Don't Write an Essay. Write a Speech.

A couple weeks ago, one of our seniors gave a chapel speech.  We're an Episcopal school; we celebrate chapel weekly.  Different chapel services take different forms and some are more formal than others.  Some include guest speakers.  Sometimes community members offer a spoken reflection.

Julia offered our most recent student reflection.  She spoke about compassion and helping others cope with loss.  She spoke about learning to manage her own emotions during challenging situations so that she could offer emotional support to others.  Julia learned these difficult lessons while working each of the last two summers at a local hospital.  It was an engaging, brave, and moving reflection Julia shared with us.  And I was privileged to already know many of the stories she told.  In fact, I knew them fairly well: Julia's chapel speech grew from one of the college application essays she had shared with me.

And that got me to thinking.  What if more students approached their college essay as a speech?  When I worked in admission I repeated the same refrain I still hear in info sessions and visits with college reps: the essay is your opportunity to have your voice heard; be authentic and engaging; share something of yourself we don't already know.  It's that first suggestion that I'm now thinking more literally about.  Have your voice heard.

It's a great test for a college essay.  Would you read this aloud like a speech?  How would it go over?  What would you share?  How would you keep your audience engaged?  Likewise, if you're having trouble starting your essay, start by considering a topic you would want to speak about.  Maybe even go a step further and actually tell the story aloud.  Before you write, dictate.  Turn on the voice recorder on your phone and talk it out.  Or read the essay aloud to a friend, teacher, or college counselor after you've written it.  Take notes on what works and what doesn't, and revise.  Did your jokes actually land?  Did the right message come across?  You might not end up with your entire upper school on their feet applauding you (unless, of course, you take the brave step to offer a chapel speech like Julia did), but you might get some solo applause from that admission counselor reading your application at their desk - and that would be a win.  At the very least, you could be confident you had your voice heard.

Colleges, Cars, and Cliffs

If you’re riding in a car barreling toward a cliff, how much do you care about the air conditioning? 

A couple weeks ago, during the first presentation block at the National Association for College Admission Counselors (NACAC) conference, I attended a session looking ahead to college admission in 2025.  The conversation was led by a researcher at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) and the deans of admission at Princeton, Drew University, and Bucknell.  I left wondering if we’re headed for the cliff and reaching for the settings on the AC instead of hitting the brakes.   

Peace Bransberger from WICHE presented a fascinating and quickly changing demographic landscape over the next 10-15 years.  Here are the highlights:

·      By 2025, high schools will graduate smaller and more diverse classes. 

·      Fewer students will graduate from private schools

·      More high school grads will come from families in lower income brackets

·      College-going populations will be more diverse, specifically due to growth in Hispanic and Asian communities

·      Prospective students will be more likely to be the first in their family to attend college

In many ways, more high school grads will be from the underrepresented populations colleges have been attempting to recruit for years.  That is a positive trend as we think about access and equity in higher ed. 

But if other truths are left unchanged, we’re facing a problem in the higher education environment in which these students will exist.  The cost of college has risen dramatically above the rate of inflation.  Student debt has surpassed credit card debt.  Fewer students graduate on time.

And here’s the kicker: first generation and underrepresented college students are especially vulnerable to these trends.  They are less likely to graduate in five years and more likely to walk away with debt.  Some of these students encounter hostile social environments on campus making it difficult to thrive.  They are also the least likely to attend college far away from their home and most likely to under-match based on their qualifications. 

34% of colleges made their enrollment numbers by May 1 of last year.  The majority of colleges are unable to fully cover students’ financial need, and very few have the luxury of ignoring need when admitting students.  So, if you’re a college:

·      You probably aren’t fully meeting the need of students who can’t afford your cost

·      You probably need at least a handful of full-pay students (who are disproportionately white and from educated backgrounds)

·      You need to make your enrollment goals (preferably by May 1, or shortly thereafter via the waitlist) so that your yearly tuition revenue can sustain college budgets 

But, by 2025, you’re going to be facing a smaller college-going population that…

·      Requires more need-based aid to attend

·      Has less savvy about the college admission process and is more likely to be the first in their family to navigate it

·      May not consider your university simply based on its sticker price

·      May not consider a college far away (most population growth is projected for the southeast) 

If you’re the dean of admission at Princeton, you might not lose sleep over this.  You can recruit and yield the best and brightest regardless of their ability to pay.  You have the means to fund students and ensure they take on minimal, if any, debt.  But what about the others on the panel – Bucknell and Drew?  What about some of their peer institutions?  Tuition-dependent colleges that struggle to recruit and yield diverse populations in 2017 are headed for a cliff by 2025, no? 

