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Forget the Rankings: Ditching Prestige for Purpose in the College Search

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To those teens and their loved ones who have placed their worth in the hands of a college admissions officer, we are here to remind you that you are so much more than an acceptance letter.

The Square That Defined Me: Jen’s Story

My high school had its own version of the Instagram commit page before Instagram even existed – a bulletin board boasting a mosaic of senior names and the college they planned to attend. It lived in a heavily trafficked hallway where, multiple times a day,  thousands of teenagers passed by with an insatiable curiosity to find out where their peers would be going. I lived in a community that instilled the importance of my name attached to a university’s name. The small square had an unspoken meaning that carried a heavy weight. I still have my square decorated in my college’s colors.

I believed one little square defined all my hard work in high school. I applied but was not admitted early decision. In December of my senior year, I watched my friend’s names populate the board. Yale. Williams. Harvard. Brown. Penn. I watched, holding my deferral letter in my hands, questioning what was wrong with me. I waited until the spring for my square to appear, and when it did, I felt like I couldn’t participate in the prestige parade in the same way as my peers. The university name was posted, and little did I know, this core memory would shape my values, impacting my career choices and my intentions for my future family. I walked through the next two decades of my life slightly less confidently.  Looking back, my story led me to major in cultural anthropology (which I would never change); I think in part to understand people’s life stories and how the culture of one’s life, down to the smallest moments in a high school hallway, could send rippling effects through their lives.

As a school counselor, I see the weight that my students carry. While I cannot change the relentless pursuit of prestige alone, I am working to shift the narrative for future generations. It’s time we celebrated college acceptance for the right reasons. Let’s teach our students to define what is important to them and discover universities that share those same values. Let’s make an Instagram page celebrating students’ discovered values and authentic identity. Let’s skip the prestige parade. In fact, let’s protest it. 

Rolling Out The Red Carpet For All: Jared’s Story

One of the most powerful lessons I have learned as a college counselor happened in 2010 when I was working for a non-profit organization in Philadelphia.  One of my students was anxiously waiting to hear if she had been admitted early to Yale.

Together, we made a plan.

On the day decisions were released, we would use a code to share the results.  Our plan was to go for ice cream.  If she arrived at my office and said “vanilla,” I knew that the results would not be what she had hoped for.  “Vanilla” meant that we wouldn’t talk about it, but we would walk to the closest ice cream shop and feel our feelings as we ate three or four scoops.  “Chocolate” meant that Yale said yes.  We would still get ice cream, just with a little more pep in our step as we walked down the block.

I’ll never forget the day she came to my office, stood by my desk, and simply said, “Chocolate.”

I screamed. I jumped out of my chair, gave her a hug, and danced around my office, cheering. We ate ice cream and celebrated her accomplishment. She was my first student to be accepted to an Ivy League university.

The lesson came less than 48 hours later.

One of my other students popped by my desk.

“Where’s my ice cream?”

“I’m sorry, what do you mean?” I replied.

The student reminded me that she had been accepted to the junior college in our area the week before.  She asked why she, too, didn’t get hugs, cheers, and ice cream. I felt so small in that moment, deservedly.

That day, I learned a powerful lesson, one I share with my graduate students every year. I now roll out the red carpet for every student. Every achievement matters.  We shouldn’t only applaud our students when they are accepted to colleges that society has deemed “prestigious.”  It’s time we shift the narrative and help our students see they are worth much more than an acceptance letter. 

Reframing the College Conversation:  Tools for a Values-Centered Approach

“Why do you want to attend [insert prestigious school name]?” 

The student shifts in their chair and nervously looks at their family,  “Because it is a good school.” 

We press with curiosity.  “What makes it a good school?”

The student clears their throat and looks over again at their parents, “Because it’s ranked high.”

“How does the ranking support your growth and help you meet your goals more than another school?” 

Silence. There is almost always silence. 

With more than 30 years of collective experience, we have pushed students and families to answer these types of questions, embracing the uncomfortableness that follows. Often, we are led to believe that a name equals success. It’s time we question this idea and embrace what truly matters: finding a college that sparks your student’s passion, nurtures their growth, and sets them up for a fulfilling life. When we speak with families about their hopes for their students, more often than not, they name happiness, physical and mental well-being, individual growth, the ability to face challenges and solve problems, and kindness toward others. 

The college admissions process is a whirlwind. For parents and teens alike, it’s easy to get swept up in prestigious institutions’ rankings, reputation, and allure. However, this narrow focus can overshadow what really matters. Worse, the pressure surrounding college admissions has a significant and detrimental effect on mental health. 

