You Can’t Find College Paradise by the Dashboard Light

By Patrick O'Connor Ph.D

“Dr. O’Connor?”

“Hey, Marvin.  Ready for prom this weekend?”

“I’ve been kind of busy.”

“Still sorting out your college choices?”

“Well, I put a spreadsheet together on all three colleges with the information I gathered from their Web sites, my campus visits, and my discussions with their admissions and financial aid officers.”

“That’s great.”

“I double-checked with my parents, and the cost of each college isn’t going to ruin their retirement or drive me into insane debt, so we’re good there.”

“Well done, Marvin.”

“And I created a formula to evaluate each college’s course offerings, campus climate, availability of internships, opportunities for study abroad, social life, job placement probabilities, likelihood for degree completion in four years, and livability.”

“You put this into numbers?”

“Right.  And that’s where I got stuck.”

“I can see why.”

“Yeah—because I forgot to taste the meatloaf at Glindhill.”

“The—“

“I love meatloaf, Dr. O’Connor, so that’s a key part of the numerical value of each college’s social life rankings.  Eastern State’s meatloaf had a little bit of a ketchup aftertaste, and McGinty College offers an amazing bacon-wrapped version on Saturdays.  I’ve asked every caller from Glindhill about their meatloaf, and have three e-mails into their food service division—no response.”

“Really?”

“I even asked one student caller from Glindhill if meatloaf was on the menu this week, so I could go back to campus and taste it.”

“Marvin, that’s a seven hour drive.”

“She said if it meant that much to me, she’d look into it and ship me a piece of meatloaf overnight.”

“Marvin, that’s a little—“

“Too much?  Yeah, since that would be comparing leftover meatloaf with fresh, which would be totally unfair.  I don’t think she thought about that.”

“Marvin, when we talked about your college essays last fall, you were working on one that talked about swimming in the ocean as part of a triathlon. Did you end up using that?”

“Yeah.  I mean, I nearly drowned about 100 yards out because I got caught up in the undertow.”

“I really loved the end of that essay. How did that part go again?”

“’The swim left me exhausted but exhilarated.  I lied on the beach and let the laps of the water—the same water that nearly took me down and away—run over my face like reassuring thoughts.  Even though I wasn’t finished with the race, I knew it was important to stop and catch my breath.  Then I got up and moved on to the next event.’”

“Great stuff, Marvin.”

“You know, it’s good to have these college choices, but it’s a lot to think about.  The spreadsheet sure helped two weeks ago, but now I feel like it’s pulling me under, too.”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve always said picking a college is a mix of brain and heart.  Maybe it’s time to let the heart take over, and catch my breath.”

“What about the meatloaf at Glindhill?”

“I’m betting it’ll be OK.  And if it isn’t, that’s one good reason to think about home and keep it close to me.  Is that crazy?”

“Not at all.”

“So Dr. O, any good leads on a tux?  My brother also rented late when he was a senior, and all they had left was yellow.  Dude looked like a banana.”

“Ouch.”

“Hey, the team name at McGinty is the Fighting Bananas.  You don’t suppose this is a sign that I should--?”

“Um, Marvin?”

“Right, right—let the ideas wash over me. Got it.”

The moral?  In using meatloaf data to pick a college, two out of three ain’t bad.

Are College Counselors Really Necessary?

By Patrick O'Connor Ph.D

Admit it—at some point in your life, you didn’t really believe college counselors were all that important.

 After all, how hard could it be?  You point the student towards a great online college search program, they plunk in their grades, their test scores, and what they want to study, and boom—their choices appear in alphabetical order, right there on their phone.  Now they just turn in the forms, and it’s off to four years of missing every 8 AM class but never missing a single midnight pep rally.  This is work?

My two-word response to this question is—holistic review.

When college counselors hear a school uses a holistic evaluation process, they know students don’t have to hit the college’s average test scores  to get a close look—if there’s something else in the student’s application that is compelling, a lower test score doesn’t automatically get them voted off the island.  Depending on the student’s situation, grades, and scores, a holistic review can make a strong case for a student whose test scores aren’t quite there; at the same time, holistic review can reveal some real-life chinks in the armor of a student whose standardized test taking skills have been honed since receiving a set of SAT flash cards for their third birthday.

If this process sounds a little squishy, it’s supposed to be—and many college admissions officers like that.  They argue that colleges are attended by students, not test scores.  If a college wants to be have a thriving environment of successful inquiry, why not consider all of the factors that make a student more than the sum of their parts? If this means a student with lower SAT scores is admitted over a student with higher SAT scores, who’s to say that’s wrong?

The answer to that question is not:

a)      US News and other college rankings publications;

b)      College presidents, who know those rankings are used to determine the value of the college;

c)       Investment bankers, who use those rankings to determine a college’s credit worthiness.

