Kevin McMullin

College admissions advice for students, parents, and counselors

Consistently good vs. occasionally great

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For the high school students who may never have heard of him, Steve Martin is an actor, writer, and musician who started his more-than-40-year career in show business as a stand-up comedian, one of the first to actually sell out arenas. I love this quote from his book Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life, which covers his stand-up career before he left it behind in 1981 to make movies.

“It was easy to be great. Every entertainer has a night when everything is clicking. These nights are accidental and statistical: Like lucky cards in poker, you can count on them occurring over time. What was hard was to be good, consistently good, night after night, no matter what the abominable circumstances.”

There’s nothing wrong with being great when the circumstances are perfect, when you just happen to do the right thing in the right place at the right time. You perform well when you really like the teacher. Your grade on a test is higher when you just happened to study exactly the right material beforehand. You score the goal or nail the solo or offer one great idea to your club or organization. Those are your high points, and you should celebrate them.

But what’s harder is to be the person who finds a way to do good work even when the circumstances aren’t perfect, when you aren’t crazy about the teacher, when it’s not your best subject or you’re not a starter or you’re not an elected officer. What’s hard is finding a way to be consistently good during those times.

This isn’t a post about perfection (even the best comedians have done their share of bombing on stage). But showing up, doing the work, and finding ways to be consistently good—that’s what’s hard. And consistently being good is the path to experiencing more than just the occasional, fleeting greatness.

Five things to stop doing

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We’ve all got plenty of items on our to-do lists. For college applicants, here’s a short list of things to stop doing:

1. Stop focusing so much on improving your perceived weaknesses.

You’re not perfect and colleges don’t expect you to be. Instead, try maximizing your strengths.

2. Stop spending more time on test prep than you do on school, activities, family, or fun.

It’s not a good strategy to place more importance on standardized tests than even the colleges do.

3. Stop participating in activities you’ve heard look good to colleges but that you don’t particularly enjoy.

4. Stop worrying so much about what your competition is doing.

Who got into AP Spanish, who cracked 2100 on the SAT, who won the award, who got picked as a starter, or who was named first chair in the orchestra—you can’t out-achieve, out-pace, or out-copy everyone else. You don’t get to control what they do. You can only control what you do. And speaking of control…

5. Stop focusing on the parts of this process that you don’t control.

Relentlessly focus on the parts that are within your control (here are a few suggestions).

Don’t stop caring about your future, working hard, or setting goals for yourself. It’s possible to keep doing those things while eliminating those on the “Stop” list.

Thinking of using connections?

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In the quest to give their kids every potential admissions advantage, many parents enlist (or accept offers of) help from personal or professional connections—the alum, the colleague who claims to have influence, the friend-of-a-friend who reportedly sits on the board, etc. I understand their inclination. It’s hard not to be intrigued when a friend or colleague who claims to have some influence at a particular school offers to write a letter of recommendation or otherwise put in a good word. If every little bit might help, what’s the worst that could happen?

First, here’s a harsh truth many families don’t want to hear—most “connections” have absolutely no bearing on admissions decisions. The 24-year-old admissions officer reading the file isn’t moved by the fact that your close personal friend attended the school and is willing to write a letter of support. Those letters rarely offer insight that can’t be gleaned from the application and the supporting teacher/counselor recommendations. In fact, in 15 years of running Collegewise, I know of only two examples where a student was admitted to college because of an influential connection to the school. In both cases, the influence came in the form of funding a new building on campus. Unless the school’s vital interests are at stake, employing a connection is the admissions version of a wild swing.

There are also risks to employing connections. Sending unsolicited letters of recommendation can take the focus off the other important parts of the application. In fact, some schools won’t read more than the requested number of letters—if you send extra, they won’t read them all, and even worse, you won’t get to control which ones they read. And utilizing connections can put even more pressure on the applicant who doesn’t want to disappoint the people who are waging a campaign on his or her behalf.

Still, it’s hard for parents (and I’m one of them now) to turn off their desire to help their kids in any way possible. So here are a few things to consider before employing a connection during the admissions process.

1. Check each school’s application requirements.
Are personal letters of rec required or even invited? The first rule of successful college applications is to follow the directions. Sending unsolicited documents puts the student at risk of annoying admissions officers who are tired and overworked at this time of year.

2. Does the connection actually have influence?
Someone who actually has legitimate influence with a college isn’t likely to 1) offer that help casually, or 2) flaunt it at a dinner party. Instead, they’ll be selective about whom they help and specific about why and how they can do so. It’s the difference between:

“I’ve got some pull. I’d be happy to write a letter for your son.”

and

“I’ve been an alumni interviewer for 15 years, and I work very closely with the admissions office. If your son is legitimately interested, I’d be happy to talk with him and see if there might be something I could do to help. Have him call me and we can set a time to meet.”

See the difference? The first offer is part bluster. The second is a specific offer that’s tempered by the request to actually speak to the applicant first.

3. Be aware of the message you’re sending to your kids.
There’s a fine line between making your kids feel supported and making them feel like the stakes are being raised yet again. Remember that teens are summarizing their lives in applications only to be judged by a committee of people who’ve never met them. It’s stressful enough without feeling like they’re at risk of letting yet another person down if a denial arrives. Parents’ intentions are almost always good in this area, but it’s important to be sensitive to the college applicant in the house. Instead of forging ahead and employing your connection, ask your student if he or she wants you to do this. That will help you make sure that any help you accept is actually welcome.

When families ignore counselors’ advice

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Counselors, how do you handle it when a student (or parent) won’t take your advice?

A family insists that their student apply to a long list of schools you know will not admit the student.

A parent wants their student to write an essay on a topic you know to be overused, like “Sports taught me the value of teamwork and committing to my goals.”

A student continuously retakes the SAT even after achieving a score that’s good enough to please any college’s standardized testing expectations.

Any person in the consulting, advising, or counseling profession faces the challenge of people who ask for your help but then won’t take your advice. But college counselors, both independent and those in high schools, feel deeply responsible for—and protective of—their students. These are kids, and we’re talking about their futures. I’d hate to have to calculate how many hours of sleep counselors lose worrying about students who aren’t following the advice they have access to.

If there were a quick solution to this challenge, someone would have found it already. But I can offer some advice and encouragement via the past posts below.

First, remember the inalienable rights of students, parents and counselors.

When you’re on opposite sides of an issue, start by anchoring with agreement.

Rather than debating, share your concerns.

Here are some tips when a parent gets too involved in the college essays.

Need help saying no?

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Fifteen years ago, I invited all (which at that time meant “all four”) of our counselors and editors to my house for dinner. One of the editors who could not attend replied:

“Kevin, I’d love to come, but my husband and I already made plans that night. If you ever host in the future, please invite me again, OK?”

There was something about the “Please invite me again…” portion that I loved. It was so earnest and sincere, not at all formulaic.  It actually left me even more likely to invite her in the future. That’s hard to do in a short email declining an invitation (it’s no surprise that she’s since gone on to be a successful author).

Happy and successful people say “no” with regularity. It’s a crucial habit if you want to stay focused, productive, and fulfilled.

But it’s important to say “no” in the right way so you don’t alienate people or come off like an ungrateful jerk. Here’s a good example you can build on if you need some suggested language.

We’re hiring a part-timer in Bellevue, Washington

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Our Bellevue office needs assistance, so we’re hiring an assistant.

Collegewise is hiring an assistant college counselor to help us take great care of the families who’ve hired us, and keep our office running smoothly during our busy season.

Who is Collegewise?
We’re a college counseling company that helps high school students find, apply to, and attend the right colleges for each student. You’d be helping our Director of College Counseling as she prepares “A” students, “C” students, and everyone in between with good advice, organization, and a little cheerleading to make sure everything happens smoothly and thoughtfully. Our goal isn’t to get every kid who works with us into an Ivy League school. Instead, our college counselors show families just how many wonderful colleges there are, helping our students apply and get accepted to schools they’re excited to attend.

What would you say ya’ do here?
This job is mostly administrative, a little customer service, and a bit tutoring. Here are some examples of things you might do in a given day working with us.

  • Make (and feel free to drink) coffee in the morning. Must…have…coffee.
  • Call students to confirm their appointments with counselors.
  • Help a student understand required recommendations and help get all the paperwork organized.
  • Print and copy materials for a seminar in the afternoon.
  • Work on a research project to find interview requirements for students’ college lists.
  • Review supplemental college essays and provide feedback.
  • Answer the phone when it rings. Make a good first impression. Don’t use phrases like “A counselor will hit you back later.”
  • Review student progress via our application management system and follow-up with any kids who have assignments due.
  • Send out an email reminder to families registered for an upcoming seminar. No spelling or grammatical errors, please.
  • Check our office supply stock and reorder any if necessary.

Who are we looking for?

We’d love to find people who have interest or experience working in education and helping students. But fit is more important than experience for this job. We enjoy working hard and doing a great job. We’d rather be forced to drink lizard spit than be that worker who shows up late, does sloppy work, or otherwise phones it in. We like working with other people who want to be proud of what they do every day. And we like to have fun here. If that resonates with you, you might really enjoy working with us.

What else should you know?