First, we invite you to consider how parents can unintentionally increase their children’s anxiety:

1. Prioritizing results over the learning process: Focusing on grades, scores, and rankings rather than the effort and growth a child demonstrates can create pressure and undermine the joy of learning. 

2. Equating worth with achievement: Defining a child’s value by their academic or extracurricular performance neglects the importance of curiosity, intrinsic motivation, and emotional development, which are stronger predictors of long-term success.

3. College is a stepping stone, not the ultimate goal: While college is one of many bridges to a fulfilling life and career, it is not the ultimate goal. Instead of solely focusing on college admission, students should view their education as a means to set themselves up for long-term success in both their personal and professional lives. We must encourage students to think beyond their college years and consider how their education will contribute to their overall life goals and values. College is just one chapter in a person’s life story, and it’s crucial to keep the bigger picture in mind.

4. Oversimplifying with labels: Using terms like “good/bad school” or “high/low score” creates an all-or-nothing mindset that fuels anxiety and ignores the nuanced reality of each student and their learning journey.

5. Overemphasizing achievement in conversations: When academic discussions dominate parent-teen interactions, it overshadows other important aspects of well-being, such as emotional health and personal interests.

By becoming aware of these tendencies, parents can shift their approach to foster a healthier, more supportive environment that reduces anxiety and promotes the holistic development of their children.

The Values-Driven Approach

Instead of fixating on getting into “the best” school, help your teen focus on finding the “best fit” school. Shift the conversation towards exploring their values, interests, and what kind of environment would allow them to thrive.

Here’s a framework for a values-driven approach to the college search:

1. Self-Reflection: Encourage thoughtful introspection with questions like:

  • What makes you feel excited and energized?
  • When do you lose track of time because you’re so engrossed in something?
  • What kind of people do you want to surround yourself with?
  • What kind of impact do you want to have on the world?

2. Defining “Best Fit”: Use those reflections to consider their ideal college environment:

  • What kind of extracurricular scene excites you most: Division 1 sports, quirky clubs, or a thriving arts community?
  • What kind of weather and outdoor activities do you picture yourself enjoying during your college years?
  • What kind of student support services do you think you’ll need to thrive academically and personally?
  • Do you learn best through hands-on projects, discussion-based seminars, or traditional lectures?
  • In terms of size, do you see yourself at a college where you’ll recognize most faces or one where you can blend into the crowd?

3. The Search – Broadening Horizons

  • Lean into resources like Forget The Rankings:  The Values-Driven College Search to think beyond prestige and find hidden gems.
  • Embrace Exploration: Visit a variety of schools, not just the usual suspects.  Never heard of a school?  Give it a chance!
  • Do more than tour.  Sit on campus.  Observe the students.  Try to catch the vibe.
  • Talk about values with your teen.  What do you value?  How is that reflected in your career?  How do the colleges you are considering connect with the things your teen values?
  • Student Voices: Read student blogs, campus newspapers, and social media for real student perspectives on campus life.

By shifting the college conversation from prestige to values, you equip your students to make a well-informed, self-assured decision. They’ll find a place where they can learn with joy, form meaningful connections, and prepare for a life filled with purpose. 

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Jared Epler has worked as a counselor for over 15 years in K-12 schools, higher education, community-based organizations, and private mental health practices. Jared specializes in career and college counseling for youth and adults, mental health counseling, and burnout and self-care in helping professions. He currently works as a public high school counselor, is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania, and is a co-founder of Forget The Rankings: The Values-Driven College Search.

Jen Vallieres has worked in education and counseling since 2007, when she began her career in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. She has worked with students from preschool through high school in school settings, community-based organizations, and community mental health organizations. She works with youth and adults and specializes in general mental health counseling and college/career counseling. Currently, Jen is a high school counselor and co-founder of Forget The Rankings: The Values-Driven College Search.

College Admissions Consultant Red Flags

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After almost twenty years working in the realm of college admissions, I’ve crossed paths with a lot of people (some well-meaning, some not so much) presenting themselves as august college admissions consultants. As a result, I think it’s important that you become aware of several of the tell-tale warning signs that someone selling herself (or himself) as a quality college admissions consultant is likely anything but!

In the two videos below, I share my thoughts on how to spot a consultant I’d recommend avoiding.

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Want to Fix Financial Aid?

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A previous post this year offered a couple of suggestions on how we can fix financial aid.  If you missed that post, a quick summary:

  • College costs too much;
  • Most people don’t know how to pay for it;
  • Financial aid forms are too lengthy;
  • The reports describing what aid a student gets are too confusing;
  • Everyone hates loans.

