College Admission Essays: I’ve heard that one before…

Last week I talked to a high school senior as a favor to a friend. The student is not applying to Georgia Tech, so I was giving him general application advice.

We talked about prioritizing extra-curricular activities, such as putting the things you care about most and have the most involvement with, first. While an application may have eight, 10 or 30 lines for involvement, busy admission officers who speed read this section may only get to third on the list. Make them want to keep learning about you by telling them clearly and thoroughly what’s most important to you.

Then we talked about his supplemental responses. Since I don’t work for the schools he’s applying to, I told him to research their websites, social media, and literature and pay attention to themes and key messages. At Tech we focus on our motto of Progress and Service and improving the human condition. Students applying to us will see questions along those lines, or should be astute enough to find opportunities to provide connections to those concepts. Every school has these, you just have to dig deeper at some places. Inside Tip: if you can’t identify what’s important to a school, then they haven’t done a good job articulating it, or they can’t differentiate themselves, or they’re just not resonating with you. Any of these is a red flag.

The Essay

Finally, we talked about his essay. I’ll be honest, the topic was trite (something about learning through basketball about overcoming odds). Admittedly, at that point, I was also packing for a trip so I was a bit distracted (and I was not being paid for this time or advice). But here’s the bottom line: the topic doesn’t really matter anyway. I’ve been reading essays for over 15 years. I’ve read for several institutions, two testing agencies, and various scholarship competitions. Conservatively, I’d say I’ve looked at more than 10,000 essays by now. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s more, and I know plenty of people on my staff and around the country who put that number to shame.

But as somewhat of an expert, here’s what I firmly believe: there is no completely unique topic: sports analogy about life, failure, and triumph? Heard it. Mission trip to a third world country, including multiple transportation modes, animal crossings, and flat tires? Check. Family drama where you displayed tremendous patience, empathy, and wisdom beyond your years? Sure. The list goes on: difficult coach/teacher turned advocate… stuck out a horrible summer job that provided valuable lessons and renewed focus and direction … beloved grandparent who moved in, built close friendship, died, but taught a lot of valuable lessons in life and death (this one often doubles as an excuse for late app submission as well)… second verse, same as the first.

As Ecclesiastes says, “When it comes to college admission, there is nothing new under the sun” RCV (Rick Clark Version). Does that mean the essay does not matter? That you should resign yourself to mediocrity? Not at all. My point is that your energy should not be spent on selecting the topic. Once you figure out which question you want to answer, meaning you really have something to say or you’re somewhat excited to respond, start writing.

Find Your Voice

Knowing the topic won’t differentiate you, it has to be something else, right? This is where your voice has to be evident. And like the list of extra-curricular activities, it needs to be clear in the first sentence or two. I know many readers who read the first and last paragraphs and only go back if those are compelling. Otherwise, it’s a dime a dozen and the ratings are accordingly average. Some schools will tell you that two separate readers evaluate every essay in its entirety. Given volume, staff sizes, and compressed timelines between application deadlines and decision release, that seems at worst a blatant lie, and at best an incredibly inefficient process.

So how do you find your unique voice? I’m going to give you a few steps, but first check out the picture below. The woman on my right either thinks I’m insane or that something disgusting is on my hand. The woman to my left could not care less and simply can’t believe I’m still talking. The guy on the end may be interested in the woman to my right and is likely mad at me for making her mad at life. So continue to read knowing that if you disagree or think these tips are weak, you’ll not be the first– and certainly won’t be the last.

Step 1: Read it aloud. There is something magical about reading out loud. As adults we don’t do this enough. In reading aloud to kids, colleagues, or friends we hear things differently, and find room for improvement when the writing is flat. So start by voice recording your essay.

Step 2: Do it again and Listen. REALLY listen. Is there emotion in it? Does your humor come out? Can the reader feel your sadness?  Does it sound like you? If you can’t tell, play it for someone you know and trust. What do they say?

Step 3: Do the Math. (What?! I was told there would be no math on the essay section.) If 5,000 other applicants chose the same essay prompt, and 100 of those choose the same topic, will your essay be noticed? Does it provide specifics and descriptions of you or others, as well as setting and moment?

