New Year’s Day is kind of quiet around my house. Not quiet, as in “everyone breathe quietly, Daddy’s head hurts when he even blinks”. It’s more like the quiet that comes once the rush of something big is over. Like the quiet of eating pumpkin pie for breakfast by yourself the day after Thanksgiving, or finishing off the last bacon-wrapped date after the admitted student event. It’s a time to revel, a time to dream without feeling compelled to look ahead— a time to just be.
That was how this New Year’s started, with a roaring fire that started at noon and stayed til ten; taking the second-to-last pizzelle a lifelong friend makes every year; the understated elegance of making a familiar but rarely used menu.
Except for the Brussels sprouts. I have detested this vegetable since the womb, and my view is only hardened by two facts:
- This is a vegetable that has multiple names, and people argue over which one is right
- Every treatment of them results in the same effect— tasteless, unchewable matter.
My wife slipped them on the menu to placate our youngest, whose palate was not inclined toward any of the other dishes. Knowing ahead of time my portion of these green golf balls would go untouched only seemed to steel her resolve to serve them.
In the spirit of the day, I tried one. Just the right amount of garlic, melty parmesan, and a hint of an olive oil I was certain I didn’t want to know the price of. I ate them all.
I’m tempted to address another item on our New Year’s menu (who on earth named them “funeral potatoes?”), but you’ve come looking for college admissions ideas, so here goes.
Planned change is the Brussels sprouts of college admissions. Things do change in college admissions, but these changes tend to be nuanced tweaks in response to current application trends, or sudden, not-so-subtle declarations from an incoming college president. The recent switch to test-optional admissions by hundreds of colleges over the last few years was more of a shotgun wedding than the result of a prolonged engagement, so that doesn’t count as planned.
It's both necessary and important to be flexible at a moment’s notice, but some changes require more time, research, and discussion in order to be implemented and effective. Our distaste for long-term change has either slowed or wiped out efforts to make important changes in the admissions and enrollment process, like:
- Changes to the FAFSA, which will finally be welcomed by all some three decades after calls to simplify this labyrinth;
- Creation of a common Student Aid Report students could compare offers across colleges without the need of a spreadsheet;
- Expanding college access to include more students who don’t consider college as a viable option.
It’s easy to see why systemic change is the high school senior no one wants to ask to prom—planned change requires discussing the nature of our work with those who don’t see it the way we do, gathering data, and the risk of the change not working.
All of this may be true, but the birthrate decline we’ve known about for years is on its way. That means fewer students heading to college, unless the percentage of college-bound graduates goes up. There’s no other way to get past this zero-sum game; it’s time to make plans for bringing more students into the fold, or many colleges will fold. Let’s begin.
And if you have any leads on that funeral potatoes thing, do let me know.
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