20 Questions About Your College Counseling Program

By:  Patrick O'Connor  Ph.D

Many high schools are celebrating College Application Week this fall, a time when the entire school focuses on the possibilities that await students in pursuing some kind of college option after high school.  CAW is a great time to promote the college search programs and other services your office has for students of all ages and their parents.  It’s also a perfect time to make sure your teaching colleagues have a clear sense of how the college selection process works in your school, and the vital role they plan in it.

CAW also offers a chance for you to reflect on your offerings and services, and see how well they are meeting students’ needs.  To help achieve that goal, I offer these 20 questions for your consideration.  There’s nothing scientific about these questions; they just address some of the key pieces of a college counseling program students need to know about in order to make the transition as personalized as possible.

Here goes—feel free to add your questions in the Comments section:

1.     Do you have a written overview of your college counseling program, with goals, objectives, and activities for every grade in your building?

2.     Does your program include an annual process for evaluating your college counseling program, and using the results to modify the program? Does this evaluation include feedback from parents and students?

3.     Do you have unencumbered access to data that will help you identify populations underserved by your college counseling program?

4.     Do you meet annually with your principal to review your college counseling program?

5.     Do you have an avenue for organizing the data received from students and colleges regarding admissions decisions and scholarship awards?

6.     Have you reviewed the information in your curriculum on standardized testing to reflect current trends, including the rise of test-optional colleges?

7.     Does your curriculum give equal consideration to certificate, two-year, and four-year college options?

8.     Does your curriculum help students explore the option of not going to college, or taking gap year?

9.     Does your curriculum include instruction in college readiness skills, such as study skills?

10.  Does your curriculum utilize the expertise of college admissions officers, financial aid administrators, and other college personnel?

11.  Does your curriculum utilize the expertise of classroom faculty, administrators, and other high school personnel outside your department?

12.  Does your curriculum utilize the expertise of parents, community-based groups, and other organizations in your community?

13.  Do you have a Counseling Advisory Committee to help support and guide the direction of your college counseling program?

14.  Does your curriculum have a plan for keeping in touch with students in the summer to avoid “summer melt”?

15.  Do you have some kind of technology based communication method to convey college news to your families (Web site, weekly newsletter, texting tree, etc.?)

16.  Does your curriculum include evening programs that are available on tape for absent students and parents to view at a later time?

17.  Compared to the other educators in your building, do you have more unrelated administrative duties to complete in addition to your counseling work?

18.  Do you have a policy on colleges visiting your high school that yields effective, well-attended information sessions?

19.  Do you meet regularly with counseling colleagues in elementary and middle school to review your K-12 college counseling program?

20.  Do you have access the professional development needed to stay current in your college counseling practice?

Applying to College? It’s Simple as 1-2-3

By:  Patrick  O'Connor Ph.D

Since I'm from Detroit, it's only natural for Motown songs to come to mind on big occasions. On my daughter's birthday, "Isn't She Lovely" comes to mind. When a heavy snow closes school, the whole family joins in a chorus of "How Sweet It Is."

And when my students start filling out college applications, it's tough to get "Ball of Confusion" out of my head.

You might think the room should start spinning in September, when every magazine publishes its version of "Colleges So Great, No One Gets Admitted To Them" -- but it's easy to talk parents and students through this message, because they bring their concerns to my office and we talk about them.

The real challenge for a college counselor is how to help students whose first sense of application panic comes on a fall Saturday morning, when they bring a pen or laptop to the breakfast table, throw a last handful of Cocoa Doodles in their mouth, decide it's time to take on that first application -- and they freeze on the line that says "Name."

In other words, they are coming out of the "College is Crazy" hype, and thinking about what they really want out of college for the first time in a long time, or for the first time ever.

I'm sorry I can't be at the breakfast tables of each of my students when there's nowhere to run to (if I could be there, I would tell them to go to their room).

Most students balk at filling out college applications because they view it as the first step towards leaving home. That's easy to see; this is the place where you listen to your music, text message long after your parents have gone to bed, do a little homework, and think about your life. The world outside has changed and challenged you, sometimes in ways you didn't like or didn't completely master -- but at the end of the day, you came home to sort out what it all meant, and looked forward to what came next. Giving this place up won't be easy.

The good news is the colleges that are right for you will feel just like home. It may be in the dorm rooms, it may be at the library (hey, it happens), it may be the whole campus -- but somewhere at those colleges, there is a spot waiting for you to reflect on the challenges of life, wonder about the possible, and text your BFFs til dawn. Once you think about college as your next home, completing the applications will be as easy as taking the written exam for your driver's license, because both are just the paperwork that leads to a greater sense of freedom. In the end, going to college isn't about leaving home -- it's about taking home with you.

