A number of readers forwarded me high school senior Simon Kuh’s op-ed, College tour fail: Why can’t admissions offices tell it like it is? As he explains:
“Every prospective student deserves an info session that delivers more than basic facts and a tour that provides a true feel for campus life.”
I’ll offer my own advice for tour guides with this past post, How I wish colleges would do tours.
For seniors who are (or will soon be) filling out your Common Application, join us for a live webinar, Making Your Common App Less Common. It’s taking place September 13 from 6 p.m. – 7:15 p.m. PST and will feature Arun Ponnusamy, our Vice-President and Head of Counseling, who has read more than 7,500 applications and 20,000 essays at UCLA, Caltech, and the University of Chicago.
The cost is $10 per attendee, and we’re limiting attendance to 200. You can find all the details, and the link to register, here.
Some parents in Los Angeles recently enrolled their young children in a “weeklong boot camp designed to prepare them for the rigors of kindergarten.” The article opens with, “They [the children] could have been splashing in a pool or playing with their stuffed animals. But some local little ones had more serious work to do.”
And in the “stuff I just couldn’t make up” department, here’s the ad that appeared on the page.
Parents, you get to educate your kids however you see fit. But I hope that the parents enrolling their children in kindergarten boot camp aren’t doing so for fear that their kids will somehow end up trailing the competition for college 12 years from now. We’ve helped 8,000 kids get into college at Collegewise, including all of the most selective colleges in the country. But we’ve never once had to break the news to a family that they needed to lower their college sights because they just didn’t do enough back in the kindergarten years to get a competitive advantage.
Even the Marines don’t start boot camp in kindergarten.
I had high hopes for the recent entry on the Georgia Tech admissions blog, 25 Reasons Not to Apply to Georgia Tech. Too many colleges’ marketing messages seem to imply that a school will be all things to all students. And I’ve written before that colleges would stand out, and likely draw more of the very students they want most, if they were honest about what their schools won’t be for those who join their freshman classes.
Georgia Tech’s entry is a good start. They did point out the workload, the heat, and the proud passion for math and science—if those are deal breakers, Georgia Tech probably isn’t the school for you. But those points with merit got a little lost for me among some of the jokes and humble-brags that showed up in the list of 20. Still, applause for having the guts to even try what most colleges just aren’t willing to do.
No college is perfect, and no college can make every student equally happy. Students, as you research schools and look for the right fits, don’t be afraid to ask the question, “What kind of student wouldn’t be a good fit here?” Proud colleges with nothing to hide will happily answer that question.
Study skills author Cal Newport set goals to (1) become a professor by the age of 30, and (2) become tenured by age 35. He attributes his success in meeting both those goals to one skill. In fact, it’s the same skill he claims also got him into Dartmouth. And best of all, it’s available to any student, with any GPA. Newport calls it deep work, and he even wrote a book about it.
Turn off the distractions. Set aside quiet, uninterrupted time. And focus on doing difficult, important work.
If the return on that investment meant you’d get more done with more success in less time, why not give it a try?
My senior year of high school, I was the goalkeeper on our soccer team that lost the league championship to a team that, based on records, we had to beat twice to take home the title. We won the first game after four overtimes and a penalty kick shootout in which I saved the final game-winning penalty kick. But we lost the second, and the championship, on a savable shot. When I walked into the house after the game, the only thing my dad did was start applauding right there in the living room. Thanks, Pop.
An Open Letter to My Dad, who Makes Me Want to Quit Sports wasn’t actually written by a kid. The author is John O’Sullivan, Founder and CEO of the group Changing the Game Project, whose mission is to, as they put it, “…put the ‘play’ back in ‘play ball.’” But it’s pretty clear that as a player and a coach, O’Sullivan knows what it’s like when a young athlete feels like his or her parent refuses to just watch the game and instead insists on coaching from the stands, yelling at the refs, and delivering an intensive post-game analysis on the car ride home.
I thought this portion was particularly appropriate for parents whose kids are going through the college admissions process. Yes, this is a sports example, but too many parents forget that the anxiety, judgement, and rejection that often come with applying to college—these things are happening to the kids, not to the parents. The parents’ job is to support, cheer (not yell) from the sidelines, and make it clear that their love and pride isn’t dependent on a winning outcome.