Step 4: Keep it simple. Three steps is enough. Once you’ve gone through those, hit submit and move on. Sitting on your essay until deadline day is only going to drive you nuts. So pray over it, do a dance, catch a falling leaf, or whatever else you think will help, and then be done.

Your essay topic may not be entirely different or unique, but your senior year can be. Go enjoy it!

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Navigating College Admissions: An UN-romantic Solution

I distinctly remember growing up and watching my parents have “Sunday night meetings.” They would bring their calendars (yep, hard copy with pencils) to the kitchen after we’d cleared the table to discuss the week ahead. When we were little, my sister and I really didn’t understand what they were doing. We were just glad they were occupied so we could pick whatever TV show we wanted to watch. In high school, I distinctly recall coming into the kitchen for a snack during study break, witnessing these logistical negotiations, and thinking, “If this is marriage, count me out.”

twain-quoteNow, however, I’m willing to concede the beauty and brilliance of the “Sunday night meeting,” because allocating that time allowed freedom. See, once they’d nailed down their own work schedules for the week and decided who was going to drive me and my sister to the games or performances or events, they didn’t have to talk about the details again. Listen, it still doesn’t sound romantic, but it gave them the rest of their week to talk about other things (presumably some of that was romantic, but these are my parents, and this is a family blog).

Application (no pun intended) to the Admission Process

As I watch more of my neighbors and friends with kids in high school (particularly during junior and senior year), it is clear that dispersed conversations and questions about scholarships, deadlines, essays, or plans to visit colleges often become a swirling, all-consuming mess. More importantly, they create unnecessary tension and division. Students feel like every time they come downstairs for a meal the “college talk” begins. Parents feel like their intelligent offspring has somehow lost the ability to string consecutive words together or convey ideas in multi-syllabic words.

Quick Quiz

Parents: Are you bringing up college options, deadlines, or test dates at a variety of unchecked times and days throughout the week?

Students: Test yourself: Do you frequently answer your parents’ sequential questions about college with: “Good,” “Okay,” “No,” “Huh?” Do you pretend like your phone is ringing and head for the car when mom asks, “Have you asked Mrs. Johnson for that rec yet?”

If the answer to any of these questions is “Yes,” I want to strongly encourage the implementation of the “Sunday Night Meeting.” Not necessarily on Sunday, but one consolidated time each week when college is on the proverbial– and perhaps literal– table.

 ground-rulesParents: You GET TO BRING brochures you’ve noticed in the mail. This is YOUR TIME to say, “Hey, look honey, the leaves are turning in South Bend. Isn’t it pretty?” You GET TO ASK, “Have you written your supplemental essays for SMU?” Or “Do you still want to take that trip to Maine to look at schools in November?” THIS IS YOUR TIME FOR: “Did you get your ACT results back?” Or “Is the University of Wisconsin psychology program highly ranked?” It’s all free game.

Students: You DON’T GET TO BRING your cell phone or really crunchy snacks. You DON’T GET to look at your shoes more than three times or for beyond six seconds. You have to FULLY ENGAGE in this conversation. I’m not going to be super obnoxious and give you a link to the definition of conversation or discussion in the dictionary, because you know what that looks like. ONE time a week… for only two hours (1/12 of that day!). You got this!

Outside of the “Sunday night meeting,” however, college talk is banned. Mom, dad: You drive past a car with a Princeton or Michigan State sticker. Not a peep. Sean next door gets accepted to Auburn or Colorado College, send a text in congratulations or post something online. Mute button is on at home.