No, the answer is d) All of the above.

There may indeed be many great applicants who don’t put their best foot forward on standardized tests, and many of these same students may have qualities that would prove to be worth far more than a good test score.  But these intangibles don’t translate well to a spreadsheet; and in a world where having a Best Colleges list means you have to have a list of Not-So-Best Colleges, the bottom line can’t be a Mobius strip.  So college presidents hate squishy, while many college admissions officers love squishy—and they work at the same college, which has to take in at least a few students now and then.

Enter the college counselor.  Knowing some colleges rely more heavily on test scores than others—and knowing which ones those are; knowing some colleges (try as they may) insist they are holistic but prominently display their high college rankings on their Web site; and knowing that Jane is an amazing writer who is so perceptive about author’s tone she really can see why every answer on the SAT reading test could be correct-- we greet Jane at the door, thank her for the printout of colleges the computer says are perfect for her, remember the day she wrote an entire Chemistry lab report in iambic pentameter,  take a deep breath, and say “So, you want to major in Writing?  This is really a great list.  But what about…?”

And when you think about that moment, not only do you realize people think college counselors are important. 

You realize they want to be one of us.

You Have to do What to Get Into College?

By Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D


School counselors just can’t win in April.

Last week, you went to get hot dogs for opening day of baseball season, and you were mobbed by questions about why straight A students didn’t get into Harvard. This week, you went to get some red pens at the drug store to do your taxes, and people are asking you about the articles describing who did get into Harvard:

“Did you hear?  American rich kids are out at the Ivies.”

“All of those fancy community service trips and summer camps?  All passé.”

“Forget academics-- students should focus on becoming trapeze artists to get into Princeton.”

The good news is that this college second-guessing is so depressing, it’s actually making you look forward to doing your taxes.  The bad news is the people saying these things are the parents of juniors who want you to “get them into college” next year.

What’s a counselor to do?  Tell the truth.


*  Reviews of the admission patterns of several Ivy League schools do indeed show admit rates are up for international students and students who are the first in their families to go to college.  While that means fewer upper class students from college-going families were admitted, it doesn’t mean they were shunned, and there’s a good chance they’ll be room for them next year, too.


*  Is it really news that exotic community service trips are over? However well-meaning they may be, spending thousands of dollars to work with students in need has always defeated the point, something colleges (and I) first pointed out four years ago—and in this column (see http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2008/0328/p09s03-coop.html)

In terms of summer camps, however, one wants to be careful here. A student writer who has left her high school peers in the dust needs a top-tier summer program to grow as a student. Since there’s no posing involved here, that student should go to the best program she can get her hands on, and ask her high school counselor to tell the colleges the student is by no means trying to impress her way into a college.  At the end of the day, passion still matters; students shouldn’t be afraid to show it.


*  This trapeze advice is simply astonishing.  Colleges are indeed looking for students with unusual talents, but since when is this news?  Colleges have long recruited athletes, musicians, and other scholars whose grades aren’t cum laude-- but that’s because colleges value these talents and get something in return.  Unless they’re the national champion, a student who’s a great trapeze artist is unlikely to get a break in admissions if they have a B average— special as it is, colleges get no money, media, or prestige from those who fly through the air with the greatest of ease.

In addition, these “special” talents don’t always play out as the student might expect.  If East Coast College is looking for violas this year, it’s good to be a violist.  On the other hand, being a violist next year won’t get you very far, since they’ll have a bumper crop leftover from this year.

Since students won’t know how many violists are needed until you’re a senior, it’s probably best to pursue the talents they love, engage in the extracurriculars that appeal to them, give back to their local community, and take the most challenging classes they can succeed in across the curriculum. If they end up playing a viola, they’ll find a great school…

…and if that advice turns out to be a little old school, sometimes it’s good for things to be certain-- just like taxes.

A New Response to College Rejections: Surrender

By Patrick O'Connor Ph.D

It had to happen sooner or later.

Two years ago, colleges created waitlists that put more people on hold than Peggy the Customer Service Agent. A few people sighed, but no one really complained.

Last year, colleges ramped up the process of sending student acceptances by e-mail—in the middle of the school day.  Significantly less Calculus was taught for one day, but nothing more than that.

This year, things are different.  This year, people are disillusioned.

As highly selective colleges report more record highs in applications, these same colleges are (naturally) reporting record lows in the percentage of students offered admission.

In the past, this news was met by students with a shrug and even a smile, as if they were saying “It’s OK. Hey, who could get in with odds like that?”  This year, fewer students are looking at it that way, and when you listen to what they are saying, it is a cause for concern.

They generally say something like this—and this isn’t hyperbole:

“This is unbelievable. I have a friend (neighbor, cousin) who applied to an Ivy League School with straight As and a 35 on the ACT.  She wanted to volunteer at the local homeless shelter as a ninth grader, but there was no local homeless shelter—so she started one.  It now has a board of directors, a $50,000 budget funded by local donations, and it feeds and houses 100 people every night in the winter—the same season she captained her school volleyball team to a second straight championship in a five-state super tournament and was a third place finisher in a national science fair.”

Students who raised these points in the past had very strong grades and test scores, but not near-perfect ones; there was usually enough of a gap between where they were and the pinnacle to give the colleges the benefit of the doubt.

The same was true with extracurricular activities.  80 hours of community service is well above the mean, and leads to important societal changes—but there were always students who had a broader vision; did a little more; showed more innovation.  That can no longer be said when students of profitable start-up tech companies and mega-volunteers are hearing no.

“She thought she was going to have to give up her position as CEO of the shelter when she went to college, but since each of the 12 selective schools she applied to denied—denied—her admission, she’s going to the honors program at a state college, so she doesn’t have to.”

This is far from the shoulder shrug students gave to Fate in the past, and it’s more than loss—it’s genuine disillusionment, a surrender which is echoed in a very common last line:

“What does it take to get into one of these schools?”

This is the largest cause for concern. Colleges seem poised to continue to solicit more applicants without increasing the number of admission offers, and students may continue to try and be all things to the admissions office in the hopes of getting an offer that will only become more coveted over time.

Still, the student response to this year’s scantier yield of yeses is calling the value of work ethic, selflessness, and industry into question in a way not seen in previous years, and the cost of that reflection may soon be much higher than reassuring Suzie the honors college at State U is a pretty great education.  This could turn out to be a life lesson that just isn’t very pretty.

We all need to watch this very carefully.

Two More Options as Colleges Send Decisions

By Patrick O'Connor Ph.D.

Most of the Ivy League college news will land today, Thursday, at 5 PM.  We’ve discussed some of the options students will receive when they open their e-mails or letters, but there are two other trends that deserve a little attention from the Class of 2012:

January Admission  Seniors expecting to hear an answer from an admissions office may instead be asked a question—“How About January?”  A growing number of larger universities (most of them public) started using this approach about four years ago.  Knowing some freshmen who arrive as part of a large class in the fall will not be returning in January, these colleges invite some applicants to plan on coming to campus in the middle of the year, where they will have a bed, a room, and class sizes that don’t require the Superdome to seat the class.

Students see some clear plusses in this offer.  First and foremost, it gives them something many students crave—regulated time off from school.  Knowing college awaits them in the winter months, students travel, complete volunteer work, or more often find fall jobs to make sure their college experience is well-financed once it happens in January.  Parents should also see the plus of sending their student off to campus well after the Fall Frenzy, when energetic freshmen find try out ways to test their new-found freedom in ways that are, well, interesting. 

On the other side, students will also miss some of the safer fall rituals.  Football games are a big part of many schools that offer January admission, and many students make lifelong friends during those crazy fall days.  Some colleges might be talked into offering football tickets to January admits (hey, it doesn’t hurt to ask), but think carefully about saying yes to a later start if you’re worried about making friends.  You may need to work a little harder at building friendships in January; on the other hand, you could be the hit of campus with stories of your fall adventures, and you could find it easier to get better grades now that everyone’s a little more settled.

Transferring  Record applications and high college costs are leading more students and families to decide their senior will start at one college, then transfer to another college.  If this is something you’re considering, keep these points in mind:

·         Make sure your dream college accepts transfers.  There are some colleges that don’t accept transfer students, or admit so few that it’s impossible to achieve the dream.  Ask ahead.

·         Check transfer requirements.  Students often assume they can transfer to another college after just one semester, but that isn’t always the case.  Ask the college you’re transferring to for a transfer guide; this shows the classes you should take at your first college, and it outlines what grades you need to have for transfer admission.

·         Beware of electives.  You don’t always get the classes you want at your first school, which may tempt you to sign up for an elective not on the transfer guide.  This may still work out, but don’t waste your time and money; call the transfer admission office at your future college to see if this class will count as an elective, a requirement, or as nothing.

·         Enroll early.   Many transfer students start at colleges where enrollment for Fall classes starts in late June.  Don’t get five 8 AM classes by accident; apply to your first school now, take their placement tests now, and register—well, you get the idea.

Three College Admission Trends That Are Only Getting Bigger

By Patrick O'Connor Ph.D

Hollywood might think The Hunger Games is being released this Friday, but school counselors know the craving for meaty college messages has been on for three months. Early returns suggest applicants will be seeing an increase in three trends that could make April fools out of student and counselor alike, unless we plan ahead.  Here’s what to expect when decisions come out next week:

Another year of increased “no’s” The US birth rate may suggest a decline in the number of high school graduates, but colleges are still receiving record numbers of applications.  Two years ago, the University of Michigan received 32,000 applications, and that number jumped to 40,000 last year when U-M joined the easier-to-complete Common Application.  Predictions of a flat 2011-12 fell flat themselves when U-M announced they received 43,000 applications this year, leaving less wiggle room in the class than ever before.

