More and Less, Part 1

“You’re going to be out 14 nights in November?!”

Now. What I should have said was… nothing. But what I actually said was, “Yes. But I’ll definitely be home for Thanksgiving.”

Let me back up. My wife and I have a planning and calendar meeting each month. This exchange (well, that and her getting up and leaving the room) was how our October meeting ended. 

I knew I’d bitten off more than I could (or should) chew. In addition to Georgia Tech programs, I was also chairing the search for a new pastor at our church, and had committed to a few speaking engagements connected to the book I recently published.  

Being a keen observer of non-verbal cues, I made sure our November planning meeting went differently. First, it started with flowers and a deep apology. Second, I’m proud to say I made sure I did not board a plane or sleep in a hotel in December.  

The final week of the year was by far the best.  Georgia Tech was closed, and for the first time in my 16-year tenure, I did not try to “catch up” or “keep up” during that time. In fact, I took email off my phone and left my laptop at work. I encouraged my team to do the same. “It will all be here when we get back. Enjoy your break and your family!” 

After truly unplugging, here were my two biggest takeaways: 

1. Balance within any single day is a myth. We will drive ourselves nuts attempting to squeeze everything we value into a 24- hour period. Whether you are in high school, college, or 20 years past both, we need to continually ask, “What do I value and why?” And just as importantly “Am I making appropriate time for these things? And what frequency is realistic?” 

Otherwise, we end up unnecessarily spinning our wheels, or feeling like a failure when something gets dropped. I’m hopeful in 2020 we’ll all give ourselves more grace and look at balance less in the context of a day, and more in the context of week or month. If you value spending time with friends, reading, or traveling and those things are not happening in a broad period of time, then you are out of balance. 

The beginning of the year is the time to reflect on this. Make time to actually write down what brings you joy and energy. What (or who) challenges you, helps you grow, and adds value to your life? How can you make time for these things and people? And what regularity is healthy and realistic? 

2. Priorities also adhere to Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion (“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”).  If I am going to make room (or more room) for one thing, something else needs to be reduced or eliminated. While our culture incessantly tells us to keep adding things to our plate, that is fundamentally impossible.

We frequently hear the term “More or Less,” but the truth is we need to think about “More and Less.” As we head into 2020, here is my list:   

Top 3 Mores:

1. More dates/trips with my wife.
2. More nights/weekends totally unplugged.
3. More reading physical (not Kindle) books.

Top 3 Less’: 

1. Less checking email/social media on my phone (especially while walking).
2. Less saying “Yes” without considering the implications/trade-offs.
3. Less tabs open at the same time.

As I thought about the year ahead, I came up with the mores and lesses I hope to see in my college admission colleagues. Parts 2 and 3 of this series will include thoughts for school counselors, parents, and students, but this week I’m writing for those doing admission work in colleges around the country. 

To my admission colleagues…

Whether you are in year two or 20, I want to say a big thank you for the great and important work you do! If you (and your team) did not take the time to look back at 2019 and marvel at your accomplishments, make that a priority. Celebrate your wins! It’s easy to get caught up in the cycle and move from one goal to the next. Particularly in the cyclical world of college admission, we need to be intentional about pausing, reflecting, and appreciating how we’ve grown and what we achieved, rather than dwelling on all that could have gone better or the particular metrics we missed. The truth is even when we hit enrollment targets or meet net tuition revenue or increase or decrease what was asked of us, someone will have an issue with how it was done or some nuance buried within the macro. We must learn to focus on and be encouraged by our progress and opportunity, rather than bogged down and burned out chasing perfection.   

More Transparency

Let’s be honest. 2019 was a pretty low point in the world of college admission. Operation Varsity Blues brought our work into the spotlight and called the integrity of the process into question. Far from Hollywood the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice cited our field’s largest professional organization, NACAC, for violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act due to the Association’s Code of Ethics and Professional Practices. Combined with escalating tuition, a growing narrative around the value of college, as well as more closures of colleges around the nation, public trust naturally eroded. 

As a result, there has never been a more critical time for admission representatives to be honest and open about how admission decisions are made, what we are looking for in students, and how our distinct institutional missions impact our timeline, process, and class goals. I hope admission and enrollment reps from schools with a broad reach and platform will commit to telling a bigger story about the landscape of higher education. It is incumbent upon the enrollment leaders at these colleges to model this approach and empower their teams to adopt a more inclusive mentality and philosophy. 

Specifically, I hope 2020 brings more variety and diversity in consortium travel, rather than traditionally narrow groupings. If you work at a school that only collaborates with others similar to you in size, selectivity, or athletic conference, I hope you will question if including a more diverse set of schools could help tell a more robust narrative about the options students have in our higher education ecosystem.  The Colleges That Change Lives Tour and the RACC events in California are great examples, as they convey a variety of campus cultures, missions, curricular focus, and selectivity. (Send more examples via Twitter to @clark2college and I’ll retweet and add those to the list.)

In addition to publishing a macro admit rate, I hope colleges will make more of an effort to display in presentations how these vary based on decision plan, e.g. ED, EA, Regular Decision, by residency (if public), or other influencing categories when possible. Currently, families have to dig too deep into the dark corners of our institutional research sites to procure this. Again, we build trust and raise transparency when we are willing to be forthcoming with data. Going forward highly selective schools should be banned from saying, “We are looking for reasons to admit applicants.” It sounds good on a panel, but if your admit rate is >25% this is semantics at best and patently false at worst. Be willing to articulate how supply and demand and institutional priorities, rather than fairness or purely quantifiable metrics dictate admission decisions.

I hope schools will be more specific about their college’s real costs and net price, and work to simplify and clarify financial aid letters. Too many families are unnecessarily confused and cannot make the best comparisons and financial choices because of the conflation of loans, scholarships, grants, and institutional aid. When astute professional accountants receiving these packages are bemused, something is broken. Additionally, I hope admission offices will collaborate either internally or externally to create videos, provide webinars, or host programs to help families in your community better understand scholarships, financial aid, debt repayment, and other terms.

Yes, this is more. A lot more. But if we truly want to enter 2020 and the new decade committed to being better- more equitable, more positioned as educators, more in line with fulfilling the mission of higher education as a public good, then this is not only necessary, but our fundamental responsibility. 

Less Isolation

College admission is tough work. Between weeks or months of recruitment travel, hundreds or thousands of applications to read, dozens of speeches and information sessions to give, and countless emails and phone calls to return—not to mention occasionally squeezing in some laundry and dishes, there is no wonder our profession sees high turnover, particularly around the three to five year mark. 

As you enter 2020, my hope is you will be committed to building a broad and diverse network and support system. It is easy, especially in the winter, to become myopic and mired in the cycle turning from review to yield, or immediately back to recruitment of the next class. Make an effort this month to find someone outside of your office to connect with. Perhaps that is a colleague on campus, an admission officer from another college in your town or city, or someone you met during your travels who you can commit to keeping in touch with professionally in the year ahead. 

I hope you will be proactive to initiate a monthly coffee or lunch, or a regular call to check in, catch up, and share celebrations or frustrations. What I’m describing is completely free. Don’t allow yourself to be limited by the perspective and opinions of people in your own office or institution. Do not wait around for someone to tap you or fund you to go to a conference or join a professional organization. We all need sounding boards, encouragement, and colleagues who understand our challenges.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

What are your mores and lesses for 2020? Again, if you have not already done so, I highly encourage you to take some time this week to write them down and revisit them periodically in the year ahead.

Next week, Part 2: More and Less for school counselors.