This is the 130th article in Bears Doing Big Things, a monthly column celebrating the stories of notable M-A alumni.
Ever since her high school leadership class, Carrie Jorgenson ’05 has been passionate about making college advice accessible to everyone. “The national average is 372 students to one counselor, and so as you can imagine, that’s a really hard job to do,” she said. As the co-founder of Early Bird, a college counseling platform, Jorgenson works to bridge the socioeconomic gap between those who can afford individual college counselors and those who can’t.
Jorgenson grew up in the Bay Area and attended Oak Knoll Elementary School and Hillview Middle School before following in her parents’ footsteps and attending M-A.
At M-A, Jorgenson participated in various activities, including Leadership, student government, cross country, lacrosse, and several jobs. “I loved my Leadership class. I was student body secretary and really loved that experience,” she said.
Jorgenson described the culture at M-A as highly diverse and driven. “I remember there being a lot of just great creative people,” she said. “I did definitely have an awareness of privilege, how different upbringings came together under one roof.”
Jorgenson’s initial interest in college counseling began in her Leadership class, where her teacher led her through an eye-opening exercise. “Take one step forward if your parents live in a house. Take one step back if they don’t. Step forward if your parents went to college, one step back if they didn’t,” she explained. “I remember just the shock that I felt, seeing the room divide.”
Another important experience for Jorgenson was the annual Canned Food Drive. “I was big on leading that, and I remember we were doing the Canned Food Drive bag drops to families in the community,” she said. “One of the houses that I dropped off canned foods to was a classmate of mine, and I just remember that feeling of him coming to the door and me realizing just how many people in my own community were in need.”
Jorgenson also reflected on her experience with Alice Kleeman, M-A’s former school counselor. “I really liked her and had great support from her, but I remember feeling like, how does she do her job, because there’s so many of us,” she said.
Jorgenson also had an independent college counselor alongside Kleeman. “I remember feeling like that access piece was really paramount for me at that point, [and] I realized that not everyone gets to have this experience of working with an independent counselor.”
After M-A, Jorgenson majored in communication and minored in psychology at Cal Poly. Originally unsure what she wanted to study, she chose communications because of its wide range of applicability. “I think communications was a perfect major for me because I wasn’t sure. I was social, I liked working, and it just felt like the right move,” she said. Jorgenson found a passion for psychology later in college. “I really liked working with kids and better understanding decisions,” she said.
Despite earlier misgivings, Jorgenson greatly enjoyed her time at Cal Poly, where she felt she could thrive. “Originally, I didn’t want to go to Cal Poly because it felt so different from M-A,” Jorgenson said. “It was a really, really great experience for me. I made a ton of friends, had internships, and really had an experience that I felt proud of when I graduated.”
After Cal Poly, Jorgenson attended the University of San Francisco to get a master’s in counseling psychology. Jorgenson then worked as a counselor at Saint Francis High School. “Cal Poly’s motto is Learn by Doing, and I think a lot of my career has been shaped by that,” she said. “[Saint Francis] was a really great place for me to go right after grad school, and get to impact that community, and learn about the ins and outs of college counseling.”
During her time at Saint Francis, Jorgenson helped combat the intense pressure students were dealing with surrounding college applications. “Admit rates at colleges were so low, and kids were taking so many AP classes, and really just feeling so much anxiety around college, that as a result, sadly, there were a couple of [suicide] clusters related to that,” she said.
Jorgenson and her colleagues sought to influence parents to take some of the pressure off their students’ college picks. “It was no longer the Yale or jail mentality,” she said. “We had a school-wide book that we had our families read called Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be.”
After Saint Francis, Jorgenson went on to read application files for UC Berkeley. “That was really formative for me because it showed me the other side of the desk,” she said. “This experience, on the other side, allowed me to better understand how admission decisions are made, and how universities ultimately shape their admissions class.”
Jorgenson also worked as an individual counselor at ESM Prep, a company that helps students find the college fit for them. “I helped them through everything from picking their courses, all the way to planning out their next college tour, all the way to completing their applications,” she said. “It made me realize how much a difference an independent counselor can make in a student’s life, and I think the other side of that coin was that I realized how important it is that all kids get access to the right resources.”
Jorgenson stressed the importance of finding the right college due to the high financial commitment that comes alongside it. “College is one of the biggest investments that a family will make. Tuition, in some cases, is over six figures for schools, and so being really clear on why that school makes the most sense not only to apply to, but if you’re accepted to actually go to, is so paramount,” Jorgenson said.
After working at ESM, Jorgenson co-founded Early Bird, a college planning platform for students from eighth grade to senior year. “If you look at my whole career trajectory, it’s sort of like everything sort of added up to this moment, and I guess the tipping point was when I was working at ESM, and just, that feeling that more people need access to this methodology, workflow, and resources, and cutting through the noise, and making this, as it should be, on the most exciting times in a student’s life,” she said.
The Early Bird platform guides students and parents through the process of applying to college. “It takes you through in the right order, and it gives the family bite-sized pieces of information to start the jigsaw of the puzzle pieces of putting together a roadmap to actually creating a college list and deciding on the right strategy, figuring out financial aid, and writing essays,” Jorgenson said.
Jorgenson is especially proud of her platform’s accessibility. “What we’ve built is really at a fraction of the cost of what typical kind of independent counseling can cost. We’re really big on having families, no matter what your background is, no matter what your socioeconomic status is, have our platform to be of assistance, and so there’s an access point for everybody,” she said. “If you can afford more support, you can buy one of our packages. But if you just also know that you want like one or two targeted sessions with a counselor to double-check your college list. You can do that.”
At Early Bird, Jorgenson works with engineers to ensure the platform works optimally for her students and interacts with students in a small capacity. “It’s really important to me that I always continue to maintain students on my caseload so that I can make the platform relevant and the best version that it could possibly be,” she said.
For Jorgenson, the best part of her job is its improvisational nature. “It’s getting to go back to my Cal Poly roots and just roll up my sleeves and problem solve,” she said. “We are a scrappy little startup trying to make an impact, and that’s a tall order. It’s what motivates me every single day.”
Jorgenson’s advice to current M-A students: “Be as authentic as you possibly can be in the application process, and you’re going to find your right fit. Pay attention not to the name on the sweatshirt or the college on the bumper sticker of your neighbor’s car, but really pay attention to what environment you truly think is the best environment for you. With the goal being that when you go to college, it’s to learn, it’s to network, and it’s to figure out who you are and further develop. As long as you’re true to that, you’re gonna find your best fit college.”
Jorgenson’s advice to those interested in counseling: “Start working with kids as soon as you can to make sure that you like that dynamic of working with kids, teenagers, and parents, and just roll your sleeves up and jump in. You’ll learn so much, especially in your first few admission cycles. It’s a really great, fulfilling career. It’s dynamic. It’s changing, obviously, a lot with technology. But I think it’s just making sure, first and foremost, that if you’re going to spend a career doing this, that you’re fulfilled by working with kids.”
