Advice for Collegebound Juniors

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

Now that most of the smoke is clearing from this year’s college application season, there seem to be some things juniors want to plan on doing that seniors, for better or worse, didn’t have to worry about. Ready?

Make sure to take the SAT, ACT, or both It wasn’t all that long ago many, many colleges decided maybe test scores didn’t matter that much after all, and went test optional, leaving it up to the student to decide if their test score really said very much about them.

It turns out some colleges are finding their testing addiction tough to kick, so many are now heading back to requiring tests. You’ve worked hard to find a college that will offer you the right mix of challenge, support, and opportunity, so keeping it open as an option by dedicating four hours to a test (and the prep that goes with it) is worth it. I wish it were otherwise, but it’s time to be safe rather than sorry. Sign up for at least one test, and plan on taking one a second time if you can.

You need a backup plan, Part I The story of the year that has me yanking what little hair I have out by the handful are the ones that are being right now about the highly popular colleges that have become “easier” to get it, since the admit rates have gone from 3 percent to 5 percent.

What does that mean? Well, in basketball terms, it means that, for every shot taken last year, 3 went in. This year, 5 will go in.

Don’t let the numbers fake you out. Find some nice colleges just like the one you love that aren’t crazy competitive to get into, and apply—and remember, there are some nice honors and residential colleges at public universities that offer nice aid to smart kids.

You need a backup plan, Part 2 The other story that’s nuts is the “four years of college isn’t worth the price” argument that keeps students from applying to college in the first place. It’s easy to go into a Mercedes showroom and decide you can’t afford the latest model, since everyone (more or less) pays the same amount. Not so college admissions, where financial aid takes individual situations into consideration; some states offer free tuition for the first two years, and some colleges make all aid packages loan free.

Don’t let the sticker price scare you away. Find out what the real cost will be to you by applying for admission and aid, and see what happens.

You need a backup plan, Part 3 Finally, the news is replete with students who just don’t want to go to school anymore, that the prospect of four more years of The Scarlet Letter just isn’t their idea of a good time. 

Fair enough—try this.

Somewhere in your community, someone is giving what’s called an aptitude test. This test measures the skills you have, and can give you some idea what career you should go into, based on talent—that’s based on talent, not interest, so these tests do have some limits.

Go take an aptitude test, and have someone go over the results with you, especially the part that talks about what kind of training you need after high school to get a job in this field. High schools, community colleges, and the military tend to offer them, and this can help you get some idea what should come next that truly won’t be a waste of money—provided it’s a job you like.

Decision Time is Nigh

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

This is a time of great excitement for all of you, but before you go any further, it’s important to know three things about selective college admissions. I cannot overstate the importance of reading this twice, thoroughly, before you move ahead—OK?

Some colleges will find their applications are at an all-time high The number of students graduating from high school goes up and down, but one constant is the number of students applying to highly selective colleges—it always tends to go up. Even if it didn’t, getting admitted to colleges with a 6 percent acceptance rate is just plain hard to do. This isn’t a random process, and there’s more to it than just grades, but an increase in the number of applicants makes it that much harder to get admitted.

There is a common reason why colleges deny admission to most applicants The number one reason selective colleges turn down most applicants is simple—they run out of room before they run out of great applicants. If they had more dorm rooms, and more professors, and more classrooms, they’d love to take more students. But they cannot do justice to the students they admit by taking too many students, since no one gets a quality education that way—and that’s not fair to anyone.

An admissions decision is NOT a character indictment With more applications, and limited space, colleges must create a learning community that is exciting, diverse, and rich with opportunities. Doing that is a mix of science and art, a mixture of data (grades, maybe test scores) and insight (essays, letters of recommendation), and frankly, a little guesswork, where (as one admissions officer said) the standard is excellence, not perfection. In selecting these students, these colleges will tell you that just about everyone who applied qualifies for admission—they would be a great student, benefit the college tremendously, and contribute to the college in many ways. Since you applied to a highly selective college, all of that applies to you.

Given that, I can’t think of any way a letter of denial or waitlist should be interpreted to mean “The college doesn’t like me”—or worse, “”I am not a good person”. College admissions is about many things, but it is never a judgement about you as a person.