The second thing I would do is replace students' earbuds with soundproof headphones. Some students hit the brakes because of outside opinions about their college choices. The application to a college a student loves often heads to the shredder when a well-meaning neighbor asks "Where is that college?", or Uncle Bob reports the college is nowhere to be found in the recently published rankings. If it turns out no other student at the local high school is applying to this college, this can become a trifecta for trauma.

When this happens, I encourage students to make the mature choice and be selfish. By fall, college-bound students know who they are and what they want in a college -- with all the research they've done and the campuses they've visited, if college selection were a term paper, they'd have about 25 sources to quote and 3000 file cards to synthesize by now. Knowing what you know about college and yourself, it's important to keep the well-meaning insights of others in perspective -- some may know you, some may know colleges, but very few (except your parents) will know both as well as you do.

Everyone on your first grade soccer team got a trophy for participating, and choosing colleges works the same way -- with self-knowledge and college knowledge, everyone gets a best college, even if what's best for you is different from what's best for everyone else.

At this time of year, it's easy for seniors to think it's gonna take a miracle to get into college. You've worked too hard to believe in things that you don't understand, instead, remember what home means to you, stay focused on what you've learned about college and yourself, and your college applications will go flying out the door so quickly, you'll realize the miracle is you.

So pick up the pen, and pass the Cocoa Doodles. You can do this.

Giving Junior Families the College Help They Need

By:  Patrick O'Connor Ph.D

This time of year is every counselor’s nightmare.

You just get finished administering the PSAT (which, with some of its changes, was not an easy task), and suddenly, your office is flooded with questions from juniors and junior parents:

“When should I take the SAT?”

“What else should I be doing to get ready for college?”

“When will I start meeting with you about my college plans?”

It’s easy to see why the PSAT turns all thoughts to college; what’s hard is trying to get juniors and their parents to understand you’re still working with seniors right now, but the juniors’ turn is coming soon.

One easy way to do that is to give juniors the old 1-2.

 1.     Introduce them to the concept of the 20 minute meeting.  Administration of the PSAT is the kickoff of the college search for juniors, and the key to a strong college search is clear communications, especially between juniors and their parents.  This means parents really shouldn’t pepper their junior with college questions at importune times—like in front of their friends, or as they’re pulling away to go to homecoming. 

At the same time, juniors need to realize they need to keep their parents informed of their college plans, even though this is naturally a time when they want to do their own thing.  Parents can help with things like setting up college tours, paying for application fees, and making sure you wake up earlyon SAT Saturdays.

Most college-bound families have discovered the 20 minute meeting as the key to keeping everyone college informed without driving everyone college crazy.  By establishing the same 20 minute time to meet every week, students will know when they’ll be expected to share college plans and ideas, and when they can relax.  Parents will value the meeting time, since they will be able to get their questions answered and know they aren’t making their child look “uncool.”  It can take a week or two to get a feeling for how the meetings work, but families who have used the 20 minute meeting swear it helps with the appropriate flow of college knowledge.  More important, it keeps families from driving each other crazy.

 2.     Give them something to talk about.  Most families will buy in to the idea of talking college once a week, as long as they’re sure the meeting will be worthwhile.  If the first three meetings are nothing more than exchanges of “What do you want to talk about?”, participation in the meetings is likely to fall off on either side. 

That’s why it’s important to give parents and students something to talk about.  If you have a junior newsletter, be sure to add a list of 2-3 topics each week (or 4-5 each month) that parents and students can discuss.  By providing the topics, you’re making sure the conversations flow in a way where they build on previous conversations—and that they do so in a way that is timely.  November topics can include registering for the ACT and SAT, planning college visits, and starting to talk about senior year schedule, while topics in March could include attending a college fair, reviewing plans for the summer, and thinking about building a first college list.

Providing timely topics gives you the chance to help families reinforce your college counseling curriculum with discussions at home that are tailored to individual student needs.  If you don’t use a newsletter, a program like Remind can be used to communicate topics.  Either way, it engages families as families, and that helps college plans

Before You Talk to Juniors

By:  Patrick O'Connor Ph.D

Hardly a week has gone by in this young school year without some big announcement that will affect the college plans of this year’s juniors.  In case you’ve been watching the new pictures of Pluto, here’s what school counselors have learned since Labor Day:

• More details have emerged about the new SAT, which debuts just in time for juniors to take this coming March—but those taking the test won’t get the results for at least six weeks.

• Juniors filing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid will be able to do so in October of their senior year, while this year’s seniors have to wait until January to do so. In addition, juniors will be able to use tax information that’s already been filed with the IRS, making it much easier to apply for federal help for college.

