How Lantern College Counseling Helps Students Thrive at Deep-Fit Colleges
I recently shared a new paradigm for the college search and application process centered on thriving as a foundation for lifelong success and based on the concept of Deep-Fit™, developed through my decades of experience supporting college students.
What is a Deep-Fit College?
A Deep-Fit college is one where a student will have the opportunity to thrive and lay the foundation for a successful life—to create their future. Read more about Deep-Fit.
Why Lantern College Counseling for Deep-Fit?
Lantern College Counseling is the home of Deep-Fit. I developed this new paradigm for the college search and application process based on my decades of admissions and student support experience.
Many families looking for a college counselor are eager to know the counselor’s experience on a board of admissions and with helping students apply to college. Lantern’s two counselors have been helping high school students apply to and transition to college for over 25 years. Families have told me that they will only hire a college counselor who has served on a Board of Admission, as I did for eight years at Wellesley College.
Where Admissions Experience Falls Short…
What many families don’t realize is that perhaps even more valuable than the experience of serving on a Board of Admission is the experience of working with college students after admission and while they are on their college campus. This experience is critical to guiding high school students to campuses where they will thrive. Lantern’s two counselors have been supporting and educating students on college campuses in mentoring and advising roles for over 45 years. Lantern College Counseling knows what makes students thrive and is acutely aware that getting into college is just the beginning of a student’s college experience.
Jennifer Stephan (on left) and fellow deans of Tufts University at commencement in 2017.
Lantern College Counseling’s Robust Admissions Expertise
Eliza and I have been helping high school students apply to and transition to college for over 25 years. This expertise lays the foundation for our approach to supporting students.
I (Jennifer) was first introduced to college admissions work as an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University when I worked in the Office of Admissions, giving campus tours and interviewing prospective students. Beyond this initial exposure, my professional work in admissions started when I became a dean at Wellesley College in 2008, serving on the college’s Board of Admissions for eight years. In this role, I read, evaluated, and voted on in committee approximately one hundred transfer student applications each year. During this time, I began guiding high school students to apply to college, and in 2018, I founded Lantern College Counseling. As a thought leader in college admissions, I frequently publish and routinely contribute insights through invitations to speak on podcasts and at national conferences.
Eliza brings ten years of experience guiding students to apply to and transition to college to Lantern. Before joining Lantern in 2023, Eliza supported underserved youth to apply and transition to college while working with various non-profit organizations in Canada, including Pathways to Education Canada. Additionally, in 2015, Eliza was selected from a nationwide search to serve as a scholarship application reader for the Bill and Melinda Gates Millennium Scholarship, where she assessed thousands of competitive applications from students nationwide. Eliza has completed an Independent Educational Consultant Certificate program at the University of California, Irvine.
What Sets us Apart: We Know How Students Thrive on Campus
Beyond our expertise in admissions, Eliza and I have been supporting and educating students on college campuses in mentoring and advising roles for over 45 years.
Sometimes, I say that I’ve never left college. In a very real sense, this is true! I went to graduate school straight after my undergraduate degree at Johns Hopkins University, and after finishing my PhD at Carnegie Mellon University, I became a professor of computer science at Wellesley College. At Wellesley, the parts of my fourteen years as a professor I valued the most were mentoring and advising students as their thesis and faculty advisor. So much so that I moved from my faculty position into a formal academic advising position as a Class Dean supporting a class of students during their time at the College, a role I held for eight years. I now have a similar role at Tufts University, Dean of Academic Advising and Undergraduate Studies, where I oversee the engineering advising team that guides Tufts undergraduate engineers.
Eliza was a key member of my team for six years before moving back to Canada to be closer to family, where she now has an academic advising role at Carleton University. One of Eliza’s responsibilities at Tufts was advising students interested in internally transferring from the School of Arts and Sciences into the School of Engineering. Fun fact: Eliza was my own daughter’s academic advisor when she was a first-year student at Tufts (and while I was still working at Wellesley College), encouragingly guiding her through the internal transfer process and welcoming her into the School of Engineering! As a mother, I was so grateful to hear my daughter excitedly chatter about her caring advisor, Eliza, during her first year at Tufts.
On-Campus Advising Helps us Understand How Students Thrive
As academic advisors, we support students in achieving their educational and personal goals as they connect to academics. We meet with students individually to help them make the most of their time in college and have impactful experiences like the big six college experiences and those highlighted by the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). We help them choose their classes, think through possible majors and minors, consider studying abroad, learn about co-ops, jobs, internships, and research opportunities, balance extracurricular activities and their classes, and more, all while ensuring they stay on track for graduation! As a dean, I’ve created opportunities for students to have impactful experiences by creating coop and study abroad programs at Tufts and certificate and double-degree programs with MIT and Olin College of Engineering at Wellesley, for example.
We build relationships with and mentor our students, cheering them on towards their goals. We encourage them to develop mentoring relationships with other faculty and staff. One year, a graduating Wellesley College senior invited everyone who had mentored her to an “A Bevy of Mentors” tea in the dorms to thank us. As academic advisors, we encourage our students to develop their own bevy of mentors! We also support them in mentoring their peers, both informally and through formal peer mentoring programs we run to boost community connections, build campus culture, and help students grow individually.
Another way to think of academic advising is that we teach students how to access an institution’s vast resources so they can thrive: career services, academic tutoring and coaching, accessibility support, preprofessional advising (prehealth, prelaw) counseling, study abroad, cultural and identity centers, health services (physical and mental health), financial services, the registrar, scholar and leadership development offices, maker spaces, and many more.
In all these ways, we help students to thrive and lay the foundation for a successful life—to create their future.
Lantern College Counseling: Your Guide to Deep-Fit
Many college counselors who have worked at a college or university have typically done so in an admissions office evaluating applications and do not have experience guiding students after they enroll. An admissions officer’s job ends once they admit a student. At Lantern, in our roles on college campuses, we’ve worked with students who thrive and those who do not. We’ve supported students for whom Wellesley or Tufts was never a fit. We have seen firsthand that attending a school that isn’t a fit can lead to a complicated, messy college experience that impacts the student’s future options. So, we know that admission is not the end; it is just the beginning. We know it isn’t all about getting in but what happens during college. We profoundly understand what thriving in college looks like and how to achieve it.
When families hire Lantern College Counseling, they have access to our collective expertise: over 25 years of experience helping high school students apply to and transition to college and over 45 years of experience supporting and educating students on college campuses.
When we guide high school students to find their Deep-Fit college, we know the questions they should ask and what they should look for. We’ve even developed a road map for college success so that students can make the most of their Deep-Fit college experience once they arrive there.
Learn more about our Deep-Fit counseling services.
Where is your child on their journey to find their Deep-Fit? Access our Deep-Fit Assessment tool.
