Gamifying the College Search Process with Sam Bernstein [Episode 157]

Lauren 0:00
You are probably knee deep—let’s be real—underwater, in individual planning meetings right now with your students and probably parents too, and you’re talking about what’s to come after high school. We put this pressure on ourselves as high school counselors to have all of the answers, or at least I know that I did when I was starting out. Like someone asks you a very specific question about a very specific college that they don’t know what college it is, and they’re looking for this needle in a haystack, and you imagine that they want you just to know what that college is.

Lauren 0:00
Your student wants to know what college in the country is best known for their equine therapy undergrad degree or their sustainability certificate that could be added onto their dual Architecture and Interior Design major. It’s like, that’s insane that some of you think that you have to have that filed all the way back in your brain. Most of us don’t have that readily accessible in our brain for us.

Lauren 0:56
Today, I’m talking with Sam Bernstein, the founder of a free college search app called Loper. Though he’s not a counselor, I feel like he could be our biggest hype man. He’s made the connection between what students need to feel engaged and excited about the college search process, because it can be really overwhelming, and he really does believe that it can be more enjoyable if it’s a fun self discovery process.

Lauren 1:19
One of the best parts about Loper is that it allows counselors to have real conversations with students, because that’s where we get to shine, right? Not the research, not the paperwork, the conversations and the relationships. It’s what we love to do best. You’re gonna hear us talk a little bit about AI and technology, gamification and overall, just making the college search process actually fun. He’s trying to solve these problems with Loper, and he tells us about how students can best use the app, and then the benefits that you’ll reap as a counselor because of it.

Lauren 1:49
So let me introduce you to Sam, and we’ll get right into our conversation about the college search process and Loper. Sam is the co founder of Loper, a free mobile app designed to help students explore and discover their best educational opportunities after high school. The inspiration for Loper came out of the pandemic where life on pause led two college friends, Sam and his co founder, Eric, to spending long nights discussing their shared passion: education. Fast forward two years, and they quit their jobs to launch Loper, which has now helped nearly 200,000 students find best fit opportunities after high school. Let’s get to this interview with Sam.

Lauren 2:26
You got into this profession to make a difference in your students’ lives, but you’re spread thin by all the things that keep getting added to your to do list. I can’t create more hours in the day, but I can invite you into my Counselor Clique where you’ll finally catch your breath. Come with me as we unpack creative ideas and effective strategies that’ll help you be the counselor who leaves a lifelong impact on your students. I’m Lauren Tingle, your high school counseling hype girl, here to help you energize your school counseling program and remind you of how much you love your job.

Lauren 2:59
Hey, Sam, I’m excited to welcome you on to the podcast to talk about college searching and that whole process, because I know counselors are always looking for tools to help with that, and it’s something that we spend a lot of time doing with our high school students. So welcome to the podcast.

Sam 3:13
Amazing. Thanks so much for having me, Lauren.

Lauren 3:15
Okay, you are passionate about education and technology, which is a really cool intersection for us as high school counselors, because we get to benefit from what you have put together. And so I kind of am interested in hearing how this process has evolved for you. Like you’re not a counselor, that’s not your background. But how are you serving counselors? Especially searching for colleges with their students by this evolving technology, the app that you have?

Sam 3:40
Yeah, no, absolutely. And appreciate the question. You’re totally right to call out that I’m not a counselor. And you know, my co founder and I, when we started Loper, we really got in this from the student lens, where students just have so many options right now, and it’s, how do you narrow that down? And what jumped out to us is that technology has an opportunity to really make things fun for students, and that was the first piece. And we, you know, maybe our controversial belief is that engagement can be better than depth, especially in the early days of this process, where it’s just so overwhelming. It’s like, how do you get someone to take that first step? Sometimes it can be as easy as something that’s actually fun to spend 5 or 10 minutes on.

Sam 4:20
And I think if you rewind the clock for us where we’re not so far removed from the college process, but maybe a decade ago, I would have a really hard time saying that much about college was fun for me in high school, and all of those other feelings, I think, really complicate a process that should be so exciting. And so that was a student lens that we approached with.

