What if students could earn college credits, explore the world, and gain invaluable life experience, all before starting their traditional college journey? In this episode, I sit down with Neal Crosson from Verto Education to talk about a unique yet powerful path: first-year study abroad programs.

We dive into how these programs work, who they’re best suited for, and how counselors can support students considering this path. Plus, we tackle key questions around credit transferability, program structure, and what makes a student a great fit for this experience. Let’s expand the conversation around post-high school options, because for the right student, a first-year study abroad could be a game-changer!

Resources Mentioned:

• Verto Education Website
• Podcast: Episode 147, Exploring Gap Year Opportunities for Your Students (or You!) with Julia Rogers
• Leave your review for High School Counseling Conversations on Apple Podcasts

Connect with Lauren:

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• Join the Clique Collaborative http://cliquecollab.com

Full show notes on website: https://counselorclique.com/episode161

Hello, my high school counselor listeners. I'm excited

to bring you another guest episode today. I originally

connected with Neal Crosson over on LinkedIn as he started

following me based on another podcast episode that I shared or

that was shared out. He is colleagues, or knows, Julia

Rogers from around the international gap year student

programs world, I guess you would call it. Julia Rogers was

on a past episode where she talked about gap year programs.

And you'll hear a little bit of crossover here in what Neal has

to offer.

Having lived and studied in Spain, Costa Rica, and Turkey,

Let me introduce you to Neal, and then I'll give you a preview

of what we're going to talk about. I'll let you listen in on

our conversation, and then we'll wrap it up. With over seven

years of experience in international education, Neal

Crosson is passionate about helping students explore unique

pathways in higher education. As national admissions manager at

Verto Education, he guides students toward their first year

abroad, offering academic, cultural and personal growth

opportunities beyond traditional study abroad programs.

he's seen firsthand how international experiences

transform students' academic and personal development. His

background includes teaching ESL, leading gap year programs,

and crafting college admission strategies, all fueling his

commitment to making global learning accessible. Neal

believes every student deserves a chance to gain a global

perspective, and he's here to share how counselors can support

their students in taking that first step towards an enriching,

transformative year abroad.

In this episode, you're going to hear about a unique pathway that

I hope you will find valuable to share with your students, kind

of outside the norm of what you might usually be talking about

when you sit down and talk about your post secondary planning

with them. We talk about a gap year type international

experience. I don't know how to condense it into one sentence

here, but you're going to hear Neal explain what this popular

program is that is honestly becoming more and more popular

with our students who are heading off to college. I'll let

him do the talking here, and then we will chat here at the

end about what we learned from the episode.

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.

Hey Neal, welcome to the podcast. I'm so glad that you're

here to talk about just global perspectives and how that

affects our high school students.

Thank you, Lauren. And yeah, I'm super excited to be

here. Global perspectives, international education,

experiential education, all of these things wrapped up into

one. This is what I'm here to talk about. This is what gets me

super excited and what I am passionate about. So I'm very

excited to be joining you today.

Yeah, we talked a little bit off air about your

background and experience, and I read the listeners your bio, and

all of your experience has been in this world with all different

job experiences, but it's really cool that it has pointed you

back here to continue like leading high schoolers into this

world, which could be really unknown to high schoolers. So

will you tell us what is Verto education? First just go ahead

and give us a little intro to like the people you work for.

Yeah, absolutely. And I also want to make a note here

that yesterday was National Study Abroad Day. So this

conversation is quite, the timing of it is, is quite good.

This is how you're celebrating. You're talking

about this.

100%. Yeah, but to answer your question, yeah, what is

Verto Education? Verto Education is a first year or freshman year

of college study abroad organization that is really

trying to pair the best of both worlds between a traditional gap

year experience with the academic backbone of a study

abroad experience. It's not traditional study abroad. It's

not traditional gap year. It is first year abroad.

So all students that are starting in a Verto Education

program are recent high school graduates. This is their first

collegiate experience, and rather than going to a

traditional campus, they're going to be starting in, you

know, one of five different Verto study centers. It's our

study center model, our campuses in miniature. But the idea is

really for students to have an academic experience, earn

transferable college credit while they are immersing

themselves in different country. And the second part of our model

is we exist in the US higher education ecosystem here. So we

partner with dozens of colleges and universities across the

country to really make good on this, this promise for students

to get a gap year without the gap, get the experiential part,

the transformative first year experience, but then to have a

clear path forward to continue their education and graduate

within that four year timeline.

