Kevin McMullin

College admissions advice for students, parents, and counselors

A no-brainer decision

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Too many families do not bother to apply for financial aid. They may think college is too expensive to even bother. They may worry that applying for aid could hurt the student’s chances of admission. They may assume they won’t qualify. None of those are good reasons not to apply for aid.

Here’s another bad reason—student loan aversion.

With all the press about the mounting student debt, I’ve found that families have become far more averse to allowing their student to take on debt to attend college. Loan aversion isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But it’s a terrible reason to refuse to apply for financial aid.

Applying for financial aid doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be offered loans, and it certainly doesn’t mean that you’re required to accept them.

If you receive need-based aid from a college, your financial aid award could contain a combination of grants (free money that doesn’t need to be paid back), loans, and work study. This is why the award is often referred to as a financial aid “package.”

But families have the option of accepting certain portions of that package, and refusing others. If you’re loan-averse, you could accept the grants and work-study and refuse the loan portion (assuming you could pay for the school without the loan).

Whether or not it makes sense for a student to take on debt to attend college is a big decision with too many factors in play to address here. If your family has committed to a no-debt strategy, I totally support that.

But in the same way that the decision to apply to college is separate from the decision to actually attend, the decision to apply for aid—and even to check the box indicating that you would like to be considered for loans—is separate from the decision to actually take on debt.

The debt decision may be complex, but the decision to apply for aid should be a no-brainer.

A seat at the table

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The family dinner table can really put everything in perspective, especially during the holidays. Take Christmas 1992, for example.

1992 was the first year my parents spent at home while both their boys were away at college. For the holidays, I came home from my senior year at UC Irvine, my brother from his freshman year at Harvard. I can’t remember a time I’ve ever seen my parents so happy as that first night at the dinner table together.

My brother and I liberally swapped college stories. He and his Harvard crew teammates had just beaten college archrival Yale. And his dorm neighbors had recently voted him as the student with the most deplorably unkempt dorm room.

Apparently, my brother was on quite a winning streak as a Harvard freshman.

I’d just been hired to run the UC Irvine summer orientation program for incoming freshmen, a job I’d been coveting for three years. And speaking of accomplishments, my roommates and I had always wanted to see if we could stay up all night playing video games. Two weeks earlier, we’d climbed that Everest and reached the summit.

It’s important to set goals if you want to be successful in college.

My parents never asked us what grades we were getting, or what we planned on doing after graduation. They didn’t tell my brother to keep his room clean or me to throw away my video games and opt for a good book. At that dinner table, all that mattered to my parents was that their two boys were home from college.

Wherever your kids go to college—from Harvard to Haverford, Duke to Denison, Georgetown to Juniata, Princeton to Purdue—they’re going to come home for the holidays and sit down at your dinner table. And as long as they have stories about how much they’re loving college, I think you’ll find that the names on their college sweatshirts really won’t matter to you all that much.

In fact, you’ll probably find as you sit together this holiday season that the “C” on the geometry test and the SAT score that didn’t quite break 1800 and the room so messy it could rival my brother’s dorm room won’t seem nearly as important as the time you’re spending together.

Dinner tables really can put things in perspective.

Thank you for reading, and happy holidays.

Earn a “yes”

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Here’s a great story about the founding of Under Armour, a multi-billion-dollar athletic apparel company. CEO Kevin Plank was a football player in college who wished there had been a better alternative to wearing a cotton t-shirt under his pads. So he bought some fabric at a shop about a mile from his college campus, then took that fabric to a local tailor and asked him to make as many tight t-shirts out of the fabric as he could. As Plank puts it,

“It was really that easy. I think sometimes entrepreneurs can get caught up with theorizing, hypothesizing, business planning – at some point, put the freaking pen down and go do something. Go find out if you can make your product. Once you make it, stop projecting what’s going to happen, and go find out whether your product can sell. Find out whether someone is willing to take hard-earned cash out of their pocket and exchange it for your product.”

I’ve heard from dozens of people over the years who want to become private counselors. Many of them are caught up in the details like, “What should my logo be? How should my website look? Who should design my business cards? Which accounting software should I use?” But those questions ignore the much more important one—are people willing to pay you for advice? If not, you don’t need a website, logo, software, etc. And all the time and money you spent making those things would have been better served improving your counseling game and earning the trust of a few families who will work with you.

I’m all for good planning. But whether you’re starting a business, running a PTA, or founding a high school club, remember that your most important job is to be good enough that customers or members are willing to exchange time and/or money in exchange for working with you. Everything else is secondary.

So the most important question to ask is, “Will someone want this?” And the most important thing to do is spend your time, energy and money to earn a “Yes.”

One parent’s take on standardized testing

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Jon Boeckenstedt from DePaul University has something most parents don’t have—over 30 years of college admissions and financial aid experience. But like many readers here, he’s got kids of his own. John’s take on standardized testing, shared here on his blog in the face of his daughter taking the PSAT, is a refreshing read that he sums up nicely at the end:

“When the [PSAT] scores come in, we’ll look at them, of course. And when the mail arrives in bushel baskets, we’ll sort through it all, lingering fondly over some, and sending some unopened to the recycle bin. But we’ll never define a complex human being by scores on a three-hour test on a Saturday morning; my earnest hope is that our kids don’t allow that to happen to themselves.”

What are you doing today?

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I love the advice from Jason Fried (CEO of Basecamp) in this article because I think it applies to far more than just business:

“Instead of spending your time worrying about what could, might, or may happen, spend your time on what matters now. Are your customers thrilled with your service today? Is your inbox flooded with word-of-mouth referrals today? Do your employees love their jobs today? Can people find what they’re looking for on your website today? Be honest with yourself. If the answers aren’t satisfactory, then I’d suggest that you truly have something to worry about—no matter how beautiful and comprehensive your business plan is.”

Almost all of the anxiety around college admissions comes from worrying about things that either haven’t happened yet or are not entirely in your control (or both). The more time you spend worrying about whether or not your GPA is high enough or your test scores are good enough or your activities are impressive enough, the less attention and energy you have to expend on what you’re doing today. And today is what really matters.

Instead of spending your time worrying about whether or not your dream colleges will say yes, spend your time on what matters now. Are you pushing yourself to learn as much as you can in school today? Are you committing yourself enthusiastically to activities that make you happy today? Are you trying to be a good person and treat people right today? Are you taking responsibility for your education and your future today? Be honest with yourself. While you can influence what happens with colleges tomorrow, you can’t control that outcome entirely. So focus on what you can control—what are you doing today?

Let’s see what happens

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There are moments in my life I can recall vividly years later as a result of a mental snapshot I took at the time. Submitting my college applications is one of them. It was 1989, and I had to stand in line at the post office to mail my thick envelopes in the hopes of getting some even thicker envelopes in return (a thick envelope from a college in your mailbox was—and at many schools, still is—the universal sign of an acceptance). I remember exiting the post office in my hometown of San Rafael, California and saying to myself, “OK. Let’s see what happens.”

I don’t remember feeling any anxiety in that moment—just curiosity about what would happen next. Where would I get in? Where would I choose to go? How much different would my life be just one year later when I would officially be a freshman at a college to-be-determined? And what would my life be like after that? My college and post-college lives were in front of me, and the uncertainty about the specifics was exhilarating.

Seniors, you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen next. You don’t know which schools will say yes or where you’ll end up in college next fall. That uncertainty is part of the process, and worrying won’t get you any closer to clarity. So why not enjoy it?

Some uncertainty about your future is one of the benefits of youth. You have your whole life in front of you and plenty of time to figure out what it should look like. And while I do believe that life continues to improve with age, uncertainty at seventeen is a lot easier to enjoy than it will be later in life when you have adult responsibilities.

The adventure you’re about to embark on won’t repeat itself. So take a deep breath, enjoy the ride, and let’s see what happens.

When an apology makes things worse

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This week, Johns Hopkins University sent 294 students an offer of admission…by mistake. What bothers me more than the mistake is the text of the apology.

Dear ______,

Earlier today, you may have received an email from us with the subject line: Embrace the YES!

Please note that this email was sent in error.

The decision posted on the decision site reflects the accurate result of your Early Decision application.

We regret this technical mistake and any confusion it may have caused.

Sincerely,
The Office of Undergraduate Admissions
The Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins, that’s just embarrassing. You can do better than that.  You must do better than that.

I’ve written before that humans tend to forgive humans. But this apology should have reflected the same essay advice they give to students.

Mistakes are a lot more forgivable than half-hearted apologies are.

For parents: let them fall

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Madeline Levine is a psychologist who works with teens and a founder at Challenge Success. In her book, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More than Grades, Trophies, or ‘Fat Envelopes’, she uses a great visual to prevent over-parenting, one that every parent can identify with.

Toddlers learn to walk by first taking a few steps and then falling down. You don’t criticize the toddlers when they fall. You don’t worry that the falling will somehow hold them back in the future. You don’t eliminate the falls by resolving to transport them yourself from Point A to Point B forever. You just let the child keep trying. After enough falling (and parental encouragement), the toddler eventually stays upright and forges ahead. Lesson learned. No over-parenting necessary.

It turns out that falling and getting back up, in all its literal and figurative forms, is how kids continue to develop. But as toddlers become teens, many parents start to worry that the stakes are higher. Instead of letting the kids trip and fall, some parents start jumping in and taking over things that kids can do for themselves (or can almost do for themselves, the same way that toddlers can almost walk on their own). From choosing activities, to talking with teachers about grades, to even writing essays and filling out college applications, when you remove the opportunities for falling, you also remove the opportunities for learning.

No sane person would accuse a parent who stops their toddler from falling down a flight of stairs of over-parenting.  But as kids become teens, I imagine that it must often be difficult for parents to discern an opportunity for learning from a potentially catastrophic fall. Just remember that GPAs, test scores, and admissions decisions from colleges don’t inflict bodily harm. When in doubt, as long as there’s no risk to their health or safety, ask yourself if this is something your teen can do—or can almost do—for themselves. If so, let them try on their own. They may not succeed the first time. But in those cases, falling is the surest route to learning.

On kids living life out loud

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Casey forwarded this Seth Godin podcast to me in which Godin shares some interesting advice about raising kids in the Internet age where, through social media and the ability to both connect and share, kids grow up “living a life out loud.”

It’s not unusual for a teenager to have connections with hundreds, even thousands of people online. Those connections aren’t necessarily personal, but anyone who puts up a YouTube video, or posts a picture of themselves, or writes a blog, tweet, or social media post—all of those things can be viewed and shared by other people. And that’s a much different universe than the one parents lived in before the Internet arrived on the scene, when youthful indiscretions and teenage bad judgment had a much shorter shelf life.

While some kids brazenly share their life online with no thought of potential consequences, others are using it as a chance to contribute, organize, help people, share technical innovations, or find other ways to leave a mark. By embracing the Internet as an opportunity to leave behind things that make them proud, those kids are getting into a good habit.

And here’s Godin’s take on the parent’s role in guiding your kids through the new universe:

“As parents we’re often pushed to make this choice. And the choice is to keep your kids out of the connection world and isolate them and make sure they’re ‘safe.’ Or, put your kids into the world and all hell will break loose. Those are the things that they talk about at the PTA meetings. And I don’t think that’s the choice. I think the choice is—everyone is in the world now. Everyone is connected. You cannot keep your 12-year-old from hearing profanity. Get over it. But given that they’re in the world, what trail are they going to leave? What mark are they leaving? Are they doing it just to get into college, or are they doing it because they understand that their role as a contributor to society starts now when they’re 10, not when they’re 24, and that the trail they leave behind starts the minute someone snaps their picture? And if we can teach children that there isn’t this bright line between off duty and on duty, but that life is life and you should live it like people are looking at you because they are, then we trust them. And we trust them to be bigger than they could be because they choose to be bigger. And it’s that teaching, I think, that is so difficult to do as a parent because what you really want to do is protect them and lock them up until it’s time. But the bravest thing to do is have these free range kids who are exploring the edges of the universe, but doing it in a way that they’re proud of, not hiding from.”