• A group of colleges that includes some of the most selective US institutions have formed a coalition that will offer its own application for admission next year, a move that will first affect—you guessed it—the juniors.

Even though counselors know better, our first inclination is to look at these changes and scream.  We’re quite certain the new rules, deadlines, and unknowns will shake the college hopes of juniors, who will have to face all of these changes at once, all while making one of the most important decisions of their young lives.

Except the juniors are brand new to this.

Unless something really odd is going on, no junior has ever applied to college before, so any “rules” about applying to college are new to them.  Some of them may have witnessed an older sibling or close friend apply, and developed application strategies based on what those mentors did (or didn’t) do.  But we’ve always had the challenge of bringing younger siblings and their parents into the current world of college admission, and it’s clear next year will be no different.

“But it’s so much change!” you say.  “Surely some of this newness is going to rub off on the students.”

That’s certainly true—later March SAT scores throws off the testing timeline many counselors advocate for students—but that’s a change that will have a much greater impact on the adults who are used to the old rules, not the students who don’t know the old rules.  It’s important to keep this in mind when you communicate with your juniors.  Any news is new news to them, so the tone our message takes is crucial.

This means it’s best not to over-explain. Instead of a detailed description of what the FAFSA changes mean, show them the good:

“Good news!  Starting next year, students will be able to apply for federal financial aid in October, not January- and you can use the information that’s already on file with the IRS.  This is going to make applying for aid much easier.”

This approach keeps the stress off students, letting them feel the greater freedom the FAFSA changes were intended to create.

It’s certainly true that choosing a college will be a big deal to this year’s juniors—but it was going to be a big deal to them even if we were using the same old SAT, FAFSA deadline, and college applications. Choosing a college is important, and it can be life-changing, but it doesn’t have to have a soundtrack by Wagner.  Let the woman in the Viking helmet rest; take a student-centered approach to the changes, and all will be well.

It’s OK for us to freak about what’s new—just not in front of the children. 

Advice for Students on College Essays

By: Patrick O'Connor  Ph.D

Counselors who read last week’s column on writing effective counselor letters for college have asked if there is any advice they can pass along to students on the essays they have to write for college.

I live to serve.

Students, you amaze me.  You love to share your opinions.  I know this, because you share them everywhere—Chattersnap, Gramphoto, and all the rest of those social media sites I know nothing about, other than you use them because you love to talk about yourselves.

Except when it comes to college essays. 

If I asked you for 650 words on your impressions of Watch Me Whip, Watch Me Nae Nae, you’d go on for weeks.  But colleges want 650 words about your favorite place in the world, and you say things like “The library.  Gotta love that big dictionary.”

Watch me weep.  Watch me sniff sniff.

Your college wants you to come to campus, talk with them for three hours, eat lunch, and go home.  If they did admissions that way, they’d probably get great students—and by the time they were done interviewing everyone, each of those students would be 45 years old.

So you aren’t writing essays—you’re having a conversation, except you’re putting what you have to say on paper.  That means you’ll want to do this:

Stop guessing.  When a college asks “Name a problem you’d like to solve”, there’s no one right answer for everybody.  Cure cancer?  Great.  The need for your mother to work three jobs? Absolutely. The squeak in your garage door?  That can work, too—as long as it means something to you, and you can convey that meaning.  This isn’t Algebra; you get to decide what the answer is, and why it makes sense. Put it down on paper, put the commas in the right place, and you’re good to go.

Tell a story.  Remember the time you told your best friend about the first concert you went to, or the best pizza you ever ate? You were on fire at the end of the story, genuinely excited at the chance to share part of your life with them.  That’s how you should feel once you’re done writing a college essay.  This isn’t a speech you give to thousands of people; it’s a story that means something to you, and you’re telling it to someone who really wants to hear it.  Save the speech; tell the tale.

Head or heart?  Some students think the key to a great essay is to pack it with facts that make you sound like a brainiac, while others say the college will only beg you to come if they need a whole box of tissues to get through your essay.  Life is a little of both, and so are college essays.  Show the colleges what you think about, and why it means something to you. This will let them know you’re past the drama and trauma of teenagehood, and eager to embrace the tasks of becoming a thoughtful, caring adult.

Answer the question.  If the college asks “Who do you admire?” and they still don’t know your answer once they’ve read your essay, you’ve given them one more reason to reject you.  Ducking the question may work in Washington, but it doesn’t play well in admissions offices.  If they want to know, you need to tell them.

Your goal is to write an essay that sounds so much like a conversation, they’ll be surprised you aren’t in the room with them when they’re finished reading it.

Kind of like Gramphoto.  But with words.

A Quick Refresher on Counselor Letters for Colleges

By: Patrick O'Connor  Ph.D

Most high school counselors are enjoying a very small window of change.  With the challenges of schedule changes behind them, counselors are now gearing up for writing letters of recommendation for college applications. 