  • Starting pay is $15 per hour.
  • We’re looking for someone to work 5-8 hours per week, Mondays-Fridays (depending on your availability) from September to early December. There may be an opportunity to do additional work in 2016 as well.
  • We’ll provide all the necessary training about college admissions and the Collegewise way of doing things.

What’s the next step?

If your interest is piqued, we invite you to get to know us a little better by looking around our website. Find out more about what we do, who you’d be working with and what we believe. If you like what you read and think you could find a professional home here, please email a resume and cover letter to our director, Katie Konrad Moore. Like a great college essay, we think a great cover letter should help us get to know who you really are. Don’t be afraid to be yourself—smart, thoughtful, maybe even funny. Just don’t be generic. We’ve also got five (totally unsolicited) tips for job seekers if you’d like them.

We hope to hear from you, but if we don’t, we hope you find a great gig someplace else.

Two free admissions seminars for international families

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I don’t know anyone more knowledgeable about the intricacies of college admissions and the best ways to help families manage the process than my business partner, Arun Ponnusamy. He’s conducting two free admissions seminars specifically for international families on September 24th and 26th. All the details are here. If you can join, you won’t be disappointed.

The letter and spirit of application laws

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It won’t come as a surprise to many students that lying on a college application is a bad idea. But the line between truth and lies can become progressively blurrier when students are trying to give themselves every reasonable admissions advantage.

Should you check a particular ethnicity box when you acknowledge it’s true for only a tiny percentage of your DNA?

Does taking AP Spanish qualify you to answer “Yes” to whether or not you’re fluent in a second language?

Should you list yourself as founder and president of a club that only met once?

Where is the line? When does the spirit of the application law supersede the letter?

There are no hard and fast rules here, but I’d offer these two guidelines:

1. If an admissions officer called your counselor to verify this information, would you be confident or nervous about what your counselor would say?

2. If the interviewer for your dream school asked you to tell her more about this, would you be happy to dive into the details, or would you feel like you’d been caught in a fib?

Your answer to those questions should give you a good sense of whether or not you’re heading toward application impropriety.

And while “Could a college really find out I stretched the truth?” is the wrong question to ask, here’s my answer.

Our new Common App Guide is here—and it’s free

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BlogAnnounceImageToday, we’re all really excited to announce that our Collegewise Guide to the 2015-16 Common Application—revised and updated to reflect the most recent version—is now available to download.

The big news? It’s free of charge. You can get your copy here.

Why did we decide to give this guide away?
We make our living working with families who hire us to help them manage their college application process. We work really hard to be great at what we do, we don’t charge more than we think is fair and reasonable, and we’re proud of the difference we make for those families. Previous versions of our Common App guide were priced at $10-$15, and we’ve sold nearly 10,000 downloads since we first released it in 2011, many of them to families who likely couldn’t have worked with us because of geography or economics.

But we’re also out to make a big difference in the college admissions world. We want students and parents to have access to good college planning information even if they can’t afford to pay for it. We want counselors and teachers to have more tools at their disposal to help kids get to where they want to go. And most importantly, we want to be a bigger part of those solutions. Between my blog, our free newsletter, and the hundreds of free presentations we give at schools and in our communities every year, we’ve always been committed to this goal. But we can do more, and we want to show the educational community that we’re doing what we can to walk our talk. Giving our guide away feels like the right thing to do.

Here are a few suggestions for how you might use our guide:

Students

  • If you haven’t started your Common App, complete each section with our help. We think your app will be stronger, and you’ll actually spend less time on the application by just getting it right the first time.
  •  If you’ve already finished your Common App, use our guide to do a line-by-line review before you submit.
  • Struggling with just a particular section or two? Our guide can probably help.

Parents

  • If you are the official college application reviewer in the house, use our guide to review your student’s Common Application (kids should always complete their own college applications even if a parent will review them).

High school counselors

  • Looking to brush up on your Common App knowledge? Spend an hour with our guide and you’ll be a virtual expert.
  • Do your students come to you with questions about the Common App? Keep a copy of our guide on your desk (or bookmark the link to save a tree), and use it whenever you need a second opinion.
  • Share it with colleagues, teachers, and students.
  • Post the link on your website or in your student newsletters.

Private counselors

  • Our guide will teach you exactly what to look for when reviewing each of your students’ Common Applications.
  • Share the link with your students for them to use at home while they complete their applications.
  • Do you have partners, employees, or interns who work with students? Our guide makes a great training tool.

We’re not sure yet whether we’ll make future versions of this guide available for free, but this decision will stay in place for the 2015-16 version. We’re proud of it, we’re excited to share it with a wider audience, and we really hope you and your students enjoy it.