Good Neighbor Podcast: Cobb County
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Cobb County. Good Neighbor Podcast hosted by Milli M. helps residents discover and connect with your local business owners in and around Cobb County, Georgia.
Is your business serving the residents of Cobb County? Then, we need to talk! Visit gnpCobbCounty.com to schedule your free interview.
Good Neighbor Podcast: Cobb County
E59: Demystifying the Process: How ThinkProtege Makes College Dreams Affordable
Navigating the modern college application landscape feels like traversing an entirely new territory for most parents—especially when the process has evolved dramatically from their own experience. Today's episode features Dr. Claudia Batichon, founder of ThinkProtege, who's on a mission to democratize educational consulting and college preparation.
As a first-generation Haitian immigrant who became a teenage mother while in college, Dr. Batichon's personal journey fuels her passion for helping students from all backgrounds. Her own daughter recently made headlines in People Magazine after securing $1.8 million in scholarships and acceptances to nearly every school she applied to—proof that with the right guidance, extraordinary results are possible.
While traditional educational consultants charge upwards of $10,000-$20,000, ThinkProtege provides affordable monthly support that includes biweekly meetings with students, scholarship identification, application strategy, and ongoing guidance throughout the entire process. Dr. Batichon busts myths about test-optional admissions (spoiler: most merit scholarships still require test scores), explains why starting in senior year is already too late, and emphasizes that her services aren't just for Ivy League aspirants but for students considering community colleges, trade schools, or gap years as well. Whether your student dreams of Harvard or aims to become an ultrasound technician making $80,000 after two years of training, ThinkProtege stands ready to guide them toward financial freedom through education.
Ready to transform your student's college journey? Visit thinkprotege.com to learn how affordable educational consulting can help secure scholarships and create a strategic path forward for your child's future.
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Millie M.
Speaker 2:Hello everybody, Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. I'm your host, Millie M. Are you in need of an education consultant? Well, one might be closer than you think. I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, Dr Claudia Batichon of ThinkProtege. How are you, Claudia? I am doing well. How are you Doing quite well. We're excited to learn all about you and your business. Tell us more about ThinkProtege.
Speaker 3:So ThinkProtege, basically I'm an independent educational consultant and the services that I provide basically are helping high school students find scholarships, helping them with their college application process, basically taking the stress away from parents, because a lot of parents who I work with they feel like they don't know how to navigate the college application process right now in 2025, because it has definitely changed from what it was 20 years ago when we went to school, 10 years ago. So you know, I kind of alleviate that stress off of them and I find all of the scholarships for my high school students. I help them with their Common App, black Common App, help them figure out which schools they should apply to, which schools will give them merit money and basically the goal is to try to give them financial freedom when it comes to going to college.
Speaker 2:Financial freedom is a big one, so how? Did you get into this business? What made you decide? I want to help high schoolers navigate through this arduous process and stressful process.
Speaker 3:So originally so. I used to work as an NCAA compliance administrator and I worked with athletes, so originally my business was called Smart Athlete because of my career background as an athletic administrator at the Division I level Six years ago I helped over 100 athletes get scholarships not get them recruited, but help them with their NCAA eligibility so that they could be eligible to be able to play at the next level. Then about three years ago I said you know what? I think this would be good if I branched off and just started working with just, you know, the general population, not just student athletes, because I've been a teacher for a long time. I'm an educator at the higher ed level, I'm an adjunct. I'm also an educator at the K-12 level, secondary high school, and I noticed that a lot of students were coming to me. Dr B, can you help me with the college application process? Dr B, I don't know what's next. Can you help me with my FAFSA? And I was doing this a whole lot. And then I realized you know, this business did exist but a lot of these consultants were charging like $10,000, $20,000 to work with students. So there was a huge gap for the kids who come from the either low-income home or somewhere in the middle where maybe their parents don't have $10,000 to hire a consultant High school guidance counselors they're doing their best but their caseloads are huge. Consultant high school guidance counselors they're doing their best but their caseloads are huge. A lot of guidance counselors have 400 to 450 kids on their caseloads when you think about 9th through 12th grade. So it's hard for a kid to get that one-on-one, despite how much a guidance counselor may potentially try. So a lot of parents are now hiring their own consultant to sit down with their kids a couple of times a month to work with them. So that's how I kind of got into the business and I work with my students.
Speaker 3:Like, once you get on my caseload, I meet with all of my clients, my proteges, that's what I call them. I meet with them twice a month and they have to. It's mandatory. They have to make our 45 minute meeting and throughout that, throughout those meetings, there's a timeline. Like right now, my juniors they're starting to think about their letters of recommendation. We're identifying schools that they should apply to. Then we're going to get into their essay this summer. That way, once August rolls around because I'm a big believer that if you're starting this in August. You're late. You know they're saying a day late and a dollar short. Well, you're late, you're behind the game. The process doesn't start senior year. The process starts before senior year and it really can honestly, I'll be honest with you start as early as ninth grade.