Yeah. So as someone who's not sitting here, my

listeners are listening, they're not, they don't have your

website pulled up, so they're hearing this about this for the

first time, I have a couple like practical questions. So when a

student is going into their freshman year, are they, say

around here, going to Clemson University, and then they're

noticing that there's this option to study abroad? Or are

they applying to the study abroad program, knowing I just

kind of want to take a gap year, like, how is a student kind of

piecing this together? Like, this is, I'm going to go on this

experience.

So I'm going to give you an answer that it's probably a

little bit longer than you might expect. On the one hand, we have

what we call traditional students at Verto. These are

students that are seeking out a first year abroad experience.

Maybe they are, you know, thinking about a structured

academic gap year. Then they come to us, finding us through

our website, finding us through social media, and deciding that,

hey, you know, this is something I'm interested in learning

about, hitting apply and engaging with us from there. The

other part of that is that some of the universities that we work

with actually invite students to Verto Education. They will

select a subset of their first year applicants and decide to

offer them, hey, if you want to come to our institution, if you

want to come to our university, we'd like to see you studying

abroad for the fall semester, or maybe the fall and spring

semester, so the full academic year.

That's cool that you mentioned that, because that's

what I was thinking. I have heard of someone doing that at

our school around here that everyone wants to go to is

Clemson. And I don't know if Verto is connected to them, but

I know a girl who went and did that her first semester, and I

thought that was so interesting. I wonder if she chose that or if

the university offered that to her.

To be honest, oftentimes students are first hearing about

Verto through their university. And the same with the college

counselors, with education consultants. A lot of times when

their student comes in, and this will be in their official

decision letter from that university saying that, hey, I

received this invitation from, and I don't want to show

favoritism here, but we have some long term partners of

University of Tennessee, Knoxville, University of

Vermont, William and Mary for just to name a few, they might

extend this offer to a student that may have been wait listed,

to a student that may have been given a spring admit, or a

student that, in the case of some of our partners, even

denied. And saying that, hey, we see a lot of potential in you.

We would like you to have this experience. And to keep in mind,

these students are earning transferable college credit that

have been, you know, reviewed for articulation to that

university. And assuming that student meets x, y and z, then

they have this sort of guaranteed closed loop back to

that university. For us right now, this is a time of the year

that we colloquially refer to at Verto Education as channel

season, because this is the channel pathway, the invitation

pathway, where right now or soon in the next couple weeks, 1000s

of students are going to be extended this offer across the

country.

So it's your busy season right now. You're about to be

answering lots of questions, inviting lots of students in.

It is our busy season, or really, on the cusp of our very

busy season. Yeah.

Okay. Well, for a student who is considering this,

or a counselor who is encouraging a student about an

experience like this, what do you see as an advantage for a

student going and doing a study abroad, especially in a gap year

time like before they go to college?

Yeah, so a lot of times I think of the Verto experience as

allowing students to reap a lot of the benefits of a gap year, a

lot of the personal growth, experiential learning, really

just building up this, you know, this portfolio of different

experiences that facilitate the growth of that student. So

having them engage in something different is really opening up

the door for what we call finding their why, or finding

that thing that they're passionate about, exposing the

students to something different. And let's say they are, you

know, thinking about a specific college major, maybe this will

give them the confidence to say, like, actually, yeah, this is

what I am dedicating myself to, or really opening up the door to

have this more exploratory experience where that student

can, you know, take different courses, have different

experiences, and decide, like, actually, you know, maybe, uh,

maybe I'm not considering engineering anymore. Maybe I'm

actually considering, you know something else.

So it is trying to give students the breathing space to do

something exploratory while still progressing along their

degree path. I haven't mentioned this yet, but the coursework

that's offered at Verto, it is facilitated through the

University of New Haven, which is our academic provider, or

really our our academic backbone. But the coursework is

meant to fulfill general education courses, anything from

a seminar in academic writing to biology, different business

courses and things like that. So that seems to rest assured that

they are continuing to progress along their degree path, taking

the same kinds of courses they would do as a freshman at a

traditional university, but getting that study abroad

experience at the same time, that global experience.

Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, I'm just being curious

right now. I know I kind of read in your bio, you've had some

study abroad type experiences, or you've lived other places.

Can you kind of tell us, give us, like, a little snippet of

your international experiences? Because I'm sure they pointed

you to what you're doing now.

100%. Yeah, it's sort of become my, for better or for

worse, my personal brand, in a lot of ways.

Your entire personality.

Exactly right. Oh, yeah. So I've studied abroad more than

most people. By that, I mean I had my first study abroad

experience as a rising senior in high school.

Me too.

Oh yeah? I spent a month in Costa Rica throughout high

school. I always studied the Spanish language. It's been a

huge passion of mine. I studied abroad a summer in Costa Rica,

came back, finished my senior year of high school, and

eventually the Spanish language became my my major in college,

which, of course, led me to study abroad in Spain with a

focus on the international world. I also studied

international development in Istanbul, Turkey. And yeah,

thinking about when I was a college graduate, like many

students, I found myself questioning, what is the path

forward after that, you know, as a recent college graduate. A lot

of questions were sort of, you know, bubbling in my mind of,

you know, what am I going to do? How am I going to enter the

workforce?

And I decided that, Hey, maybe I need a sort of adult Gap Year,

which led me to through some some research provided by one of

my my Spanish professors. I remember he walked in the

classroom and wrote on the board this link that said, you know,

to the Spanish Ministry of Education's website. And he

said, Hey, there's this program where you can go to Spain, you

can teach English. They're not going to pay you a lot of money,

but it's really good experience, and it's the opportunity to live

in a foreign country. So I remember writing that in the

back of a notebook and putting that notebook away, and then

right as I'm about to graduate as a senior, pulling that

notebook back out, finding that link, finding this program

applying to it, and what was originally going to be a one

year stint of teaching English in Spain ended up turning into

three years, a master's degree, and really just a wealth of

experience living in a foreign country, of having to navigate a

foreign country using my second language.

And I decided, okay, the adventure continues. So upon

leaving Spain, I found work as a program instructor at the gap

organization of a company, and I ended up leading programs for

about a year in Hawaii. So not exactly International, but

working directly with students that are seeking out something

different, something transformative, that are wanting

to, you know, engage with the world in a different way,

through volunteering, outdoor education, through, you know,

just learning about Hawaiian culture. And then I found Verto,

and they were, they were seeking out someone based in the DC

metropolitan area as a regional admissions counselor. So that

was sort of my bridge between study abroad gap to now, sort of

entering the world of higher education, which I feel like is

a perfect metaphor for my own organization, for Verto

Education, because it's really what we are trying to

accomplish. It's a lot of things, but blending the best of

a lot of what these different programs have to offer.

That's cool. I did a study abroad before my senior

year of high school as well, in Salamanca, Spain, and I look

back and I'm like, How did my parents just let me go to Spain

for like, five weeks? Like, would I do that for my kids? I

mean, I hope so. A lot of the characteristics that you were

describing of, like, I came back more independent, and I think my

parents already did a pretty good job of, like, making me

advocate for myself in a school setting and whatever. So this

was kind of the icing on the cake, but it made me confident

to go live away from home, and, you know, be an adult at 18

years old. I was ready for that.

And so I do think there are so many, so many skills that come

from, from leaving your home and kind of doing that still in a

safe place where you have supports, you have teachers, you

have program leaders. You're not totally on your own, backpacking

somewhere, but you have the support of a program, which is

pretty cool.

I wanted to ask you, counselors are listening to this. Maybe

they have in mind the students who are these, like high

achievers, who they say, Oh yes, they're going to be perfect to

go study abroad, you know, wherever it is, whenever it is,

whether it's before their freshman year of college or

during college. What kind of characteristics would you say a

counselor should be looking for in a student who they would who

they would encourage to go do this? Or would you say anyone is

kind of qualified to do it? What should a counselor like be

looking for in that student first and foremost, before they

refer them to a program like this?