Sam 4:38
But Eric and I were both very cognizant we are not counselors. We’re not counselors. Never sat a day at an educator seat. And I think what we learned from going out and interviewing counselors and starting Loper, and I say learned, maybe reminded is a better word is that counselors’ secret sauce is that they’re just so amazing with people. And I think technology sometimes has this connotation that it’s going to automate everything away with the role, and I think now more than ever, that’s a fear people have. But you can’t automate everything when it comes down to people and their lives and their dreams and their hopes. And so I think with counselors, there’s a few pieces of technology that really excites me, where there’s automating workflows. How can we just take someone who has too much on their plate, and simplify it and strip it down.

Lauren 5:23
Amen.

Sam 5:24
Yeah, it shocks me sometimes when I’ve sat down with counselors and like, Okay, actually walking through day, like, Wait a second. But when you do actually all the work that you’re supposed to do, it’s like, oh, okay, got it. This is, this is not sustainable. It does not stop. And then the other piece is there, technology can complement counselors’ messaging. There’s only so many ways that you can say as a person, there’s only so many people that you can reach in one on one conversations. How can we expand breadth? Just like it can expand breadth, it can also expand depth that you otherwise might not be able to get to. You might have one, two 15-minute conversations with a student in a year. There’s only so much. How can we make those as impactful as possible, and then again, add to that messaging.

Sam 5:36
And then it really just ends up going back to engaging the student for us at the end of the day, where the counselors I talked to, and the ones that I think are best at their job, it all ends up coming back to what’s best for the student. How can it get students excited? And that’s typically why they became counselors in the first place. When I talk with them, and rewind the clock, whether they’re 25 or 65 it comes back to helping other people, helping other people, helping students. And with Loper, we just wanted to make something that counselors could be really excited and sharing with their students. Students would be excited and using, and I think we’ve done a pretty good job with it so far.

Lauren 6:34
Okay, you said so many good things I want to unpack about the student side. So you said something in the beginning about your concentration being on engagement versus depth, or like, that was kind of your original game plan, of like when you went in, because there is so much depth to this process. Like, the college search process is overwhelming. It’s overwhelming to a counselor to need to have all that information in our mind. Or it’s like a myth that we feel like we need to have every single answer for every single student. Like, no, let’s sit down and discover it together. But students feel like that too. Like, how am I ever gonna learn about anything? I just know the top three colleges in my state, and that’s what I know. And so tell us a little bit about, like, your thought process behind engaging students in a different way than just a website where they’re searching for colleges.

Sam 7:20
Yeah, and I think it’s in many ways that engagement can end up leading to depth, but if you start with this sense that it’s, okay, you need to know everything about all colleges, which is I think what counselors sometimes feel. And it’s, that’s just impossible, that’s, you’re human. You can’t know everything about every single college in the US. You shouldn’t. It’s probably a waste of your time as a counselor if you do. Maybe as an IEC you can expand to more, but even then, I’d say I’m shocked if you’d actually take every single college you need to know that much about. And that’s where the technology can come in.

Sam 7:53
And on that engagement side for students and counselors, if you can take that first step, and as I think about our app and what is different about it, instead of going on to a traditional college search website. Very easy to use your traditional website in the sense that it might be 8 to 10 filters high level on your preferences, but then it spits out a massive list. Could be 75 schools. It could be 275 schools. And on that, there’s not that information on each school. It’s kind of on you to go research and go further to understand why it’s a fit for you outside those really high level preferences and maybe falling into a state that you’re interested in. And it’s still really overwhelming. It’s like, okay, now I see this school. How do I even approach researching it?

Sam 8:38
With Loper we’ll onboard students in a chat style interface. We think that’s something that’s very native for students, just in terms of how many different messaging apps are out there. They’re comfortable. They’re flying. It always, always shocks me to watch students on boards like, oh my gosh, you I made this app, and you’re going way faster through it. You understand it better than I do.

Sam 8:56
And then we actually just drop them into what we call swipes within explore mode, and we have students swiping right and left on what they’re most interested in. And that can be an academic major. It can be something as simple as I want to study in a sunny place. And it’s that type of carefree exploration where it’s just right, left. We have a couple of different styles of ranking prompts, and okay, there might be multiple choice questions. What are you most nervous about in college? And as you go through you may not realize you’ve answered 20 or 30 questions that can really help technology narrow down the universe. And that’s where, with counselors, I could give you these 30 preferences from a student. It’s so hard, if you were in live time the conversation to rack your brain and say, Okay, here’s not just one school. Here’s a list of 10, 12 schools that actually fit those preferences. You’re a superhuman if you can do that. And counselors, in many ways, are superhumans.

Lauren 9:47
But some of them are so specific, like you’re saying, like, I wanted to be sunny. It’s like, well, that probably didn’t come up in a conversation with me as a counselor, because I’m, I’m thinking through those big topics, right off the bat.

Sam 9:58
Exactly. And it’s so hard. And then, of course, there’s contradictory preferences, because we’re talking about high school students. One of my favorite ones is, you know, I want to study at a medium sized school, but I want a school that has 20,000 to 40,000 kids. It’s like, okay, well, hold on.

Lauren 10:13
They just don’t understand, like, what they have no capacity for what those sizes are, what they mean, because they’ve never either visited a school. I mean, we have all sorts of students. Maybe you have limited access to things, like their parents didn’t go to college, they haven’t toured anywhere. Like this gives them some framework, I guess, to think about.

Sam 10:31
Absolutely, and we try and explain as they go and contextualize every single prompt as we call it, that they’re swiping on has a one pager, you know, more interactive than a one pager, but fast facts on the back of it, where students can read about if they’ve never heard a topic. You know, if you don’t know what an affinity group is on campus, you can actually read about what that is and learn, okay, this is something that I’m interested in potentially joining. College is an experiential good that’s your, it’s higher ed marketing to students who have never experienced it. So it’s this really weird paradox in some ways.

Lauren 11:03
There’s a lot of hidden language in it. And I love that you’re swiping and like, it has little blurbs where, like you said, you can, that affinity group that feels like, What the heck is that? Like they have no idea, as they should not. They’ve never been there. They’ve never experienced it, but you give them moments where they can stop what they’re doing and read about what that is and see if it’s important to them.

Sam 11:26
And that’s where it’s really fun for us to bring the counselor back into the process. And we can definitely talk about different ways that we’ve seen counselors have success in using Loper in the classroom, outside the classroom. But as a counselor, one, you may never have that conversation with a student separately about what is an affinity group. But with Loper, give technology in our matching algorithm, delivering best fit schools to students, we make that moment fun. We try and make a match feel really special on the app, pictures, Media Gallery, actually personalize why we match the student with that school so they can read it. So it’s not just this mystery of, okay, there’s a list of 75 schools. How the heck did they appear and show up? Go one at a time there.

Sam 12:06
Then, for a counselor, you could actually have students coming to you. And it’s my favorite stories that I hear are, Hey, I just found out about blank school. I love it. I’d love to learn more. And then you, as a counselor get to have that one on one conversation. But similarly, with something like an affinity group, maybe. Hey, I learned about this affinity group. I’m really interested. I think this sounds awesome. I’d love to join one, and now you get to have this really rich, specific conversation that in way too many contacts is impossible for counselors to get to otherwise, because of the nature of their job.

Lauren 12:37
Right, and we all know that we say the same thing 100 times. I mean, more than 100 times in those meetings, because we’re just trying to get through a lot of information. So I’ve always thought I love doing getting all the big information out in, like, a large group setting, and then having those individual conversations with parents and students. But this is taking it to another level, like even more individualized, personalized conversations, because they’ve come in having done some research already.

Lauren 13:01
And I’ll say this is hard to explain on a podcast, but off air, I have looked at this app, and it is really engaging. It’s really cool. Kind of what you’re saying, like the swipe, those things are so native to our students now that it’s really easy to use.

Lauren 13:16
Will you talk a little bit about gamifying the college search situation? Because, I mean, I’m very motivated by gamification. I don’t know if our counselors have heard that term before. They probably have engaged with it, and maybe don’t even know it has a name, but that is something that you have thought about as you’ve been trying to engage students in this college process. So will you tell us about how you do that with Loper?

Sam 13:39
Yeah, absolutely. And I think in some ways, for gamification, it can be overused in many contexts.

Lauren 13:46
When do you see it overused? Like, too many badges, too many like, corny things, that kind of thing?

