Phil Sloan, a Swampscott-based sports lawyer, has teamed up with his former Harvard College classmate, an independent educational consultant and life coach, Steve Maislin, and Marblehead-based financial consultant and college planning expert Jim Femia, to launch CollegeBound Coaching and Campus Connections.

The new company will help high school students with preparing for college as well as the admissions process.

 “We differentiate ourselves from other college admissions advisory services in that we believe that teenagers are more in need of ‘student life coaches’ than high-priced babysitters to walk them through the college admissions process,” said Sloan.  While they offer traditional college admissions counseling, financial aid consulting and essay-writing services, “it is our ‘student life coaching’ approach which makes us different; that, and the fact that we employ college students to provide more relevant, more affordable      college preparation and admissions services.”    

“When we began working with high school seniors over the past year,” Sloan explained, “we heard over and over again how much they wished they had begun focusing themselves sooner to what it was going to take for them to get into college.  We decided to focus ourselves on helping teenagers as early as possible to set and achieve measurable goals along the way.”

 Working closely with Maislin, a certified life coach trained in college admission counseling, Sloan has developed a new and innovative methodology to setting and attaining measurable goals through core life skills such as prioritization and time management.  Their inter-disciplinary approach, which they have termed “student life coaching,” combines extensive research in educational consulting, adolescent and sports psychology, leveraging the combined experience of their growing network of professional partners.    

“We are not claiming to work miracles,” said Sloan.  “We simply work closely with teenagers and their parents to figure out how best to help them to meet their goals, in and out of the classroom.  In today’s world where students are pulled in so many different directions, so much of that a result of social networking and texting, maintaining focus and working towards goals can be nearly impossible for the average teenager.”

“Many parents are frustrated that they are unable to communicate more effectively with their teenage children,” Sloan said. “We strive to connect with this often difficult-to-reach age group, underlining the importance of balancing their time between schoolwork, athletics, community service and other extracurricular activities, with social time, so as to better position themselves in the fiercely competitive college admissions process.”

In order to help parents to better communicate this message to teenagers, and to help them to cope with the stress of gaining admission to college during the often turbulent adolescent years, CollegeBound Coaching is currently hiring and training high-achieving college students to work closely with their clients.  “Campus Coaches” partner with the CollegeBound Coaching professional team to provide middle and high school students with the individual help, support and guidance they need. 

Further leveraging this fast-growing network of college students, CollegeBound Coaching is launching a new and innovative college visit service, “Campus Connections,” to provide high school juniors, seniors and their parents with personalized, customized campus visits at schools across the country, beginning this spring.

According to Sloan, “We are not trying to replace the official college admissions tours conducted by the schools themselves.  Instead, we are offering to provide high school students and their parents with a low-cost way to gain access to real college students on campuses across the country who can answer their real questions as to what it’s really like to go to that college.  We are also providing college students with much-needed, on-campus, part-time jobs.”

 “With transfer rates and tuition costs rising so dramatically over recent years,” Sloan continued, “we are helping college applicants and their families to make the best possible decision the first time around. With parents spending so much time and money on visiting colleges with their high school-age children, we have created Campus Connections to serve a growing demand for increased productivity of these campus visits.”

For more information on CollegeBound Coaching and Campus Connections, you can visit http://www.collegeboundcoaching.com. To speak with Phil, Jim or another member of the CollegeBound Coaching professional team about their student life coaching, college admissions, financial aid, college visit or other consulting services, you can call 800-689-5195 or you can send your inquiry via e-mail to info@collegeboundcoaching.

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Trio to help college-bound students