Two Oak Harbor women have been thinking about college issues for so long that they decided to start a business around them.

“Think College” is a collaborative venture by Lynne Vagt and Cheryl Gordon, each of whom possesses vast experience raising kids, getting them successfully through primary and secondary education, and sending them on to college.

Vagt is a home-school parent while Gordon sent her children to private school before sending them on to high school, but they both face the same challenges with getting their kids ready for college.

“We wanted our children to finish high school with as many open doors as possible,” Vagt said. “To accomplish this, we knew that our kids would need rigorous academic training, strong character, solid communication skills, and meaningful extra-curricular activities.”

Gordon said getting her daughter Amanda ready to pick a college was eye-opening compared to her own, simpler experience more than 20 years earlier. “I was amazed at how much admissions had changed,” she said. The process of researching colleges was immense, calling for gathering accurate information from numerous sources, questioning college officials, touring campuses, and attending college fairs. Not that Gordon was intimidated. “Having analyzed statistics and marketing programs as a corporate officer, I was in my element,” she said.

With all that research knowledge and information on hand, Gordon found other parents were calling her with and questions. At about this time, she and Vagt, an old friend, started talking about their college search experiences.

The two started collating information and building a curriculum and strategy to help parents and students prepare for college.

Think College was born.

“Since preparing for college takes years, we agreed that it is crucial to engage both students and parents in the programs we offer,” Gordon said.

Vaght said she and Gordon approached the college process from different backgrounds but found the same challenges. “Cheryl and I realized the road to college readiness was clogged with confusion, uncertainty, and an overwhelming tidal wave of information — some good an some not so good,” she said.

While students and parents have always had access to help, sound advise is sometimes hard to come by. “With student-to-counselor rations averaging 450 to 1, and counselors struggling under the weight of crushing state and federal mandates, college preparatory and admission guidance services are often pushed to the back burner in many public high schools,” Vagt said.

The pair developed Think College seminars to help middle and high school students and their parents create a plan for college readiness and navigate their way through the college application and admissions process.

“We have met with high school counselors, interviewed college counselors, talked with admissions offers, and read extensively,” Gordon said. “Education and college admissions is a dynamic body of knowledge requiring our constant attention.”

Think College hopes to get parents and students thinking about college early, so they can prepare to be well educated, as the 21st century job market demands. “Without prior planning, many students find themselves taking high school level courses in community college,” Gordon said. That’s both expensive and time consuming. Other students who haven’t prepared for college have no choice but to enter the workforce qualified only for low-wage jobs.

“We believe that college readiness is an appropriate goal for virtually every high school graduate,” Vagt said. “It today’s students are to be ready for life, they must be ready for college.”