Sam 13:52
I think there’s corny things there. We will talk about it sometimes is pandering to the students. And I am sure at different points, when we look back as Loper is evolved and we’re always trying to improve the product, there are times there’s like, Okay, that was that was silly, that was stupid. We need to take that off the app and try again. And I think, like too many badges, can be a good situation, but I generally bucket into when it’s our team as non high school students, trying to think that we are high school students, or the second, we’re like, oh, this is really cool for high schoolers. And it’s just us saying it, and we haven’t talked to a high schooler, that’s like, alarm bells need to be ringing somewhere.

Lauren 14:29
Right, when the adults think it’s cool, the kids probably don’t.

Sam 14:33
Exactly. And I think that over stimulation is the other piece too, where it’s like, not everything needs and animation and buttons, flashing and gamification doesn’t need to be, I guess Flash, is another way to put it, but it’s just it comes back to engagement. I know I’m gonna probably say that word 50 more times.

Lauren 14:55
But intentional engagement versus flashy. I like that. I like thedifferentiation there. It’s like it doesn’t have to be fireworks on some big show or something. It’s just it’s the right stuff in front of students to keep them excited about the process and not overwhelmed.

Sam 15:11
And I’ll go to the, it’s probably a misquoted stat out there about high school students attention span, and it’s six seconds now. I think, I really push against that. I don’t think high schoolers have six second attention spans, but you probably have six seconds to capture their attention. And that’s where, but man, oh man, if you ever seen a high school student on their phone, if you ever seen me on their phone, trust me, I got longer than six second attention span. I can be scrolling for minutes, hours. It’s 2pm now I thought it was noon, and so high school students can really focus and they can really engage.

Sam 15:18
And with college, the fun piece is we have the head start in that many of them are already, some are college obsessed, which I think can be very unhealthy. Many are college focused. And then there’s a whole nother population that I think really wants to engage, but just has no idea where to start. And so that’s where, with gamification, students are swiping right and left. We have BuzzFeed style quizzes for anyone who rewinds the clock. And remember those four panel quizzes? That’s where students do get badges. Hopefully not too many. Hopefully not.

Lauren 16:11
I didn’t know it’s like, that was where we were going with that.

Sam 16:14
No, no. Trust me, we’ve had times where it’s we were trying to put a badge on everything. And it’s like, Wait a second. I just went through the app. I got 117 badges, and I don’t even know what these badges do. What do they mean?

Lauren 16:23
I love those, like buckets of students, like the ones who are, I mean, I don’t love when they’re obsessed with it, but those exist. And then the ones who are interested, and you already kind of have their attention, and then the ones that would be interested if they had the right information in front of them. So like, where are we as counselors, missing those students. How do we capture them? And how do we capture them earlier? Because, like, a slow and steady drip of this information, I would think would be most beneficial to them, not fall of their senior year, when they’re kind of panicking of what am I going to do next? What am I going to do with my life?

Sam 16:56
Definitely. I think one thing I’ll lead in with on on the Loper front directly is, I think Loper is in many ways, best suited for juniors, like right when you’re starting the traditional college process at your school in you know, I know it can vary, but we’ll just call it January 1 of your junior year. Seniors have hopefully all applied. It’s January 1, okay, time to focus on juniors. Really great at the front end of the college process.

Sam 17:20
But what we’ve learned with counselors is, many schools, junior and senior year, you have a plan. You have a plan that works well, and if your plan is working, you do not need to mess up your plan. If you want something new and to engage students. Definitely introduce Loper junior year. It’s great resource. But what we found is a lot of those schools, especially, I will say, schools that have more well resourced, more counselors, and they’re able to really run that robust process, is sophomore year is a gap. And it’s, how do we just get in sophomore years? More important, just get students excited. So if you’re wondering, I have this process, where would I fit in Loper? sophomore year.

Lauren 17:54
And I always joke, sophomore year is like the lost year. It’s like, we forget about those students because they’re transitioning from middle school into ninth grade, then that junior year starts that intense search process about whatever is next, whether it’s college or work or military or whatever. But sophomore year is kind of just like this island where they’re like, huh, maybe two year college. Maybe, they have no idea. And we forget about them.