Most colleges go to great pains to point this out when they send their No letters. Believe me when I tell you they aren’t just being nice; they truly honor and respect everything you have done as a person, and they are grateful you applied to their college. That may not mean much the minute you hear the news, but it will over time. Whether the college says yes, no, or maybe, your value and worth as a person is cast in stone, and can be shaken by absolutely on one, be it another person, or an admissions committee.

Your life isn’t in that envelope or e-mail; it’s just an admissions decision. You already have a life, and a fine one at that.

Time With Your Parents

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

Your applications are in, but college should still be on your mind. There is no letting up on taking tough classes; no giving up on writing essays; no slacking off on homework, and no telling the teachers how smart they are in the hopes your B will magically become an A.

Fair enough, you think. At least you can stop meeting with your parents, now that the college choices are all made.

Yes. About that.

It would seem something has happened since you first carved 20 minutes out of your week to talk with your parents about college (You did do that, right?). To begin with, they’ve learned to give you space; most parents think it’s crazy to limit themselves to 20 minutes a week to talk about college, especially during the weeks in the fall when you were working on applications and telling them absolutely nothing beyond their allotted time. They’ve learned to trust you more, which will come in handy over time—like one you go to college, when you buy your first couch, and name your first child after a Game of Thrones character.

But something else has happened. Because you met once each week when no one was rushing to get you anywhere, your parents had a chance to see wat you’ve made of yourself since the last time things weren’t so crazy—which for most families, is when you were bout four. I have to tell you—they really liked what they saw. And they’d like to keep seeing it every week for 20 minutes.

This probably makes no sense to you, but when you came home and said “Last Winter exam! Yes!”, they said, “Last Winter exam? No!!” They told you they cried when you went to this year’s Sadie Hawkins Dance because they thought you looked nice, right? Nope—last one. And remember how they once dreaded having you home from school for any reason? Not so much now.

Through the 20-minute meetings, your parents realize they have a child who is smart, knows who they are, and understands a little about how the world works—and that child is moving out of the house in six months. Giving you up then is something they’ll figure out; giving you up now is something they would just as soon not do.

Of course, you don’t have to talk about college—now is not the time to sit in the living room, holding hands and listening to the cuckoo clock chirp away until the college decisions arrive. Order some food in, catch up on a movie, work a jigsaw puzzle—do something, and do anything together.

Love is as much a verb as it is a noun, and showing them what you feel at a time of uncertainty (for you and them) can make a memory that will last far longer than whatever State U has to say in a couple of weeks.

No college decision will change the way they feel about you, just like it shouldn’t change the way you feel about yourself. Twenty weekly minutes of meeting time that isn’t “required” will bring that home as nothing else can, and build a stronger base for whatever is waiting after Decision Day.

Give it some thought as you work on your next scholarship essay. They’re sure thinking about it—they’ve told me as much.

Michigan Assessment Program Thwarts College Opportunity

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

Students looking at life after high school often consider college, and applying to college can sometimes be challenging. In Michigan, it comes as a surprise to many that some of those roadblocks exist in the Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress, the tests given each spring to high school juniors to assess student learning. M-STEP was considered one of leading-edge assessment tools when it debuted in 2014-15, but like all tools, it requires maintenance in order to stay sharp and effective—and when it comes to college access, there are three key ways M-STEP needs to be updated, and soon:

Elimination of Transcript Requirement

State law currently requires M-STEP scores to be posted on student transcripts. This includes the SAT portion of M-STEP, a test that used to be required by nearly all four-year colleges as part of the requirements for admission. But many four-year colleges no longer require test scores, leaving it up to the students to decide if their scores are strong enough to be included in their college applications.

State law doesn’t give Michigan public school students that choice—they have to send their transcripts to colleges, so the colleges get their SAT scores, even if they are low. This means some Michigan students are giving colleges information the student doesn’t want to send—information that could put them at a disadvantage when applying to college. This also means that students from outside Michigan enjoy an advantage when applying to Michigan colleges that don’t require test scores.

Elimination of SAT essay Evidence-Based Reading and Writing

M-STEP also includes the SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing Exam, a test that was part of the national SAT when M-STEP started. This test was intended to give colleges some idea of a student’s ability to write at the college level by requiring a writing sample from all students.

It didn’t take long for most colleges to realize that the writing sample in this part of the test conveyed little information about a student’s ability to do college-level writing, and many colleges began dropping this requirement.

