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1 Why We Wrote This Book

David Teten

Partway through Yale, I realized that I was surrounded by kids who had advantages I didn't. They were walking right through doors I didn't even know existed.

All my classmates seemed to have attended elite boarding schools and have parents who worked on Wall Street. Meanwhile, my mother was a choreographer, and my father left school in Paris at age 13 to apprentice in a leather goods factory. I had friends getting internships at Goldman Sachs freshman year; I thought Goldman Sachs sold ladies’ handbags.

I had aspirations to have children myself, and I started taking notes on what I was learning about how to “work the system.” I wanted my kids to have the systematic understanding that I lacked. As I advanced, I took more notes, planning to eventually publish a book, but waiting for the right time and coauthor. I finally realized that I had known the right coauthor all along: Mandee Heller Adler, a friend who overlapped with me at Harvard Business School.

As I've learned more since Harvard, I realized what skills really matter for the next generation. Seth Masters, former chief investment officer (CIO) of AB (a $500 billion investment management firm), observes that young people have to be ready for an environment where functional skills depreciate rapidly; where the information economy will be dominant; and where few people will spend a career in the same job category … let alone the same firm.

You need the skills that you can learn in class: how to absorb information, how to ask questions, how to write well, how to be a good team member, foreign languages, programming languages, etc. But you also need skills you will really learn only in a work setting, even if that work setting is a group of students running a club. For example, how to pitch yourself; how to pitch a product; how to build a team; how to run a team.

We certainly think you should take your classes seriously and get good grades. But for most people, the exact material you study in school is far less important than learning how to learn, given how fast skills get out of date.

When I was a junior in college, I suddenly realized there was a whole world of institutions who wanted to give me money or give me a free education, just because I was a young person. Free stuff? Sign me up!

I literally laced up my sneakers and spent 3 hours jogging to every single academic department at Yale, copying down information from the posters on each department's bulletin boards. As a direct result, that year:

 I entered a writing contest and won a cash prize.

 I won an award from the Yale English department.

 I won a scholarship to spend a week at Mount Holyoke College studying German Studies and Europe.

 I won a scholarship to study political philosophy for a week in the Czech Republic.

 I won a scholarship to spend a long weekend at the US Military Academy (West Point) studying national security issues.

It's not that I was such an amazing candidate. It's just that I applied. Most of my peers were unaware of these opportunities.

We'll save you the jog. We have listed in this book all of the most selective generalist programs we have found and also how to find the niche programs relevant to your particular major and situation. Almost all of these programs are free or highly subsidized, and some are not as competitive as you may think. Taking summer classes is great, but you may get even more value from some of the programs we list.

The opportunities we list not only expose you to new disciplines and parts of the world, but they also look amazing on resumes and graduate school applications! We also list programs focused on young professionals, as opposed to current students. We think it's helpful to have on your radar programs that are relevant for your future self, not just your current self.

One of the reasons people pay so much to attend university is the breadth of the alumni base. But over time I realized that you can meet great people regardless of where you went to school … if you put yourself in other, equally challenging environments. The programs we list are not graduate schools, but they are the functional equivalent of the Ivy League. And what's more, they are often easier to get into because fewer people know about them.

When we were near the finish line of writing this book, suddenly the COVID‐19 pandemic hit globally. This disruptive crisis is making both companies and people rethink the value of formal, in‐person, traditional education. For hundreds of years, most people thought that it was mandatory to live in close proximity with other young adults to get an education. Now people realize that's not necessarily the case.

I'll share another reason I wrote this book: Just like your parents, I have a lot of advice I'd like my kids to follow. And you, like most young people, sometimes don't want to follow your parents’ counsel. But one trick I've learned in raising four kids: if good advice comes from anywhere OTHER than my wife and me, my kids are far more likely to pay attention. So, I'm going to give this book to my kids. Because it looks official with a pretty cover, they're far more likely to heed it.

Your early career years are like the initial financing round for a start‐up company. If you don't hit your key milestones during the critical age 18–23 time period, the next stages get increasingly more difficult.

The core theme of Atul Gawande's book The Checklist Manifesto is:

 Checklists improve performance, even saving lives, but …

 Most people resist using checklists.

I agree with both of these points. Our goal here is to create a set of checklists for your life in school, as well as in your early career.

Mandee Heller Adler

After working on Wall Street, selling an Internet company, and then running a division of a publicly traded company, I was ready for a new challenge. I wanted a career with meaning, and to use my blessings to help others. To quote Benjamin Franklin, I wanted to “do well by doing good.” I realized that so much of what I had accomplished up to that point was due to advantages I received through higher education, first at the University of Pennsylvania and then later at Harvard Business School. This led me to independent college counseling: I would help other students to reach their academic goals.

Over time, my mission became International College Counselors, a global education advising business with students in 13 countries and counselors across the United States. When I was approached by David to help turn this book into reality, I realized that although I was very good at helping my students get into a top college, what they really needed next was a road map to best take advantage of the opportunities they were being given. This book is the answer. It's great to go to Stanford, but not if you graduate unemployed and without allies. This book will help young adults make the most of their early career years, so that they can maximize their investments of time and money, and become confident and successful citizens. I thank you for reading!

Mandee and David

You're likely investing a lot of money, and a lot of time, to get yourself educated. We definitely did. How can you maximize the benefits of all the years and all the money that you are investing?

To prepare this book, we interviewed dozens of professionals who work with young people early in their career, as well as our classmates from the University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, and Harvard Business School and clients of International College Counselors. We asked what were the most effective uses of their time during their education and also probed to learn about what were the least effective uses of their time.

We hope you get a lot of value from our book! Please don't hesitate to contact us via InternationalCollegeCounselors.com and Teten.com.