Now, I get that it’s college football season. I have no problem with passionate support of your alma mater or understandable vitriol for your opponent. But that can’t transition to, “You’re not really going to apply there are you?” Or “Look at their fans. They just don’t look smart…”

Two Important Truths

  1. The reason your parents are bringing up college, asking you questions, and expressing their opinions is partly because they’re not convinced you are on it. If you answer their questions, show you have a plan, and demonstrate that you are making progress on applications and working towards deadlines, you’ll dramatically diminish the seemingly incessant nagging.
    truth
  2. It’s not nagging! It’s love. “Sunday night meetings” are not romantic. They weren’t then, and still aren’t now. But they are rooted in love. The time your parents take, the questions they ask, their desire to see things taken care of  is absolutely grounded in deep affection. They know you’re going to head off to college in the next year or two. There is some fear in that, and a lot of excitement. Every now and then they can’t believe you’re taking AP Biology or standing at over 6 feet tall. Somehow carpool lines and tricycles don’t seem like that long ago. Give ’em a break. Fear, excitement, love– these all warrant you being fully engaged. Two hours a week (1.1% of your week!): Answer the questions; look them in the eye; put down your phone—and every now and then, how about a hug?

Long live the #SNM!

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College Admission: Same as it Ever Was?

This week we welcome Regional Director of Admission, Mid-Atlantic, Kathleen Voss to the blog!

In the college admission world, I am considered a dinosaur – which is a polite way of saying I am a fossil.  To put things into perspective, the summer after college, the president walked into my office and said, “We’re implementing a revolutionary new platform called EMAIL.”  When I started on this journey, way back in nineteen hundred and ninety-three, I was 5 years older than most of the high school students that I was working with!  

I remember talking to the kids and completely relating to them.  After those students enrolled, they became like my younger sisters and friends.  We had much in common, I listened to the same music they did, watched Days of Our Lives in the dining hall during the lunch hour, and understood their struggles with school work and social pressures.

These days, I tend to relate more to the parents, many of them graduates of the class of 1993. We commiserate about our kids and share our worries.  I am still musically savvy and can tell the difference between the Justins (Timberlake and Bieber) but I no longer have the time or brainpower for Days of Our Lives, and the memories of youthful struggles are fleeting.

Sometimes, while standing behind my table at a college fair (over 500 of them in my career!), I look around at all of those young faces, and I hear that Talking Heads song… “And you may ask yourself, how did I get here?”

While I am not sure where time has gone, here is what I DO know after 23 years of working with high school kids.

They Are Socially and Culturally Aware.
By the nature of their generation they have been developing skills since early childhood that have aided them in better understanding and “acknowledging the importance of harmonious social interaction.”  Today’s young people are more open to diversity than we were 20 years ago. I like that kids today have more sensitivity to people who are different, and more confidence in sharing those differences.  There is no doubt in my mind that young people are evolving by being exposed to all types of diversity.

They Work REALLY HARD!
According to Business Insider, kids today are taking 27.2 credits, compared to the 23.6 that high school kids took in 1990. At Georgia Tech, the average number of AP/IB courses our admitted students have taken is 10, and that’s on top of logging hours of service learning outside of the classroom. We see first-hand the volume and personal benefit of service learning. These hours, in addition to sports, work, and all of those other activities found in high school, make for very busy teenagers!

Often I am asked, “Should Johnny take AP Chemistry or stay in band?  His schedule won’t allow for both.”  My response is, “What does Johnny love?”  I tell my own children, “too much of anything isn’t good for you,” and that includes AP’s.  For many kids, they need the freedom that band, art or sports provide to help recharge their brains for those higher level courses.

They Face Pressures That Would Have Given Me Nightmares.
YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat.  Your entire life captured for the world to see! That Facebook meme that says something about being glad that there was no Facebook when you were in high school… it’s the truth!

Many of the young people I meet are burned out. They suffer from chronic stress.  While I do meet kids who thrive on the pressure, I have to be honest folks, if my parents were like some of the parents I’ve met out there, I would be stressed out too!  Asking about the college profile for your 1st grader because you want to make sure they are in the “right” classes, calling the admissions office to tattle about the disciplinary infractions of your child’s classmates, writing your daughter’s application essay because “I can just do it better,” berating guidance counselors when your child doesn’t get into the school that only accepts 5% of its applicants… where does it end?

One of my colleagues at an exclusive private school in the Washington DC area begins his college night presentation for parents with the following statement; “think about your alma mater…. over 50% of you would be denied admission if you applied there today… can you give your kid a break?”

