#187 Authenticity Wins: How Intentionality Led Jack Goldstein to UPenn Transcript

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT… PLEASE FORGIVE THE TYPOS & GRAMMAR! xo-Lisa.

Wwhat if you were teen or 20 something? Stopped chasing perfection and focused instead on what truly lights them up. Jack Goldstein did just that. He leaned into what made him unique, followed his interests with purpose and let go of the pressure to build the perfect resume that intentionality paid off. Jack earned a spot at UPenn uncovered a powerful personal story rooted in advocacy, and co founded a business that’s reshaping how students experience college visits. In this episode, you’ll hear how Jack made thoughtful decisions about his time in high school, choosing alignment over overload, and how that gave him clarity and confidence in both college admissions and early career direction. He also shares a story behind quadzio, the platform he and his brother built to connect prospective students with real campus ambassadors for meaningful one on one tours and advice. If you have a college bound team, it might just be the missing piece in your family’s college exploration process. I’m Lisa Marco Robins, and I want to welcome you to College and Career Clarity a flourish coaching production. Let’s dive right in to a great conversation.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 1:59
Well. Jack Goldstein, welcome to the show.

Jack Goldstein 2:02
Hello. It’s great to be here. I’m

Lisa Marker-Robbins 2:06
glad you said yes. So we met on LinkedIn, and what I loved about what you’ve been sharing on LinkedIn, besides your cool business, which we’ll talk about later, because this really is more about your journey and less about your business, but you do have a cool business, so we will tease that, and we’re going to share about a little bit later. But I what I loved is, through the work that I do, I oftentimes meet students who are just chasing prestige, chasing brand name, I’m actually working, I didn’t tell you this before. I’m currently working with a student who just graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, and he’s career confused. He he’s come to me for career coaching. And when I asked him not going to use his name because I don’t have permission, but when I asked him, you know, when you were back in high school, what were you thinking about? He goes, I just wanted the highest grades possible. I was checking the box on the right extracurriculars so that I could get into the most prestigious school possible. He lands at Penn. And then I said, Well, when you were at Penn, what were you doing? Thinking about like, what would come next? He goes, I wasn’t. I was just enjoying my opportunities there. I had a great friend group. I did study abroad. I did a lot of neat things. And now I’m moving back home into my parents house, and now I gotta figure it all out. And the good news is, it’s never too late to figure out this career piece. I mean, we he doesn’t want to go back to school. So, you know, you limit some of your opportunities, but it’s not too late. It is figureoutable. He was chasing prestige, and now here we are working with him. You posted that. Yes, I guess you were aiming for prestigious schools, but you weren’t the 4.0 student. You didn’t check the box of extracurriculars just to check a box. You feel that you packaged up in your college applications last fall were authentically, authentically, ah, why can’t I say that right now you had authenticity? We’ll say that you are authentically yourself. You are Jack. What does it mean to authentically be Jack to get into college? I want to hear a little bit about what it means to be authentic to yourself.

Jack Goldstein 4:36
The way that I knew that I was doing the right thing was I did a lot in high school. I was definitely an overachiever. I had really hard classes I was taking. I was always really busy with extracurriculars. Always had a sport going on. I always had friends I had to hang out with, but I always knew that I was doing the right thing, because, yeah, I would get less sleep than a lot of my peers, and I would be tired. I’d be groggy, but I. To always be motivated. I always walk up in the morning and I knew, like, I’m excited for the day. Like, yeah, I have a lot to do, but I’m excited to do it all. Like, it was the craziest, I would say, three weeks of my life before my early decision for Penn, or no, it was the week after my early decision for Penn, and it was like the weeks leading into the early action deadlines. I was also preparing to go to Chicago for a national Mock Trial tournament, and I literally think I was sleeping three hours a night for those three weeks. But Never did I wake up tired, and I was starting to be like, What is going on? Am I going crazy? But

Lisa Marker-Robbins 5:36
let’s just say you wouldn’t recommend people only sleep three hours a night, right?

Jack Goldstein 5:40
But if you, if you love, what I’m trying to say is, if you love what you’re doing, you won’t get tired. If you love what you’re doing, you’re going to be excited to wake up every day the next morning. So I think that it’s just so important to do what you love for the sake of you loving it and not doing it for the sake of writing it on your activity sheet in a few months. Because let me tell you, I definitely had some activities that I did to check a box. And when you have 150 characters to say what you did and what impact you left, it is really hard. You want to let those activity sheets write themselves. It should be a piece of cake if you really loved it, and you did it for the sake of loving it, and not for the sake of doing it for your college application.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 6:21
So when you started going after things that you loved, and there are only so many hours in a day, and I’m going to assume you took a lot of APS to get into Penn, how many do you know? How many APS you took?

