Before You Scream at Your College Counselor

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

You've worked so hard to schedule, prepare, and nudge your high school senior to apply to college on time. You shared that small thrill when they hit Submit with time to spare, and you thought you were all set.

Until they got the e-mail.

"Our records indicate your application is incomplete. Unless we receive a copy of your high school transcript in the next five days, we will be unable to process your application."

At this point, you've decided this is personal, so even though it's 7 at night, you pick up the phone and leave The Mother of All Voice Mails for your school counselor.

Boy, did you just blow it. Here's why:

Your entire reaction is based on a wrong assumption. The college hasn't said "Forget it"; they've said, "We need something." You can help them get what they need. Was that voice mail helping the college? Was it helping your child?

The college likely has the information. Even with advanced technology, admissions offices get backed up — so the transcript might not be in your child's file, but it is in the college's application system somewhere. That means your high school counselor — the one you just called incompetent — sent the transcript, and in a timely fashion.

If the college already has one copy of your transcript, they don't want another one. If the transcript is already in the college's system, they really don't want a second copy, since that would just increase their backlog. The only way to double check is for someone to call the admission office, and see if the first copy has found its way to your child's file.

You just berated the person who can help you the most. To be honest, the person who should call the college is your child (it's their application), but it's likely you want the school counselor to call. You know — the one you just described as incapable of doing their job.

This isn't to say they won't help you and give your child their full support, but if you've just given them a big, and very angry, piece of your mind, you've now put them in a spot where they need to start keeping a paper trail of your, um, complaint. That takes time; so does recovering from being told by someone who last applied to college 20 years ago that you don't know what you're doing. You want the problem resolved now, but you've just prevented that from happening. Is that really a good idea?

You've just left an impression you can't erase. Let's say the transcript is already there, or that a second one is sent, making your child's file complete. The college is now considering your child carefully, but they'd like a little more information about them. How does your child react to setbacks? How well do they speak up for themselves? Do they demonstrate flexibility?

The person the college will be talking to is — you guessed it — the school counselor, who is now only able to extol the virtues of your child's ability to hand their problems over to Mommy and Daddy to solve, simply because that's what the counselor has experienced. This isn't about a grudge; this is about their experience.

It's easy to freak out about the college admissions process, but just because you can, it doesn't mean you should. That's even more true when challenges arise, and your child looks to you to set the model for handling adversity they should take with them to college. This assumes the college still wants them. Part of that is up to you.

Ten Things Juniors Need to Know About College

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

Along with the New England foliage, college fever is at its peak this week. As seniors scurry about, trying to remember their middle name while making application deadlines, now might be a good time to get juniors focused on what really matters, hoping they can avoid this frenzy next year. Ready?

1. This is about you. A few of the seniors in your school are just discovering this, as they try to figure out how to tell their parents they’d rather go to the local college no one’s heard of, instead of the famous college that admitted them that they really hate. You don’t want to be that student next year—so don’t apply to any college you’re sure you don’t want to attend.
2. That means you drive the bus. The only way you get to stay in charge of things is for you to keep track of who’s doing what—and to make sure you end up doing most of it. So, you write your essays, you submit the applications, you call the college with any questions you have, you ask the teachers for the letters of recommendation, you talk to your counselors. Colleges say they’re hearing more from parents than students, and that hurts your chances of getting in. Grab the keys, buckle up, and get busy.
3. If you need help, say so. You don’t have to be a team captain or a born leader to get into college, but you’ll need to know how to ask your high school for your CEEB code, because you’ll need to ask your college for all kinds of things. And when you get the answer you need, remember that someone just made your life better. Say thank you.
4. There’s more to college than classes. If you ask any adult about their college experience, they’ll talk about the friends they made, the trips they took, and the life lessons they learned. Classes are part of the college experience, but only a part. Visit the campus that could be your home to make sure it feels like home, both in and out of the classroom.
5. College is expensive. Nearly everyone’s college plans depends on how much aid they’ll get to pay for it—but how much will you need, and how much might end up being loan? The time to start finding out is before you apply, not after. You’ve already had one awkward talk with your parents, about where babies come from. It’s time to make it two.
6. Lots of people want to go to the same college. Not everyone will get in. That could be you. 95% of the students applying to Ivy League schools can do the work, and hundreds—that’s hundreds—of valedictorians—were denied admission to the Ivies this year. You may never need Plan B for college, but you’ll need to know how to make a Plan B once you’re in college. Now is the time to practice. Find two schools you’d love to attend where your chances of admission are greater than getting struck by lightning. They exist.
7. A little planning is good. Many colleges with February deadlines are actually rolling admission schools, where it’s first come, first serve. Find out which of your colleges are rolling, and apply by mid-October. They are harder to get into in February. Much harder.
8. A lot of planning is bad. There’s a lot to consider when applying to college, but two hours charting the probabilities of your admission under different early action plans are really two hours that are wasted. Instead, use that time watching this. Or this.
9. The first year of college isn’t Grade 13. College classes meet on a different schedule, and cover material at a different pace, so your study skills will have to be flexible and your mind will have to stay sharp. Learning does that for you, so keep paying attention to high school until you’re finished with high school.
10. You’re a senior. Act like it. Applying to college is a temporary, interesting hobby, not a lifestyle. Work on your college applications a couple of hours each weekend, and leave the rest of the week for studying, bonfires, dances, and French fries. Lots and lots of French fries.