So I'll give a bit of a nuanced answer here. You know my

personal stance is that anybody can benefit from this type of

experience. That being said, the world of study abroad is it's a

self selecting population. While anybody can benefit from it,

it's not necessarily the best experience for everybody,

particularly at different times of their life. They're going to

want to see some students that are, I think, exhibiting a bit

of independence, exhibiting a bit of maturity. And, of course,

these are the same kinds of things that the students will

ultimately receive as benefits from participating in a program

overseas. But they have to, that student does have to recognize

that, hey, you know, I'm going away to college, which already

in itself is a big leap, and then to add the layer of I'm

going away to study in a collegiate environment in a

foreign country, that's when you know reality might start to set

in. And think like, oh my goodness, this is a daunting

experience.

Yeah, I think that's a great point. They have to have a

So that student, I think, should be fully prepared in terms of

the research they put into it, of understanding what that

experience is going to be like. You know, with the college

counselor, I think, kind of facilitating that, that

research, or facilitating, you know, just thinking about those,

those ideas. But they're going to want a student who's going to

display some of that maturity, some of that independence. They

are going to have to understand that to study abroad is exactly

that. It is to study abroad and not just to be abroad, which, of

course, in different countries, there are going to be different

temptations than you would expect, compared to a, you know,

for that student being in the United States. So having that,

that ability to, you know, to self regulate and to advocate

for oneself, I think, are going to be hugely important,

especially when those traditional support networks,

family, counselors, things like that, are not going to be

present with them on site, at least in traditional sense,

being able to self advocate in front of, you know, the program,

staff, the directors, the faculty and country is going to

be hugely important.

little bit of that independence and maturity already, but

they're only going to come back with more of it if they take

advantage of the program and they grow in the way that you

intend them to grow. Because I'm sure there are kind of

milestones as they're there, like you're going to class,

you're passing your classes. You get to go on adventures on the

weekend, like there are probably so many fun things, but they

have to be able to balance it all and and do it all in another

country, which might be intimidating.

I'm sure parents have thoughts on programs like this too. I

mean, maybe parents or students, their hesitations. What would

you say to parents or students whose hesitations are the cost

or affordability or safety? I mean, that's a big thing when

the parents are sending their students far away. And then

transfer credits, because we're talking about a program that

they're earning credits that are coming back to their school. So

how, how do you address these big topics that are surely gonna

come up as they're doing their research about stuff like this?

Oh, man, yeah, when it comes to, I guess, the parental

response to the idea of studying abroad, I see a lot of you know,

a full spectrum of different reactions in there. On the one

hand, you have parents that are like, do it. This is the best

time in your life to do it. You know, oftentimes they have study

abroad experience themselves, and they are reflecting on that

and thinking like, oh, man, if you can do this as a freshman,

go ahead, do it. You're going to have an amazing experience. On

the other hand, you do have parents are a little bit more

guarded, a little bit more hesitant with that, thinking

about like, oh, you know, whether it's first year abroad

or a gap experience, this misconception that there's going

to be a lack of structure, or there's going to be a lot of

distractions, you know, for that student in place.

So I think reassuring parents that you know, in the context of

first year abroad, students aren't just they're not the

traditional study broad population. These are young

adults, ages 18, 19 years old, trying to not only navigate a

foreign environment for the first time, but a collegiate

environment for the first time. And with that as a first year

abroad program, we have to, you know, make sure that there is a

high level of student support in place in country, you know

things like safety protocols, student orientations, where not

only are we showing them, you know what to do in the case of

emergency, what numbers to call, what staff to call, but you know

even some life skills. How do you feed yourself? How do you

navigate a grocery store in Florence, Italy, for example.

How to use a gas stove, which, you know, is surprisingly not

intuitive for a lot of students. So letting them, you know,

letting parents know that there's going to be a high level

of support in place for their students through, you know, we

have a role at Verto called our Student Success Advisors, or

SSAs, which are program staff that work with a cohort of about

30 students per advisor. And this person is, you know, is a

former program instructor for, for gap. I have a lot of respect

for these professionals, because they wear a lot of hats. They

are the big brother, big sisters, older siblings, for a

lot of these students, providing mentorship, socio emotional

support as well as academic support to make sure that that

student is having a positive experience while abroad.