Speaker 3:My daughter she's a class of 2025 graduate. This is the biggest graduating class in US history. So it was a very competitive class to be able to get into schools and my daughter was able to receive one point eight million in scholarship dollars yeah, and she was able to get accepted into almost every college that she applied to. She was just they just did a whole, a whole page on her own People magazine and she went viral for this. So I'm beyond proud of her. But her process started way before ninth grade. In middle school, we started thinking about what high school courses should she take and by the time she got to ninth grade, we were already visiting colleges. She's visited over. I would say, oh gosh. She's been to at least 20 different campuses. That way, she had an idea of where she wanted to go and she wasn't just blindly choosing a school just because.
Speaker 2:I think I've seen your child with those scholarships. I did read about a young lady who got over a million dollars. I'm going to go back and see if that's your baby, yeah.
Speaker 3:Her name is Jada Simone and yeah, she went viral. I think channel what was it Like channel 11 news or something picked it up and then from there everybody started picking it up and then people magazine reached out and it was cool.
Speaker 2:Are you doing this for other people's children? Obviously you were able to. You have agencies are charged so much money. It's like the ones that really need it need the scholarship money, don't have the money to pay 10 000 to an independent. I really appreciate you bridging that gap. So what are some of the myths and misconceptions about your industry or what you do in particular?
Speaker 3:I would say some myths are. You know a lot of I. I read a lot of different things, um. So a couple of them would be well, they're not really doing anything, I can just do this on my own um, or I can just chat gpt. Yet well, it's not that simple, it really isn't. Um. You, you really have to understand how to dissect a student's transcript. Um, you really have to understand how to dissect their test scores, sat and ACT. And you know, during COVID, you know there was this big thing on you can apply test optional.
Speaker 3:Well, a lot of schools are now going back to testing. So the days of test optional I'm not going to say it's fully over, but a lot of schools are stopping it because what they're realizing is the kids who they accepted under the test optional guidelines because they weren't measuring them fairly across the board. You know one test that everyone is taking and it's a true, fair test. Some of those kids were not prepared for college because of grade inflation. Depending on where you live the state, the district, whether you went to private school or charter school or public school, grades can be inflated very differently depending on how those districts are doing grades, and so what would happen is those kids. They got accepted, they had a 4.8 GPA, but then they're not performing well. Not saying that everything should be based off of a test, but a test does give you a little bit more. It does help you with your measure as you're looking at kids across the board.
Speaker 3:So one misconception is well, I don't really need a consultant because I can just apply test optional. Well, that's fine, but merit money doesn't exist with test optional. Only few schools will give you merit money if you apply test optional, just strictly based off your grades. If you actually sit down and you do the research on which schools are offering money, how much are they offering? They're offering money to students who have high test scores and high GPAs. Or you can look at a chart and see okay, if I have this GPA and this exact test score, then I can get 20,000 from this school and it's renewable for four years. So now you have 80,000. That you don't have to think about.
Speaker 3:And then the other one is well, independent educational consultants are very expensive. I'm not going to say that I'm expensive, but I will say that my price is more reasonable than most independent educational consultants. I try to price. I try to keep my price fair.
Speaker 3:Number one because I am that middle class and I'm like, well, could I afford the ten thousand to twenty thousand dollar consultant? Not necessarily, but can I hire somebody and pay them maybe one to 200 a month to work with my child? More comparable to like hiring a private coach for sports yes, then, that's definitely more reasonable. And because it takes the headache off for the parents who don't know who didn't go to college or who hasn't sat down and done the research. What trends, what's going on now within the last three years or five years. You can get lost in this entire process you really can, and it's a very expensive process. It's not cheap to apply to colleges. Colleges are charging anywhere from $50 to upwards as 95 per application, and so it's very important that you know that the place you're applying to you have a really good chance of getting in there.
Speaker 2:I would definitely encourage people to have a strategy going into it. Yes, there's a process, but there can also be, like you said, a strategy. You don't want your efforts to be in vain. You definitely want to connect with someone who can guide you through that process, and I would see it as an investment. It is. It's an investment. You pay those fees, but then there's all that merit money that you could possibly get back in return. So obviously your target customers are parents of high school kids. I would say how do you reach them?
Speaker 3:Yes, well, word of mouth. I'll be honest with you. I have a website, but I've had a lot of success. And then parents will tell other parents and all of a sudden, you know my parents are. They're booking a consultation meeting with me. I do offer a free 15 minute consult, but I also offer a couple of different things. So, one being I have my contracted clients, that's the ones who I know for a fact. Their parents are paying me monthly. I'm meeting with their students twice a month, but it's not just during the meetings that we're talking, like two of my consultants, my protégés they two of my protégés. They text me this morning.
