A Few Reminders as College Decisions Come Out

By:  Patrick O'Connor  Ph.D

This is the week students hear from the rest of their colleges.  Since these colleges include

the Ivy League schools, this week gets a lot of attention from the press and parents, which can lead to a rise in the anxiety levels of most students.

The best way we can support students through this challenging time is to remind them of three things, and remind ourselves of three things.  First, for the students:

It’s a college decision, not a character indictment  It’s always easy for someone else to tell you not to take a college decision personally—after all, this isn’t about them.  But the truth is, ninety percent of the students who apply to a college could do great work there; it’s just that these colleges run out of room before they run out of great students.  If they said no, that’s their loss, not yours, because…

Every college you applied to is a first choice  You may have ended up liking one college more than the others you applied to, but that doesn’t make the others a second choice.  You did your research, liked what you saw, and know you can do great things at all of them.  As long as some of them said yes, you have the privilege—the privilege—of choosing among great options.

You can keep looking  More than a few students get to April and feel the need to start over.  The National Association for College Counseling has a College Opening Update will be up soon—most likely early May—so you can see what colleges are still officially taking students.  If you can’t wait that long, call the college and ask.

For those of us working with students:

Cast the net far and wide  You won’t have to look hard for the students who are elated with their college choices—they’re the ones wearing the Exact. Same. College. Swag. Every day from now until graduation.  The harder search are the students who aren’t happy with their choices who have given up on themselves, who think bothering to ask for help is pointless.  Alert your teachers and administrators to look out for seniors who have a sudden change in temperament, either more quiet or more outgoing than usual.  Chances are, something’s up with them.

Get ready to work the numbers  This week’s joy will become mightily muted for some of your students, as they eventually get past the first page of the acceptance letter, and peek at the financial aid offerings for the first time.  Aid offers are hard to read, and some families just won’t call financial aid offices no matter what.  Be ready to check in with the students who are likely aid candidates, and get ready to make some calls.  It’s best if Mom and Dad do it, but they’ll probably need help. 

Avoid the trap of May 1 There’s a movement underway to celebrate the college achievements of all high school seniors on May 1, the day many colleges ask students to send in an enrollment deposit to one—and only one—college.  There’s nothing like a good celebration, but May 1 isn’t the end of the college search season for many, many, MANY students—especially students attending community colleges or public universities, or students whose financial aid packages are still up in the air. If you have lots of students who fill this bill, consider moving the celebration to later in the month, or build it in as part of graduation.  The goal is to celebrate everyone, and May 1 may be too soon to do that.

The College Counselor Who Left His Own Children Alone

By:  Patrick O'Connor  Ph.D

When it comes to dealing with the key moments of my daughter’s life, I’ve always had my hands full.  The first one came when she was not even two years old, and decided it was time to climb up on the playscape all by herself, just like she’d seen her older brother do.  It didn’t matter that her legs were about half as long, and the diaper she was wearing significantly limited her mobility.  It was time, and that was that.

As she eyed the situation, I was about twenty feet away, clearing some brush, and holding a chain saw, of all things.  There was no way I could drop the chainsaw without her noticing it, and not even the slowest gait towards her would do anything but convince her I didn’t think this was a good idea.  All I could do was stand there and watch, poised on the balls of my feet to spring the twenty feet in the event I needed to catch her.  She didn’t exactly look like Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief, but she made it up, in her own way, safe and sound.

An adjustable wrench was the tool du jour when the next major transition came.  Wearing a helmet that made her very much look like Toad in the Mario Party games, she decided a cold spring day was the right time to be liberated from the training wheels on her bike.  She straddled the seat with excitement as I struggled to get the acorn nuts to budge.  As  I was turning the last one, I was starting to deliver my best advice on how to negotiate the roads in our neighborhood, and the bumps in our driveway, with just two wheels.

It was too late.  Hearing the last of the training wheels hit the ground, she heaved the bike forward, and without so much as one of my hands on the seat to offer temporary balance, she was gone.  Her journey down the driveway was one smooth line of travel, as if she had done this for years. The only job I had left was to watch and admire her getting elegantly smaller and smaller.

The tool I had on hand in the third transition turned out to be one I didn’t use.  My family had the blessing/adventure of having both my children attend the school where my wife and I worked, she as an elementary science teacher, me as a college counselor—the only college counselor.  By the time she was a junior, my daughter had schooled herself from her older brother’s experiences in postsecondary planning.  Look hard, know what you want, and Dad will be more than happy to send out the paperwork.  Simple.

The sentimental part of me wishes something would have happened with her application that would have created a space for me to play Super Counselor, swoop in, and save the day, but the realistic part of me was proud to see there was no such need.  She had to choose between offers at several schools that all made sense for her in their own way, so I did have the chance to hear a little of her thought process as she waded through them, and made an incredibly sound decision.  But that was about it.

Since I’d been in college counseling forever, it would be fair to say I had more than ample resources at hand to be some combination of a Hovercraft Dad and Helicopter Counselor by picking up the phone and making sure things went smoothly.  Not only was that not necessary; it would have been counterproductive. 

The college selection process is as much a discovery of self as it is a choice of what’s next.  Denying my daughter the chance to take the lead, direct her college selection process, and survey the landscape of options she’d created for herself would have dulled the senses needed to self-advocate in college, discern among the pros and cons of a question with strong answers that were also limited in their own way, and take pride in the efforts of living and learning that gave her these choices in the first place.

College is only a great thing if it prepares you for something greater.  The same is true for applying to college, and to this day, I’m grateful humility ruled the day, and the phone was left in the cradle, so my daughter could take her next step, fully emerging from hers.

The Mystery of College Admissions

By:  Patrick O'Connor  Ph.D

My brother was a pretty mean clarinet player in high school.  He had a good ear for pitch, and a great sense of rhythm, and while he didn’t devote excessive hours to practicing, it was clear he knew his stuff.

That’s why we were pretty confident he was headed for a first place rating when the state music festival came along that February.  We got up incredibly early on a Saturday morning, and headed across town to a community college with pretty bad signage.  We finally found the room where he was to perform—he was the third person to play that morning—and he had plenty of time to warm up, then play the piece to perfection, like he had a million times before.

The twenty minute wait for his score was agony, in part because we hadn’t had breakfast, but it was nothing compare to the feeling in our gut when the score sheet indicated he earned a second place rating. 

We then had one of the quietest breakfasts ever at a local restaurant.  There wasn’t really a state of mourning, as much as there was a state of confusion.  What exactly was missing from his performance that kept him from a top rating?

The answer came several weeks later, when his band teacher met up with the guy who had served as the judge for my brother’s performance.  “Yeah”, the judge said, “it turns out he was actually one of the better performers I heard all day.  I be if I had a second cup of coffee before I heard him, I would have given him a first place rating.”

This isn’t exactly the news you want to hear when you’re a high school musician.  To be sure, my brother didn’t let it get him down.  He went on to study music at college, and had a promising side career as a musician for many years.  Still, it’s hard enough to get through high school without having to sort out the mysteries of adulthood, especially when the adults in your life can’t really explain why things like this happen, either.

A number of students are about to experience this same feeling in the next couple of weeks, and they don’t even play the clarinet.  College admissions experts are expecting record levels of applications at the most popular schools, and since these schools aren’t admitting more students than they did last year, that means they’ll be saying no to more students than ever before.

This can be frustrating to students for a number of reasons.  For starters, it’s likely that a ton of students who will get “no” for an answer from the college of their dreams would have been admitted ten years ago, when fewer students were applying to fewer colleges.  A- students may have been good enough for students back then, but now that there are more A students applying, things have changed, even if the A- students can do the work.

On top of that, students will be left wondering what they did—or didn’t do—that kept them from being admitted.  This kind of thinking is pretty hard on a student, since there is rarely a clear, single reason why a college denies a student with great grades and great scores, who did everything short of cure cancer in their spare time.

The reality is that a handful of schools are blessed with the best of the best as their applicants, so they can be a little fussier when offering admission—but even then, they can’t always tell you why they told others no.  That isn’t easy for adults or students to understand, but the best thing to do is adjust your reed, and keep on playing.

College Admissions Isn't Fair. It Also Isn't Simple.

By:  Patrick O'Connor  Ph.D

In addition to Daylight Saving (not plural!) time, we’re about to enter College Decision Time, when a huge number of colleges will be sharing their admissions decisions with students.  These decisions will leave some students with good news, and other students wondering what else they could have done to gain admission.

A new approach to explaining why a college said no to a student is starting to make the rounds.  According to this theory, the real driving factor behind admissions is the school’s mission, or the reason the college says it exists. Yes, you could be a great student with high grades in AP Everything who was president of every club in your high school. Still, if your essays and teacher letters don’t indicate that you understand the college’s reason for existence, this theory suggests that would be reason enough for them not to take you, since their review process would likely reveal that there isn’t a “fit” between what the college is looking for, and what you have to offer.

The piece certainly offers a great explanation for why Joey in the locker next to you got into your dream college and you didn’t, even though your grades and scores were higher than his. In connecting admissions decisions to the school’s mission, the article even offers a strongly-principled reason for why they took your sister five years ago with her lower grades and lack of extracurriculars, but didn’t take you this year. The school has a different sense of purpose now.

So, the article puts together a nice argument, with only one small problem. Admission at most colleges doesn’t work like this at all. Instead, it depends on other factors that are a little more basic, but somehow more complicated—like:

How many people apply. The article tries to emphasize the role of mission at highly selective colleges. This suggests that if these same colleges only had 600 applicants for 500 seats, they’d likely take everybody, no matter what their essays said. That doesn’t make their decisions based on mission; it makes them based on numbers. Simply put, they don’t take everyone who applies, because they don’t have to.

What the college is looking for. It’s certainly true a college is looking for certain qualities in a student, but that search is a little more pragmatic than the article suggests. An admission officer from an Ivy League college once told me “If we’re graduating three hockey goalies this year, and you’re a high school senior applying as a hockey goalie, your chances of admission just went way up.” So what happens if the essays in the hockey goalie’s application don’t reveal a deep understanding of the school’s mission? Is this still a fit?

This has less to do with mission than it does institutional priorities—the particular need the college has that year for Philosophy majors, a bassoonist, or someone who wants to do Neuroscience research. These priorities may have something to do with the mission of the college, but they aren’t as closely related as the article suggests, once numbers come into play. The virtues of athletics may be integral to the college’s existence, but they aren’t going to admit every one of the 18 hockey goalies that apply; they’re only going to take as many as they need in any given year—and this year, that may be none.

Rankings. The last ten years of college admissions have seen an increase in all kinds of devices used to get more students to apply. Snap apps, on-site decisions, and the rise in early application programs all point to a desire on the college’s part to attract more applicants, even though very few colleges are actually enrolling more students than they were ten years ago.

What’s behind the need to do that, if admissions decisions are driven by mission, and not by rankings? Is it impossible to be a solid B+ student and have a better understanding of a school’s mission than your National Honor Society counterpart? If not, why are so many highly selective colleges now denying so many—in fact, nearly all— the B+ students who used to fulfill the college’s mission with distinction?

When most families start looking at colleges, they think the admission process is simple—take strong classes, get good grades, make sure your test scores are strong, join a few clubs, and you’re good to go. That perception works at an incredible number of colleges, but the highly selective colleges have a process that’s less clear, because they don’t have to take everyone who applies. It would be easy to assign this cause to the college’s mission, but that doesn’t reflect reality—and it also doesn’t explain why all kinds of schools say no to some A students and say yes to C students who average 21 points a game.

It would be great if mission was the only reason college admissions doesn’t seem fair, but it isn’t. Like life, it’s more complicated than that, and our students deserve an explanation more representative of that complexity.