"Let's Just See What Happens..."
Lee Coffin:
For New Hampshire, I'm Lee Coffin, Dartmouth's vice president and dean of admissions and financial aid. And this is Admissions Beat.
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Parents, we're talking to you this week and the topic at hand as searches get underway is to give you a reminder that the people in the schools where your kids attend, or who offer benefits to you around guidance, know what they're talking about. And as you start developing lists and exploring, we thought we'd have a conversation about the propensity of some parents to ignore advice, to say something like, "Yeah, let's just see what happens," when a college counselor says, "This is a reach. This is not likely. This is not a good fit." And the parent shrugs and says, "Let's just see what happens."
So I call the episode, "Let's Just See What Happens," because often we know what's going to happen and you are headed down the wrong path. So this week we welcome some friends who work with you from the school side to share some thoughts about listening and to be receptive to counsel that might not fit the opening idea of the college search. We'll be right back.
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I'm excited to welcome two friends of the 'pod back for another visit on Admissions Beat, and maybe a third will join us. He is running late, but for now, our episode features Vanessa Montorsi, the director of pupil services and counseling at Fairfield Ludlowe High School in Fairfield, Connecticut. Hello, Vanessa.
Vanessa Montorsi:
Hi, Lee. Thanks for having me back.
Lee Coffin:
I grew up right near Fairfield, so I always think of you as my quasi hometown rep, and for listeners, in addition to her day job at Fairfield Ludlowe, Vanessa is the treasurer of the New England Association of College Admission Counseling, which is the professional organization in New England that connects schools and colleges around this idea of college counseling and admissions. So she'll pull from both of those and making her umpteenth visit is Jennifer Simons, director of counseling at Bright Horizons College Coach. Once upon a time, director of admissions at Northeastern. Before that, director of international recruiting at Tufts. And just a wise and witty, long-time admission person herself. Jen, hello.
Jennifer Simons:
Hello. Thanks for having me.
Lee Coffin:
Of course. Tell listeners a little bit about the service you offer. So you work for Bright Horizons, which is known by many as daycare provider, often in companies. Through that corporate benefit, you also offer college counseling. So just explain that so listeners get a sense of the wide parameter that you have.
Jennifer Simons:
Yeah, we work with hundreds of companies as a service to their employees, starting with employees that have children in middle school. We work with them to explore all the different facets of the college admissions process. We help them, especially in high school, when they have to choose classes, we talk about extracurricular activities and they get this service for free. Well, it's courtesy of their employers. It's a benefit. Right now, we literally have good old-fashioned phone conversations with families. They come to us with questions, they leave with homework that we assign them and it's an ongoing benefit through their high school careers.
Lee Coffin:
Great. And Vanessa, for listeners, you represent a suburban high-achieving public high school in the suburbs of New York City.
Vanessa Montorsi:
Yes.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah.
Vanessa Montorsi:
Yeah, about 96% of our kids are going off to a four-year college.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. So when you both heard me open the episode with the, let's just see what happens, did that resonate with either of you?
Jennifer Simons:
More frequently I have heard the expression, "Well, you never know."
Lee Coffin:
You never know.
Jennifer Simons:
"You never know what's going to happen." And to which I always want to say, "I do know. I actually do know." I recognize that this is not a science, but I was really thinking about this to prepare for this pod-isode and I have never been wrong in saying that a student wasn't going to be admitted someplace. There are some counselors probably Vanessa much nicer than I am, I'm sure that says, "Well, maybe Vanessa says you never know," but I say, "Let's direct our attention elsewhere and you are not going to be admitted," and then the parents say, "Well, you never know."
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. And Vanessa, do you have a version of that?
Vanessa Montorsi:
Yeah, absolutely. Just a few weeks ago, one of the first junior... So we started our individual junior family meetings and one of the first ones parents and kids came in, kid had a high threes and all Ivies on the list. And to Jen's point, you want to be like, "It's not going to happen." And in the school counseling world, we have to maintain a relationship with them. So we're like, "Well, maybe it could happen and let's expand that list and look for other options for you that might be a better fit."
Lee Coffin:
And what's the reaction to that expansion of a list?