I was really hoping the two suggestions I made might generate some thoughtful discussion about how to make college more affordable, and lead us to a point where we were ready to take on changes to financial aid the way the profession is taking on changes in required testing.  Instead, I got crickets.

Undeterred, I’m back with another approach—and this one even sounds like fun.  I haven’t been to many conferences in the last few years, and what I’ve really missed is the conversations at the end of the day where most sentences begin with “Wouldn’t it be great if…?” Those conversations have led to all kinds of changes in the way I counsel students, and they inspire all of us to keep looking for ways to expand access and opportunity.  Without these conversations, work can be a little less inspiring, especially when students who heard Yes from the dream school come in with the financial aid report, and remember why that was a dream school.

So how about this?  What if we go to the people who run financial aid offices, and ask them how they would improve financial aid?  This happens all the time in the business world; the way to improve the delivery of a service is to ask the people delivering the service.

Since we’re talking about serious money here, this needs to be something a little more casual than just a conversation over a couple of beers, so let’s put together some guidelines:

Financial aid folks, identify what you would change about the world of financial aid, and why.  It can be one thing; it could be myriad things.  I have a bias towards access, so I’d likely be more interested in the parts of financial aid that keep kids from coming to college, staying in college, or making the most in college.

Give me some data.  Some of the best ideas are those that come from the gut, but in this case, those ideas relate to money, and that involves recordkeeping.  Show me how this affects kids.

Tell me what you ‘d do to fix this problem, and why you think this would solve the problem.  As is typically the case here, this needs to be the right mix of practical and blue sky, where we blow up enough of the current system without tossing out the parts that work.  “Let’s start over” may sound exciting, but it isn’t a plan.  I’m looking for something that’s partly a plan with wings, and partly a dream with legs.

Tell me how you know if you fixed the problem—what data points will change, what procedures will be updated, what students will worship the ground you walk on as a result of these changes?

Tell me what could go wrong—why it might not work, why it might work but just for your school, and what unintended consequences might arise.  In some cases, the answer here might be “beats me’, but even that answer can be explained in detail.  “There aren’t any” isn’t an answer—it just means you haven’t thought about it much.

What will you get if you send me this information and I like the idea?  Well, my plan would be to pick the best three ideas, and give each of them $300,000—100 grand a year for three years—to implement the plan.  You’ll need to include a budget to show what you’d do with the money—and using it for financial aid itself is OK—and you’ll need to track the money to make sure you can show what it actually went to.  But show me you’ve got a plan that’s part pipe dream, and you may get the chance to make it come true.

Now.  About the money.

I don’t exactly have a million dollars lying around, and something tells me there might not be a lot of foundations willing to give me the money if I go to them and simply say “How about if we try and fix financial aid?” I do think they might provide some funding for innovative ideas made by experienced financial aid professionals who work at the grass roots.  That’s why we need to start with your proposals—if I go to them with real plans, they’re much mor likely to sign on. So you may get nothing, other than a chance to step back, re-picture the big picture, and think about your work in a different way. But you may get more.

If that’s of interest to you, I’m at collegeisyours.com

Let’s see where this goes.

A Primer for College Admissions Decisions

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We’re about three weeks away from the height of the release of college admissions decisions, the time of year when students pull their hair out either waiting to hear or musing over what they’ve heard.  Along with trying to ease student angst, college admissions veterans know they can expect an inbox full of articles featuring the following content:

  • Record High Applications at Highly Selective Schools
  • Highly Selective Schools Report New Lows in Admit Rates (yes, these two are related, but most Americans don’t understand this, thanks to the way we teach math in this country, so…)
  • Calls for Equity in Admissions Follow Record Application Year

We can expect these articles because they are written every year, partly to make an official record of what actually has happened, partly to supply some kind of solace to students who didn’t get the admissions news they had hoped (“See Son?  It was harder than ever to get in”) or to fatten the praise of those who did (“Wow!  I beat the odds in the Most. Competitive. Year. Ever!”)

To balance these “the sky is falling” articles, I write one that tries to keep everyone on an even keel, so they can provide some stability to the students and parents who are new at this, or who are doing it again, and forgot what it felt like the first time.  Hardly anyone notices the piece I write—it’s apparently more fun to be out there on rocky seas than to be safe in the harbor—but in the interest of trying to offer some support, here we go:

  • Not all applications are created equal. A college that reports a 5 percent admission rate doesn’t mean a particular student’s odds of getting in are 5 percent; it means the college admits 5 out of every 100 applications it receives.  Put another way, a student with a C average applying to Swarthmore doesn’t have the same “chance” of being admitted as a student with a 3.9.  Juniors should keep this in mind.
  • Much of the college experience depends far more on what the student puts into the experience than where they experience it. A former student was admitted to a Seven Sisters college, which then proceeded to gap her in financial aid.  She ended up at a public university, where she basically ran the Global Studies program where she earned a degree.  This included fulfilling her desire to do a semester abroad in South Africa, even though her college didn’t offer study abroad there.  She simply registered as a guest student at another college that did.  Tell me she would have had any of those opportunities at the Seven Sisters school.  Go ahead.
  • Notions of the need for change in the college admission process are overblown. It takes about 20 minutes to apply to most colleges, since they require neither essays nor teacher letters.  Since that’s about the same amount of time it takes to get to another level in Mario Brothers 812, it’s pretty safe to say most students can complete this task without life-altering stress.
  • Notions of change in the college admission process are simplistic, Part I. Admissions observers had a field day when COVID drove many competitive colleges to go test optional, a change that was gaining steam even before 2019.  Two years later, we now find a rise in “test optional strategies” from test prep advisors who will advise students on which tests to take, and which scores to send—all for a fee.  Similarly, we see some competitive colleges admitting fewer—far fewer—test optional students than those who submit scores, but deciding not to report that to the major public, since the “test optional” moniker is so highly valued.  The result?  A change that was supposed to make applying to college easier has made it harder in many cases, except at colleges where the admit rates were generous to begin with—and those are the schools where applying takes 20 minutes, and application reform wasn’t necessary.
  • Notions of change in the college admissions process are simplistic, Part II. Undeterred by the lack of real parity brought by many test optional policies, many reform advocates are now turning to essays and teacher letters of recommendation as the next parts to go in the current process.  This leads to two questions:
    • If you take out all parts of the current application process (some are even saying grades shouldn’t have to be reported), what do you replace them with?
    • Do you honestly think whatever you answered in the last question can’t also be gamed to favor the rich? Interviews?  Community Service?  Cake Baking?  Put any life experience or skill in the mix of college applications, and in a year, a horde of tutors will crop up that will give an edge to students who can afford their services.  That will be very hard to beat.
  • My annual plea for more counselor training in college counseling. If it’s safe to conclude that any admissions process will favor students who understand it, it’s reasonable to conclude it will favor any student who works with a counselor who understands it.  So, instead of changing the admissions process, how about leveling the playing field by making sure all counselors receive deep training in college counseling?  Less than 5 percent of all school counselor training programs devote any time to instruction in college counseling, and that sometimes only consists of how to register for the SAT.  Private school college counselors have greater access to professional development that keeps their already keen college counseling skills sharp.  Most public school counselors got their counselor training in a program that gave them no college counseling skills at all.  Which group needs to be better trained in the first place?

That should be all you need to make it through the media madness of the next month.  Release the hounds.

 

January Application Deadlines Are Just a Bad Idea

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The story is worth hearing, and even listening to again.  You came home from college for the holidays, and Mom or Dad was preparing the traditional roast.  You’d somehow eaten this dish a thousand times without ever seeing it prepared, so you were horrified and fascinated to watch them lop off a half pound or so from the back of the roast and toss it in the trash—perfectly good food.  You composed yourself enough to make asking why they did this sound downright casual.  “My mother made it this way” was the response—and it was just too convenient that the mother in question was also in the room.  “That’s right” she added, “and my mother made it the same way.”

The resolution of the issue had to wait until Sunday, when great grandmother joined the family for dinner.  Seated at the table with the roast right in front of everyone, the sensory elements were perfectly aligned to ask the question- why cut the roast?  “I learned to do that from my mother.  The pan we had was too small for a full roast, so we always had to trim it to size.”

And there is the fascination.  No other generation had the same limitation of pan or oven, but the roast trimming continued without questioning or consideration for three generations.

It shouldn’t be too much of a stretch to consider just how many implications this tale of roast trimming exist in college admissions, and nowhere is that more clearly the case than with application and notification deadlines.  Long before any kind of Internet presence, January 1 was an application deadline for hundreds of colleges.  Remarkably enough, this pre-high tech deadline didn’t make much sense even back then, since the deadline was a postmark deadline, but post offices were never open on New Year’s Day—in fact, depending on how small your town was back then, post offices across smalltown America were hard to find open after noon on the 31st.

