Helping Teenagers Find The Right College Solution Through Cardinal College Planning With Tonica Johnson

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College planning can easily become a headache, especially when you start to talk about money. So many things factor into the price of a college education. How do you know which school to go to then? Do you focus on the price or on your major? These are the things Tonica Johnson takes note of when dealing with her clients. Tonica is an education consultant of Cardinal College Planning. She helps students and families pick the best-fit college for them. In this conversation with Stephen Jaye, Tonica explains why expensive doesn't necessarily mean high-quality education. Join in and learn what to watch out for when looking for the right college for you. --- Listen to the podcast here: Helping Teenagers Find The Right College Solution Through Cardinal College Planning With Tonica Johnson There's a certain common story that I've heard a bunch of times in different forms. This is a story where someone who is both curious and observant, identifies a need and finds a way to fill that need using something about their unique talents. These stories vary in the exact topic. Certain specifics are always going to be different from person-to-person but there are some commonalities amongst all these stories. One of them is of course, as I mentioned before, being observant, curious and looking at what's around you and responding to experiences both your own and the experiences of others. The other is taking some form of a leap of faith, some leap, some believing in yourself. My guest is Tonica Johnson who started her own service called Cardinal College Planning, which is a service in a topic that I would never think of myself. This is one of the things I find so amazing about hearing all these stories. Some of which are on my previous and will be in my future episodes. It's oftentimes something that I would have never thought of but as soon as I hear what's happening, I'm like, “This makes a lot of sense. This is something that needed to be done.” Tonica, welcome to the show. Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. We're excited to have you here. First of all, to orient our audience, I know college planning can be a daunting task. I think almost everyone remembers the process of submitting applications, getting the letters of recommendation from the right people, having the right extracurricular activities. What does Cardinal College Planning do for the teenagers and parents that you work with? Maybe what I was pursuing next wasn't gonna work out, wasn't gonna be forever, but it was worth trying instead of something I knew my heart and soul wasn't into anymore.Click To Tweet It’s definitely a daunting procedure, for sure. Since it is overwhelming and stressful, I advise families through all of this stuff. If I start working with families and they're a little younger, it's got even more crazy and competitive than it has. I'm 30 when I went to college, it wasn't this crazy yet and every year after, it seems like it gets more difficult. It's a matter too of making sure you're choosing the right classes as early as 9th and 10th grade so you can get in the ones in 11th and 12th grade. When you go to apply, they're seeing that you took the courses you needed for their sake competitive business program. I worked with a client and a huge thing that I do is course recommendations. Like you said, adding over those extracurricular activities, won't get too much into detail. There's not a right or wrong but guiding students through their passions and finding activities that they want to do but are also going to look good for their applications. The big thing is researching the schools. I'm sure we'll get a little bit more into this. Part of why I got into this was realizing students were applying to the same few schools that they knew locally over and over. When there are literally thousands of institutions in our country,