About Us - Making It Count Programs

About Us

Our Mission
Making It Count, owned and operated by Monster, will be the nation’s premier educational training and advisory organization for today’s students and parents. Our goal is twofold: to teach students how to succeed in college and best prepare themselves to maximize their opportunities upon graduation, and to help parents make smart, proactive decisions on behalf of their students. By achieving this goal, we will play a meaningful role in reversing the long-term negative trends in college graduation rates and graduate employment statistics.

Company Summary
The idea for Making It Count started in 1987 when company co-founder, Patrick O’Brien (then a Procter & Gamble brand manager) prepared some notes for a discussion with his younger sister on how to succeed in college. These notes would become the outline for his book, Making College Count: A Real World Look at How to Succeed In and After College, first printed in 1996. Since then, the book has been sold in bookstores across the country and has been featured in USA Today, the CBS Morning News, MSNBC and Amazon.com.

By 1998, the concept expanded and our flagship in-school presentation program, Making College Count for high school seniors, was developed by co-founders Brad Baker and Patrick O’Brien. That year, the program was delivered to 50,000 students. Since then, we have developed several additional programs and expanded our reach to more than 20 million students in more than 4,500 high schools and 650 colleges in all 50 states through our package of assembly-style presentations including:

Making High School Count (for high school freshmen)
Making Your College Search Count (for high school juniors)
Making College & Career Count (for high school seniors)
Ultimate Money Skills: College Funding (evening program for parents of students in 9th through 12th grade)
Monster College Advantage (for first-year college students)
Ultimate Money Skills: College (for college students)

The programs are highly acclaimed by counselors and students alike. In 2008, counselors rated all of our programs an average of 9.57 on a 10-point scale for “Value of the Presentation,” and a 9.42 for “Effectiveness of the Delivery of the Presentation.” Ninety-nine percent of students agreed that other students would benefit from the programs. On average, students rate the programs 8.75 on a 10-point scale for “Value,” and 9.04 for “Effectiveness”

We have more than 200 trained and certified speakers who deliver our presentations. They are trained to present the message as if they were a big brother or sister simply giving advice about their experiences and how to achieve success. The presentations are dynamic and engaging, holding the audience’s attention through relevant interactive exercises, on-stage volunteer exercises and a detailed workbook that students and parents can use to follow along and more deeply engage themselves in the material presented.

For more information, please contact us toll-free at 1-877-668-1188 or by filling out this form.