SUPPORTING SERVICES
Specialty Consultations
Smart College Selection’s core work is Comprehensive College Consulting — guiding students and families through the full college selection and application process. But over the years, we’ve noticed gaps where families want something more focused, earlier, or deeper than what the standard process provides.
Our supporting Specialty Consultations fill those gaps. Each is led by experienced Smart College Selection consultants who bring their depth of knowledge about students, families, and the college search. These consultations are available to any family — whether or not you are working with Smart College Selection on comprehensive consulting.
Smart Foundations
A focused session for parents of students in 7th, 8th, or 9th grade
Smart Explorations
Helping students identify potential areas of study and work environments
Smart Foundations
For Parents of Students in 7th, 8th, or 9th Grade
This service is for families of younger students who are already thinking ahead about how to best support their student until they are old enough to benefit from our core Smart College Selection service.
Smart Foundations is a focused session for parents — a one-on-one conversation with an experienced Smart College Selection consultant. We’ll cover what’s most relevant for where your student is right now, answer your questions, and leave you with a clear sense of what to focus on when and why.
Above all, Smart Foundations offers a view into how parents can lower the stress around the college selection process and navigate with confidence, based on expert guidance instead of getting caught up in the fear-based noise about college admissions.
Every family’s questions are different. Topics typically include:
High school course selection — what matters, what doesn’t, and how to think about rigor vs. balance
Extracurricular activities — quality over quantity, and what colleges actually look for
Testing — when to start thinking about it, what the options are, and how to plan
Summer planning — how to use these years intentionally without burning out your student
College selection basics — what families in these years should and shouldn’t be thinking about yet
Your questions — anything that has been on your mind
How It Works
The Smart Foundations session is a one-hour Zoom conversation with a Smart College Selection consultant. Simply book and pay through the button below. We’ll confirm your appointment by email and send a short intake form so we can make the most of our time together.
If you’re thinking about working with us down the road, this is the best way to stay on our radar.
Families who complete a Smart Foundations session are among the first we contact — after siblings of past students — when we open enrollment for a new class year.
$400
Smart Explorations
Career & Major Advising for Students
Smart Explorations help young people in high school, college, and beyond identify potential areas of study and work environments that genuinely fit them.
We use two of the most established assessment tools available, the Strong Interest Inventory and the Highlands Ability Battery, to learn more about your student’s interests, strengths, and abilities. We translate the results into clear, personalized, actionable guidance to help them throughout their college and career journey.
Note: Smart Explorations 1 and 2 are available as standalone services or as an add-on to your consulting engagement for families already working with us, where it will complement the criteria development work that’s included in your engagement. The insights gathered will be seamlessly shared with your student’s college consultant, advancing the criteria development process and informing college selection directly.
Smart Exploration 1: Discover Your Interests
The Strong Interest Inventory identifies what a person genuinely enjoys — the subjects, activities, and environments they are naturally drawn to — and matches those results to college majors and careers where people with similar interests tend to find satisfaction and success. One of the most widely used career interest assessments in the world, developed in 1927 and continuously refined since.
Your Student Benefits From:
A clear picture of genuine interests and what they suggest about college major and career fit
A personalized shortlist of majors and career fields to explore
The confidence and language to speak clearly about their direction
A written summary of findings and recommended next steps
INCLUDES:
Strong Interest Inventory
Three one-on-one sessions plus an assessment
$795
Want to go deeper? Smart Exploration 2 adds the Highlands Ability Battery; see below.
Smart Exploration 2: The Full Aperture
The Strong Interest Inventory tells you what draws a person in. The Highlands Ability Battery tells you where they are naturally equipped to do the work well.
The Highlands Ability Battery measures natural abilities through timed exercises across nineteen areas — identifying which kinds of tasks come quickly and effortlessly, and revealing strengths a student may never have had a name for. Used together, the Strong Interest Inventory and the Highlands Ability Battery provide a complete picture: interests and abilities, pointing toward where a student is most likely to thrive.
Your Student Benefits From:
A clear understanding of both interests and natural abilities
Both full assessment reports
A personalized shortlist of majors and careers that fit across both dimensions
A written Whole-Person Summary prepared by the consultant
INCLUDES:
Strong Interest Inventory + Highlands Ability Battery
Four one-on-one sessions plus two assessments
$1200
About the Consultant
Bonnie Stewart
Smart Explorations are led by Bonnie Stewart, a Smart College Selection consultant with 25 years of experience as an educator and a Harvard Ed.M. in Language and Literacy. Bonnie holds certifications in both the Strong Interest Inventory and the Highlands Ability Battery — a combination that is rare in the independent educational consulting world.
When the assessments are complete, Bonnie doesn’t just hand a student a report. She helps them understand what the results mean in the current context of their lives, whether they are in college thinking about next steps, in high school considering specific schools, programs worth exploring, and the story they’ll tell in their applications, or even in young adulthood trying to find their best professional home.
Have more questions about Smart Explorations? Please reach out!