Is College Worth It? An Update

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

A few years ago, there was a discussion about the value of college— two- year, four-year, even certificates. I wrote a column in response to that discussion, and most of it is below…

And in reading it, it seems like it might need updating, in light of new data. It’s clear parents, and even students, are seeing college as a vocational training experience, and not a life-shaping one. I get that; college costs money and for many, the time spent in the classroom is time that could be spent on the job, bringing home money for a household. In addition, there’s a question about the relevance of what’s being taught. Is Shakespeare really all that important today?

Three quick points:

• College doesn’t have to cost as much as you think it does. Tuition at a four-year public averages $11,000 a year. With any reasonable amount of help from the Federal government or the college, the family share is about a car payment each month.

• Yes, flipping burgers has become more lucrative in the post-COVID era, with full-time wages starting at $30,000 a year in most markets. Still the four-year college graduate will make twice that much a year over the course of a career—and if you marry a working college grad, your household has 4 times that much money. 4 years, for a million bucks.

• Your social media feed is full of stories of couples that divorce, politicians who lie, and rich people who break the rules. So is Shakespeare—except that, in reading his plays, you can see what happens at the end. You don’t need Shakespeare, but you don’t need McDonald’s fries either—and yet, life is so much better with both.

So read what’s below, and judge it as sentimental, if you wish. As society becomes more polarized, and mental health needs only increase, it could be that the sentimental part of life, and college, holds more value than we think.

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It’s October, and senior year is in full swing: 5 academic classes, one honors class, and 2 APs. If all goes well, you’ll be admitted to a college that’s right for you, where you’ll get to do this for four more years.

“Dude” you say to yourself, “is college worth it?”

Your parents come back from a dinner party in the neighborhood. “I ran into Jenny Smithers” your Mom says. “She graduated from State U this spring with Honors in Architecture, but with the slow job market, she’s an assistant manager at Burger World and living at home.” “She’s the eighth college grad in the neighborhood who came back home” says Dad. “One more, and the unemployed college grads can start a baseball team.”

“Dude”, you say to yourself, “is college worth it?”

You take a break from job hunting to catch the end of the sports show on TV. As you’re flipping the channels, you stop at a story that talks about Bill Gates, Abe Lincoln, and some woman in Connecticut. The story says Bill Gates didn’t finish college and Abe Lincoln never started, but this woman in Connecticut took out $115,000 in loans to go to college. She now has a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy, and can’t get a job.

“Dude” you say to yourself.

You head back to the computer, and make a scientific investigation. It turns out that the unemployment rate is lowest for students with college degrees. It also turns out that most of the job growth in the next 10 years will come in jobs requiring training after high school, but not a four year degree. It also turns out the average graduate with a Bachelor’s Degree has $30,000 in college loans.

“Whoa!” says you.

You’ve decided your homework can wait, and you head down to Maggie’s Pizza. Dave’s the manager on duty tonight, and he’s the smartest guy you know.

“’Sup, bro?” he says, without looking up from the pizza he’s cutting.

“Dave, is college worth it?”

Dave looks up, puts down the pizza cutter, and wipes his hands on his apron.