Well, it's cool that they're that person exists

there, because think about our students going off. They're

going to make mistakes. They're going to run into something,

whether they get sick there, and they don't know what medicine to

take because their mom has always given it to them, like

the things that you find in the transition to college, they're

going to have that in another country. And so how they're

going to respond to that is going to test their independence

and maturity, but having somebody there and knowing how

to use the supports, I feel like, is going to be a way that

they're going to grow when they're there.

And that's why I say that, you know, and this is something

that we try and still in our students, is that idea of self

advocacy, of self authorship, of when there's a problem that

arises, the quickest way to solve it is by addressing it

with, you know, with the resources available, with the

staff on hand. Not to call mom and dad and play this game of

telephone where mom and dad then emails our Dean of Students, and

Dean of Students then talks to the program staff, and by the

time that loop closes, the problem was resolved already,

you know, a week ago, right?

I mean, that's never happened before, right?

Oh no, no, never, never, never. But it is, I mean, that

is the reality of working with first year students, is they

need an extra layer of support, compared to your juniors or

seniors in college that have two, three years of college

already under their belt, so they know how things work. They

might know how to advocate or self regulate a little bit

better than some of these younger students. And you had

asked a question for seeing some concerns that parents might have

about maybe some of the more logistical aspects of the

program, you know, talking about the transferability of credits,

for example.

Because I'm sure the parents want to know like, Hey,

you're doing something that's going to make sense with what

you said your path was going to be. Because I bet they come into

this like, Well, I was gonna go straight to college, but this

opportunity came up. So the parent wants to know, like,

you're going to keep continuing with that plan, right?

That is a common scenario where you know a student might

come and say, like, Hey, maybe I want to have this experience

before committing to a four year school. And parents are like,

Oh, well, I don't want you backpacking across Europe for an

undefined amount of time. So where are the guardrails? What's

in place? Where's the structure here? In the context of Verto,

at least, you know, we work with an academic provider, as I

mentioned, which is the the University of New Haven. So the

the courses that students are taking will be coded for

University of New Haven. The transcript will reflect

University of New Haven. If, you know, if I'm thinking about a

transfer applicant from Verto, and they are, you know, at a

different institution, they're looking at that student's

transcript, it'll be like, Oh, this was a University of New

Haven transfer student. But in reality, it's actually, oh no,

this student spent a year overseas.

So with that, the student is gaining, you know, an official

college transcript, so schools that will accept transfer credit

from the University of New Haven are definitely on the table in

terms of what comes after that Verto experience, and to

reassure parents that their child is getting, is earning

credits from a regionally accredited institution. And then

with some of the partner schools that we work with, some of the

pathways that we have in place, we have this awesome direct

transfer pathway that dozens of different schools have set

individual eligibility requirements in terms of GPA,

number of credits earned, number of semesters completed with

Verto. Andassuming that student would reach those, those

different checkpoints there, then they have dozens of

different direct transfer schools, schools that are

guaranteeing admission to students based on their Verto

performance.

So from the student support side, you know, there's a lot of

support on the ground for that, for that student, it's the

reality of the population that we work with. For the post Verto

plan, the academic credentials that student is earning are

widely transferable to schools across the United States, but

especially to the partner universities that we work with.

What you're saying, what I'm hearing you say, is, you do

a lot of the back end kind of research of transferring those

credits, and someone who comes in either directly through Verto

or through their university, it's like y'all have already

worked through how we transfer the credits, how they show up on

your transcript, making sure all those things are seamless. They

just go get good grades in their classes, and the parents can

rest assured, they will transfer, like you can have that

conversation up front, but they're going to transfer how

they're supposed to if, because I assume you're doing that work

behind the scenes, to make sure that happens.

100%. And you know, if I, if I were a business student,

right now, a business grad student, I would definitely use

Verto as a an interesting case study, because there's a lot of

moving parts, a lot of collaboration across different

institutions that Verto works with. So yeah, we put in, we

have a lot of hard working folks here that are very mission

driven by the idea that, you know, we need more students

getting out there and having these global experiences now

more than ever. So we are very dedicated to making sure that,

you know, not only we talk to talk and in this gap year

without the gap experience, but we also walk the walk in, in

terms of providing students with that, that continuity forward.