Since colleges aren’t getting any bigger, more applications mean more rejection notices, including no’s to students who would have been sure bet admits two years ago.  There’s a good chance one or two of your students will get caught in the surprise; be ready to talk about the number of applicants again this year, confident you can say it was a record-breaking year.

Waitlists are something more and something less  Increased applications also means more students will be hearing “maybe” on a day when they had hoped to hear “yes.” More than one student has told me that being on the waitlist of a college is actually worse than being denied, since you have no idea if your name is going to be taken off the list, *and* you still have to make plans as if you weren’t going to be admitted.  It’s a good thing senior prom doesn’t work this way; imagine how a student would feel on the dance floor when their partner points to someone across the room and says “There’s my first choice.”

Waitlists may not be new, but their function took a big turn a couple of years ago, when more Duke applicants were waitlisted than admitted.  Now most colleges use the waitlist as both an economic necessity and a kind of beauty prize for applicants who would have been admitted just a couple of years ago.

Students know this, but still hope against hope they’ll be called off one of the six waitlists they may be on.  Make sure to bring them back from their journey to the World of What If long enough to put a deposit in at a school they will love, just in case all six “could be” schools turn in to “could have been” schools.

July-applying juniors  If you think all of next week’s action will involve only seniors, think again.  Hundreds of juniors will see the solemn faces and quiet tears of their role models and decide they know how to make sure this doesn’t happen to them—they’ll just apply earlier.

Even the most morose senior would tell them this logic is faulty, if they were asked.  But it’s likely juniors won’t be asking anyone about this “discovery”; they’ll just act on it on their own, unless you intervene.  Find a minute among the end-of-March madness to summarize the year in college applications, and e-mail practical advice to juniors and their families about what this means to the Class of 2013.  Mayan predictions aside, students who apply in July really could be the end of your counseling world; make sure they understand there can be such a thing as too early in the college application process, at least for one more year.

College Decisions: Just say Yes, Just say No, but don’t say Maybe

By Patrick O'Connor. Ph.D


College decisions have already started coming out.  Once again, we’re looking at record numbers of applications, and once again, Harvard, Princeton, Rose-Hulman, Knox and most every other college didn’t spend the winter buying an extra 50 acres and tricking it out with new dorms to double their class size—so there will be more rejections and waitlists than ever as well.

There’s ample advice counselors can use to console students who weren’t admitted and to encourage students who were placed on waiting lists, but there’s another stealth group out there who just won’t be getting a lot of love—the student who has so many admission offers, they just can’t make up their mind.  

On the one hand, this is easy to understand; Meryl Streep wouldn’t have garnered a lot of empathy if her acceptance speech had gone something like “Wow, a third Oscar?  Just where am I going to put this?” On the other hand, it’s important to support these students, not only because they truly need strong guidance right now, but because their problem could easily become everyone’s problem if they decide the best thing to do is to put deposits in at every college that accepted them, then decide in August.

Just to review the ground rules, students have until May 1 to place an enrollment deposit at one, and only one, college.  They don’t necessarily have to tell their other colleges they aren’t coming, but they can only tell one college they are coming, and they do that by submitting a (mostly) non-refundable deposit.  The reasoning here is simple—colleges need to build budgets, hire faculty, design schedules, and order enough mystery meat to make sure they can deliver on all the promises they’ve made students in those glossy brochures.

Students and parents who decide May 1st is just too soon often deposit at more than one college—either they just do see the rush, they think it’s unfair, or they don’t understand what harm it does…

…until they get to the one college they attend.  There, they discover their own college has had, oh, say, 20 students call admissions the day before classes begin to let them know they aren’t coming.  Because of these double depositors, the college has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue, and has financial aid that is going unused.  This also means students who were in the advertised 20 student seminar classes are thrust into 30 student seminars at the last minute, leading to schedule changes, unhappy students, and parents who are now consulting attorneys for breach of contract on the school’s part—even though they themselves may have double deposited at a number of colleges as well. 

The moral of the story is to tell all students and parents not to do this, and to say this an awful lot of times in a number of ways between now and May 1.  If they applied on Common Application, they signed a pledge they wouldn’t do this, and if colleges find out a student is playing them against one another (and this happens), the student will have plenty of free time on their hands come fall.  

College is the main thing they’ve been thinking about for the last eight months, and they still have 45 days before an answer is due.  By being available to talk with them, and with a few stern e-mail reminders to parents, good choices can be made by May 1 with everyone’s future looking bright, both now and in August.