Jack Goldstein 6:35
I think it was eight. I could be wrong, eight or eight or nine, maybe

Lisa Marker-Robbins 6:39
typically, I hear like, seven or eight is a number that I see a lot of students who get into Ivy’s for, and you didn’t only apply to Ivy’s. We talked about some of your other schools as

Jack Goldstein 6:50
well. Penn was my only Ivy League school that I Oh, it wasn’t

Lisa Marker-Robbins 6:53
okay. So other schools were selective. But, I mean, there was a continuum there, right? Of selectivity?

Jack Goldstein 7:00
Absolutely. I mean, there was a big drop off between my first and second choice schools in terms of my first choice with Penn, second choice was Syracuse. I was ready, if I didn’t get to Penn, to pull the trigger and do early decision two to Syracuse, which, I mean, there’s a there’s in terms of, just like on paper selectivity and like, you go on the US News and I mean, there’s a huge drop off. But I was ready to pull the trigger on Syracuse. I love that school.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 7:23
Okay? I love what you just said there, too. So it’s you really, truly loved Penn, and you’re starting there this fall. We should say yes, but you also really and truly love schools that were far less selective, but had a lot to offer. I mean, Syracuse is a fantastic school for sure. When you were in high school and you were pursuing the things that lit you up, that the things that you woke up excited, your feet hit the ground the next day, or you’re good to go. Were there things that you gave up, that you decided to kind of shed off of your extracurriculars or your academics that you felt like you had to make some tough choices?

Jack Goldstein 8:05
Um, I would say, in terms of shedding, that’s a great question. I’ve never been asked that before. Um, I mean, honestly, yes, I would say that I definitely had to give up a lot just with my social life, um, hanging out with my friends all the time. I wasn’t able to do that quite as much. Not. I just don’t think as many of them were as busy as I were. And one of my friends in particular, he’s going to Stanford in the fall, he sort of was doing the same thing. He wasn’t sort of able to to hang out with a group of us as often. And it’s just sort of like there’s a given a take to everything. And I knew, like, I didn’t think that I was going to end up at Penn, but I knew that I I wanted to be able to have a choice of where to go to college in the fall. I wanted to have as many opportunities available for me. So I knew that I wanted to really hunker down on my on my academics, and just really pursue, like, what I wanted to in terms of extracurriculars and sort of in return of that, like I definitely had to sort of take the loss of of, you know, socializing with my friends as much as I had in years previously. I would say in terms of athletics, I definitely had a big step back. I was a three sport athlete for my first two years of high school, and I just sort of realized, like, I wasn’t going to make it as big in sports as I was in other activities. I was great at sports. I loved them. But, you know, health is health was one thing. I had a concussion, but also, just like, I had a much higher ceiling in the classroom and on the mock trial courtroom than I did on the football field. And so frankly, I had to step away from that. That was a huge time commitment. I definitely lost something in terms of, like, you know, being part of that football culture in the family. But I think that sort of brought me to the next level in mock trial. I

Lisa Marker-Robbins 9:49
like how you said, like, you had a higher ceiling in some other areas. I think that’s a good way to look at it. You know, as a career coach for teens and young adults, I talk about, like. Being really honest with yourself about your aptitudes, right? You know, I can be fascinated with certain topics, but I might not have the aptitude to excel in them even, you know, even at my age as an adult. And so we have to be honest with ourselves, and that’s a good phrase, a good way to put it like, what is my ceiling? And invest digging in and investing the time where you’ve got a higher ceiling, so you’ve got more opportunity to be able to achieve and grow and do the things that light you up. So okay, so you and people ask me all the time, and I’d be curious about your Stanford friend, should I quit my sports to do other things? Or somebody recently asked me, should I quit my job, my part time job to do other things? And I’ve always answered no, not if they are, again, authentically who you are. You know, I gave you a hard time about your three hours of sleep, you would not have been able to sustain that, my friend, for too long. But I’m sure there’s rest, which I always say is like sleep or just taking it easy, and there’s rejuvenation, and rejuvenation is things that light us up, that that refuel us. So you it sounds like we’re doing a lot of activities that were rejuvenating to you because they aligned really with who you are, right? Yeah, so did your Stanford friend did? Was he in any sports? Or Did either of you have part time

Jack Goldstein 11:34
jobs? Yeah? I mean, so his biggest thing was robotics. He spent an absurd amount of time at school, in the workshop, or wherever they did their work. And I mean, he loved it. And I mean, we would all give him a hard time because, I mean, he was just sitting there making robots, and he never complained about it. He actually, like, talked about it in absurd amount with our friends. And I mean, none of us know what he’s talking about, but just like the passion that he spoke with, you could tell like, Okay, this kid loved robotics, and so it’s just like, I’m so glad that you spent all that time doing it, because it’s just like, once again, it energized him. He was doing the right thing. And, I mean, I’m sure Stanford sort of saw that. Like, okay, here we have a kid who’s not doing the thing to check the box, but he’s just doing the thing because he loved it. So, you know, here we go. Let’s, let’s accept this kid because he’s doing the right things, not the things that someone would do. Because, I mean, there’s better activities out there that that look better on a college application than being the CO captain of the robotics club, but it’s what he loved and well,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 12:44
so you made a good point when we were talking about doing this episode, that when you have those things that you love, and then it’s kind of gets it gets packaged, whether we like it or not, and that might be a very clinical way to say it, but it’s, It’s the reality of when you’re applying to college in the fall of the senior year, there is a package, and you talked about how what you pursued had through lines for that entire package. Can you talk a little bit about that and what you mean by that? Yeah,

Jack Goldstein 13:17
so sort of my whole thing was sort of like how adversity turned to advocacy. That was sort of like the thread I was trying to sort of weave through my entire entire application. And so the hook of my common app essay was basically it, I’m paraphrasing, but in seventh grade, I was harassed by Neo Nazis, and it sort of made me shy away from my Jewish identity for a long time, and then it sort of goes through, like, all the different activities that I did, like I taught, like, I start with sports, and that’s where I get sort of my my fire and my intensity from, like, even to this day, I still have like, that football, rah, rah, like, intensity. Like, I’m super, super, if you talk to anybody like, I’m a very intense person, that’s, I don’t know how to better put it, but sort of, then that carried on to mock trial, and my willingness to not deliver a closing arguments, like I’m reciting a speech that I’ve prepared, but I was, you know, Just like, once again, really intense, really energetic, really passionate about, sort of like, what I was doing in that moment, being in the moment all the time, and so sort of just like that mock trial, then sort of shifted to like me being like, okay, I can use my voice. It’s something that, you know, based on, you know, scores that I was getting in the courtroom, like, okay, my voice is a pretty strong weapon. Why don’t I start using it for the better? You know, take it beyond just the courtroom, and let’s start advocating for, you know, anti semitism and and fighting against things like that. That sort of hit much closer to home, and that’s sort of where my research project on anti semitism ties in, and I learned to really use. My voice for the better. So it’s sort of something that started on on the football field, moved to the courtroom, and then became something much larger.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 15:08
You You were telling me before we hit record about and this will be a totally different type of advocacy, but you spent last summer on baseball advocacy, right? Yes, talk a little bit about that, because it’s like you’ve taken this personal narrative of who you are. So personal narratives aren’t invented, I mean, they’re who we are, right? So this idea of your personal narrative of you know you, you found your advocacy voice, and it related back to kind of overcoming the adversity that you would experience back in middle school, junior high, and now you’re even using it for other things. So I love what you did last summer, because you’ve you’ve told me like you’re thinking about law as a career, you’re not 100% sure yet. And I said, have you done a job shadow yet? Or an interview, an informational interview. You’re like, not yet last summer, this is what I spent all my time on. Talk about the advocacy you also did last summer.

Jack Goldstein 16:08
Yeah. So my primary objective was to help bring major league baseball to Portland, um, and so I was, I spent a lot of my time just looking at best practices that other cities were using. Seeing, you know, our biggest Confederate at the time, competitor at the time. Competitor at the time was Salt Lake City. They had a really sleek economic model written up. They had a lot of legislation really early on in sort of that the rat race to to get Major League Baseball’s attention and to get an expansion or a relocation team. And so I was sort of just like trying to see what they were doing, seeing what other cities who have had successful relocation teams in the past, see what they did. And sort of, I ended up writing up, just like, what I think, based on all this research, what would be the best course of action for our city to take. I was also very,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 16:50
we should say, like, this was not a jack on his own passion project. You actually had an internship for this?