Yeah, I love that. And it's not just traveling, like

you said, putting on a backpack and going to Europe for an

undisclosed amount of time. Like there are guardrails here that

say, like, this is my plan during this time, when I finish,

I'm going to go transfer here. It gives parents reassurance. It

gives students a goal to work towards. And I think it's a

really cool program and a cool opportunity that I mean, you

might tell me it's been around for 100 years, but it feels like

more of a newer, popular thing that colleges are offering for

students these days. Like you said, whether it's they were

deferred, they were rejected, this is just an opportunity we

want to present to you to see if you're interested. And more and

more students are doing it, which I think is cool.

100%. Yeah. And I think you are hitting on something

there, that first year abroad as a concept is, it's fairly new. I

mean, there are some institutions that have, you

know, historically had a first year abroad program in place,

and UN is one example that, Northeastern University is one

example that comes to mind. Our organization,we've only existed

since 2017, we've been able to work with about 3000 students

since then. But it is becoming something more more popular

amongst students, amongst universities, as something that

they want to offer. If they're a large university that can

facilitate, let's say, multiple campuses internationally, then

they might have a first year abroad program in place, where

Verto, we sort of serve as in the middle there, working with

lots of universities that maybe, you know, it's not a great

solution for them to have a bunch of international campuses

where they would send students for that first semester, that

first academic year.

Well, I'm sitting here thinking about counselors having

these conversations with students in their office.

They're planning for the future with students and parents in

their office, like individual meetings. And I just think that

this episode will be super valuable to them, just to

consider this as a pathway, as they're laying out, where their

students could go after high school. Because we often will

spout out two year college, four year college, straight to work,

military, like those are kind of like your four main pathways.

And we're good at talking about those four things, we get a

little nervous talking about things that could be a little

different, because we're not sending hundreds of kids from

our, even our big high schools, to go do this. It might be one

kid a year, or every couple of years, who takes this challenge

and runs with it, but I hope that this episode could just be

a thing that goes, filed in the back of their mind, so that when

a student kind of mentions wanting some adventure or

wanting to try something different, where they have that

letter from the university and they say, What is this? I don't

know what to make of this, help me, that they can hear a little

bit about a program like this and think, Okay, that's a

pathway that I could send some of my students on. I think this

information will be really valuable for counselors to take

back to their students.

Yeah, and, you know, I appreciate that. I think a big

part of my role is really to educate counselors, you know, on

this subject, or really to maybe try and bring down some

resistance to the idea of trying something new or trying

something different. and this just represents a stepping stone

along that. It might not be, you know, starting on that

traditional campus, that first year, there might be the the

sacrifice of having to miss those big, you know, football

games and events like that, but trying to help students

understand that like you know, this, this ultimately is part of

the bigger picture here. This is ultimately helping you achieve

your goals and just giving students that reassurance of,

you know, hey, maybe consider it from this angle. Maybe

understand that this is a viable part of your college experience,

just in a different way.

Totally. And with anything there are trade offs.

Like you said, yeah, maybe you missed the freshman orientation

or the first home football game, but okay, you are hiking in the

Alps, or you're like, rafting in Costa Rica, or something like, I

promise you're gonna have some unique experience to come back

and share with friends that you make.

Well, easier said than done. Trying to tell a young

adult that, like, Hey, you might miss out on what everyone else

is doing but in the greater context of your of your life,

you know, taking that, that trip to Spain, you know that that

might represent a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Right, that would be hard. That would be hard.

I do work with a lot of adults that when they learn

about, you know, these kinds of experiences, when they learn

about Verto Education, they think, where was that when I was

in school? Or, man, I wish I had, I had studied abroad. And I

would make the argument that the freshman year is is likely the

best time to study abroad, without the constraints of major

specific courses, without the constraints of different social

relationships, which are, you know, powerful factors in your

late teens, early 20s.

And just being able to live in a foreign country or experience a

foreign country is the closest that you can get to living a

second life, in my mind. And who wouldn't want to experience

that, maybe I'm biased here, but who wouldn't want to experience

that, that formative period. And to be able to look back, you

know, 10, 20 years from now and reflect on on that, and then

say, like, Hey, I took the leap. I did it, I pushed my comfort

zone, and I gained a lot from it. And that is what we, that is

the argument that we try and make to students all the time,

which, you know, doesn't always work.

But it's worth a shot.