Postmark deadlines are now a thing of the past, but there are other issues to consider with January 1.  A clear number of high schools close for the holidays around December 23 if not sooner.  This leaves most students largely on their own to put the finishing touches on the first major, multi-component task they’ve had to negotiate in their young lives—that, or it compels counseling offices everywhere to assemble some makeshift effort to offer support here and there at a time when counselors most need a break of their own. (Although there was one high school who was floating a “guarantee” that every counselor would check their email every day of the December break, thus denying everyone a chance to rest and recover.  Talk about a happy new year…)

Even the efforts to offer some kind of support over vacation can miss the mark, especially for students who are the first in their family to apply to college.  I am not a disciple of the “applying to college is rocket science” school, nor do I believe young people learn much about deadlines by treating them like they are amorphous, when they are not.  Still, given that this is the first major multi-tasking activity most young people have that has a fairly big consequence attached to it, it isn’t unreasonable to hope the deadline would permit them the chance to have counsel—and even more important, face-to-face support—to complete the task, something a finger-wagging “just plan ahead” overlooks in a brazen, cold way.  If we then add on the fact that nearly every admissions office is empty and unavailable for student support on January 1st, it’s easy to see every director of admission with carving knife in hand, ready to lay waste to a couple of pounds of perfectly good applications, all in the name of “we’ve always done it this way.”

At the risk of sounding like someone who has never run or even worked in an admissions office, the answer seems simple—this is a practice that needs to stop.  The easiest alternative would be requiring all materials to be submitted by the second Tuesday in January, a time when even the most luxurious of December vacations is over, where students have had time to seek the help they need, and everyone has had time to refresh their energies in a meaningful way.  Doing something challenging doesn’t mean it has to be inhumane, and the family man in me suggests that, for as much as I value the lessons learned in applying to college, there are more important things to consider over the holidays, like developing a strategy for a successful entry in the annual family gingerbread building contest.  This is the final holiday of youth, and it deserves recognition, and space, as such.  It’s possible to do that and develop a strong college portfolio, given the right deadline.

This isn’t the only deadline that could use some attention.  November 1, November 15, and May 1 all landed on a Sunday last school year, leaving students with a couple of days to do the best they could with what little they knew.  Again, this is especially true for students whose family has no experience applying to college.  Since these students tend to come from urban and rural schools where counseling ratios are typically astronomical, it’s easy to hope colleges would want to nurture applications from these populations, rather than throw more barriers in the way of these talented, but raw, applicants.

There are many other facets of the college application process where roast trimming can apply, especially when considering every facet of the application is easier for students who come from a background of wealth.  This aspect seems easy enough to start with, since its effects are easy enough to understand.  Let’s put the January 1 deadline and its impact back in its sheath.

To The Media: End the College Application Nightmare Stories

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It figures that August 1 landed on a Sunday this year.  What used to be just another beach day took on special significance a few years ago, when Common Application chose August 1 to launch its updates for the coming school year.  It’s exciting to be sure, but with a hint of melancholy, as a few overly enthusiastic parents use the occasion to tell their high school seniors “Summer’s over”, while the seniors meekly head towards the nearest computer, even on a weekend, muttering “But what if I don’t want it to be?”

Happily, more than a few colleges agree with the seniors.  While there was a stream—OK, a torrent—of colleges Twittering students on Sunday to hurry up and apply, more than a few colleges said “Start today if you want to, but our deadline isn’t until January.  Take your time.”  I had planned on thanking each of those colleges for posting such a message in the face of application mania.  I’m pleased to say there were too many to do so.

But this is just the start, and here’s hoping more colleges get on board.  The last two years of schooling have left this year’s seniors in pretty bad shape.  Day after day of waking up to find out if school is in person, online, both, or neither may have left them flexible, but it has also left them exhausted.  Students who fit every element of one (and certainly not the only) likely college-bound profile—from the suburbs, in a college prep curriculum, with two well-off parents who went to college—are saying out loud they just don’t think applying to college is worth the hassle.  That’s not because of the Delta rebound; it’s because their last couple of years of school have left them unsure of themselves and their ability to control their destiny.  Since any college admissions rep will tell you the key to a successful application is to let the student drive the bus, this is a huge problem.

Part of the solution lies with us.  August is peach and melon season in Michigan, a time when very rational people who never eat fruit feel a swelling in their taste buds that can only be satiated by interaction with produce that is truly a little slice of heaven.

This same thirst wells up in the media every August, but it isn’t for fruit—it’s for stories about the confusing, terrifying, uncertain world of college admissions.  With a new crop of high school seniors every year, journalists eagerly seize on their newness to college admissions, highlighting profiles of bright young people who find themselves flummoxed over how to apply to college, and when to apply to college.  Curiously, these stories rarely display a student’s confusion over where to apply to college, since the media only covers students who are considering the same 25 colleges ever year that admit about 5 percent of their applicant pool.  “She’s a National Honor Society president, but she can’t get her arms around Yale’s application.” Of course, these same students would be equally baffled by using a plumber’s wrench for the first time, and they easily get the hang of this college thing two weeks into the process.  But apparently, that’s not the point. The very first time they do something new, they don’t completely understand it.  My goodness.

