
JOYCE REED,
Founder and Director of College Goals
Qualifications and Experience
- 18 years of professional experience in college admission as founder/director of College Goals
- Former Associate Dean of the College, Brown University, 14 years
- Focus on academic advising and well-being of 1st and 2nd year students
- Extensive admission experience with international and American college applicants
I am a Canadian (and American) who moved to the USA during high school, in time to pursue my undergraduate and graduate studies in Greek Classics and English Literature at Brown University. After a long career as an education administrator and teacher, I returned to Brown in 1990, where I served for fourteen years as Associate Dean of the College. My focus was on the academic advising of first and second-year students at Brown, and their academic well-being.
As a dean whose responsibilities focused on developing and administering college-wide advising programs designed to enhance and support first and second-year students’ academic success and satisfaction, I became acutely aware of the challenges and the deep rewards of the college search and application process, and I also became very conscious of the consequences and suffering that can result from making a poor or inappropriate college choice. I also know what can make a college student triumph, academically, personally, socially.
In 2003, I retired from Brown with the goal of using technology’s expanding tools to create a uniquely qualified consulting practice that would offer an exceptional level of mentoring and guidance to students and families who want access to experienced, professional counsel regarding the college and university selection and application process — no matter where on the globe they currently live or study. College Goals has grown and developed over the decade and now offers the wisdom and expertise of a team of highly experienced admission professionals, all of whom hold firmly to those principles of caring, professional, student-focused guidance and support that I consider essential.
I delight in seeing how College Goals’ students thrive, academically, and personally, during their college years. We hear regularly from ‘our kids’ and their parents because we create a strong and supportive bond during the college search. We support and guide them through an intense process of perceptive self-evaluation, goal setting, and decision-making. The increase in our students’ maturity and self-assurance during the time we are privileged to work together is always, always extraordinary. When College Goals students head off to their colleges, we know, and they know, why they are there, and that they are in the best possible places for them to succeed.
I am also the mother of 5 and stepmother of 2 successful college graduates, some of whom chose alternative educational paths until entering top universities. They are now professionals, scattered across the globe from Los Angeles to London, focused on technology development, design, and teaching.
Joyce was invaluable to our family during the application process. Being British and French we knew close to nothing about the American College system, and Joyce gave our son the encouragement and advice he needed every step of the way. The two of them built a relationship through emails and Skype, and when they did eventually meet in person they were like old friends! Joyce always answered our son’s questions immediately, and always kept us involved in the decisions being made. As parents we felt our son was being guided through the maze by someone with a huge amount of experience and, equally as important, a great understanding of teenagers.
– UK, London