Worth a shot, of course, historically easy to to persuade

population right? Kidding, of course. But yeah.

well, hopefully a counselor, hearing you say that,

and just like hearing all the value that comes from that,

that, like I said, goes in the back of their mind when they're

having that conversation, saying, you know, I think you're

a great candidate for this, and I think that you'll only grow

because of it. I love the point you made about really doing this

before you're invested in friendships and community at the

school, like they can do that their sophomore year or after

that summer period, whatever that is, they're going to

assimilate and find their way into that and find their friends

when they get there. But it is harder to peel away from

leadership positions that you're taking or you're going to be a

TA for a class you had to apply for that, like those kinds of

things, are harder to pull away once you're already invested in

the community. So I do think it would be really advantageous to

do this in between high school and college. So this was a great

conversation.

After they have listened to this. Is there somewhere where

counselors should go for more information? Should they go to

your website? Should they be looking at colleges websites

with their students? Like, what should they do to get more

information next.

absolutely. Yeah. So for Verto specific things, of

course, the vertoeducation.org. That is our website. And you

know, within that, we have a lot of great resources, not only

detailing our different campuses, our course

registration guide, which I think is going to be hugely

important for counselors, in particular, thinking about their

students, of if they participate in Verto, how will those

individual courses, how might they transfer? So we provide our

our syllabi online with the University of New Haven course

codes. So for any transfer equivalency tools out there,

it's just kind of, you know, plug and play with those course

codes.

We have a blog on our website with a ton of different

resources detailing some common student experiences. You know,

how to finance your your time abroad, what to expect, how to

apply for a passport, things of that nature. But for general

information, you know, I think gooverseas.com is a great

resource for that. It's sort of the Yelp of of this

international education world with tons of different programs

that are listed and available, including our own. I myself, I

run a counselor webinar series that details different parts of

thestudent experience. What does academics look like at Verto?

How do we incorporate experiential learning in our

classroom? So any one of those, those different resources, both

to learn more about us and also learn more about what other

programs are out there.

Well, it sounds like they have a lot of learning

opportunities if they want to actually learn more for their

own professional development. But also, I mean, I would take

this information and put it on my school counseling website,

put it on my school website, so that students know it is a

different pathway than maybe they've heard of before that

it's even a thing. Because just exposure to something new, I

think, is really powerful for our students, especially if they

don't have siblings or parents who have done study abroad. This

would be a whole new thing, but they might be the right student,

and this might be the right fit for them. So thank you, Neal,

for being on the podcast. This was super insightful, really

helpful, to give our counselors just another option for their

students as they're planning their post secondary options.

Lauren, thank you so much for for having me on here the

day after National Study Abroad day. Yeah, I really enjoyed our

conversation, and I'm excited for your listeners to hear it

too.

Awesome. Thanks.

Okay, wasn't that inspirational to hear Neal talk about this

program that maybe you haven't considered? You heard me mention

in the episode that I did a study abroad program when I was

in high school, and talking to Neal just got me reminiscing on

that. I thought about all of the characteristics that I developed

when I was there, and the growth opportunities that I had to be

pushed out of my comfort zone and grow while I was still in

high school, which is wild. But I don't think people look back

on an experience like this and say, I wish I wouldn't have done

it. You hear more of the I wish I would have done it. I wish I

would have taken more time to do this. What he was kind of

echoing from parents saying, I wish I either had that

experience or wish I could go back and do it again. And I'm

sure if you had an experience like this, you listened to this

episode and thought, wow, what I would give to drop everything

and go study abroad in another country. It would be really

cool, right?

So I hope you take Neal's resources, whether that's the

webinars that he offers to counselors or just the websites

that he offers, and share them with your students. Let them

know that this is an opportunity for them that maybe they haven't

considered before. Or maybe when they get that admissions letter

from their college that they're planning on attending next year,

and it offers them an opportunity to go study abroad,

point them to this episode, or point their parents to this

episode. I know I'm talking to you as high school counselors,

but if it could help others, share it out, let them know what

is out there and that this is a viable opportunity for them. I'd

love to just spread this message far and wide and let people know

that there are true advantages to having a global perspective

as our students move from high school into the college arena.

So I hope this episode was helpful for you and gave you

some new ideas as you're working with your students. I'll see you

next week.

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 podcast, 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.