Credit Drew University for cutting tuition costs.  That’s a start.  But what about their peers?  What happens to any number of wonderful institutions who admittedly struggle to yield their class, who rely on having at least a handful of full-pay students, and who would love to be more diverse, but whose price tag is unlikely to go down, all while fewer future applicants will have the ability to pay it.  What if you're one of those really excellent colleges located in small-town Iowa, Pennsylvania, or Ohio that hasn't historically been an easy sell for diverse students from distant regions?  Should we expect that students who typically stay closer to home – and again, we’re facing significant population declines in the Northeast and Midwest – will suddenly change their behavior? 

Back to the initial analogy, then.  If selective college admission is riding in the car, it sure seems like we’re headed towards the figurative demographic cliff.  Princeton is riding in the backseat surrounded by airbags full of money and a parachute made of prestige.  They’re going to survive impact and walk away unscathed.  Drew University (and a few others) are trying to tap the breaks by lowering or freezing costs. 

But it sure feels like many small liberal arts colleges are riding shotgun and fiddling with the temperature on the AC instead of yanking on the emergency brake.  In the face of these demographic shifts, they promote the mastery transcript – an initiative spearheaded by elite, private schools (whose population is set to decline by 2025, according to WICHE).  They envision being more interested in ‘non-cognitive indicators’ in application review.  They are thinking about increased security for their application databases.  They talk of deemphasizing test scores. In aggregate, these all are positive changes to a selective, holistic review.  A nice, comfortable temperature improvement in our metaphorical car.  But to whose files will these colleges apply their admirable new reading strategies?  How will they financially support the students they admit using these tactics?  Do these changes amount to any more than tweaking the temperature levels while we barrel off the cliff anyway? 

An interesting figure was presented at the end of the session: there are approximately the same number of school-aged children in China currently as there are people of all ages in the entire American population.  Perhaps the answer at some colleges will be to admit more international students, who typically are expected to pay full tuition and for whom need-based aid is almost non-existent. 

In other words, just when the domestic population offers more of the diverse, first-generation students that have been underrepresented on so many elite college campuses for years, selective schools might instead look to wealthy Chinese students to balance their budgets.  Wouldn’t that be a shame? 

Live Music and Junior Year

Seems it wasn't that long ago I was sitting at my desk in a virtually empty building listening to online streaming sets from Phish's summer tour a little louder than would probably be acceptable in most workplaces.  Occasionally I took my shoes off.  Working here during the summer is like working a totally different job.  For two months, Groesbeck is a ghost town.  I spend a lot of time staring at spreadsheets of application data.  Students stop in rarely and almost always email first; the usual interruptions and unannounced drop-in visits come to an unnerving halt at the end of May.  Summer provides an opportunity to tap into my inner introvert and to dig into our application results in a way that time doesn't usually allow for during the year.  But, man, is it quiet.

Fortunately it doesn't last long.  By mid-August, we're back in full swing.  An empty building suddenly comes to life.  Thinking of those Phish shows, I imagine it's kind of like a band emerging from the darkened hush of a stadium tunnel onto a stage: a jolt of noise, lights, and suddenly lots of screaming people.   Summer just ends.  One day I show up and the stillness has yielded to hordes of exuberant, rowdy teenagers.  It's jarring at first, but it's a welcome change.  Most people don't choose to work in schools if they want prolonged periods of solitude behind a computer screen.  Seven or eight weeks of that is plenty for me.

To continue the analogy, I bet our returning students feel sort of like fans that have just barely gotten to their seats for the start of the concert - fans that did the awkward not-quite-a-jog-but-definitely-not-a-comfortable-walk to their seats hoping not to miss anything.  I've done that strange version of the power-walk.  There you stand as the first notes are played, a little winded, a little overwhelmed, and without having had a minute to sit down or catch your breath.  Your think, "Wait, did I make it?  Did I get here in time?  Have I missed anything?"  