Sam 18:17
So that’s the big push in the starting earlier, I keep thinking if there’s one message I would hammer home is Loper with sophomores, a great way, risk free, in many ways, in the sense of, it’s one of those benefits of a mobile app, where, as a counselor, you just kind of let them run. It’s going to be contained. And then you can always, if a student ends up, we think we do a good job, but if you end up meeting with them junior year, you can always bring them back if there is a little bit of a direction. Or the fun thing with sophomores is sometimes reality does not match their imagination where they are. I wish I could say that students who didn’t have a 4.0 weren’t entering 4.0 for their GPA. Simple example, if you’ve got a 2.5, you tell a Loper that you have a 4.0, we’re gonna match you with different schools. So can be nice for counselors to bring them back.

Lauren 19:00
But I love starting that conversation earlier, because I can’t tell you how many kids get to the more serious part of the process, and they they say, Why didn’t anyone tell me my GPA needed to be higher? And it’s like, whoa, wait, we’ve been telling you that for a while.

Sam 19:12
Oh yeah, that’s my favorite one.

Lauren 19:14
If they get that like reality check a little bit earlier, then they can set goals. Then they can say, this is what I want to achieve. Oh, I didn’t realize. And they experienced that for themselves, like it’s way different than their parents telling them out at the dinner table. And then, like counselors are the next level of intervention. They listen to us a little bit more than their parents, but something that they get to discover on their own? That’s huge.

Sam 19:36
Yeah, and that’s where to return back with your question on on cadence, I think you’re right to call out freshman year, and again, this is coming from someone who hasn’t been a counselor and having these conversations. But as I see them, it’s, let’s just get students locked in on that transition to high school. In many ways, it is middle school to high school is a big jump. It’s hard for me to even go back and run the clock to imagine. But it’s about having that goal in mind, and whether it’s freshman year, and setting that goal for students. And I think for some students who fit in those buckets will just say college, apprehensive or not really sure where to start, probably don’t have the language to express where to start and what they’re thinking about, building excitement, whether that’s freshman year or sophomore year, and getting that goal in mind of this is where you can go and be aspirational.

Lauren 20:24
You don’t have to decide now, but these are your options and high level, here are some different pathways you can take.

Sam 20:30
And I’m glad you said here are your options and different pathways, because I think sometimes the goal in mind has been very incorrectly framed as the most selective school that you can get into, or that there’s a goal in mind. But by the way, that goal is limited to this bucket of 50 schools, and good luck if you’re not in those 50 schools, because life is over. And it’s just the most frustrating message to see high school students get again and again again.

Lauren 20:56
And it’s like, where did, where—I’m gonna say they come up with it. I had that too when I was in high school, like, why did I, why did I think that? I just made up these expectations in my own mind.

Sam 21:05
Yeah, you’re not, you’re not listening to your counselors, probably, I guess.

Lauren 21:08
No, I didn’t really have someone. They just kind of came in and said, pick a college, I don’t know.

Sam 21:14
Yeah, and it’s just, you get it. It’s, you know, sometimes it can be parents, sometimes it can be friends, way, way too much just coming from the internet. And you know, I will poke fun at the rankings listed that are out there, and you know, they’re showing up as the first, second, third result on Google. And as a student it’s like, okay, rankings, I can make this a one size, it’s a one size fits all system, which is really easy for our brains to wrap our heads around, but it’s not the right way to think about it. And not only are there so many other colleges, but a big, exciting development for us with Loper is, there are really viable and increasingly accessible, non four year college options. Community college, two year college, always been there, still need to be spotlighted better, I think, by community.

Lauren 21:58
And those are in your app too the two years?

Sam 22:01
So two year colleges, that’s the big jump here. Two year colleges, we’re bringing into the app this year. But as well, non degree pathways. You know, whether that’s trade school, whether that’s service based learning programs, and I’ll shout out a program we’ve been thrilled to work with, which is called Lead for America. They have 40 different sites for civic service programs. Topeka, Kansas, work get paid for your working with local government. Topeka Kansas, so many of those students end up going back to four year college afterwards, some of those you see as direct path to a workforce and continue to progress in their careers.

