License Plate Fail: What a Vanity Plate Taught Me About College Counseling

Exhibit A: The plate I thought was clever. “GET U 1N.” I stand by maybe sixty percent of that decision.

I have a long history of letting my car do my marketing for me. So before I explain the license plate that I had to surrender after one too many misreadings, you should know what kind of person you're dealing with.

Years ago, my wife and I owned a veterinary practice, Helping Hands Veterinary Care. And I drove a car named Casey Bones. Casey Bones was a old sedan we had painted to look like a dog: floppy ears on the roof, big cartoon eyes on the windshield, a tail, the whole thing. Picture the Mutt Cutts van from Dumb and Dumber, but make it a four-door and give it a slightly worse paint job. I drove that dog around town on purpose. I figured every red light was a small, rolling advertisement, and that somewhere out there was a pet whose life might be saved because a stranger saw a car shaped like a beagle and remembered our clinic existed.

Casey Bones. I’ve made peace with not being subtle.

So when I started Grateful College Counseling, I did what I always do. I put the website on the bumper along with the Penn State and Tufts stickers already there for my two kids. I then went looking for a vanity plate to seal the deal.

My first choice was "GET U IN." Taken. Of course it was. So I did what every mildly determined person does at the DMV website and started swapping letters for numbers until something cleared. "GET U 1N." Close enough. And honestly, in the moment, I kind of loved it. It felt like a call to action. It felt like I was owning the whole point of the business. I won't lie to you. For about a week I felt a little like Saul Goodman. Better Call Jake.

Then the doubt crept in, because the doubt always does. The problem with "GET U 1N" is that it isn't quite true. I don't get anybody in anywhere. The students do that. They write the essays, they build the relationships, they do the growing up. I'm the guy in the passenger seat with the map, helping them understand a confusing process and pointing out the turns. "GET U 1N" made it sound like I had a side door to the admissions office. I don't, and I'd be suspicious of anyone who said they did. But the plate was paid for, the letters were bolted on, and I made my peace with the small dishonesty of good marketing. I'd done it before. Casey Bones never actually treated a single animal either.

I lived happily with my slightly-too-bold plate until the day someone read it completely differently than I'd ever intended.

I was getting a comment about the plate, and the person clearly thought "GET U 1N" meant get you one. As in, the Tesla. As in, nice car, you should get one too.

No. Absolutely not. I am not a car salesman. I did not buy an electric car to flex it at stoplights. I bought it because I was tired of paying for gas and wanted to plug in at home like a responsible adult. The last message I wanted my car broadcasting to Richmond was Look at this! Don't you want one? The whole point of the plate was to get kids into college, and instead it had quietly turned me into a guy hawking Model Y's for Elon.

Within a few weeks, "GET U 1N" was gone.

The redemption plate: “UNIV4U” - University for you. Or, if you’re feeling generous, Universe for you.

The replacement is "UNIV4U." The honest reading is University for you, fitting, since the whole job is helping a family find the right one. But my favorite reading is the one I didn't plan: Universe for you. Unlimited opportunity, a wide-open world, the future cracked open instead of narrowed down. That's a lot closer to what this work is actually about than a side door ever was. I'll take "Universe for you" over "Elon's best salesman" every single time.

There's a small, unglamorous lesson in here somewhere, the kind I end up giving families more often than I'd like to admit: you don't fully control how your message lands. You can pick the cleverest words you can find and someone will still read them through their own windshield. All you can really do is make sure the thing you're saying is true, that when somebody finally reads you right, what they find is the real version. Casey Bones was a goofy car, but the clinic behind it meant it. "UNIV 4 U" is a goofy plate, but the work behind it is the realest thing I do.

Anyway. If you see a gray Tesla around Richmond with a plate about the universe, give a wave. Just please don't ask me how to get you one.

I'm Jake Pasternak, and I run Grateful College Counseling, an independent college counseling practice in Richmond, Virginia. We help families navigate admissions calmly, confidently, and kindly. If that sounds like the kind of help you want, you can book a free consultation.