Vanessa Montorsi:
Sometimes it's definitely hesitation for sure. And I think for me as a counselor, I have to think about why is it they're thinking this way? And I know in at least Fairfield County, there's definitely a status thing for sure that's going on down there. I think there's a fear. I think there are potentially outdated assumptions about how admissions actually works because when a lot of these parents went to school, it was a different ball game. I always start my junior parent meeting with, "Hey, when everyone applied to UConn back in the mid-90s, there were only about 10,000 applicants. Oh, guess how many applied to UConn last year? Over 60,000. And the number of seats didn't change. So it's just getting more and more competitive."
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, I think that's a really important marker, Vanessa. I do programs all the time. I look at it, the audience now and the parents are more and more people who graduated from high school in the 90s into the early or mid-2000s. Right as the admission boom lit hit. And I say if you went to college or not, the landscape you remember in 1995 to 2010 is long gone. The landscape we're in the mid to late 2020s is much more heterogeneous and the volume is big and it's more international. And so some of the guidance you're getting is framed around this contemporary truth that you may not have been paying attention to because you weren't in a college search. Jen, do you hear that same kind of fuzzy memory popping through where they don't realize that the place they knew in 2006 has evolved?
Jennifer Simons:
Oh, absolutely. I mean, they know it because there's a buzz. They read the New York Times articles and they know, but really the parents that I deal with more frequently that feel like they don't know anything, that know that they don't know anything are the ones who are educated abroad. So that's a lot of Indian parents who were educated in the British system, totally different. And then they come here and they say, "Well, I don't know anything because I wasn't educated in this system." And I say, "You're actually at an advantage because everything that your American college educated peers went through is totally different right now from test optional to..."
I mean, and I illustrated, it's funny, Vanessa, when you talk about the numbers of applications, that's great. I talk about the cost. There's nothing that brings home how different it is now than the cost of the university or college education compared to the way it was when these parents were going through college. And because it's also like applications has disproportionately risen. So they get that when they're, "Oh yeah, it was $20,000 in 1992 to go to Wellesley College." Yes.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, campuses change. I was in the meeting yesterday at Dartmouth and someone mentioned Colby as a place that is really in a transformative moment from where it was to where it's going. And I think if you're not paying attention to higher ed, you might not have known that Colby caught fire over the last decade, not literally, and is moving into a space and the degree of selectivity that it didn't have before. It was always wonderful, but it's different. Northeastern is another one that I mention all the time is a place that where it was and where it is and, Jen, you were there. It's got volume, it's got selectivity that wasn't true a generation ago. And I think for parents that's an important, just reminder that as you come into this process, especially if it's your first child doing it, that landscape is something you have to start with.
So we're airing this early February, and the juniors in high school around the world are just starting, if they've started, they're in the discovery mode from now through the start of 12th grade and the fall. There's no decisions to be made other than, where are you looking? How are you doing in your classes? What feels right? But there's no application that's due. You need to keep your aperture open to a search that's got lots of options on it. So let's go to the list because I think step one as discovery begins is a family will come to one of you, I mean Vanessa, you said you just started doing this at Ludlowe and a family spells out, "Here's what we're hoping to explore, here's what the student wants to study, where they'd like to be," and the list begins. How do you usually characterize the list in these early moments? So just so listeners who might not have started yet, what are the terms they might hear from a guidance counselor around the odds of competitiveness?
Vanessa Montorsi:
We kind of start with the basics for somebody who just walks in and hasn't done anything. Obviously looking at academics, do they have the majors or the programming that they want, the location of it. Do you want to go across the country to California or do you want to stay closer to home? Size obviously matters. Where it is? Is it a city? Is it in a rural area? So that's where we start in Fairfield, kind of those basics. And most schools have Naviance or a score or a school links database where they can kind of start plugging these data points in and it kind of nice because it starts to generate a little bit of a list. And from there you can do more cultivating of the data that might align a little bit more with the students like non-negotiables, what is it they really need to have or want out of school to thrive for them?
Lee Coffin:
And does that list take shape with these non-negotiables? Do you then cross-tab it with a projection of this is a likely campus for you, this is one that might be more ambitious? I'm using kind words, but Jen, how would you start to take a list and diagram it for a family?
Jennifer Simons:
Well, we literally break it up into three sections. We call it possible, probable, and reach. The probable are what I don't like to say, but parents frequently referred to as safety schools.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah.
