A semester-long, eight-session professional learning experience for educators dedicated to building a better system for post-secondary, career, and life advising.
Counselors want to provide students personalized, high touch postsecondary and career coaching. But state mandates, massive caseloads, and limited time make that almost impossible.
As a result, too many young people are entering the modern job market without the insights, skills, or networks they need to land great first jobs. They're finding themselves underemployed or unemployed, struggling to realize their potential in today's economy.
For these twenty-somethings, the promise of an American education remains unfulfilled. And for many of their counselors, the sense of purpose that drew them to the profession feels out of reach.
Only 3% of high-performing, under-resourced students end up in jobs that position them for upward mobility.
52% of college grads end up in jobs that don't require a college degree.
Nearly a quarter of bachelor's degree programs have a negative ROI.
88% of employers say college graduates from the last three years are less prepared for the workforce than in years prior.
It begins with students' unique life aspirations, then converts those into personalized postsecondary and career plans that:
It then empowers counselors with the methods and tools they need to help students effectively put these plans into action.
The outcome? Students graduate prepared to succeed on their postsecondary paths and in today's job market. And counselors feel a greater sense of fulfillment knowing they've championed students' goals, not just checked boxes.
“Noble Schools is excited to partner with Backrs...to help our students not just apply to and get accepted into incredible institutions but also guide them in determining best majors and career pathways to follow to give them the highest rate of academic and professional success.”
Michelle Santos
Director of College Counseling
“I am excited to partner with Backrs because of the alignment of values between Da Vinci Schools and Backrs, and the opportunity that Backrs will give us to leverage their expertise, research insights, and experience with network partners to help Da Vinci students make good choices on their path to a strong early career.”
Steve Wallis
Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services
“We've seen increased student engagement, clearer career direction, and a boost in confidence as students articulate and pursue their goals. It's been a game-changer for helping us meet our mission of preparing students for life beyond the classroom.”
William Clark
COOP to Careers Team, University of Cincinnati
We created this institute to empower educators to implement Outcomes-Driven Advising within their schools.
It's designed to give them a stronger map, a shared methodology, and a practical system for helping students make better decisions and build stronger futures. Through the experience, educators will leverage their strengths, hone their craft, and get reconnected to their “why.”
Co-CEO & Co-Founder, Backrs
Andy Bobowski is Backrs' Co-CEO and Co-Founder. Before Backrs, he was a school founder, principal, and head of schools, leading principals, teams, and postsecondary strategy. He's on a mission to transform how young people are prepared for strong careers and lives.
Operations & Data Lead, Backrs
Benjamin Maldonado is driving AI-powered solutions for student success at Backrs. Before that, he worked with organizations like McKinsey & Company, Meta, and LinkedIn, helping leaders build strategies for growth and performance.
Helping students get clearer on their long-term aspirations not only serves as a powerful advising anchor, but also increases student motivation. Participants learn how to connect life aspirations to career tracks and, subsequently, the many connected pathways.
Paths can change many times. Tracks are very difficult to change later on and they matter because they influence the preparation, standards, and options a student needs to preserve in high school and beyond. Awareness of life aspirations increases student motivation and buy in.
This session introduces the four Enduring Unlocks that shape long-term student success: Academic Foundations, Real-World Experience and Achievement, Mindsets and Skills, and Communities of Success. Participants will learn what stronger development looks like across each Unlock and how to interpret a student's strengths, gaps, and readiness using a shared set of rubrics.
Strong transcripts, marketable degrees--these are all important, but they are not sufficient alone to ensure a student can achieve their career goals. 60-80% of jobs are secured through connections, and employers want to see evidence of workplace-ready competencies gained through real world experience.
This session focuses on the discipline and skill of prioritization. Participants will learn how to move from a broad readiness assessment to a focused diagnosis of the binding constraint: the issue most limiting the student's trajectory at that moment. From there, they will identify the key lever most likely to create meaningful movement.
Ten pieces of decent advice are usually less useful than one piece of sharp advice aimed at the right constraint. Students do not need more to juggle. They need better sequencing.
This session helps educators bring better evidence into conversations about colleges, credentials, and majors. Participants will learn how to interpret and use institution-level measures such as success rate, median earnings, cost, and return on investment, alongside program-level measures such as employment, underemployment, earnings, and career alignment.
A school's brand tells only part of the story. The program, ROI, probability of completion, and career launch matter much more.
Participants will learn how to run a high-quality Are You On Track? coaching session that reconnects the student to their life aspirations, compares their current progress with the track they hope to preserve, interprets evidence across the Enduring Unlocks, and turns that analysis into a focused plan.
Students can receive scores, feedback, and recommendations without understanding what the information means or what should happen next. The value of Are You On Track? comes from the conversation that helps the student interpret the evidence, identify the right priority, and take ownership of the plan.
This session helps educators diagnose what is preventing a student from moving and respond without relying on encouragement, repeated reminders, or taking over the work. Participants will learn to distinguish among direction, ownership, and execution, then help the student build one practical change that increases both agency and follow-through.
It's easy to interpret a student's weak execution as laziness, indifference, or poor motivation. As adults, we often respond with more reminders, stronger consequences, or by completing part of the task ourselves. That may create short-term compliance. It rarely builds long-term agency. The goal is to help the student develop a repeatable way to move themselves forward.
This session helps educators go beyond counting activities and toward evaluating the quality of a student's experience, responsibility, initiative, and contribution. Participants will learn how to interpret evidence across five dimensions of achievement and help students identify the experience most likely to strengthen their readiness, career clarity, and future options.
Students are often encouraged to join clubs, volunteer, pursue leadership positions, and stay involved. But participation alone does not tell us much about what a student can do. What matters is the evidence underneath the activity. Has the student shown up reliably for real work? Identified a problem and acted on it? Contributed meaningfully to a team?
This session helps educators make social capital a deliberate part of college, career, and life advising. Participants will learn how to assess the strength and range of a student's relationships, identify the relational gaps most likely to limit their growth or access, and help students build authentic connections over time.
Some students grow up surrounded by adults who can explain how college and careers work, make introductions, review applications, secure internships, and advocate for them in important moments. Other students have similar talent and ambition but far less access to those relationships.
Helping students get clearer on their long-term aspirations not only serves as a powerful advising anchor, but also increases student motivation. Participants learn how to connect life aspirations to career tracks and, subsequently, the many connected pathways.
Paths can change many times. Tracks are very difficult to change later on and they matter because they influence the preparation, standards, and options a student needs to preserve in high school and beyond. Awareness of life aspirations increases student motivation and buy in.
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Watch these short talks to preview some of the material you’ll learn at the Backrs Institute.