“Let’s see. Moved in the day before classes started, and I was so scared, I didn’t unpack til November 12th. My roommate was from Brooklyn, and he taught me how to eat pizza the right way. Read my first book of poetry. Worked my summers cleaning dorm rooms, and swore I’d never do that again. Went to Scotland for three weeks, and got to see the sun set at midnight. Learned how to footnote a paper, why camels spit, how to write the business plan that led to this store and the four others in the chain, and why it matters to me who wins the elections in Turkey.”

“What happened November 12th?”

“I met Maggie.”

“Hmm.”

“What about you, man? You know what you want to study?”

“No.”

“Where you want to live?”

“No.”

“Do for a living?”

“No.”

“Yeah. That’s about where I was, before I went. Slice to go?”

Dave shows you how to eat pizza Brooklyn style, and you head for home.

“Where’ve you been, champ?”

“Sorry, Dad. Just needed to clear my head.”

“Well, it’s a busy time for you.”

“Yeah. Hey Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Who’s running for president in Turkey?”

The Key to College Readiness

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

Seniors, it's the first month of school, and seniors are already in the doldrums. That glow of the first day of senior year is a million miles away, buried under layers of college essay drafts, emails to the teachers writing your college letters, and four failed attempts to remember your school's CEEB code. One college application is in, two more are stalled, and it seems like all you can do now is wait for something to change.

And you're right. If you want to be college-ready, it's time to go bowling.

This isn't about adding one more extracurricular to your Common App, and this isn't a way to earn that PE requirement you somehow dodged in 10th grade. This is about getting a taste of college life here and now, since bowling teaches you:

Humility: Just about everyone is a terrible bowler, and it drives you crazy that you are no exception. This is largely because you can't come to terms with the fact that the idea seems so simple — throw the ball, knock down the pins — but the reality is just more complex.

College is just like this. College students take four classes that each meets twice a week, and you have six daily classes in high school. With all of that free time, how can anyone possibly run out of time to study or turn in a late assignment — especially since someone else does the cooking? Try as you may, you just don't understand the drama; but thanks to the intricacies of bowling, it will become clearer to you right around the fourth frame. Remember this freshman year.

Flexibility: Amateur keglers go to great lengths finding an outfit that goes nicely with rented bowling shoes. These fashion marvels may have one blue stripe, one red stripe, brown laces, and a spot of fluorescent orange paint sprayed on each toe, but you refuse to look bad at the bowling alley. You will scour the back of your closet, delve to the depths of your dresser drawers, and even enlist the help of your parents (!), but you will find the perfect ensemble to keep everyone's eyes off the only pair of shoes you are ever likely to wear that glow in the dark.

College is no different. Try as you may, you won't be able to escape the overcooked Friday fish casserole, the roommate with a passion for loud polka music, or the lab partner who persists on sharing their political beliefs that are the polar opposite of yours. You can't run, you can't hide, and setting your hair on fire just won't help. It's time to search high and low for a way to put the best possible face on the situation, and move forward — even if you have to ask for help to do so.

Understanding: You've bowled the same way since you were five. The first three frames are awful, the next four frames make you feel you could be the next king of the alley, and the last three frames give you a sore arm and a lot of time in the gutter.

Seeing the pattern of when things are about to go sour is the beginning of wisdom, and the end of life in the gutter. So do something different. Warm up your arm, don't throw the ball so hard, and remember what happens. You'll learn a little more about what works and what doesn't, and that will come in handy for the next frame of bowling, or for your college frame of mind.

You see, bowling makes you college-ready. It's all about the approach.

College Counseling and Mental Health

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

The key to all counseling—personal, academic, career, mental health, college—lies in one goal:  To give the client something new to think about.

Consider that for just a moment.  

A client comes into our office with a given set of rules and ideas about how the world works.  Since they haven’t come in for a social call, it’s clear they want those rules and ideas to do something else than what they’re now doing.  They want them to make more sense.  To open up more possibilities.  To bring them more peace.

How do you know this has occurred?  You can see it in their eyes, hear it in their voice, watch it in their step.  No, they probably haven’t overcome whatever it is that brought them in.  But they’re leaving with a new plan for what the next step is, and what it could lead to.  That’s not just hope; that’s strategic hope.  That’s counseling.

I thought about this when I read about a new survey of high school counselors showing more time is being spent on mental health counseling, and less on college counseling.  The survey suggests students feel the cost of college is a big factor in keeping them away from thinking about that option, followed by uncertainty about their career interests.  Apparently the thinking behind this last factoid is, why go to college unless you know what you want to be when you grow up?