Jennifer Simons:
So it's very likely that you will be accepted here based on your particular statistics. Those are probable. "Possible" is target, what people would call target schools or in the middle schools. And "reach" are obviously going to be more competitive to get into. Now I think it's important to know that when we run lists for families, we don't put proactively put, let's say any of the Ivies, Stanford, MIT, even places like Tufts and Rice and Chicago, those places we don't proactively put them on the lists for them even if they tick all their other boxes. And why is that? Because they're going to always be what we call a reach plus plus, simply by virtue of their acceptance rates, they're going to be much, much less likely. I don't care if you are a straight A plus student, I don't care if you have perfect ACT, perfect SAT, I don't care if you've been the president, all the things, it is still going to be a reach for you. I don't care. I know what, can I say something that might hurt your feelings?
Lee Coffin:
Yeah.
Jennifer Simons:
I say to them, and this is something I believe to be true, it's not personal when I say that your child is not getting into Dartmouth, your kid is great, you're a great parent, you've done everything you could. Your kid is perfect. Dartmouth isn't better. And that's where I think I'm going to step on your toes. It's not necessarily a better school because it's more selective. And I know, Vanessa, those parents in Fairfield and all the other nice suburban areas in the country, that's what they think. They think that names are better and they think that certainly again like Ivy Leagues, posh schools that have been around hundreds of years, of course. But does that mean it's better for your student? The honest parents have actually said this, I know that this might not be the best fit, but had a family say to me once very, very bright young man, he said, "We want MIT. Don't tell me that Colorado School of Mines is just as good."
I personally believe they're just as good, but they wanted a name brand and I'll take that, that's being honest, but I'll tell you something. When they get that list and all of the schools that they want are in that reach section and a lot of the "safety schools," a lot of those probable schools are going to be predictable, large state universities or places that give lots of narrative that they might not be as familiar with. And that's the hard part. But then, "Oh, you want me to apply to... I've never even heard of that school. How dare you?"
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, well on that, you put your finger right on it, Jen, as I knew you would, and you didn't hurt my feelings. I represent a college that is uber-selective and I don't say that as an arrogant statement, it's just a fact. Our admit rate last year was 6%. When the admit rates are in the single digits, it's an unlikely outcome for everybody. It doesn't mean no one's getting in. And there are strategies that we'll talk about in future episodes about how do you navigate that and maximize your odds. But at the early moment, a reach doesn't mean that's the best place you're going to get into or you must hold it like a lottery ticket like if you get it, something fantastic has happened. Maybe that's true. Maybe that's the fit. Hooray. But I think this catnip part of this, this reputational heat that surrounds reach is part of this problem. Vanessa, is that making sense?
Vanessa Montorsi:
I think it's 100% accurate. I think parents think a good list equals prestigious names. Where really I think a good list is where a student has multiple great options come April senior year and they're not just stressing at that point, but they have a lot of good options that fit for them.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. And I'm guessing when you hear, "You never know," or, "Let's just see what happens," we're talking about reaches.
Vanessa Montorsi:
Absolutely.
Jennifer Simons:
The conversations around early decision… I think sometimes I've heard again and again, "Well, Cornell would be a reach, but they have early decisions, so we're going to apply early decision to Cornell where it will be less of a reach." I know you're still not going to get into Cornell, but okay... And so then we talk about places that are very transparent, like my friends at Northeastern who say, "It will behoove you to apply early decision if you can make that commitment like we like early decision I think," or, "Forget about whether they like early decision or not, just plain old, less selective, not Ivy League schools that would be a better fit for you to be accepted to, ultimately."
So you have a conversation with parents about you're wasting an opportunity by not thinking strategically about early decision. Lee and I have a colleague who's the director at Belmont Hill, and he said, "When kids make good decisions about early decision, they get good decisions back." You have to be strategic about it and not just say, "Well, I can get into Brown because they're easier to get into because they have early decision." No they're not. Or Dartmouth or whatever.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. I just want to say next week we're going to have an episode around crunching numbers and the data that swirls around this process and what you're saying is part of this challenge is people think, and I do air quotes, "Early is easier," because they see acceptance rates on some sites that are less tight, but it ignores other factors. Like in my pool we have recruited athletes who go through early decision and that's a separate process that funnels into the early round and it makes the data seem to tell a story that it doesn't always tell. And I think it leads some families astray as their search is getting framed. But you said something a minute ago, Jen, that I want to come back to where I think in this "reach" space, the idea that the Ivies also just the top cohort in whatever ranking we might be talking about, that's the list. That's where we have to put all of our marbles and hope-
Jennifer Simons:
Parents will actually say that, Lee, "We are only applying, we could get into the whole "we" language…"We are all taking the SAT, we are all applying to college, but we are only applying to schools in the top 30 of U.S. News and World Report." That is something I hear frequently.
Lee Coffin:
Even if they're all reaches.
Jennifer Simons:
Yeah. But also even if they're not all reaches, what a silly way to-
Lee Coffin:
No, I see this all the time where families will say to me like, "We want an Ivy outcome so we're applying to all eight." And I say, "But Dartmouth is a profoundly different option than Penn." Not better. We're just different. I mean as a campus, as a curriculum, as a place, we are probably as far apart as you're going to get and we're both in the same athletic conference. Parents, what I'm trying to emphasize here is this idea that these early categories that accompany the search are designed to preserve your options as your children explore. So that top-heavy lists might invite someone to fall in love with a bunch of places that aren't going to happen. And I think concurrently, I think the other side of this rainbow is the word I never use. I hate the word "safety school." What's wrong with "safety school?"
Vanessa Montorsi:
I think it sounds less prestigious.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, undesirable. It sounds like, "Why would I go there?"
Vanessa Montorsi:
Yeah, I think that's exactly it. To your point and Jen's point, there are so many amazing schools out there that people just haven't heard of because they're not on the reports, but the U.S. News Reports rankings, those are slanted, all data is slanted. That's why it's so important to look elsewhere. I think it's important for parents to know we're on their side, we want to root for them and their child. We're not working against them, we're working with them. But what we really want to avoid is a situation where in March of their senior year, their child only has one option and feel like their work didn't pay off. So do the work ahead of time so you're absolutely successful later on senior year.
Lee Coffin:
Pick up the word "probable." So Jen categorized this as "probable, possible, reach." So "probable" is kind of a green light saying, explore this place and your odds of admission are probable. Doesn't mean it's bad, it means this is a good thing. You could proceed forward knowing that if you love it, you're in the zone there. Council families towards that as a good thing.
Jennifer Simons:
Also notice, Lee, that the word probable does also not mean definite. Yes, it's likely you'll get in, but you might not. I mean with any... Unless you're applying to a community college you might not.
Lee Coffin:
Is there a sure thing?
Jennifer Simons:
Community colleges are a sure thing. I do think for in-state residents, your state university—so know that your state university isn't just the flagship—most states have satellite campuses. Those are usually short things for most because, I mean, obviously if you haven't passed classes or you might need to go to a junior college or community college first, but I would say that your state university, especially the satellite campuses are what I would consider likely in most cases.
Lee Coffin:
And the beauty of potting is sometimes guests appear out of sequence and so Steve Soud, the Director of College Counseling at Isabel Newman School in New Orleans has joined us. Hi, Steve.
Steve Soud:
Hi everyone.
Lee Coffin:
We're happy to have you back on Admissions Beat, as we have this conversation about helping parents understand that the guidance you share is meant to help not insult. And as you hear me say that, Steve, just to catch you up to where the conversation, when you hear family come in for a junior meeting and you give them the list and we were just talking about likelies and probables and safeties and the way they resist that framing as if it's not good enough. How do you counsel someone forward when they say, "No, no, we're not even going to look there."
Steve Soud:
There's a delicate balance, particularly in the junior year you have to walk. On the one hand we're going to present them with the data that says, "This is a serious reach." We use terminology, we use the "appropriate reach" and "inappropriate reach." The inappropriate reach is this is not happening, period.
Lee Coffin:
And it's inappropriate because why? It's headed for a no?
Steve Soud:
It's a guaranteed no. You can see it on... They're not anywhere close what I like to call in the game. They're so far off of the admit zone on a scattergram or scatterplot that I know it's not happening.
Lee Coffin:
And why are they focused on that then?
Steve Soud:
It's a combination of ignorance. To be honest. The world has changed. They all applied to college 25, 30 years ago and we know how different it is. We counsel them repeatedly over the years about GPA, inflation, and about test score inflation. One of the jokes is if you took, that we used with families is, if you took the SAT prior to 1995, you get to add 150 to 200 points to your score if you want to compare it to your child. And we know they're all comparing it to their child's score, right? The role of early decision has changed dramatically. We all know that. So that's part of it. And part of it is they want what they perceive to be the best for their child, which may not be the best for their child, but that's what they want. That's what they aspire to for whatever reason. And there's as many reasons as there are families I suspect.
