The City of Cupertino hosted its Teen Speaker Series panel on Saturday, Nov. 1 at the Quinlan Community Center at 1 p.m. The 45-minute event featured independent college counselor Tina Pratt and Vinnie Gupta, the founder and CEO of Upward Path Institute, college counseling services organization. Both speakers presented informative sessions on preparing for college acceptances and discussed strategies for approaching admissions to student and parent attendees. After both presentations were concluded, the panel opened up to a Q&A session for the attendees to clarify any lingering doubts about the process.
First-year member of the Cupertino Teen Commission Sumedha Kumar explains that the commission collaborated with the Cupertino Youth Activity Board to moderate the panel as well as coordinate outreach efforts towards teens and organizations. With this event being introduced only last year, Kumar says she was surprised with the turnout.
“I’m glad to see a combination of both teens and parents who have a lot of interest,” Kumar said. “Not all teens get the opportunity to get such in-depth college counseling because it is extremely expensive, but having such a nice community here to host an event with these two very experienced college counselors giving their insights is very nice.”
Pratt’s presentation focused on the logistics of the application process, highlighting how students with different interests and achievements are evaluated differently and offering guidance on how students can best present themselves to colleges. As an entrepreneur with her own college counseling practice for the past 12 years, she brought extensive firsthand experience to the session. Pratt also visits at least 15 colleges each year to better understand campus culture, academic expectations and curriculum offerings, allowing her to provide students with personalized advice and help them find colleges at which they will thrive.
“When applying, students are often coming from a place of fear and overwhelm,” Pratt said. “My job as a college counselor is to bring down that stress level and help students understand what their paths and options are because there are always multiple options.”
