Company Overview
Once upon a time...

Well, to be more specific, it was 1987…A young man, then a Procter and Gamble brand manager, named Patrick O’Brien prepared some notes for his younger sister about 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, MS-NBC and Amazon.com.

In 1998, Pat joined up with co-founder Brad Baker and the company, Making It Count, was born. As teenagers once themselves, Pat and Brad knew that the young people who really needed to hear the messages provided in Making College Count were probably not the students who would take the initiative to buy and read the book. So the two co-founders set out to find a way to get the message of academic success out to as many students as possible.

They decided that the best way to really communicate with teens would be to deliver the topics in the form of live, entertaining, interactive presentations in high schools across the country. Because they didn’t want the possible barrier of shrinking school budgets to be a factor in how many students could benefit from the information, they also decided that the programs should be offered for free.

That’s where our corporate and organizational partners come in to play. Thanks to their belief in, and sponsorship of, these valuable programs, Making It Count is able to develop and deliver our series of academic and career success presentations for FREE to more than 2.5 million students at more than 5,000 high schools each and every year. Due to the continued success of ALL our student programs, Making It Count has spoken to over 17 million students since the company's start in 1998.

Our series of programs includes:

Making High School Count for high school freshmen. Click here for more information about this program.

Making Your College Search Count for high school juniors. Click here for more information about this program.

Making College & Career Count for high school seniors. Click here for more information about this program.

Making College Financial Planning Count for parents of students in 9th through 12th grades. Click here for more information about this program.

The Ultimate Road Trip: Campus2Career for first year college students. Click here for more information about this program.