But the challenge is is to walk them down over time. And in my experience, there's six months to eight months after the first junior meeting, but to the time when the kid is actually applying. They've figured a few more things out and they start to accept it. I had a parent say to me back in the fall, "Yeah, I've figured out my kid is not quite as stellar as I thought. He's a wonderful kid, but he's not quite maybe what I thought he was in terms of his competitiveness in the pool."
Lee Coffin:
Jen and Vanessa, do you hear that kind of epiphany too whereas the search develops reality starts to set in?
Vanessa Montorsi:
I do. I actually just got an email the other day from a parent who's pretty much, to what Steve was saying, just they were looking at more of a selective school and through the research they realized this maybe less selective school was actually a better fit and they were thrilled for it because of the opportunities that brought their child. Now they're in there thriving there; the opportunities are just so abundant. And it's really going to set them up well for the future and their career, which is something I don't think we always talk about. College is four years. We forget there's actually a life after college and you have to have a career and succeed and do all of that to make some money.
Lee Coffin:
Well, I think what's so poignant about this topic, this reaction of, "Well, let's just see what happens," and you all know what's going to happen, but the family doesn't yet know it. Think at the beginning of a college search, there's this romanticism about a process and a potential and something that might happen. You're all grizzled veterans, you know it won't, but you also don't want to, to Vanessa's earlier point, you don't want to snuff out their hope, right? I mean you want to enable the search and the discovery and the epiphany Steve just shared where student and parent realize like, "Okay, we looked, it isn't the best fit, but we explore it." So you want that to happen, right?
Jennifer Simons:
You want that to happen. But what Steve gave is an example about the parents that are, they're off the grid. They're not on the Naviance chart. It's not in the acceptance rate. "In the mix" is the opposite of that, right? I say the hardest families for me to deal with are the ones that the kid is so close. You know what I mean? Or they do have those straight As. They do have all the APs. They do have the perfect score. They've done everything. They're in the mix and it's just, oh, that's hard.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Well, it would be great if each of you shared a story, an example of a family that came into your office with this early list taking shape and gave you the, "Let's just see what happens," and then what happened? How did you counsel them through?
Steve Soud:
Years ago I had a father and it was complicated. He was a Harvard graduate and he had married late in life and his wife, her kids had gone to Georgetown and their son that they had together was just not that kind of a student and he was a really good student. That father came in,--we don't allow parents to access our scattergram data from home, we believe that needs to happen in the office—and this is a prime example of that, of why he came in three or four times and poured over the data until he picked out the college that he felt would be the best "college" that his son could get into. And he told his son, "That's where you're applying early decision." Well, the son had very different ideas and there were two other schools that he was really interested in that weren't nearly as selective, but they had his vibe. Well, he applied early decision. He got into the school his father had chosen prior to tell the father, "This is not a good idea."
Three months later I get a call from the father and the son has been talking to his stepsisters and telling them "I don't want to go there." And he expressed suicidal thoughts to his sisters and the father of course was beside himself and didn't know what to do and could we undo this? So I made, what as you know, Lee, is a very difficult decision phone call to a dean that we had a close working relationship with and said, "This kid needs to withdraw his early decision commitment." And they weren't happy with us, but they understood. And sure enough, you know what? The kid spent two years at one of the two schools he was interested in and the second two years at the other school he was interested in. So he got both of what he actually wanted, but that father really put his son in grave emotional jeopardy by railroading him into what he thought was best and by not listening to what his son was saying and to what we were saying.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah.
Jennifer Simons:
Did you think he wasn't going to get accepted to that school early decision? Was that also part of the process? It sounds like you were rightfully concerned about his actual education and his social emotional development, but did you also believe that by applying early decision to the school that his dad wanted him to go to that he was losing other opportunities?
Steve Soud:
Well, yes, he was losing other opportunities, but that was the place his dad thought was the most selective place he could get into. And so I knew that he would... I was pretty sure he would get an early decision. I just didn't think it was the right decision for that kid because that wasn't what he was looking for. And we do have to listen to them.