Jack Goldstein 16:57
Yeah, yeah. So I was working, it was called prosper Portland, that’s our city’s economic development agency, and so I was working with people. A lot of what I was working on was under NDA, so I wasn’t able to talk about most of it, which was a super cool thing for a 17 year old to be involved with. Sorry, I can’t talk about that, right? I mean, I felt like a celebrity at the time, no, but, I mean, it was just super, super cool. And I mean, I love sports. Sports bring me a smile. Why wouldn’t I sort of try to work to get those smiles on everybody else’s faces? Because, I mean, we all love sports, and the City of Portland, sports are a huge thing, especially like the Portland Timbers, the Portland Thorns, like people love their sporting events, and it puts smiles on their faces. So Major League Baseball, I think would do the same exact thing. And so I just bringing sports the city. It’s a great thing. It’s something that, you know, could it raise our taxes a little bit for a short amount of time? Yes, but it puts smiles on people’s faces, and that’s all I really wanted to see happen. Okay,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 17:55
so you have this through line of advocacy, and then obviously, if you become an attorney, there’s advocacy involved in that as well. 100% so you and your younger brother have now started your own business, and it really also is about advocacy. 100% tell our listeners about quad. Z Oh, as well. I like the story because a I think it shows what’s possible for young people who put their mind to it. I love how it demonstrates intentionality with your through line of advocacy. And I think it’s cool what you guys are doing, too. So tell us a little bit about quad CEO,

Jack Goldstein 18:37
yeah. So quad Z, O, we started at about 45 days ago, we already have about 120

Lisa Marker-Robbins 18:43
thought of it before 45 days ago, right?

Jack Goldstein 18:47
The idea came about when I was visiting all the colleges and started realizing that we’re spending a lot of money and spending a lot of time on something that you can do online. And so what quad zo does is we are going to have just we have ambassadors, and then we’re going to have the shadows. And the ambassadors are college students who are on the college campuses, and then the shadows are high school kids, juniors or seniors, wherever, whatever age you want to start visiting colleges at. And they’re going to be going to the college campuses. They’re going to be paired with an ambassador for a one on one college tour. They’re going to be taken to the places that the traditional college tour doesn’t take you. I never got taken into a dorm, which is where I’m going to be spending a lot of time next year in college. I never ate a bite of dorm food, which is what I’m going to be living off of for the next four years. I didn’t really get to meet any professors or get to sit into any classes. But when I visited a school and met up with a friend from my high school, I went into their dorm. I ate the dorm food, I sat into one of their lectures. So I was like, Okay, why don’t we scale this a little bit because, I mean, I got a great experience when I got to meet with kids, but not everybody knows. Shows the people or not everybody know has has a has a person at a school that they’re looking at who they think would be willing to show them around for a few hours and beyond college tours, it’s really just a great way to connect that bridge. If you want advice on a college essay, like, Hey, I’m really having a hard time getting started on this essay. Like, what did you do? So maybe they can send their essay from the past. So all we’re really doing is we’re a bridge between people looking at colleges and people at those colleges, and we’re going to just put them in connection, and hopefully it’s going to help clarify the whole process. Because there’s, there’s a lot of, you know, it’s very wishy washy right now, nobody really knows what’s going on. It’s really, really hard to find the perfect college nowadays, and so hopefully quad do is going to help provide more of a personalized experience. You’re paired with somebody from your high school or paired with somebody based on your interests, and so you get to sort of see how you as a person would integrate into that school, because when you’re on the traditional college tour, you really don’t know. You don’t know your tour guide is going to be those info sessions are sharing all information that you get on the website, right? So hopefully it’s just going to make it a better experience, more personalized and more for you.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 21:16
You know, what’s a good example of when I’m doing career coaching with the teens and 20 somethings that we support. I always say, you’ve got to go do some informational interviews. And I’m like people who love their jobs and want, they want to share about them. They’re more than happy to sit down with a young person who is considering that career they’re excited to do so. I have adults offer all the time. Oh, I’m more than happy to talk to somebody who’s interested in this. I’ll tag somebody on LinkedIn and a post and and pull an adult into a conversation with a kid for those people that are following me on LinkedIn. And this is the same thing, like, if you’re on a campus and you’re having a positive experience, and you’re you become an advocate for that campus. People become advocates for their career, their you know, the job that they have. So I love taking it that, taking it to that it’s

Jack Goldstein 22:13
also a way, way, a great way to give back to your high school. I mean, I had a great experience in my high school, and for high school kids, I remember how lost I felt in the college search process. So if I had sort of like an older person who I could look up to, who was at a college that I was really excited about, and I had easy access to text them, and I knew that they would be excited to respond, and if I wanted to go visit the school, they would show me around. Like that would make me feel so much more comfortable in that process, so much less lost. And, yeah, I just think that it’s a really great solution to a big problem that a lot of students face nowadays.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 22:53
It’s, you know, it’s the power of those alumni networks, right? And the same student I just referenced earlier, who just graduated with Penn, and we’re working on the career advising piece. The homework assignment for him last week was go find Penn alumni networks on LinkedIn. And I noticed that even some of the majors or some of the colleges within the university have their own alumni groups on LinkedIn. And so it’s it’s the power of that alumni network as well making those connections. It’s super strong. Yeah, it’s funny. You were saying that you only had personal connections at two universities that you visited, and you felt like it made a difference when my 27 year old, when we were doing this all, very long time ago, a decade ago now, I would put out to my network. Hey, does anybody have a kiddo on campus XYZ and and our best visit was not somebody I knew, but somebody who worked for me in Philadelphia, ironically, who we were going to a state in the south to visit her neighbor’s son, attended that school. I said, hey, we’ll take you out to dinner. What college student doesn’t want free real food? No brainer. And I said, We’ll take you out to dinner to be able to pick your brain. And we sat there with this guy and talked about the university, and then he gave us some some tips and tricks for the next day on our visit. So I love what you guys that’s

Jack Goldstein 24:29
exactly what quad do is trying to do. Just get rid of that whole you don’t have to go do it yourself. Search on LinkedIn. Now we’re just going to connect that bridge for you. So hopefully it we were able to scale to a point where we get enough students to be able to feel the just be able to be able to feel like, okay, I’m not lost in this process anymore. The hardest thing we’ve had is like, okay, it’s been super easy to grow in my high school, because I know everybody, everybody knows me, and they’re like, Okay, this is a credible kid like this. This is a real thing that’s going. On like we’re excited about it, let’s sign up. But it’s been hard to scale nationwide, and so we’ve been doing a lot of outreach, and we’ve gotten some people who are excited about it, but it’s like, Okay, now we need you to tell your friends about it. We need to really go large scale, because quad do doesn’t work if you just have one kid from your high school. We need to have 20 kids from each high school at a bunch of different schools, so people have different options to where they can get paired up with an ambassador and sort of experience what, what it’s like to be, to be at your the right college, you know,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 25:32
just real quick. How’d you land on the name quad zo?

Jack Goldstein 25:35
Because, I mean, like, the quad is like, sort of like something that’s like, I

Lisa Marker-Robbins 25:39
thought. So I just thought I’d like the quad. But

Jack Goldstein 25:43
then we also wanted kind of like a cool techy, like, cool business name. So like, we thought, like, Zeo would be, like a really cool end of the business name. And so it’s like, quad Z O, like, it’s the mix of like, okay. Like, if you think about it, you’re like, okay, like, quad Z O, quad. Like, college, you can make that connection. And then we just thought that, like the ending, Zeo is just like a really cool like, 2020, heck, like, I agree. I right here. So look at you. Yeah,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 26:15
people want to learn more about quad Z Oh, and the great work that you and your brother are doing. Where do they go?

Jack Goldstein 26:20
Quadzio.com it’s super accessible. You can find it on any browser. Just yeah, go to quadco.com if you’re a college kid, it takes 60 seconds to become an ambassador. It’s free. It’s a great way to give back to kids from your high school. It’s a great way to show off where, where you’re at college. And it’s a great way to make some money as well next year if you’re looking to do

Lisa Marker-Robbins 26:41
that awesome. Well, Jack, thanks for coming on and sharing your story about the authenticity of your personal narrative, how you connected all the pieces. And hey, we don’t have to be perfect to find the right college

Jack Goldstein 26:54
there that that is it, right there. That is it. Thanks, Jack. Thank you. You.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 27:04
Jack’s journey is a powerful reminder that authenticity isn’t just admirable, it’s strategic. When students pursue what excites them and lead with their real story, college admissions and career attainment can become a lot less overwhelming and far more meaningful. If your teen is starting to build their college list, they need more than rankings and brochures. Real insights come from connecting with current students. Head over to quadzio.com to explore the platform Jack and his brother created and learn how your student can get one on one campus perspective that goes far beyond the official tour. If you’d like more resources to support your teen’s college and career journey, subscribe to our newsletter at flourish, coachingco.com forward slash newsletter to get our best tools and tips each week. Your young person’s path doesn’t need to look like anyone else’s, just make sure it’s truly a fit you

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