Today, Michigan high school students are one, if not the only, group of students still submitting these scores to colleges — and even though the colleges don’t want the scores, it’s hard for them to unsee a test score that’s submitted. In addition, high school English departments use these results to fine-tune their curriculum decisions, even though colleges feel the results have no bearing on a student’s ability to write.

Elimination of WorkKeys

ACT’s WorkKeys is a tool designed to assess some job skills. No college requires WorkKeys as part of the admissions process, but it was included as part of M-STEP to give students some insights into their vocational options.

Unfortunately, the administration of WorkKeys in spring of the junior year has not delivered on that promise. Since WorkKeys results aren’t available until fall of the student’s senior year, school counselors report that WorkKeys plays little, if any, meaningful role in shaping students’ plans for life after high school, since they’ve already planned their senior year schedules and have been working for up to a year with school counselors on their postsecondary plans.

It's important to measure student progress in school, so long as that assessment occurs in meaningful ways that create opportunities for better, and more, learning. It’s time to put Michigan back in the lead among states promoting meaningful postsecondary planning, and these changes to M-STEP are a strong step toward achieving that goal.

Mental Health Counseling: Time to Assess

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

The COVID crisis threw a lot of things into disarray, from families to schools to school counseling curricula. Eighteen months or online school/in-person-no-wait-online school first required counselors to figure out how to put their counseling curriculum online, then sent them scattering when some districts seemed to arbitrarily decide when to put school online, and when to hold it in person. In addition, many counseling offices put together post-COVID mental health programming that was needed to help students remember how to “do” school in person, and how to move past the isolating effects of the pandemic.

It's hard to believe 5 years have passed since then, but time has indeed marched on, and many counseling curricula are looking like the front hall closet after a long winter—full of mismatched boots and unpaired socks that are taking up a lot of space, but not doing an awful lot.

We’re close enough to spring, so let’s do some curriculum cleaning, shall we?

Reinforcing the idea of a school counseling curriculum You certainly know that there is content and skill sets you want all students to have before leaving your school, but this may still be news to classroom teachers, parents, administrators, or even students. If COVID made you take out the messaging that pointed out that counseling has a curriculum, just like math and English, it’s time to get that message back out there.

Considering the key elements of your mental health offerings I once worked in a school that had an incredible number of parents who worked the 2-10:30 shift at the local car assembly plant, leaving lots of students to put themselves to bed while parents worked, and get themselves up while parents slept. Your community may have special needs as well, on top of the usual developmental issues your students face. If you’re not sure, now is the time for a needs assessment to make sure you’re offering the help that will help.

Is there overlap with community mental health services? Local mental health services aren’t as plentiful as they used to be, but some municipalities, states, places of worship, and community organizations are still committed to helping people live mentally health lives. This is as good a time as any to see what services they offer that may overlap with yours—and if they exist, whether you can break free and offer other programming to expand your services, while referring students out to the community programs they might need.

Do you have personnel or professional development needs? As you focus your services on your school’s needs, you may find there is a skill set missing among your mental health personnel. The data from a needs assessment provides ideal evidence for an administrator to give you the training, resources, or extra helper needed to meet a demonstrated need. Now is the time to ask.

Consider how you’re formatting your services Classroom presentations on bullying may have met the need pre-COVID, but your data may suggest there’s a need for a more focused approach with some students. School assemblies, classroom presentations, afterschool groups and more all have something to offer to meet mental health needs. See where the data guides you, and go there.

The big question Throughout this process, keep asking “What will success look like?” No curriculum is worth the trouble if you just keep teaching it without knowing if students are growing. What that looks, or feels, or sounds like is important to consider now—and so is how you’ll be able to measure it.

A Primer on the US Department of Education

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

The US Department of Education (known as ED) has been in the media spotlight the last two weeks with an intensity that only compares to the FAFSA foul-ups of last year. Just when it seemed like ED was going back to business as usual, along comes a new president who actually isn’t a new president, and ED is getting more discussion than the Kendrick Lamar Super Bowl appearance.

As is always the case with such white-hot social attention, there’s a lot of news out there, a lot of gossip out there, and a lot of hoping out there—hope that ED is on its way out, and hope that ED is going to somehow survive all this. As you make your way through the morning headlines, here are some key ideas to help you sort fact from fiction, and hope from reality.