The impact of this approach to college application coverage can’t be understated.  Thousands of students have already had to give up most of their summers at the insistence of parents who have caught the angst early, eager to make sure that college essay sparkles, unaware that the number one cause of weak essays isn’t underwriting, but overwriting.

Parents who haven’t been on their seniors about college since Father’s Day read these August articles and panic, fearing their child is now “behind”.  They plop their senior in front of a computer screen and tell them they can’t come out until an application is finished—for a college that doesn’t even start reading applications until January 10.

Parents whose children really understand themselves, and had no intention of applying to these schools, now feel their child is “losing out” on something, and suddenly insist that an application or two to the Big 25 is a good idea, “just to see what happens”, even though their student is well aware of what will happen.

This brand of media attention has never served high school seniors well, and it’s likely to make matters even worse for this year’s seniors, who are looking to gain their footing after two years of scholastic uncertainty.  In the interest of their well being—or, to use a phrase that is on the verge of becoming unimportant due to its overuse, their mental health—how about a few less media stories on the impossibility of getting into college and its excessive expense, and a few more stories about the 75% or so of colleges who admit more than 50% of their applicants, and the many colleges who are forgiving institutionally-based student loans?  Could the media finally discover the urban and rural colleges whose buildings have not a hint of ivy that are turning around the lives of students who didn’t have the opportunity to take 7 AP classes in high school, students who are shining academically?  How about the students who are making community college work, earning a degree that costs less from start to finish than one year of Harvard, all while the students typically work about 30 hours a week?

It’s certainly true many people turn to the media to read stories that will fuel their dreams—that’s why so many people follow the Olympics, and replay the video of the woman who was reunited with her dog after two years.  But stories about the uncertainty of the college selection process don’t feed students’ sense of the possible; they nourish their nightmares.  They’ve had enough of that these past two years, and may be headed for more.  The best thing the press can do for them, and for our society, is to admit there are more than 25 good colleges in this country, and wake the students to a better vision of how to apply to college, other than run a gauntlet that, at the end of the day, is largely of the media’s own making.

Remain a Full-Time Student During Senior Year in High School

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Many students, particularly strong ones, find themselves finished or close to finished all of their high school graduation requirements by the end of junior (11th grade) year. As a result high schools often offer seniors (12th grade students) in high school the option of attending school part time as long as graduation requirements are met. Don’t be seduced by this options that may bring short term pleasure but long term challenges.

What Needs to Change in College Admissions

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The ups and downs of the quarantine gave college admissions officers and school counselors a taste of application life to come, as the birth rate for high school graduates continues to slide, and the need to develop new approaches to recruit students increases.  As the profession continues to try and improve college access, and knowing that small differences can make a big difference, here are some considerations for both sides of the desk to ponder this summer over a well-deserved glass of lemonade:

Colleges—move your deadline dates.  November 1 (early applications), January 1 (regular applications), and May 1 (many deposits) are all big dates in the college application world—and they all fell on a Sunday or a holiday this year.  I don’t understand this, since the admissions offices weren’t open, and the vast majority of high school seniors had no access to counselors or other application helpers the day of and before the deadlines.

This needs to change.  Yes, students need to be responsible, and should learn to plan ahead—but perhaps that lesson is better applied to deadlines for things they’ve done before (like papers), not with things they are doing for the first time (like applying to college).  The first Tuesday in November, the second Tuesday in January, and the first Tuesday in May would solve this problem nicely, increasing the quality and quantity of applications to boot. Georgia Tech made the move, and they get kaboodles of applications.  It’s an easy, but important, change.

High Schools—stop working holidays.  Moving the January 1 deadline to a date when high schools are in session is also overdue for school counselors, who have taken a serious shellacking this year with all the student mental health issues arising from COVID.  School counselors have always been overworked, but never able to use the December holidays to recover, since they were expected to help their students make January 1 college deadlines.

It’s time to take a stand.  Assuming the colleges move their deadlines, counselors need to learn to let go.  Send a note to all senior families early in November, letting them know your vacation is—well, a vacation.  If you really can’t let go of your students for that long—or if the colleges unwisely cling to January 1– set two days of vacation for online office hours, and take a breath all the other days.  You have mastered online office hours this year.  Let them be your friend.

Colleges—keep innovating.  One (and perhaps the only) upside of the quarantine was the ability of college admissions offices to adapt major chunks of their traditional approach to recruitment. Test optional, drive-thru tours, and online high school visits suggested it might be OK for everyone to get their hopes up, that some real college admissions reform was in the air.