Sam 22:33
Those opportunities, one, as a counselor, if you’re supposed to also know everything about those opportunities, good luck. But two, it’s just they’ve never really had a good way to be evaluated side by side for a student. And there’s definitely going to be a lot of work that we need to do to improve that comparison for students this year, but really to be able to look and say, Okay, this is me, my situation, my interest. This is what four year college and a high level sense can look like in some good fit colleges. But then here are options, B through E, that all can actually be viable for me. Military, I think, is still certainly viable for many students, but I think in many ways it’s been college or military, it needs to be college or military or what else.

Lauren 23:15
And we’re saying that, so that’s cool that this is gonna, that’s gonna be a focus of the app too, that like it’s for all students. And I love both sides of the equation of the exposure to the searching when they think that’s not for me, but then also filling it out. And like, I thought my pathway was going to be college, college, college. But there are other pathways to get there too. So you’re saying the messaging that we are already saying to students.

Sam 23:42
I always love to hear that from counselors, because that’s the goal. In many ways, it’s an extension to come back to that original question on technology and counselors. Sometimes I hear, “Well, you’re trying to replace counselors,” and I always laugh in many ways when I get that question.

Lauren 23:56
We are irreplaceable.

Sam 23:57
Irreplaceable. I love it. Truly though I laugh in that response, but 425 to one national student counselor ratio. You’re telling me that we need to replace counselors at that level. It doesn’t, it really just doesn’t make sense, if you start to look at the numbers. But it’s an extension, and it’s good when we’re echoing messages from counselors, because there’s this funny thing that happens with students in technology, where sometimes students won’t listen to you for no matter how many times you say it, then they read it. They see it on an app, and it’s like, oh, I just learned this. Sometimes you got to bite your tongue. Like, that’s so great. I’m happy for you.

Lauren 24:32
I’m glad you heard it from somewhere.

Sam 24:35
Yeah, forget about the 10 different presentations we’ve given you over the last two years.

Lauren 24:39
And I’m sure that’s how parents feel too, when then they sit in the meeting and the counselor says it, and they’re like, Yeah, that’s what we just talked about.

Sam 24:46
Sometimes even that’s the, you know, excited, probably a little bit longer term for us and think about how to engage parents in this process. But sometimes we’ve had parents use our app, and I even say for counselors, encourage parents to talk about the app with their students, even. And then if they want to download using themselves, it’s going to be, kind of put themselves in their student’s head, another great resource. But we’ll have counselors say, parents, we’ve told parents this message 20 times, right? And then they find out about it elsewhere, or they use Loper, their student used Loper, and they’re asking us about it. And it’s not just the students who aren’t always great listeners. The adults in the room have plenty of room for improvement as well.

Lauren 25:20
Totally. Well, I’ll say we talked about this before off air, but that this app is really student driven, which I love, because I think students should be driving this process, and not as much counselor driven, like there’s not a counselor interface side. And I’m telling listeners this because you’re not trying to add something else on a counselor’s plate. I think you had a counselor portal before, and it just wasn’t being used, which I was like, Yeah, that makes sense. We have so many portals to log into. What’s one more? It’s kind of cool that the students are driving this process. So I’d encourage counselors to go just download the app and, like you said, Put yourself in the shoes of students, or you go back to high school and fill it out and feel what that feels like to swipe, to select, to learn about different groups and different things on campuses, and kind of choose your own adventure as if you were a student. I think that could be a cool opportunity for a counselor.

Sam 26:10
Absolutely, and I’m glad that you brought that up. So this is one of the big learning lessons for us over the past few years, where it’s counselors do not need another product. You have your core CCR software, you probably have 10 other portals that you’ve got to log into at one point or another in a day.

Lauren 26:26
Things that people above you are making you do,

Sam 26:30
Always the most productive pieces of technology, I’m sure. We had a portal and counselors started effective, but it’s logging in this once or twice a year, once or twice a semester, it’s hard to integrate it in my process. And what I do want to make clear is, students can absolutely share out their school lists, their interests to counselors on that one to one basis. We always encourage, Hey in that meeting, have them pull out their phone and actually show you their list on Loper, ones that interest you. We do know that some more and more buildings have no phone policies. So if there aren’t room for exceptions, they can always share it ahead of time.