Speaker 3:One's like hey, I'm looking at this scholarship. It's asking for XYZ, can you help me with it? Another one said hey, dr B, I need to register for one more dual enrollment class. Tell my students if you're going to do dual enrollment, you want to make sure that your courses are going to transfer. So I know what school she's going to go to, because she is she's, she's going to be an athlete at that school.
Speaker 3:So the courses that she's going to be doing at the local school that's near her home, we're already looking, making sure that those courses will definitely transfer, so she's not wasting her time. 're already looking making sure that those courses will definitely transfer, so she's not wasting her time. If the state is paying for that dual enrollment class, you want to make sure that you're getting that free money, truly, because nothing's worse than a child taking 15 credit hours of courses and none of those courses transfer to their actual degree and they just become electives and they just sit there. So it was pointless, to be honest with you. So she texted me this morning. She's like I need one more class, can you look through?
Speaker 2:And I told her I said yep, give me 24 hours and I'll get back to you with that information Again. Love that, that, that strategy and that guidance that you provide. So let's switch gears a little bit. Can you describe a hardship or life challenge that you overcame and how it made you stronger?
Speaker 3:or life challenge that you overcame and how it made you stronger. Oh, wow, a hardship or a life challenge that I overcame. I would say I'm an immigrant. I was born in Haiti. My parents came to America when I was eight years old. My mom worked as a housekeeper, my dad worked as a security guard. No one in my family had graduated high school in America. No one in my family had went to college. So I was the first to graduate high school in the US, first to get accepted to college, go to college.
Speaker 3:I got pregnant with my daughter the one that I was telling you about when I was a. It was somewhere I think it was right after my sophomore year, and then I had her my junior year. I think it was right after my sophomore year, and then I had her my junior year. So I was technically, you know, teenage pregnancy, just not 18. But I was. I was 20 when I got pregnant with her and I had her when I was 21. So I was a very young mom. My husband and I were high school sweethearts.
Speaker 3:So all of those challenges, all of those hurdles, still was able to graduate in four years, went on to get my master's. Directly after graduating. I enrolled in school that August, graduated in May, finished my master's in a year and a half and then went on to get my doctorate. So my daughter saw all of that and I do think that's been a part of her drive too, because I was that person.
Speaker 3:I was like, hey, you know, we're not going to be a statistic here, we're going to, we're going to figure it out, we're going to figure it out. There's always a support system. You just have to find your community. And I found my community and luckily I attended a school where my professors were very understanding, took my daughter to class with me a couple of times. My professors would hold her they would, you know, she would sit on my lap as I'm taking a test, and it was just a very supportive system. So I think it's important for us as a community to make sure that our high school students feel supported, regardless of what they're going through, because there's always a way as long as you have support.
Speaker 2:I love that message. There's always a way as long as there's support. I'm so glad you were able to find that community and give such an inspirational story to others that, no matter what challenges that you face, you can come out on the other side. Tell our listeners one thing you would like for them to always remember about Think Protege.
Speaker 3:One thing that I want your listeners to always remember is that think, protege, we're here for all students, not just a certain caliber of students. So even if you have a kid who's not going after a Yale or Princeton or Harvard even if they're thinking about their local community college.
Speaker 3:we're still here for those kids and we're still here to help them navigate the system so that they can find money to be able to go to school as well. But something that I opened up recently I said you know what? Everyone's not going to college right away, and it is okay for some kids to do a gap year. So just recently I did open up my services to help those kids figure out. Okay, what do I do within that time?
Speaker 3:Maybe I graduated high school and I didn't have the highest GPA and I wasn't the best student academically. But I just need another year for someone to help me with my soft skills, to help me with my interview skills, so I can find a job to be able to maintain and then try to figure it out. Maybe go to trade school, and that's okay, too, for kids to go to trade school. So I'm also pushing that because you can go to trade school and make really good money. Think about it Ultrasound techs, x-ray techs. They're making 70, 80,000 depending on how long they've been in the field, and they only went to school for two years. So I just think it's okay for kids to try to figure out what's the right path for them. Not the right path for their parents, because you're not going to be the one out there doing the job, but what's the right path for that child, because they have to be happy with what they're doing.
Speaker 2:Perfect. If someone is in need of your services, how can they find you? My?
Speaker 3:website wwwthinkprotogecom dot com.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for being here with us today and offering just your insight and your intellect about all of these things, because it can be overwhelming for parents and for students, and I hope that people reach out to you if they are in need and wishing you and your business the best moving forward.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpcobbcountycom. That's gnpcobbcountycom, or call 470-470-4506.