They Are Going to Be Okay.
I have answered the same questions for 23 years: “What is your average GPA? SAT? ACT? How hard is it to get in? My friend said you don’t accept grades under a B, is that true? My counselor said that I don’t have enough safety schools on my list, what do you think? ”  I’ve seen some kids come in on fire and burn out in a semester… others needed a few months to acclimate and then take off. But in the end, most made the right college decision, especially if they were true to themselves.  In his book Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be, Frank Bruni does a great job explaining why it’s what the student does in college, not where they go, that determines success.

I’ve told parents and students at all of those college fairs and visits to high schools is that it IS going to be okay.  A year from now you will have landed, and if you stay true to yourself, it will be enough.

Finally, there really will come a time when all of this will be a blip on the radar. Your college journey will be a story that you tell your own kids when you, too, are a dinosaur.

“Same as it ever was… Same as it ever was…”

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College Admission: False Voices and Escape Strategies

Little kids love stories. But if you are going to truly entertain them, you have to really develop the villain. Since I went to UNC, I often base my antagonist in Durham. With the Blue Devils living there, it’s quite easy to build a series of stories around the devious King K plotting in his Gothic towers to corrupt the world through sinister back channels (and occasionally back injuries). In many of these bedtime yarns, K would whisper in the ear of a good guy how he can make him more powerful, or more rich, or more safe, etc., if he/she just joins the Devils. (Note: No dig here on Duke. Great school. It just works well in anecdote… and the architecture does lend itself to the role.)

At times my kids would literally yell to the protagonist, “No! Don’t do it!” or “Can’t you see what he’s trying to do?” And in these stories, it was incredibly obvious: K was playing on their fear, or exaggerating his powers, or trying to manipulate for his own gain. They identify and call this out immediately. And that’s the point. I can make it a fairly quick story and get out of the room. Brilliant!

Identifying Voices in Real Life

But, in real life, as you get older, the tenor, motivation, and transparency of the voices around you are not as easy to discern. Messages become more nuanced, and it’s easy to be confused because many times these sources seem credible. Nobody is literally dressing up in a Devil mascot outfit with a pitchfork trying to convince you to attend a certain school or pay for a particular service.

But “false voices” are in this process, so it’s important that you listen closely. Here are a few things to watch out for as you learn to identify those who speak the truth, and those who may not.

  •  Hyperbolic language: (The quotes in this section are actual phrases that have been used, not hypothetical examples). If someone around you is continually saying things like “disaster,” “panic,” “insane,” “stress,” or “peril,” you should be very cautious. To the best of my knowledge the world hasn’t ended during admission season, even when test scores are delayed, admission applications crash, or recommendation letters fail to load. You want people around you that provide solace, wisdom based upon experience, big picture data, and the power of options. Language of fear has no place in the admission profession, so consider any trace of that a red flag. While you would not do this during bedtime tales, it’s ok to physically run from “storytellers” like that.
  • Excessive Fees: If someone is charging you for their services, you should expect sound, expert, distinguished advice. This is a life lesson. You’d have high standards and a rigorous process for selecting a financial advisor or marriage counselor who is guiding you on your investments financially and relationally, right? The same is true in the admission process. And this is where the nuance occurs, because there are some very talented, experienced professionals in the admission process who will charge a reasonable fee to assist you in college list development, application packaging, scholarship navigation, etc. There are also some parents who just went through the process with their own kid who happened to get into “a good school” and now think they are an expert. If anyone is guaranteeing you admittance to a school, promising receipt of a specific selective scholarship, or implying they have a magic bullet in their “essay crafting,” you need to yell loudly in your own brain, “NO! Don’t do it!”
  • For Profit Schools: If you are considering attending a for profit school, I would urge you to read more about debt loads, graduation rates, recruitment tactics, and scratch well below the surface before enrolling.  Often the language you see in marketing and enrollment strategy from these institutions is highly exaggerated, both in what they deliver and the results of your degree.
  •  Test preparation: There is a wide misconception that because you pay for something it’s better. Absolutely false. Khan Academy has phenomenal free preparation material and ACT is partnering to develop opportunities for free or greatly reduced tutorial options. I encourage you to start with free options before exploring fee-based avenues; particularly those “guaranteeing” certain score increase ranges.  And if you are going to invest in test prep, do your homework. There are a lot of very reasonably priced local options, including community colleges and even private high schools. These typically charge less yet get similar results to the more corporate test prep industry entities.
  • The Media: Journalists are under immense pressure to turn stories around quickly and increase readership. This means that headlines are often dramatic and frequently articles don’t tell the complete story. For instance you’re almost never going to read that only about 100 schools in our nation admit less than 33% of applicants, and that the vast majority our nation’s 2000+ schools admit more than they deny. That story is not going to sell, so the “full story” goes unpublished. Again, some education beat writers are thorough, balanced, and excellent researchers. But if you see something in print/online about a school you are interested in, I implore you to go straight to the institution for clarity and perspective.
    Bonus Tip: You’re young. Save yourself. Don’t read or contribute to the comment section below these pieces, as they quickly devolve into petty, unrelated banter.