This Trump administration is different than the last one The 2017 Trump team featured a president who cared Not. One. Whit. about education, with K-12 getting a whopping one sentence in his first State of the Union. Between now and then, someone has convinced the new Grover Cleveland that K-12 is a threat to the American way of life, an example of government overreach, or both. As a result, Team Trump II now wants to clip the department’s wings and influence, any way they can.

Closing ED will be difficult Federal departments are created by Congress, with bills that specify exactly what the new division is supposed to do. That generally means no other part of the federal government can do what Congress wants this part to do. It also means Congress is the only group that can put it out of business.

And yet… Just like a school counseling office, government divisions often end up doing things that aren’t in their job description. ED is no different, offering programming and other services that, it could be argued, are an extension of their mandate, but not an essential element,

That’s where Executive Orders come in. Congress may have created ED, but the president runs it—and the boss can come in at any time and change, add or delete the “other duties as assigned” to ED in any way he’d like. That’s part of what’s going on now, and there is legitimate concern these orders could limit ED’s influence. An Executive Order can also be used to direct Congress to eliminate ED. That may be coming.

Layoffs and Leaves The president can also manage personnel, much like your superintendent does. This can take the form of layoffs, if they feel there isn’t (or won’t be) enough work to do; calls for employees to consider resigning, with the implied promise of layoffs if there aren’t enough resignations; and administrative leaves, an action which takes people out of the office, but not off the payroll. Administrative leaves are the most curious tool in the leadership toolbox, since they don’t affect the budget, but simply keep someone out of the office. It’s generally used to keep dissidents at bay, so they can’t organize any opposition to actions taken by the boss—and those have indeed happened at ED.

DOGE and ED The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has made its presence known at ED, and while DOGE can have access to all kinds of databases and personalized information, its role at ED has, so far, been mostly structural—what can they cut, what can they offload to another division. Efforts to access databases at other departments have made the headlines; if this happens at ED, the same is likely to occur.

National School Counseling Week and 3 Questions

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

National School Counseling Week is next week. I keep hoping this is the year when, like Labor Day, counselors don’t have to be the ones to remind the world about this incredible opportunity to thank their hopelessly overworked selves for everything they do, especially the things they do that no one notices they do.

But it doesn’t look like this is that year, so let me instead not only remind you of this opportunity to remind others, but suggest how you celebrate it. Some holidays are basically a barbecue and ice cream, while others bring along opportunities to reflect. My hope is this will be a little of both. After all, who doesn’t mind a little bit of Sweet Baby Ray’s and a good banana split, while also setting aside the insane pace of the life of a school counselor to sit in your work chair, really feel what it feels like to be sitting, and do a little blue-skying?

If you’re looking for help with what you should be reflecting on, try these.

What would I like to be doing in this job I’m not doing? The last time you thought about this question was probably your first counseling job, where a day didn’t go by without you saying “They didn’t teach me how to do this in grad school”, or, “Why am I not doing what they taught me in grad school?” There’s something about the manic pace of the day-to-day work that discourages big picture thinking, often because we think that taking ten minutes to ourselves is ten minutes less we’re with students.

But there is value to ten minutes without students where we still focus on students, and that’s what this question asks you to do. You’ve done this job for a while now, and you know your community—its strengths, its challenges, its resources, what you could do with just a little more time, a little more money, or a little more organization. There is something within you that wants to dream this dream, and NSCW gives you permission to do so.

What would your principal like you to be doing in this job that you aren’t doing? I’ve long had my eye out on principals, and how they support school counselors, and the good ones can do two things at once: hear what you want to do with the job, and know how you’re perceived by the community. Paired together, under the best of circumstances, they use this knowledge to help you build a path forward, to grow your services and grow as a professional, in a way where everyone wins.

So take the time and ask this question. If it turns out all they honestly want is for you to be more available to be a last-minute substitute teacher, skip this. Otherwise, the answer to this question is vital to the next one.

How can you give your principal what they want, so you can get what you want? A counselor really wanted to attend a national college counseling conference annually. She found the nerve to ask the principal, who said “I’ll find the money, but I never want to hear you complain about changing schedules again.” Done.

Such deals may not be the stuff they taught you in grad school, but it’s part of the real world that allows counselors a chance to better serve students and feel a sense of newness about their work. No one ever wants to own a drill; we want a hole in the wall. And yet.

Thank you for all you do.