At first, this seems like a great opportunity—what counselor wouldn’t want to spend time talking about the best attributes of their students?  But when letter writing is folded into all of the other fall counseling duties, and the number of letters that need to be written is considered, the joy can quickly fall away.

The best way to keep the joy in your task—and the joy in the letters—is to keep these simple rules in mind:

Paint the big picture.  Teacher letters talk about what it’s like to work with a student in class.  Counselor letters talk about the student’s role in the school and the community.  Leader?  Thinker?  Team builder? Artist?  Rebel? What do they give to the school, by simply being themselves?

Tell a story.  She coordinated the town’s clothing drive when the south end of town flooded, including her own house. His version of America the Beautiful brought tears to everyone at the Labor Day picnic.  Every visitor to our school spends a couple of minutes marveling at her painting in the front hall.  Each sentence has 18 words or less, but brings the reader to your community.  Leave the adjectives in the thesaurus; show them, don’t tell them.

Cut to the chase.  Don’t bother rewriting the laundry list of activities and awards your top students have earned.  That’s somewhere else in the application.  Focus on what matters—which award is the most significant, or unusual?  What club did they start on their own?  What role do they play in your school?

Point out the bumps in the road.  Colleges need to know that the B in Advanced Math is because of a final exam that was taken the day after her father lost his job, or that sophomore year was a wash because his parents divorced.  Mention the adversity, and point out how the student conquered it.  Colleges can only understand the context if you share it.

Finish on an up note.  Based on who they’ve been in high school, what will they give to their next school?  A curious mind?  A disciplined approach to creativity?  The quiet voice in class discussion no college can live without?  You’re a counselor—find the good in a student, even if it’s a work in progress, and share that with the college.

Do what you can.  Yes, counselors at some private schools do write three page letters of recommendation for some of their students.  But those counselors have 50 seniors on their caseload, not 500.  Tell the college you’re swamped, put together a solid paragraph on what separates this student from everyone else, and invite them to call with questions.  That’s more than enough, given all you have to do.

Don’t believe me?  This column is way shorter than most of mine, but it had a lot to say.  I did it; you can, too.

What the White House College News Means to School Counselors

By: Patrick O'Connor  Ph.D

The counseling world has been abuzz this week with the weekend news from the White House that has strong implications for how counselors work with college-bound students.  With a little planning in advance, counselors can make the most of these opportunities, creating even brighter futures for the students they serve.

Updated FAFSA deadline Almost all students applying for financial aid for college have to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA.  Right now, this form can only be filed after January 1 of the year the student wants to go to college, and the student has to use the prior year’s tax information to complete the FAFSA.

Since many students (or their parents) don’t get their tax information right away, this can delay the filing of the FAFSA, or lead some families to conclude it’s just too hard to file the form.  Those families that do file often don’t get a financial aid offer from the college until April, leaving them only a month or so to decide if they really can afford their student’s dream school.

That’s all about to change.  Starting with the Class of 2017—that’s this year’s juniors—students can file the FAFSA in October of their senior year, using their tax information from two years prior (also called “prior-prior year’s taxes”).  One of the real advantages here is that FAFSA filers will be able to allow the federal government to retrieve the required tax information from the filer’s IRS file.  Since the information is two years old, it’s already been submitted to the IRS; it will now just be a question of getting two computers to talk to each other, and that’s much easier than having the filer dig up the information on their own.

This change means a couple of things for high school counselors:

• The Financial Aid Night program you usually run in November or later now needs to be run in September.  Counselors may want to consider making this part of the Senior Night program they already run in the early fall. 
• The same is true for any FAFSA Completion Program that’s typically run in January or February.  It isn’t clear if colleges will start awarding financial aid packages any sooner as a result of this change, but if they do, FAFSAs should be submitted much sooner.
• If families have more information on how much aid they receive, that gives them more time to weigh financial aid offers from different colleges—skills they might not have right now.  Adding these skills into your Financial Aid Night might not be a bad idea.

Updated College Scorecard  The White House had hoped to release a College Scorecard that graded colleges, so families could compare one college to the other.  It turns out that goal was a little ambitious, since there are many, many factors involved in deciding if a college is right for a particular student.

Instead of a single grade, the scorecard offers users armloads of data, allowing families to analyze (for example) the average cost of attendance for students by income level; average starting salary for jobs, and the average monthly payment for students who had to take loans to pay for college.

It’s always hard to say how helpful a new research tool will be used until many students try it out, so counselors need to keep a close eye on this source.  It may be difficult to find time to play with the data on your own, but that might be time well spent, especially doesn’t always tell the whole story behind college choice.