“It’s confusing when you are still upset about the loss hours after a game. How long is it appropriate to be sad and angry? I mean, I am the one who played, right? We are supposed to win some and lose some if we play good teams, right? We got beat, but now we have to move on and get ready for the next game. I am not sure how staying angry will help me get better for the next game. I certainly don’t feel like learning much immediately after a loss. The best thing you can do after a game is tell me you are proud of me for competing, and showing good sportsmanship, and that you love to watch me play.”
For parents of athletes, O’Sullivan’s 14-minute TED Talk is worth viewing, too.
According to this Wall Street Journal article, employers are increasingly seeking workers who excel in the “soft skills” like communication, teamwork, critical thinking, and initiative.
But the article got one thing wrong—no employer is going to hire someone just because they add these skills to their resume. You can add any skill to a resume, but that alone won’t make it a hirable strength.
What employers will really appreciate is an applicant who’s demonstrated these skills, who has experience and references and tales of impact that will attest that these strengths are more than just words on a resume.
And I can’t think of a better place to develop those, with more opportunities and people to help you develop them, than college.
My college buddy Jim once arrived home furious and announced to me and the rest of the roomies that the local McDonald’s had just refused his coupon on a technicality, to which he boldly declared to the cashier, “You just lost yourself a customer, buddy!”
Fellow roommate Keith sarcastically wondered how McDonald’s could possibly go on with “only 99 billion served.”
The fledgling mom-and-pop burger stand might have appreciated that opportunity to please just one customer a lot more than McDonald’s would have. I’m not commenting on the quality of either business. But scarcity works both ways. We all often want what we can’t have. And it can be difficult to appreciate what we have too much of.
Many students and parents have heard advice about forging personal connections with college admissions officers. That’s why you see parents figuratively—and often literally—pushing kids towards the tables at college admissions fairs. It’s also why many admissions officers find that some students email their offices like they’re communicating with pen pals rather than asking legitimate questions.
If you have a question, you should ask it. If you have the opportunity at a college fair to say hello in person to a rep from a school that interests you, do it. But before you do anything in the name of making a personal connection and helping your admissions chances, please remember two things.
1. Real questions and genuine interest are always preferable to anything that feels like networking with the purpose of forging a connection.
2. The mom-and-pops are more likely to remember you than McDonald’s will.
Prestigious colleges are besieged with applications, and with attempts to forge personal connections. They have a long line of customers who eagerly want to buy what they’re selling, far more than they could ever hope to serve. Yes, they’re still real people who genuinely want to get to know the people they’re evaluating as much as possible. And those connections are occasionally forged. But that almost always happens because a student and the circumstance just happened to be memorable, not because the applicant made a point of reaching out repeatedly.
But most of the colleges aren’t prestigious. Attend a local college fair and you’ll see that for every famous college with a crowd around the table asking what SAT scores are needed for admission, there will be five reps sitting alone at their tables who would love to talk to a student who sincerely wants to know more.
Those are the mom-and-pops. They likely don’t have far more applicants than they could ever hope to admit. And their reps just might remember a good conversation with a mature student who could thrive on their campus.
Some college admissions strategies gain a reputation in admissions circles as just that—a strategy to gain admission, rather than a sincere reflection of an applicant’s passion. Expensive pre-college programs at prestigious universities, summer trips to far-flung lands in the name of relief work, internships (often secured through parent connections) at famous firms—not every student who does these things is trying to game the system. But admissions officers have a keen eye for separating sincere, substantial commitments from those completed for the sake of adding them to a college application.
The new flavor? Starting non-profits.
Starting a non-profit isn’t the hard part. Sticking with it, doing the hard work to fulfill the mission, showing up again and again to help those the non-profit ostensibly exists to serve—that’s the hard part.
If you’ve thought about starting a non-profit in the interest of impressing colleges, please know that colleges will be far more interested in what you and your non-profit do after starting.
And if you’ve identified a cause or group you’d sincerely like to help, you might consider joining an existing program if one exists. There are hundreds of non-profits, volunteer groups, or even just circles of like-minded citizens who are already doing the work to help those who need it. You can bypass all the paperwork, red tape, and preliminary start-up steps and instead jump right in and start helping.
I applaud any student who finds the time and energy to help people, including those students who found organizations committed to causes they care about.
But like most work worth starting, what happens next is what matters most.
The Challenge Success folks share their Top Ten Back-to-School Tips to Help your Child Thrive in School This Year.
And for students, here’s a past post of mine with a collection of back-to-school posts, books, and other resources.