These data points should be discouraging to the profession for a number of reasons:

• The shift is much more significant in public schools than private schools.  Over 60 percent of public school counselors report a downtick in college counseling, compared to 18 percent in private schools.  If we accept the long-standing premise that private school parents tend to be more involved in their child’s education, that would suggest public school students are shutting out college before they don’t really know what they’re saying no to.

• That’s clearly true with the issue of not going to college because they are unsure about career options.  Going to college used to be a vital step in the process of career exploration, and many (most) colleges are designed to give students two years to try out new paths and personas before settling on a major.  Why are students assuming otherwise?

• It’s certainly true that the colleges that get all the media attention cost too much—on average, over $43,000-- and, once again, that’s all the more reason for the media to create a more balanced approach to covering postsecondary options.  In Michigan, most students can go to the first two years of college for free, and in Detroit, most can go to four years of college for free.  Otherwise, a year of public college will run you a little over $11,000, and that’s before financial aid.  Not exactly a car payment, but manageable, with some advanced planning—planning public school counselors can, and should, be giving families in sixth grade.

• The report is a reminder of the sad level of training most public school counselors get in college counseling.  College counseling and mental health counseling aren’t either-or propositions—in fact, tell a mentally distressed student college is a fresh start, and watch their eyes light up.  But we aren’t trained that way; college counseling is an add-on about getting into Harvard, not something every student deserves to understand.

Until the media, and counselor training programs themselves, stop selling college as an elite activity, too many students will make choices they don’t understand, and that is a disservice to them, their families, and our society.

Initiative

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

He was the best combination of head and heart, the kind of student who wanted to change the world, who knew that doing so would take more than just hoping it would happen.  That’s why he went to see the director of our summer studies program one spring, having done his homework.

“I was reading an article the other day that said something like 85 percent of all students living in urban areas don’t know how to swim” he told the director.  “Since all the students in our summer program are from Detroit, I was thinking it might be a good idea to teach them how to swim.  My friends on the swim team and I can do that.”

And that’s how 200 kids from Detroit learned how to swim that summer—and 200 more the summer after that, and the summer after that, and ever since.  The summer swim program soon became as much a part of being on the school’s swim team as 6 AM practices, thanks to a smart kid with a good heart who had an idea, and acted on it.

No one ever knows why a college takes a student, especially the colleges that are incredibly popular.  Everyone has very similar grades, most tend to have the same test scores, most teacher letters are written so badly they don’t say much of anything (just tell stories about the student, really), and more than a few personal statements are devoted to students talking about how they’ve made a difference in the world.  But I’d like to think admissions offices took one look at this student, who started a program that teaches .03% of a city how to swim every summer, and said “Yeah.  That’s it.”

Make no mistake—there are tons of students out there who try to persuade colleges they’ve shown initiative every year.  It’s just that most of them don’t really have an example of demonstrated initiative that will make a college stand up and pay attention.

Where do they go wrong?

One and done  The biggest mistake is when students start a school club that is often based on a personal interest, and that’s it.  There’s no Anime club at school?  Cool—I’ll start one, hang 5 posters up at school, name myself president, and Hello Harvard!

Harvard, and most every other college, sees this coming.  If all you’ve done is start a club, with no information on membership, frequency of meetings, or activities, you’re whistling in the wind.

Classroomitis OK, says you, if it’s meetings they want, it’s meetings they’ll get. Three pals of mine and I will meet monthly and watch our favorite shows at school.

Mmmm. How about putting together some classic Anime episodes and presenting them to interested middle school students at their school?  Or introducing this genre to folks at the local senior center?  Taking your interest on the road shows a little more innovation—and, not coincidentally, shows a little more commitment.

Sit and git  Why stop at watching Anime—how about making some?  Zoom in an Anime artist who wants to share their talents, and open the seminar to your larger community.  You’re now changing a town, especially if…

Create an event …it’s capped off with an annual Anime festival, held in the school auditorium.   Local artists share their wares, maybe a guest lecturer comes by.  Add some snacks, and you’ve built something bigger than yourself, something that will last after you graduate, something that makes a difference.

Do that, and it may get you into college.  Then again, maybe that doesn’t matter as much anymore.