Yes.  Well.

In a post-vaccine world, we see more signs of returning to “normal” than creating new normal.  Reinventing the entire admissions process is no easy feat, to be sure, but how hard might it be for admissions offices to spend half a day this summer doing “What ifs” to one part of the application process?  Do that for five years, and you have a new admissions paradigm, and a more accessible one—the thing you say you keep wanting.

High schools— mental health and college access aren’t either/or.  I will legitimately blow my top if I read one more post from a high school counselor insisting that the increase in COVID-related mental health needs makes it impossible to do any effective college counseling.

School counseling as a profession has long been showing a mental health bias at the expense of quality college counseling, and this year just seems to have widened the gap.   Counselor training programs plant the seeds of this bias— training programs devote about 7 classes to mental health training, and none to college counseling—and all of this must stop, if only because the dichotomy is a false one.

Discouraged, depressed high school students light up like a hilltop church on Christmas Eve when I tell them college gives them a fresh start to life and learning, proof enough that college counseling affects mental health.  That, plus the American School Counselor Association says college counseling is part of the job.  Counselors truly are overworked, so they can’t do everything they want in any part of counseling.  That said, college can still be part of a key to a better self.  More counselors need to see that, and act on it.

Everyone—stop beating up on the Ivies.  The Ivies and their equally tough-to-get-into institutions largely decided to go test optional this year.  For some reason, this gave a lot of students with B averages the hope that they too could pahk the cah in the yahd, now that they didn’t have to reveal their test scores.

So—more students applied to the Ivies this year than last year.  The Ivies didn’t admit more students this year than last year.  That means their admit rate had to go down, and more students were denied.

That isn’t news—it’s math.  And if you want to blame the Ivies for encouraging students to apply who didn’t really stand a chance of getting in, you’re going to need to make a thousand more jackets for that club.  If you think the Ivies take too few Pell-eligible students, say that.  If you think they admit too many legacies, stay that.  But don’t beat them up for proving the laws of basic ratios.  Any other college in their shoes would have to do the same thing. (Besides, it’s the national media who has left our society with the impression that there are only 25 colleges in America.)

Everyone—about Kiddos.  It’s no secret that college is largely a time of youth, especially with the expansion of adolescence into the early twenties and beyond. But college is also a time to help young people embrace the opportunities of adulthood, skills and attitudes that sometimes require setting the desires of self to one side.

This goal would be more easily achieved if we saw students—and if they saw themselves– as capable of embracing a larger sense of self by referring to them as students, not Kiddos.  They don’t need to grow up in a hurry or, with the right kind of help, succumb to the media images of college choice as a high stakes pressure cooker.  But they also need something more than just a pat on the head and a verbal affirmation that’s the equivalent of a lollipop. Let’s try calling them students.

College Admissions and the Eyes of a Child

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There were only eight in the box, but Billy didn’t see it that way.  To him there wasn’t anything he couldn’t draw.  Especially anything red.  Shoes.  Birds.  Strawberries.  Even dogs.  Look at it the right way, and anything could be red.

Mrs. Struthers understood that, and loved to see Billy in class every day. Together, they discovered all kinds of things that turned out to be red.  As the year went on, Mrs. Struthers showed Billy how many other things were a mix of red and one of the other colors in his box of crayons.  By May, Billy was working with just green, and just yellow, and just about every other color.  But once kindergarten was over, it was the red crayon that had been worn down to a stub.

Coloring somehow became both less important and more important as school went on.  By second grade, the box had grown from eight to twenty-four, but there was less time to color in school.  Billy had rearranged the box to keep his favorite eight colors together, in the front row.

During one of those rare times drawing was allowed, Billy was relishing the chance to draw another cardinal, when Mr. Tyler walked by his desk.

“Cardinals aren’t really red, you know” he said.

Billy kept drawing, and looked up.  “What do you mean?”

“They’re actually their own color.  Cardinal red.  You have that in your box.  It’s in the top row of colors.”

Mr. Tyler walked away.  Billy kept drawing with red.

The last time Billy saw a box of crayons in school was fourth grade, when the box had grown to 64.  Billy had no idea what to do with a crayon named Salmon—wasn’t that a fish?—and the two named Yellow Orange and Orange Yellow looked exactly the same.  Why take up space with two crayons of the same color?  Billy brought his box of eight crayons from home.  The red was getting very small.

