Sara Kyle, Director of College Counseling, found her passion for counseling early on. Kyle has worked at Blake as a college counselor for 19 years, but she says that she has “been in college admissions for my [her] entire professional life.” Kyle attended St. Olaf, majoring in history and soon after graduating, found her love for counseling. From age 22, Kyle started working in college admissions at St. Olaf, looking at spreadsheets and buying names from the College board and the ACT. However, she quickly realized that she wanted to have more opportunities to foster connections with prospective students. The students that she ended up meeting at Blake reinforced Kyle’s decision to become a college counselor. She explains that “Blake had this opening, and it gave me an opportunity to stay in the profession that I love so much but really get back to working with students and supporting [them], which was always my primary goal in the work that I did.”
Kyle says that “one of the great things about college admissions is that no two days are the same, no two students are the same, no two years are the same. It’s a career where I get to constantly learn new things. I just learn about new activities that students are involved with that I didn’t know about, or new areas of study that they’re interested in, or new colleges or more about colleges that I already knew some about. This year, I learned a lot about new technology, which has been good too! So you have to have a love of learning in order to be in college counseling, there’s no question about it.”
Still, like every job, counseling gets frustrating when things don’t go well, especially now, with new challenges of testing and application anxiety. Kyle says that “one of the greater frustrations in college counseling in general is that there are so many voices outside of the profession telling students what they have to do or should do in order to be successful in college admission, and not all of that information is good. It’s hard for students to know what is the accurate information and what is not.”
While working from home, counseling has taken on a new form. In regards to colleges, they “are doing a better job of providing online programs, which gives opportunities for students who aren’t able to travel to learn about the school and discern whether or not that school is a good match for them. Colleges have been able to connect more with students outside of metro areas. They’ve been able to connect more with rural students and give those students more information about opportunities that are available to them.” Kyle also notes the drastic shift in values for standardized testing among schools and hopes that these new changes will benefit future college students. Quarantine means that Kyle is on Zoom 24/7 to talk with her students and brainstorm with colleagues, but she still tries to take some time for herself.
To entertain herself, Kyle says, “I like to be active, and so I like to incorporate exercise everyday, and my husband and I have adult children (2 Blake graduates), but they live in the Twin Cities, and my eldest daughter and her husband have a new baby boy, and so we have a baby in our family now, which is endless entertainment.”
Overall, Kyle is very passionate about her work and family, and can’t wait to be part of her students’ journeys to finding the right college.