Lee Coffin:
Mm-hmm. Well, and you're raising a point that we've made in other pods. Marcia Hunt at Pine Crest School talks all the time about kids responding to their parents as the church develops, and I've heard students of this all the time like, "I want my parents to be happy, I wanted to make them proud. I want to honor the investment they made in me, whether it's through an independent school or all the programs I do. And okay, you're telling me to go to X? You're my dad, I'll go." And yeah, that's this poignant dimension to the work we do.
Jennifer Simons:
Can I just... There's also just something I want to say along the lines of like, "Why does it matter? Why can't they?" I had a family once, so this is not exactly what you're asking, but I had a family once that was so protective, rightfully so I'm mother too, I get it, of their child's emotional state, you know what I mean? You want to push them, but you also don't want them to fall on their face in other areas. And I just felt like this college admissions process, that all went out the window, all the protections were sacrificed for prestige or whatever it was. And whether I know that they're going to get in or they don't know that I get.
What I do know is that your child is going to be very sad when they don't get into places that were a tremendous reach for them and when they get on March 30th or whenever the Ivies release, one rejection after another after another. So you're not tempering the risk in a way that's emotionally healthy. The worst part is going back to school and I feel like this is the area where we should be protecting our students a little bit more than we are, but our own desires get in the way of that and you push them into the fire.
Lee Coffin:
I think a lot of parents that I talk to get caught in this conundrum of what you just said. They're hoping to guide their child towards the best option possible. And we talked earlier about cost, I think is college costs have gotten higher and higher and affordability seems like a stretch for everybody. The return on investments of factors. So I think there's some connection between a reach and value, whether that's fair or not. I think that's how people think. So what I'm trying to help families do now is similar to what I say about affordability like, do the net price calculator today and get a sense of what's the range of costs so that you can adapt if you need to. And a list that stacks up on the tighter side of selectivity spectrum isn't productive in the long run. You can start there, but you need to open your eyes and heart to options that are in the zone.
Vanessa Montorsi:
I do think Jen hit the nail on the head and where we don't talk about the social emotional health of the students going through the process. And earlier in the discussion, Lee, you talked about applying ED and one of the conversations we often have with our families, because they want to game the system. They think if they apply ED to some of these schools, they have a better chance of getting in. And that's all well and good with some schools. And if you didn't do the net price calculator, and then all of a sudden you realize you can't afford it, so maybe you actually do get in, but now you can't afford it. So you're still going to have to say, "Oh, sorry kid, you can't go either because we can't afford it. Even though you got in."
Steve Soud:
You talked earlier about social emotional learning and that's an important part of it. I think sometimes parents bring the mentality that they have at work into their child-rearing. And I think it's profoundly dangerous because what makes you a great wolf of Wall Street or what makes you a great attack dog in the courtroom is not what makes you a good parent. And I've worked with a lot of folks who will come in and say, "Yeah, we don't care as long as she gets into one place, as long as he gets into one place, we're just going to," I've got a kid in my senior class who's applied to 19 I think colleges and we really try to cap it. We put it in print, yeah, like 10, but she'll maybe get into three and going three and 16 is not fun.
Lee Coffin:
So Steve, just a little more on that, because the list is stacked in the wrong direction relative to her competitiveness?
Steve Soud:
Absolutely, absolutely.
Lee Coffin:
And the three she'll get into, are they more in the probable side of her list?
Steve Soud:
Absolutely, yes. Well, she's already in one. We've got one, so she has a landing place, but she did ED at a place that I told her is not going to happen. She was going to do ED2 at a place that I thought maybe could happen in the mix as we said earlier, but then last minute they changed it and said, "No, we're going to do ED2." And I'm like, "That one's not happening. This is not going to occur." There's a wonderful book. I would encourage every parent coming into the process to read the first chapter of Alison Gopnik's book, The Gardener and the Carpenter. I talk now with parents very candidly, be more of a gardener, less of a carpenter. The carpenter wants to shape that child into the vision that they have and they're going to take a hammer and a shaver, all the different things, a wood lathe, whatever they're going to do, they're going to take it to that piece of wood to turn it into the shape that they have envisioned.
The gardener, on the other hand, recognizes," I have a plant here, I have a beautiful flower that I'm growing. I have to figure out what type of flower it is so I know how much to water it, I know how much sun it needs, how much shade. I know what fertilizer works best." And then they cultivate that particular individual flower knowing also that flowers bloom and bear fruit at different stages of the process. You can have two trees next to them is where the term late bloomer comes from, right? It's an old agricultural metaphor. And we say to our parents directly now, try to be more of a gardener and less of a carpenter.
