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In Search of New Mexico’s Most Beautiful College Campus

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Flag of New Mexico.

Today’s reader question comes from Jay in Flagstaff, Arizona:

Question: After living in Arizona with my mom most of my life, I’ve decided I want to go to New Mexico to college to live in the same state as my dad and my dad’s family. I am interested in history, philosophy, English, and maybe political science. But unlike a lot of guys, what’s really most important to me is beauty – I want to live on a beautiful college campus. I am very creative, and I am inspired when I am surrounded by beautiful things. So, what’s your pick for the most beautiful campus in New Mexico?

Answer: Well, this is an interesting question that I’ve never been asked, but I’ll give it a go by focusing on what I deem to be New Mexico’s best three colleges: New Mexico State University Las Cruces, University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and St. John’s College in Santa Fe.

New Mexico State University (NMSU) is a land grant university located in Las Cruces, New Mexico. I would describe its campus as beautiful and sprawling. The university has a rich history and offers a wide range of academic programs to its students, so when you are not admiring your surroundings, you have a lot of academic options to choose from.

Las Cruces, New Mexico is home to NMSU.

The campus spans over 700 acres and is filled with lush green lawns, trees, and scenic views of the surrounding mountains. The university has a mix of old and new buildings, with some of the buildings dating back to the early 1900s and others being recently constructed.

One of the most prominent buildings on campus is Corbett Center Student Union, which serves as a hub for student life and activities. The building houses a food court, a student lounge, meeting rooms, and a ballroom, among other facilities.

Another notable building is Milton Hall, which is the oldest building on campus and home to the university’s main administrative offices. The building features beautiful brick architecture and a clock tower that has become an iconic symbol of NMSU.

New Mexico State University’s campus looks good to me.

The university has several residence halls that provide on-campus housing to students, including Garcia Hall, Mohr Hall, and Zuhl Library. The residence halls are equipped with modern amenities and offer a safe and comfortable living environment for students.

The university also has a number of academic buildings, including O’Donnell Hall, which houses the College of Education, and the College of Business, which is located in Paul L. Kirkpatrick Hall. These buildings are equipped with state-of-the-art classrooms, labs, and facilities for students.

The campus also features several athletic facilities, including Aggie Memorial Stadium, the Pan American Center, and the Intramural Field Complex. These facilities are used by the university’s athletic teams and are available for student recreation and fitness.

Overall, the campus of New Mexico State University is a beautiful and well-maintained environment that provides students with all the resources and amenities they need for a successful college experience. A lot of films are also shot in and around Las Cruces because of the region’s natural beauty; therefore, you can experience a pretty environment on and off campus. Learn more about undergraduate admissions to NMSU here.

The University of New Mexico is located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and encompasses over 600 acres of land in the heart of the city. The campus is known for its distinctive southwestern architecture, including its iconic Hodgin Hall and Zimmerman Library, as well as its lush landscaping, which features lush greenery, colorful flowers, and plenty of open spaces for students to relax and enjoy the beautiful New Mexico weather.

At the center of the campus is the main quad, which is surrounded by many of the university’s key buildings, including the Student Union Building, the Fine Arts Center, and the Mitchell Hall administration building. The quad is a popular gathering place for students, and is often used for outdoor events, such as concerts and festivals.

The Duck Pond on UNM campus.

In addition to its beautiful outdoor spaces, the University of New Mexico is also home to a variety of academic buildings, which house a range of disciplines, including arts and humanities, sciences, engineering, and business. Some of the most notable academic buildings on campus include the Centennial Engineering Center, the Biology Building, and the George Pearl Hall.

The university also has a number of state-of-the-art athletic facilities, including the Dreamstyle Arena, the WisePies Arena, and the Isotopes Park baseball stadium. These facilities are used by both students and members of the community, and are a hub of activity for sports fans and fitness enthusiasts alike.

The view above University of New Mexico.

Overall, the University of New Mexico is a vibrant and dynamic campus, offering a wealth of resources and opportunities for its students, faculty, and staff. Whether you are exploring the beautiful outdoor spaces, participating in one of the many student organizations, or taking advantage of the cutting-edge academic and research facilities, there is something for everyone at UNM. Learn more about undergraduate admissions to UNM here.

Finally, St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico is a small liberal arts college that is known for its unique curriculum and focus on the Great Books of Western Civilization. Do note that the college has a sister campus in the capital city of Maryland: Annapolis. The Santa Fe campus is actually located on the outskirts of Santa Fe and is surrounded by the stunning natural beauty of the southwestern United States.

St. John’s College Santa Fe Campus

The campus itself is comprised of a number of historic buildings, including the main administration building, which dates back to the early 20th century, and several smaller residential buildings that were built in the Spanish Colonial Revival style. The buildings are set among lush gardens and open spaces, creating a serene and peaceful atmosphere for students and visitors alike.

One of the most distinctive features of St. John’s College is its commitment to a “tutorial” mode of instruction, in which students engage in one-on-one discussions with their professors and participate in small, seminar-style classes. This approach to learning is designed to foster critical thinking and close engagement with the texts, and is a hallmark of the St. John’s College experience. Based on your potential interest in majors, I think this college may really speak to you since its curriculum dives into “The Great Books.”

In addition to its academic facilities, the campus of St. John’s College in Santa Fe also features several student life amenities, including a dining hall, a student lounge, and a library. The library is an important resource for students, and is home to a collection of over 50,000 volumes, including many of the Great Books that form the basis of the college’s curriculum.

Another view of St. John’s College Campus in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The campus of St. John’s College is also surrounded by the rich cultural heritage of Santa Fe, with its many museums, art galleries, and historic landmarks. The city is known for its vibrant arts scene, and students at St. John’s College have access to a wide range of cultural events and activities, from classical music concerts to contemporary art exhibitions.

Santa Fe, New Mexico is known for some of America’s most distinctive architecture.

Overall, the campus of St. John’s College is a unique and inspiring place, offering a rich educational experience in a setting that is both intellectually stimulating and aesthetically pleasing. Whether you are a student, faculty member, or simply a visitor, you are sure to be impressed by the beauty and charm of this one-of-a-kind college. Learn more about undergraduate admissions to St. John’s College here.

Both of the state universities mentioned above are not only pretty – they are also relatively easy to get into. NMSU accepts roughly 57% of applicants while UNM accepts roughly 65% of applicants. St. John’s accepts a similar percentage of students but attracts a very small sub-set of applicants to begin with; let’s just say it has a far smaller appeal in today’s pre-professionally focused world of higher education. With that said, I love all of these colleges for the right student. While I know you are prioritizing beauty, at some point you may also want to consider cost of attendance and student life outside of the classroom as well. But, drumroll please…Here is my answer to your question: In my opinion, I think St. John’s College has the best campus for you because both the campus itself and its surroundings in Santa Fe are gorgeous. I’d probably rank NMSU second most beautiful campus and UNM third for beauty. Yet, really, they all are pretty easy on the eyes.

And, remember, beauty is in the eye of the beholder! Now that I’ve given my perspective, I strongly encourage you to take a road trip and see these three colleges for yourself, as I always say there is no such thing as a wasted college visit and you would always test drive a car before buying it so you should do the same with college you plan to invest your time and money into for the next four years of your life. Good luck.

The Birthrate Crisis, and How Colleges Should Respond

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The biggest stumbling block in education research is its lack of replicability.  In science, the same amount of vinegar plus the same amount of baking soda gives you the same result—and the same-sized result—no matter who does the experiment.  But take someone else’s methods and teaching materials, implement them the exact same way the first experimenter did, and you will likely get nothing even close to the same result.

A happy exception to this “it’s never the same” rule occurred in the 90s, when a number of studies showed, time after time, there was a way to significantly improve student learning—and it had nothing to do with changing curriculum, retraining teachers, or extending the school day.  This swath of studies showed, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the best way to improve student learning—especially in grades K-3—is to follow the magic recipe of 15 students or less with one teacher in one classroom.  Do that, and great things happen.

What has happened to this rare pillar of education reform?  Well, not much.  Once the magic recipe was discovered, administrators scoffed at the idea of dropping class size that low.  For that matter, so did taxpayers, who didn’t take long to realize that lower class size meant more classrooms and more teachers—and both cost more money.  As a result, education has largely turned its back on this piece of magic, except for some not-so-clever administrators who believe they can keep 30 kids in one classroom with a teacher and an aide and still maintain the ratio.

Since all three parts must be honored, this would be like doubling the baking soda and eggs in a cookie recipe without increasing the amount of flour.  You get something different, but you don’t get better cookies.  The magic recipe failed on its promise to deliver because the people in charge of schools—administrators and taxpayers—decided the change wasn’t worth the cost, offering instead some sleight of hand with ratios that satisfied most everyone, largely because Americans really don’t understand mathematics.

The leaders of our higher education systems are on the verge of making a similar error, with far more serious consequences.  It’s no secret that the birthrate in the US declined about 20 years ago, and is headed for a serious nose dive of the number of high school graduates in about 2025.  Since this isn’t exactly new news, one would think colleges would be looking at these numbers and saying something like “Fewer high school graduates means fewer college freshmen.  What should we do about it?”

Like the K-12 class size issue, the answer here is pretty easy.  No every high school senior goes to college right after high school, so there’s plenty of room to increase the number of college-bound seniors, and still maintain strong college enrollments.  The trick here lies in talking to students who don’t see college as part of their futures, and getting them to change their minds. If every high school student already went straight to college, this couldn’t be done; but that just isn’t the case.

As is often the case with answers that appear easy, this one has at least one major snag.  A very close read of most college recruiting literature shows it’s based on one big assumption; the student or family reading the literature is already convinced a four-year college is the answer for them, and they now simply need to sort out which ones they’ll consider.  They know about testing and application essays and degree requirements and different application deadlines, so it isn’t a question of “If College”.  It’s a question of “What College”.

Any student unsure about the benefits of four-year colleges would look at this admissions information and feel like they’ve walked into the middle of a three-hour movie; they know they have some catching up to do, but no one seems to want to help them, since they’re too busy watching the movie themselves. Given that mindset, you’d think most colleges—especially those that experienced freshman enrollment declines of up to 40 percent during COVID—would move heaven and earth to make sure they don’t end up as losers in the birthrate lottery.  A few new pamphlets, a different kind of open house, a new video or two, and a little admissions training, and you’re all set.

To date, that has not been the response of the higher education community.  Senior admissions officials tell me the general overall response has been to double down on an admissions strategy that includes making their institution the best choice, a strategy that turns what could be a bona fide effort at expanding college access into a zero-sum game.  This approach seems to glean support from the national papers who have always covered college admissions like there are only 25 colleges in the country.  The more “Ivies Report Record Application” stories they print, the more they feed the attitude that asks the question “Enrollment problem?  What enrollment problem?”

The real irony here is that the creation of a “Why College?” campaign for students new to the idea is fairly affordable and relatively easy.  Colleges that have like-minded missions and student bodies tend to be in the same athletic league.  Imagine what could happen if all colleges in one league pitched in a couple of admissions officers and a modest amount of cash to create, for example, The Big Ten Guide to the Benefits of College.  Since the goal of the campaign is informational, this wouldn’t constitute monopoly-building, and could even be overseen by the US Department of Education, which has a vested interest in making sure the college market doesn’t shrink.

The magic recipe of 15 students didn’t generate the results it was capable of for one reason—in the end, most people didn’t really care about fixing the problem.  The difference with the birthrate decline is that a lack of students means more than a few colleges will wither, or even die.  That would be a shame, but the only way to get something different is to do something different.  Are colleges wise enough to realize this, and innovate?

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.

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?”

Making a Calm College Decision

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This is typically the week many high school seniors are a little tense about their college plans.  The last few colleges are sending out decisions this week, and they tend to be the colleges where the admit rates are a little less than getting struck by lightning, so the hopes are high, while the odds remain low.

Now that the big week is finally here, here’s a quick list of things you should focus on to make a quality decision for life after high school:

What you do with the college experience matters more than where you go.  Most counselors save this advice for the end of articles like this, but these are unusual times. Chances are, if you’ve applied to a highly selective school, you have what it takes to do well there—it’s just that the college runs out of room before they run out of great applicants.  This means that the talents, habits, interests, and way you look at the world has prepared you to do great things wherever you go.  The college you attend won’t automatically make you a success; that will still be up to you.  So your future will still be in your hands, no matter what the colleges have to say this week.

It looks like another record breaking year. There are fewer students graduating from high school this year, but that isn’t keeping many colleges from seeing new highs in applications—and some that are seeing declines are still admitting less than 20 percent of their applicants.  Combined with an increase in the number of students many colleges took through early action and early decision plans, that leaves precious few seats to give out this week.

