Staff Conversations: Stephanie Coberly Pluta
How did you get involved with College Solutions?
Margaret, our fearless CEO, reached out to me one spring to see if I would coach students through crafting their college essays and encourage them to develop a strong “voice” in their writing. I enjoyed the experience so much that I moved into a counselor role soon after.
Where did you choose to go to college and why?
The University of Virginia, and truly hard to say why. I grew up in Norfolk, VA, and always believed I would study at a small liberal arts school in the Northeast far away, completing a degree in Classics and History and subsequently hop off to graduate school in the UK or Europe immediately upon graduating. My parents never spoke of their time at UVA, but my father took me on a tour there as a “trial run” for visiting other schools. I explored the Grounds, attended a class, studied the list of majors, and secretly told myself that this could work.
After being accepted, UVA offered me a position as an Echols Scholar, which meant I would live with other scholars and could craft my own major with the top faculty at the school if I so chose. There is something to be said about feeling wanted at a college, and much to my parents’ surprise I jumped at the chance to stay in the commonwealth for undergrad.
What was your favorite class in college?
My first year I took a course with Professor Jon Lendon titled “Greek and Roman Warfare.” The class was primarily attended by male students; I was only one of three women in a lecture class. Prof. Lendon delved into the development of the Greek hoplite, whether Homer and Thucydides were reliable historians, what advantages Sparta truly had in the Peloponnesian War, and how to mark different stages of the Roman army by what they carried and how they fought. We debated whether Alexander the Great was more of an on-field strategist or fantastic organizer of goods and men, if Xenophon could possibly have been correct about Greek formations on the battlefield, and we spent a class out of the Lawn to see if marching in a phalanx formation was something possible and practical. I can still hear him bellow, “if you remember any one thing about the Romans, they were horribly superstitious.” To this day I still have the reading materials and notes from this class, and when I found myself teaching and tutoring Latin, I recalled Lendon’s brilliant charisma and tried to emulate and copy his class presence with the hopes of being a tiny bit as engaging as he was.
Why did you choose this career?
“College admissions keeps us on our toes. In many ways, we get to learn with our clients and go through the process with them. It is an honor for me to guide students and their families through this crazy journey to help them find the right fit just for them.”
Good question. Can I say it sort of chose me? I volunteered in the UVA Admissions Office all throughout my undergrad, sometimes even sitting in the lobby to answer questions for visiting families. Upon graduating I stuck around to work as an Admissions Counselor, traveling for recruitment and reading applications all winter and spring.
Although I loved my time in Admissions, I left to enter the world of academia for a few years followed by a few years as a middle and high school Latin and History teacher. I discovered that I am an educator and optimist at my core, always excited to teach and engage with students as they learn. My path led me to one-on-one tutoring and coaching students, so when Margaret asked me to step in as a counselor, it seemed like all of my experiences were culminating into this dream job.
College admissions keeps us on our toes. We go on school visits, too, speak to admissions reps, spend hours on websites and webinars learning about new practices and changing regulations. In many ways, we get to learn with our clients and go through the process with them. It is an honor for me to guide students and their families through this crazy journey to help them find the right fit just for them.
Tell me a little about your family.
Always an adventure! My husband is from Boston, works with numbers and financial regulation, loves his indoor cycling, and is a freelance photographer in his spare time. I sing early music on weekends, teach a knitting class, always looking for another book to read, and take any chance I can to run, bike, and swim. We have three kids, another on the way, and are perpetually on the move. About five years ago we started a tradition of taking cross country road trips to visit and camp in as many national parks as we can. Just recently, we just returned from an adventure out to Colorado where we hiked in Rocky Mountain among moose, marmots, and quite a number of elk.
What was your favorite memory from your college experience?
I found I was always cheered by small moments of beauty or humanity, acts of spontaneity that warmed the soul. One experience I can remember was when a few friends and I were taking downtime on the Lawn, UVA’s main green space at the heart of Grounds, sometime after dinner. A cellist, perhaps a music student or just an accomplished musician, brought her instrument under the portico of the Rotunda and began to practice. She played Bach, Mendelssohn, and upon request even themes from the Lord of the Rings soundtrack. We sat in awe of her as if it were our own private concert.
What was YOUR college essay about?
My parents divorced when I was 7 and subsequently both remarried at different points in my childhood. I am grateful to have supportive parents, step-parents, siblings, half-siblings, and a stepbrother, and we all thoroughly get along. As a child, I played the role of a “people-pleaser” and felt that I needed to be a different person to each of the various people in my life, teachers, friends, and family. In my essay, I likened these adaptations to masks; each one was suited for a different person or situation and prepared ahead of time. At some point as a teen, I realized I had carried these masks so frequently that I began to second-guess what was truly part of me and what I created just to relate to other people. I believe I ended on a hopeful note, that going to college was my chance to forget the masks at home and allow my face and skin to weather with experience and my own reactions.
Moving forward, what plans do you have for College Solutions in the future?
This is a field that both changes rapidly and maintains a strict continuity each year. All of us here on staff connect with colleges on a weekly basis and evaluate how they are adapting their processes to COVID restrictions and distance learning. Everyone, students, counselors, even admissions deans, has had to turn to creative measures to maintain a fair college application process. I think we at College Solutions will be researching deeper and thinking more creatively than before on how students can still find fulfilling volunteer work or enroll in summer internships. We are looking ahead at the questions COVID will pose in future years: what does this mean for our current freshmen and sophomores and how will distance learning affect other non-testing parts of the application like letters of recommendation or extracurriculars? Lots of research to be done.