Lee Coffin:
I love that, Steve. I like the metaphor of the flower and understanding how to nurture it, which is the search. The search is organic. It's kind like that flower. I mean sometimes you realize like, "This isn't thriving, the leaves are yellow and it needs more sun." And sometimes you're looking at options that just don't resonate. It wasn't the right place. And down the road, when we read files, we see that too. As I'm reading right now, there are files where I say, "I just don't see it. I mean, a really strong applicant, but I don't see the match between you and us." And other ones you say, "Oh no, it's vivid," and that helps someone who's in the mix, as Jen says, come into the class in a more direct way. But in this early space, as people are starting to explore, what's the right ratio between reach, possible, probable? How do you sort an early list so that that discovery is balanced? Or does it not matter yet?
Jennifer Simons:
No, it matters because one of the most common questions I get is how many schools should my kid apply to? I mean, it's just so common and I've doubled down on what I say about reach schools and I say, "I don't care about the number, but what I need from you is not just three really good probable or likely schools or three probable schools on your list. I want you to like them." So we start from there. We can't have, and I'm going to use the term "safety schools" in this, but you can have a safety school if it really feels like a safety school to you, and you'll be disappointed in going there. There are so many hundreds of viable schools for every student that you need to find. I say three because I feel like that's a safe number, but you need to find two or three or four places that you really would be excited or happy to go to and that you know can very likely get into those places.
Everything else to me is additional. Everything is gravy. And I also say, a school that your parents can afford. So often for those reasons, it does come down to the state university. Growing up in New York and then living in Massachusetts, UMass has changed a lot, but I sometimes feel like people don't want what's in their own backyard in terms of the state university, unless it's a sexy state university like UVA or Michigan or something like that. Most state universities would be such a fabulous place for most people, and yet they're just too known or they just feel like safeties even if they're not. I don't know why, but so start with three that you really like that you know can get into, nothing else.
Lee Coffin:
I think that's great advice, Jen, "I want you to like them."
Jennifer Simons:
Yeah.
Lee Coffin:
And I think that's really good guidance for all the places on the list, no matter the odds of admission. So the S word is one that I've always resisted because I feel like safety sounds like a pejorative and reach sounds heroic. So you've got this dynamic where you go from, "I can be a hero because I got something that was hard to get," or I could, "I got what was obvious and that feels less blue ribbon."
Steve Soud:
We really try at our place to avoid that S word and we've substituted and I think it's a better word, "foundation" school because you're building a list. But Lee, the idea that reaches heroic. That's genius. Thank you. Thank you.
Lee Coffin:
That was just... I just said it. Well, Steve, at Newman, what do you call your tiers?
Steve Soud:
"Foundation, target," and then we do use the word "reach," although now I'm questioning whether that's the right word.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, yeah. Well, it's what people know. I mean, I've been doing this a long time and I've tried to erase the word safety and I can't. It's an indelible Sharpie that's been scribbled on the work we do. So I'm using it in this conversation because people understand what we're talking about. What I'm trying to encourage is it's not an ugly word, it's a kind word. It's saying, "This can be your home." I've had so many conversations where I hear someone say, "I'll never go to my safety." I said, "Then don't apply."
Jennifer Simons:
Right. Thank you.
Lee Coffin:
Don't apply. Because you've just wasted an application. And if that's the only place that accepts you down the road, you're going to be unhappy. You're going to feel like you got the booby prize as opposed to the prize.
Jennifer Simons:
Mm-hmm.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. So junior one-on-ones are happening. Each of you give advice to parents as you start the list shaping, what's your advice as they listen to your counsel?
Vanessa Montorsi:
It's to remember that this is the discovery phase. This should be fun. It shouldn't be stressful. And it's very elastic. So the schools that are on your list that you start with very well might not be on that list in the fall when you apply. And that's okay because that means you discovered something about yourself and about maybe other colleges that are just better aligned to what you need as a college student.
Lee Coffin:
Thank you, Vanessa. Jen?
Jennifer Simons:
I think it's enormously helpful to visit. I mean, obviously this is my background welcoming visitors to campus, but I encourage families, if you know, all the things that Vanessa said in the beginning like, "Here's what we asked. You want a large school or a small school? Do you want urban or rural?" So I want you to visit, but I also want you to make it a point to visit something that goes against all the other things that you want just to verify that you don't. So visit an urban school even if you think you'd want cows and everything, just to say, "No, I was right." Visit a women's college. If you identify as a woman and you feel like, "No, I would never," just visit one, go on the tour and information session.
