TED Community » Keith Berman

About Me

Keith Berman, Certified Educational Planner

Mr. Berman is the President of Options for College, and a Certified Education Planner (CEP), as well as a member of NACAC and the IECA. He has served as the creator and instructor of Johns Hopkins University's Center for Talented Youth College Prep course since, ran the College Access Initiative in the Rochester City School District over a 6-month period (using his book Maximum Access: A Guide to College Admissions Counseling), conducted a training summit for the counselors in the Christian Unified Schools of San Diego, been the staff trainer for The Princeton Review – India, and spoken to audiences ranging from the Merrill Lynch Parent Network to the NYU Family Life Center.

As a private counselor, he has served families in Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, England, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, New Zealand, Spain, and U.S. with college planning and application. His in-school positions include being Interim Director of College Guidance at the Rudolf Steiner School, the staff consultant at the Yeshiva University High School for Boys. Mr. Berman founded Options for College in March 2005 in Cambridge, MA. He was a Senior Interviewer at the Yale Undergraduate Admissions Office and an Interviewer at the Harvard Undergraduate Admissions Office.

Mr. Berman is a Roy E. Larsen Award recipient from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and has won awards from Harvard University, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, AmeriCorps, and the New York City Teaching Fellowship. He is a member of the Bank Street College Alumni Association Advisory Board and the Co-Secretary-Treasurer of the Yale Class of 2000. He got his BA in Music and Linguistics from Yale, and his Masters degrees from Bank Street and Harvard.

Mr. Berman also incorporates technology into his work, as a web programmer, portfolio designer, and, most recently, as part of the team that created Entoview: College Edition, an iPhone application built by Options for College, and BeginArt, a program that designs student and school art portfolios for display and admissions purposes, and links them to opportunities in the higher education world.

Mr. Berman has been quoted in US News & World Report's America's Best Colleges: 2009, 2010 and 2011, Boston Magazine, the Boston Globe, the Harvard Crimson, the Columbia Spectator, the Yale Daily News, and Inside Westchester County among others. He is on the Expert Review Board for Teen Health and Wellness, Rosen Publishing.

Keith currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter.