The Most Important Independent Study You'll Ever Take

There’s a moment in every educator’s career when the work stops fitting the institution—when what you’re best at, and what the structure allows, start pulling in opposite directions. Victoria and I both reached that moment. And instead of waiting for a new institution to come along, we built something ourselves.

Next Exit College exists because we believe the college process deserves more than it usually gets.

In every conversation we have with students and families, we keep coming back to this: The college process is, at its core, an identity project. It may be the first real one a young person gets to undertake. For most of their lives, the decisions have been made for them. What classes to take, what track to follow and what the next step looks like. College is the first time they’re genuinely asked, “What do you want?” “Where do you want to go?” “Who are you, actually, when nobody’s handing you the answer?”

Those are thrilling questions. They’re also terrifying ones, especially when you’ve never had much practice asking them.

Victoria calls college a midwife to adulthood. It’s not the destination; it’s the passage. The place where kids are held loosely enough to start figuring out how to hold themselves. That framing changed how I think about this work. We’re not in the business of getting kids into colleges. We’re in the business of helping them understand who they are well enough to make a real choice about what comes next.

The application, when it’s done right, is a byproduct of that process. The essay, the college list, the interviews—these aren’t hoops. They’re tools for self-discovery if someone’s asking the right questions alongside you.

Think of it as an independent study and the most important one you’ll ever take. We ask the questions. We sit with the answers. We help students articulate who they are in ways that serve them not just in April of their senior year, but well beyond: in job interviews, scholarship applications, in every moment that asks them to say clearly: “Here’s what I value. Here’s what I’ve done. And here’s where I’m going.”

If that sounds like what your family needs, we’d love to talk.