Yes, No, or Maybe, read the entire letter.  A student I am close to—OK, it’s my son—was so happy to read he was admitted to his first choice school he didn’t bother to read page 2 of the acceptance letter.  I did, and it’s a good thing, since it included information on the merit scholarship that made his attendance their possible.  Other yes letters have information about when deposits are due, and those are important as well.

Letters that waitlist you are even more important to read, since staying on the list may require you to do something—email, send back a card, update your application—by a specific date.  Even the letters of denial could give you information about transfer options that may now come into play.  So read the letter from start to finish, and have a parent do the same.

Read, and update, your financial aid information.  There’s a good chance all your colleges are going to be sending financial aid packages this week.  These are based on the financial aid information you gave them two months ago, when the world was a quiet place, before the stock market lost 30 percent of its value—and possibly before you or your parents lost their job.

The only way a college will know your financial picture has changed is if you tell them, and this is college—so it’s not time to be shy.  Pick up the phone, call financial aid, tell them your new story, and be ready to send supporting documents.   You’re this close to making the dream real.  Keep working.

File financial aid for the first time.  It’s certainly true most colleges have given all their aid away to students who applied for it in February, but many of those students turn down packages, or go to a different school.  If you now need help paying for college, get the forms in yesterday—check the college’s website to find out all the forms they need, and where you should send them.  Calling to ask is an even better idea.

Ask for an extension to the May 1 deposit.  Many colleges understand that this spring isn’t exactly normal, which is why they are moving their deposit deadlines to June 1 or later.  If your college isn’t doing that, you can still call and request an extension for personal reasons.  They might say no, but the only way they say yes is because you ask—kind of like the only way they admitted you is because you applied. Make. The. Call.

Apply to more colleges.  Except for the Top 50, every college in this country is still taking applications for fall admission—and, as mentioned before, some will still have financial aid to offer you.  If you’re looking at changing your college plans due to all the changes in the world, lots of colleges are eager to hear from you for the first time…

Consider transferring …and thanks to some pretty strong transfer options, you could still end up graduating from your dream school, even if you can’t start there.  The best way to plan a transfer is to call the college where you want to finish, and ask about transfer options.  Building the plan from the end means you know where to start, and what classes are best to take to minimize the credits you’ll lose when you make the shift.  Ask for transfer admissions when you call.

Talk to your counselor.  One upside of all of this is that counselors now have more time than ever to talk college with you, since they don’t have to do lunch duty.  I know, I know—they have 8,000 students on their caseload, and they might not know you well.  They will once you tell them who you are, and what you need—and that window is now more wide open than ever before.  Most schools have sent students direction on how to reach out to counselors.  As is the case with most things in life, what you do with that information is now up to you.

Remembering Tom Weede, and Calling on the Next Tom Weedes

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I could tell this was not going to be a typical meeting with a college representative.  He walked into my office with absolutely no hurry, as if this was all he had to do all day, and talked about his school from the heart, not from a memory-committed checklist of things someone else told him to say.  When I asked questions, he left a space between when I stopped talking, and when he started his answer, never once referring me to the school’s website, or the college catalog.  This was clearly a guy who knew his school as well as he knew his middle name.

It was also notable that he didn’t talk about his school in some theoretical abstract.  We do that a lot in college admissions, where we talk about a college in the third person, like it’s some kind of god.  He mostly talked about the students at his school, what they were doing, what they liked about being there.  He knew that’s what makes the college experience work for a student—who you go to school with.  He wasn’t going to waste my time reciting scores and rankings, because Rugg’s could tell me about scores, and rankings were, well, pretty pointless.  If you have time to talk with someone face-to-face, the conversation should be a giving of self, not of data, and that meant talking about things that mattered.  What matters most in college is the students.

After he said everything he thought I should know, he got up and gave me his card.  As I recall, he said something about how he’d like to hear from me, but the university had made it kind of hard to get hold of him, with a student aide and a secretary standing between him and every incoming call, but he urged me to persist.  After he’d left, I read his card, and realized I’d just spent forty-five minutes talking to a Director of Admissions who had made a cold call to my high school.