There wasn’t time for coloring again until eighth grade, when Billy took an art class in middle school.  The crayons had been replaced with pastels that were thicker, and moved across the paper differently than crayons.  Suddenly, Billy’s crisply drawn cardinals were fuzzy, and smeared, and looked a little more like smushed raspberries.  Billy waited until the end of class to ask his teacher about this, and how could he draw crisp cardinals with pastels.

The teacher frowned.  “We didn’t draw cardinals today” she said, “we were drawing mosaics.  Did you draw mosaics?”

Billy put his head down.  After school, he took his crayons home, and put them in the back of a desk drawer.

The counselor opened up the file on his lap and smiled.  “The career tests suggest you have an exceptional talent for art.  Have you considered a career in graphic arts?”

The student across from him stared at his blank phone screen.

“Billy, did you hear me?”

“Yeah” Billy said, not looking up.

“Your records say you haven’t taken an art course since eighth grade.  There’s room for one in your schedule next year as a senior.  What do you say?”

Billy’s eyes were frozen on the ground.

“Mrs. Jefferson is a great art teacher.  She taught me how to cross hatch.  Have you ever tried that?”

The counselor pulled out a blank piece of paper, and opened the top drawer of his desk.  It was filled with crayons.

The squeak of the drawer made Billy look up.  “They’re all green” he said.

“Yeah” the counselor chuckled, “I had this thing for green crayons when I was a kid, and it’s stuck with me all these years.  I had a couple of teachers try and talk me out of it, but when you love something, you just stick with it, you know?”

Billy looked away for a minute, then pulled out what looked like a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.

“Uh, Billy—” the counselor said.

Billy flipped open the top of the box, revealing a dozen crayons of different heights.  All red.

“Do they teach art in college?”

COVID Changed Admissions a Little.  Let’s Change it More.

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This isn’t the week to be a high school student.  Statewide assessment is going on  across the country, and thanks to social distancing policies, at least some students are taking the ACT on gym bleachers, six feet apart, straddling a wooden plank across their legs and using it as a desk.  Among other things, the results of this ACT will be used in some states to decide which  students get merit scholarship money.

Students in Michigan are about a month away from likely doing the same thing.  State officials reached out to the US Department of Education and asked for a waiver from the required testing in this year of  COVID mayhem.  Apparently the request got there when Betsy Devos was still in charge, because it was denied.

School counselors really thought we had won the day when over 1350 colleges decided to continue their test-optional admission policies for this year’s juniors—in fact, many colleges have extended this policy for an additional two years.  This kind of extension takes a little bit of courage, since it was made before colleges finished the current admissions cycle.  Either they’re hoping for the best, or they’re seeing what so many colleges have long known—testing doesn’t mean all that much, and once you no longer have it,

In our delirium, it seems we forgot to talk to government officials, who are asking for test results that are sure to disappoint.  Early test results in the last year show student achievement is down.  That may be for all kinds of reasons, but when you make a student take the ACT on their lap, it’s pretty likely that’s not going to show their best effort—so we can expect to see more of the same.

School counselors aren’t a greedy bunch by nature, but there are more than a few that look at the adoption of test optional policies and sigh.  It was just a year ago when more than a few college admissions wonks—deans and directors included—were truly excited at the prospect of creating a brand new admissions system that was cleaner, fairer, and easier.  Ample articles are out there showing how wealth skews every single tool used in the current system, from grades to test scores to essays to letters of recommendation to extra curriculars.  When the COVID quarantine came along, veteran admission watchers thought “At last!  Here’s the big thing that’s going to require us to rethink the whole process.”

That didn’t exactly happen. Since many of the changes affecting admissions also affected campus life and methods of instruction, college administrators were too concerned with keeping beds full and classrooms open to consider changing most admissions policies.  Figuring out how to build a class without test scores proved to be challenging enough; changing anything else was perceived to be a dice roll no one could take right now, unless they were willing to risk the college’s entire future on it.

There’s still a lot to do to bring in this fall’s class, but it isn’t too early for colleges to hunker down now and think about The Big Move they didn’t have time for this year.  Understanding that most admission changes are glacial, admission offices can use the lessons they learned from the quick change to test optional and build on them with a more strategic approach for other changes.  This could lead to a new model of admission for this year’s high school sophomores.  It’s already clear most colleges that went test-optional aren’t going to go back.  Top that decision off with some strategic planning, and careful study of some schools who did make huge strides this year (I’m looking at you, UCLA), and there’s still a chance to either even the playing field of admission, or openly admit it isn’t even, and develop the protocols needed to create the exceptions that will make it more fair.

Meanwhile, if someone could just tell government policy makers why they went test optional, and why it makes sense for states to do so as well?  They might as well make the students complete the tests with quill pens.