It used to be back a long time ago, people said "We'll visit when we get accepted." I don't think you can do that anymore. I think you really need a sense of place, and this is something we disagree about on our larger team, but I actually like summer visits for families. It's the best time that they often have the ability to go to these visits. And you also get the attention of the admissions officers. They're always going to be student tour guides and you can look at the other kids that are visiting from high school to get a sense of the vibe that they're attracting. But I think you have to visit and I think you need to push yourself. And I would also include, just based on our conversation, visit a college that's on the list that Vanessa or Steve put together that you've never heard of before. Because if they're recommending it, there's a reason for that.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, good advice. Steve?
Steve Soud:
One of the things we do with our juniors is we show them that famous Ted Lasso clip of the dart throwing scene. And the moral of that scene is be curious, not judgmental. And we ask them to bring that same attitude to the college search. Be curious, not judgmental. And Jen, to pick up on what you just said. I'll look at a kid or a parent and say, "I will not put a college on your list that I would not send my own child to." And I really do try to abide by that. So that's important. And the other thing we tell them is, obviously we tell them it's a very individualized process, but we ask them to do the hard introspection now in the second semester of their junior year. And we promise them the more work you do on that now, the easier next fall is going to be.
Lee Coffin:
Mm-hmm. And my very last question, so for your colleagues in schools around the world, when someone says, "Let's just see what happens?"
Jennifer Simons:
I know what's going to happen and you're wasting your time, right? You're wasting your energy, you're wasting your emotional energy, don't do it. Stop the madness. You say that a lot. Stop the madness.
Lee Coffin:
Stop the madness. Yeah. Yeah. Vanessa, what's the kind way of saying what Jen just said?
Vanessa Montorsi:
Well, we support you and we also want you to... Jen's cringing.
Jennifer Simons:
No. I'm thinking this... I'm cringing because it's what I should be saying and I'm not, so I'm going to say :we support you, we support you."
Vanessa Montorsi:
And we want to support your child when they get to March and April of their senior year and making sure that they do have some options too. So let's broaden our horizons. And to Steve's point, let's be curious about some other schools because there are some great ones out there that you might not know about.
Steve Soud:
Yeah, I talk about opportunity cost, and in chasing this one opportunity here you are forfeiting a much more realistic opportunity.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, yeah, that's good advice.
Steve Soud:
The other thing to help a little bit like the, "We'll support you," thing, I was actually talking with a kid and this is a real thick skin kid. He can handle it. But I said, "I'm like your attorney out in the courtroom. I'm arguing your case as strongly as I can and supporting you as much as I can, but in the privacy of my office," and the kid finished my sentence, "You're telling me to take the plea deal."
Lee Coffin:
But I love that. That's right. You're going to back them up, but you also have to give them counsel.
Steve Soud:
Yep.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. That's why counsel is in your titles.
Steve Soud:
Exactly.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Well, that's a good way to end. So parents, I hope this helped at least call your attention to an issue you might not have dialed into yet. You might hear yourself saying, "You never know," and this little light bulb goes off over your head saying, "I just said it." Your counselor is going to support the application of your child where it goes.
Vanessa Montorsi:
Yes.
Lee Coffin:
It doesn't mean they can make magic, but they'll do their best to see if they can get you where you see the road taking you. But they're not wrong. They know the odds, they've seen the patterns, and they're giving you their best guidance. So I wanted to have this conversation because I've heard so many of you who work with families and students lament this, let's just see what happens topic. And I thought, "let's bring some light and humor to it and help families here." So Jen, Steve, Vanessa, thanks for joining me on Admissions Beat and a fun conversation about a serious topic, but one, I hope, that orients families to a bit more pragmatism while they're also being romantic.
I think that tango between romance and pragmatism is a really important part of this early search where you don't want to let go of the dream, but you also need to be aware of the reality of it. Next week we will have a conversation about data. There's so much data in the college admission process that the crunching of numbers is something I wanted to bring a little spotlight to. So I'll be joined by a fellow dean and we'll talk about the data and how it's useful and how it can be misunderstood. So that's next week. For now, this is Lee Coffin from Dartmouth College. Thanks for listening.