That was my introduction to Tom Weede, who passed on earlier this month, leaving this world and our profession all the poorer.  The outpouring of loss has come from all circles of our field, and it all contains one common message; Tom was the rare person who not only felt you mattered; he made sure you knew you mattered.  He trusted you with his opinion, and trusted that you would step up and let him know how you felt in turn, even if you saw things differently.  His advocacy in the profession was focused on students, and when he engaged you in conversation, you felt, as George Bailey once said, that he knew you all the way to your back collar button.

Tom’s come to mind quite a bit this summer, and not just because of his passing.  I’ve been besieged by a number of students and parents flooding my office with requests to make college plans, and they’re all ninth and tenth graders.  One father called and insisted he had to meet with me right away, since his son was a junior, and had no college plans at all.  The student’s name wasn’t familiar to me, so I looked him up.  Turns out he was a sophomore, but since his father called the day after school was over, calling his son a junior made things sound more important, I guess.

That’s the kind of month it’s been.  One parent wants to meet to talk about “college strategy,” another one is convinced his ninth grader’s chances at graduate school are already shot because the student has no plans for this summer.  It’s easy enough to get caught up in the mania the media is peddling as college readiness, but it’s never hit the ninth and tenth graders like this before.  Worse, it seems to be hitting their parents, and too many of them are succumbing to the herd mentality of college angst, abandoning their post as sentinels of their children’s youth.

If there’s any remedy to this, I’d like to think it’s the calm, listening voice of the Tom Weedes that are still with us.  Tom did most of his preaching to admissions officers, and none of us were smart enough to ever ask him if he’d thought about saying this to kids and families. Since similar voices are doing the same thing, it’s time to ask them to broaden their scope, before SAT flash cards become the in gift for bar mitzvahs.

Voices like Ken Anselment, Heath Einstein, and Tamara Siler do a very nice job of reminding colleagues that that the college selection process is all about the kids. What’s needed now is for them to share their insights with a larger audience, giving kids permission to be kids. It would be a great way to honor Tom’s memory.  Better still, it would be the right thing to do for our world.

U.S. News Reveals its Top 10 Undergraduate Business Programs of 2019

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U.S. News is teasing its popular Top Colleges edition with the release of the names of its 2019 top 10 Best Undergraduate Business programs. All of the programs included in the list are accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Due to some ties, thirteen business programs appear on the list. See below for our thoughts.

2019 US News Top 10 Business Programs

(Including Ties and Listed Alphabetically)
Carnegie Mellon University
Cornell University
Indiana University—Bloomington
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
New York University
University of California—Berkeley
University of Michigan—Ann Arbor
University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill
University of Notre Dame
University of Pennsylvania
University of Southern California
University of Texas—Austin
University of Virginia

First Thought: Kelley at IU is by far the best back-door into America’s top business programs. It’s curriculum and graduates are highly respected by the on-campus recruiting community, which is where the action really is if you want to get a good job once you graduate. The admissions standards at Kelley, while they are far higher than they were ten years ago, are still far less onerous than those at any of the other undergraduate business programs on the list.

Second Thought: Cornell got what it wanted by reorganizing its business/hospitality programs in recent years. They are now regularly mentioned as one of only two Ivy League colleges in the big leagues in terms undergraduate business. Penn no longer has a monopoly on this designation, which is exactly what Cornell was aiming for with the revamp.

Third Thought: There is no excuse for a high-flying aspiring undergraduate business student not to have heard from at least a third of colleges on his or her list by February 1 if he or she is developing his or her college list correctly. Six colleges on the list below offer some form of Early Action (Michigan, UVA, UNC, Notre Dame, MIT) or Rolling Decision (IU). Meanwhile, UT offers Priority (11/1), and Penn, Cornell, NYU, and Carnegie Mellon offer Early Decision. Just as in the world of business, in the world of undergraduate admission, the early bird gets the worm! Get your act together early if you want to give yourself the best shot of admission into colleges deemed to offer the best business programs in the USA.

Final Thought: The list is definitely larger than last year when only ten colleges made this list because of a tie for seventh place. While more colleges are included, we are certainly happy to see the likes of USC and IU added over Boston College, Emory, Penn State and the like. From our experience there is a definite difference between both the quality of the student and the quality of the student experience at colleges included on the above list and colleges not making the list. U.S. should try to not include any more colleges than thirteen on this list in future years unless a current pretender dramatically alters its undergraduate programming and/or its admissions processes.