Meet Pedrum!

Pedrum Mardan, College Counselor

Since first entering the world of college counseling in 2014, Pedrum’s students have been admitted to hundreds of colleges and universities, including the most selective like Stanford, Duke, MIT, Georgetown, Northwestern, and all the Ivy League universities; highly competitive public schools like UC Berkeley, UCLA, University of Michigan, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, and University of Virginia; liberal arts colleges including Williams, Swarthmore, Middlebury, and Pomona; and dozens of schools that might not make the U.S. News college rankings but inspired the same level of mutual celebration from both Pedrum and his respective students upon receiving their acceptances. 

Pedrum first aspired to work in education during his teen years attending Cupertino High School, a stone’s throw from Apple’s main campus. Since then, every personal and professional move Pedrum’s made in his life has been in pursuit of that goal. At the time he was selected as a Collegewise counselor, Pedrum was serving as the Director of College Guidance at Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America (LEDA), where he was responsible for guiding a cohort of 100 students through the college application process each year. He received the University of Chicago’s Outstanding Educator Award based solely on the strong nomination from one of his former students who’d matriculated as a student. If ever there were a student testimonial to speak to the impact made by their college counselor, that’s it. 

The best practitioners of college counseling view their profession as more than just a job; it’s an opportunity to make a profound impact on a student during an important and formative time in a teen’s life. That higher sense of calling is what drives them to keep learning, growing, and making meaningful progress toward mastery. As Pedrum describes it:

College counseling is my lucid dream job. It’s futuring and worldbuilding with youth. It's sharing an infectious love for learning. It's shaping young minds and helping them question the world and their place in it. I was built for this!

Pedrum is a health, fitness, and martial arts enthusiast who can be found at dawn most mornings running loops in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. A dedicated in-home chef who just might make the best Thai green papaya salad in the tri-state area, Pedrum also enjoys the tag-along privileges to exhibitions, openings, and talks that come with his wife’s work in the art world.

Education & Experience

UC Santa Cruz, B.A.

New York University, M.A.

Teacher’s College, Columbia University, College Counseling Certification

School Counseling Practicum, High School for Mathematics, Science, and Engineering 

College Guidance Counselor (4 years) and Director of College Guidance, Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America

Admissions Assistant, NYU Opportunity Programs 

Professional Organization Memberships

NACAC: National Association for College Admission Counseling