training or peer-group training sessions that are essential to the software tools most associated with Blueprints.
• Types of assignments: Student/Parent calls to action include portal user help. Counselor assignments dedicated to administrative practices, student assignments dedicated to readiness, and parent assignments related to process overview.
• Each assignment audience is indicated: parent, student or counselor.

There is no one way to deliver college readiness services. Everything is editable.

• Never before has the roadmap to college readiness been this accessible. You may choose to change the assignment audience from student/parent to only parent or vice versa.
• Not all assignments may be pertinent to your current services yet. You may choose to use some assignments to build a lower grade college readiness process.
• The order of delivery is easily manipulated. You may choose to break one assignment into multiple assignments or use portions again with Broadcast messages.
• There are no per student fees within CounselMore software. Use Blueprints with all your students. Scale your services to grow your business.

Support

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​Meet our non-judgmental tech mentors and surprise yourself with how tech-savvy you've become!

Long-time counselor or learning the ropes?

Reinventing your career or revitalizing an educational program, CounselMore is specifically designed to support your success. It's literally woven into the software.

College readiness comes in all shapes and sizes, CounselMore tailors to your most comfortable fit.

New to College Counseling?

Systematize Best Practices

​Adopt CounselMore Assignments.