It seems our juniors in particular come out of the whirlwind start to the school year wondering just that.  Many assume they should be thinking a lot about college.  But, wait.  What about college?  Am I supposed to know where I'm going?  Shouldn't I have taken the ACT by now - how did I miss that?  Didn't I read online somewhere that I should have spent my summer visiting every college beginning with the letter Q (you know, for good luck)?!  

Worry not.  You've gotten to your seat in time, and the first set is just beginning.  (Sorry.  Concert analogy again).  Catch your breath.  Settle in and get your bearings.  We'll walk you through our college counseling plan for these next two years at October's junior college night.  There's not much you should be worrying about before then.

If you want to start looking at the calendar for winter test dates for the SAT or ACT, that's fine.  But if you are right in the middle of football season, cross country, the musical, or whatever you're up to and know you won't possibly be focused on the SAT or ACT in October or November, don't feel rushed to take it.  All of our juniors take the PSAT during school in October, and that's a nice built-in practice for an official test later in the winter or early spring.  In fact, you have six chances to take both the ACT and the SAT between this December and the first application deadlines in October of your senior year.  That's 12 total opportunities between the two tests before you really even sniff the very earliest of deadlines. 

In the meantime, stop into the visits we host with college reps from across the country (and some from around the world).  We expect about 100 college visitors this year.  These visits are a good way to start learning about schools you might be interested in.  But branch out.  Don't just visit with colleges you know.  Learn about someplace new.    

Most importantly, keep your grades up, work hard, and enjoy these first weeks back.  You aren't behind.  You haven't missed anything.  You're right where you should be.  

Getting Out of Limbo (or, Tips for Navigating the Waitlist)

It's no secret that increasing numbers of applications have allowed for selective colleges to become more...well...selective.  A phenomenon less talked about is that those same colleges are becoming less certain of their yield.  In other words, they admit some great applicants but are having a harder and harder time predicting who will actually accept their offer of admission.  Students are applying to more colleges and choosing among more options.  It's not easy to predict the decision-making process of 17-year olds faced with multiple options (surprise!).  And so at many colleges, the waitlist is an important tool to protect against the uncertainty of who will actually enroll.  This post is about what you can do if you're hoping to be one of those called from a waitlist. 

You can’t know whether a college will use the waitlist this year, or when.  It’s very rare for a college to call prior to May 1.  Be sure to deposit at a school you’ve been admitted to, and move forward with every expectation of being on that campus next fall. Wear the T-shirt.  Join the admitted class Facebook group.  Go to the local reception for enrolling students.  Plan on that place being your home next year.

You can’t control who gets called.  You might be a tremendous candidate, but if the deposits that roll in on May 1 are largely from students who are demographically just like you, the college could be calling someone else.  Most schools use the waitlist to strategically round out the class.  Maybe they’ll need local males this year.  Or more theater majors.  Maybe they’ll need that one kid from Wyoming.  You just don’t know.

So, what is in your control?  On many waitlists, demonstrated interest matters.  Even if you haven’t shown much interest before (especially if you haven’t), now is the time to be in touch. An admission office that is worried about its yield and thinks their college is being used as a back-up will sometimes park a strong but apparently uninterested kid on the waitlist.  If you are genuinely interested, complete the online form the college asks for and reach out to our rep.

If you are certain you would enroll if called off the waitlist, it’s worth communicating that to your admission rep.  Generally speaking, once a college goes to the waitlist they’d prefer not to make too many calls and yield only a few students.  Most places want to call students they expect will say ‘yes.’   

Lastly, don’t go nuts.  Flying to campus to lobby for yourself is not appropriate (even more true for parents).  Most colleges don’t want you to visit as a waitlisted student and likely won’t meet with you if you do.  On the other hand, email or phone communication with your admission rep is perfectly acceptable.  But not on a daily basis.  There’s a line between “enthusiasm” and “stalking.” Sending elaborate portfolios, platters of food, hand-crafted models of campus buildings (true story), flowers, puppies, bribes, singing telegrams, oil paintings of your admission officer, or any other gift you can think up is neither encouraged nor rewarded – though you might live on in admission infamy as a cautionary tale in the next year’s info sessions.