You’re 17 or 18 years old, so I am guessing saying things like:  “No! Don’t do it!” Or “Can’t you see what he’s trying to do!” are a bit too simplistic for you. So if someone is whispering drama, fear, and hyperbole in your ear, how about borrowing from one of my favorite songs?

“Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley

“Come on now, who do you, who do you, who do you, who do you think you are/

Ha ha ha bless your soul You really think you’re in control/

Well, I think you’re crazy I think you’re crazy I think you’re crazy/

And then make a run for it!

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The Definitive College Admission Field Guide

Last week my kids had Fall Break. I’m not going to lie…. I went into it feeling pretty cynical. A: it’s not fall, and B: they really don’t need a break. Six weeks and then a week off. Come on, man. Soft.

But my wife wanted to be sure “we did something fun ‘FOR THEM.'” (She’s crafty like that.) So while I worked at the beginning of the week, I took the latter part off and headed to the lake to meet up with them and some friends. I drove alone late one night and got there in the pitch black dark. The whole way I was thinking about all the things I could be getting done at home. But when I woke up the next morning to the sun shining off the water, a good cup of coffee in my hand, and some built in entertainment for our kids, the switch flipped immediately. Just the latest in a long line of “You were right” moments in my life and marriage.

“You’re hungry? Grab some pretzels. I know it’s 9 a.m. Don’t care. I’m on vacation.” We took the boat out. The boys wake boarded and knee boarded and jumped between dueling tubes. Me? Snacked. Put my hat over my eyes and lounged. Finally, I got on the mega inflatable couch with the two 5-year old girls and then basked in the sun as they sang and danced to “Shut up and Dance with Me!” Didn’t question the lyrics or think about this same pair 10 years from now in bathing suits with boys next to them. Nope. I leaned back… and breathed.

Take a Breath

We all need that, right? Just a good, long, selfish breath. We get into patterns that are necessary but also tiresome: Wake up, head to school, go to practice, study. Rinse and repeat.

And in the admission process you need that breath, too. Same brochures coming each day with taglines only varying by verb tense, school colors, and font. Campus tours like death marches with polo clad, flip flop wearing guides citing the number of volumes in a library or the myriad flavors of ice cream available in the dining hall. College reps at fairs and at your school touting that they’re #23 for number benches on campus. And the beat drones on…

We feel your pain. And in a “lake moment” we decided to create the definitive “Admission Field Guide.” I hope you will find it different. And refreshing.

It’s created to help you navigate this year smoothly: to give you helpful tips for your application, essays, and interactions in the college admission process; to remind you to laugh and breath along the way; and ultimately to enable you to find the college that will help you thrive and achieve your goals.

Even if you don’t click on these links or watch the videos, I earnestly encourage you take breaks this year. Go to the lake (even if it’s figuratively). Dance and sing. Surround yourself with the people who know how to help YOU take care of YOU. At the end of the day I’ll be singing this: “Shut up and breathe with me!”

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