The Costco Connection

MEMBERCONNECTION

Costco kid goes
Ivy League

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT Brittany Stinson was a much-buzzed-about name earlier this year, when the 18-year-old went viral for getting into ;ve Ivy League schools with her college admissions essay comparing her achievements, interests and life with shopping at Costco. “Costco gave birth to my unfettered curiosity,” she writes in her essay, ;rst published by Business Insider last April.

;e Wilmington, Delaware, resident tells ;e Connection by phone that her family has gone to Costco every weekend since she’s been in a stroller. As she notes in her essay, Costco has held a steady presence in her life; it’s where she ate churros, climbed a mountain of plush toys and cultivated exploratory skills that she uses elsewhere in her busy life.

A college admissions o;cer told Stinson, “ ‘If your essay is on the ground and there’s no name on it, your friend should be able to pick

it up and read it and tell it’s yours.’ So I used that to guide me through the essay writing. I wanted an essay that screamed ‘me.’ ”

;e teen was accepted by Ivy Leagues Cornell, Dartmouth, Yale, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia, as well as the highly competitive Boston University, New York University, George Washington University and Stanford, the latter of which she’ll be attending this fall.

Stinson says she’s been self-driven and goal-oriented from an early age, and set her sights on elite universities as an eighth-grader. She was at the top of her high school class every year (she earned a 4.9 GPA), graduated as class valedictorian, is ;uent in Portuguese and pro-;cient in Spanish, and is passionate about the sciences, having presented an astrophysics project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last summer. She hopes to pursue

;e teen was accepted by Ivy Leagues

the highly competitive Boston University,

t,

a v

COURTESY OF BRITTANY STINSON

both neuroscience and a ;eld in humanities while at Stanford.

She plans to utilize Costco throughout her college career to furnish her dorm and to stock up on her favorite foods; she cites chicken pot pie and apple pie as must-haves. It’s likely this won’t be the last we hear of this high-achieving Costco fan.—Hana Medina

Social skills education

so;ware that could help their sons develop social skills. Unable to ;nd any, in 2011, the

and nonverbal communication.

Zimmermans developed a program to help not only their own boys, now 14 years old, but other children ages 5 to 20 who struggle with social skills. ;e online animated education program, called

;is year, ;e Social Express was included in the U.S. Department of Education’s National Education Technology Plan (tech. ed.gov/netp), the ;agship educational tech-

THE SOCIAL EXPRESS

The Social Express (thesocialexpress.com), teaches social and emotional lessons by interactively engaging users, allowing them to learn through video modeling.

WHEN MARC AND Tina Zimmerman’s 2-year-old twin boys, Jason and Jared, were diagnosed with autism in 2005, ;nding out more about this developmental disorder was beyond di;cult.

“It was quite frustrating to get the information you needed, because it didn’t exist,” says Marc, a Costco member in San Diego.

The content was written by a team of professionals, including speech language pathologists, behavior analysts, social workers, educators and occupational therapists.

;e curriculum covers eight target skills: self-management, conversation, relationship management, critical thinking, paying attention, con;ict resolution, group participation

nology policy document for the U.S. ;e program is now being used in thousands of schools, by numerous professionals and in homes throughout more than 60 countries. The Social Express also has a reporting feature that allows administrators, teachers and specialists to analyze data and print out meaningful reports for Individualized Education Plan meetings, as well as check the status of a student’s or a group’s progress.

A still from The Social Express videos.

THE SOCIAL EXPRESS

As the twins grew older, they were drawn to visual learning on a computer, so the Zimmermans began looking for computer

“It’s a really great tool that can be used at home, at school and [to] empower parents,”

Marc says.—Christina Guerrero

OUR DIGITAL EDITIONS Click here to see a video example of The Social Express.

(See page 13 for details.)

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