Sam 27:06
And then even there, it’s something that we’ve been increasingly pleased with I,’d say, is that students don’t necessarily need and counselors don’t necessarily need to pull out their phone or show that formatted list with every single interest in school on there, because it’s that engagement that matters most. And then students are actually coming without that reference point. They’re telling youbecause they’ve actually learned something, they’re telling counselors the most important thing. And now it’s more conversation and that human connection that still just gets lost. But again, where I think counselor secret sauce is and it’s just a conversation, and it’s not even us reading a document or looking at a phone. It’s just talk to me after you’ve gone through using Loper, whether it’s for five minutes or even using it five weeks straight, telling what you learned, telling what you’re interested in. And that’s what we need to focus more on, not getting your 16th web dashboard that you need to spend a few minutes on.

Lauren 28:00
And I love that you said it’s counselor secret sauce is like the relationship piece. That is why counselors are in this, they want to have those rich conversations with students, and feel like the conversations are helping a student grow and learn and change, and that those conversations are meaningful and memorable. And this feels like a puzzle piece to go into that to help facilitate that without, like, extra stuff. It’s like we have enough extra stuff.

Sam 28:26
Less extra stuff in 2025.

Lauren 28:27
Yes, yes. Well, is there anything that we didn’t talk about that you wanted to add? I know we touched on a little bit like AI and technology and gamification and the college search in general over the years of high school. Is there anything else that we didn’t talk about that you think would be helpful?

Sam 28:42
I think we covered so much. Nothing really coming to mind other than the the repeat message, which I’ve said a few times of download and check out the app. We’re really proud of where it is, I guarantee you, by the time this comes out, we’ll have some new feature. We’ll be testing something else out on the app, but Loper 4.8 stars in the App Store, for a reason. We’re available on iOS and Android. Use this on iPads. You can use this on Chromebooks too. We do think that phone experience is best.

Sam 29:06
And I guess the last piece is there will be more web resources coming forward. That’s I knew there was something that, as I started talking, I forget there are more web resources coming out, resources for, and this is where counselors do come back in, for students and for counselors doing something really cool, we think, with school guides and that authentic student experience. We’re releasing some schools over the next few months, kind of in this pilot batch.

Sam 29:06
And when we spoke with counselors in this process in the portal, that was an area that jumped out to us, where it was, okay, you’ve now gotten me to there’s a school that I’m interested in, oh, there’s a student as counselor. How do I dive really deep? It’s like, oh, you’re you still as a counselor, you need to spend time on Google, going through a website. You’re more adept than students at navigating Google and a website, but that’s still a painful, not very enjoyable process. How can we get content-rich, authentic information, accessible on a web that will also work its way back into the mobile app too, that can give you that fun two minute crash course on school that you want to share with your students too. So that’s the other piece as well. There are more resources coming no more logins, more resources coming up.

Lauren 30:12
Great. And I have said this in the intro, but this is a free app. Download it. You’re not gonna have to pay for anything. So test it out, see if you like it, make it available to your students if it’s something that you feel like, could enhance your conversations with your students. So Sam, thank you for being here. I think this was a great conversation about searching for colleges and a resource that’s out there that’ll help a counselors. So thank you.

Sam 30:36
Amazing. Thanks so much for having me. Lauren. I really enjoyed it.

Lauren 30:40
As this episode was college related, I want to direct you to some more college resources for you as a high school counselor. If you go to www.counselorclique.com/collegeplaylist, you’ll find a handful of other curated college episodes of high school counseling conversations for you. Some of my favorites on this playlist include how to host a college application day, running senior meetings like a boss, and supporting and empowering first generation students.

Lauren 31:06
I think today’s conversation fits in really well with all the ways that you’re already serving your students and then the ways that you’re continually trying to improve what that looks like. Definitely head over and go download the Loper app and play around with it. Of course, I’ll link it in the show notes so you can just bop over there since you’re on your phone already. You’re gonna love how you interact with it, and it’s gonna be a no brainer that you would incorporate this into your college conversations with your students. I’ll see you next week for another episode.

Lauren 31:33
Thanks for listening to today’s episode of high school counseling conversations. All the links I talked about today can be found in the show notes and also at counselorclique.com/podcast. Be sure to hit follow wherever you listen to your podcasts so that you never miss a new episode. Connect with me over on Instagram. Feel free to send me a DM @counselorclique. That’s C, L, I, Q, U, E. I’ll see you next week.