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Lee Coffin:
From Hanover, New Hampshire, I'm Lee Coffin, Dartmouth's vice president and dean of admissions and financial aid. This is Admissions Beat.
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Once upon a time, high school seniors gathered information about colleges from whatever arrived in their mailbox. By mailbox I mean the box usually at the end of someone's driveway or outside their door. That's when I think about my college search— I took the PSAT, the floodgates opened, I started getting brochures and these ancient relics called viewbooks, which were brochures that the colleges produced that told the story of the college. That was it. Maybe you went and took a campus tour, but there was no other way of learning about colleges.
Jump forward to the early 2000s and social media started to inch its way into the story of college admissions. I vividly remember the moment one of my young colleagues at Tufts popped into my doorway and said, "Hey, there's this new thing, it's called Facebook. It's where all the kids are hanging out. We should be there." I had no idea what he was talking about. I said, "Sure, let's try it."
The VP of communications called me up a day later. He goes, "Absolutely not. Get off that platform. It's not stable, it's not safe, it's not credible," which in retrospect seems hilarious. At the time, we were all scratching our heads about this thing called social media. It began. Facebook took hold, it became a platform to communicate with high school students around the world in ways we weren't able to communicate with them when it was paper-based or person-based.
Something really interesting happened. We were able to meet students where they were. They were able to follow us in lots of different ways. Flash forward to now, there's so many ways people can be engaged and we don't even know it. So I thought let's have a conversation with some students about the role of social media and their college search. When we come back, we will meet three members of Dartmouth's class of 2029. They all happen to be bloggers.
So once upon a time, they were high school seniors consuming media. Now they are content creators and we will talk to them about what helped them find their way to college. We'll also talk with one of my colleagues in admissions who coordinates this work and give some thoughts about what we're trying to do as we socially communicate. We'll be right back.
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Hi, guys. How you doing?
Sarah Hedgecock:
Great.
Will Kieger:
Good.
Daniel Seog:
Doing good.
Lee Coffin:
Good. So we are joined by three first-year bloggers for the Dartmouth admission process as well as Will Kieger, the Assistant Director of Admissions at Dartmouth. Hi, Will.
Will Kieger:
Hello.
Lee Coffin:
You are making your third appearance on Admissions Beat.
Will Kieger:
I am indeed.
Lee Coffin:
You are indeed. This is a new topic for you. So for listeners, Will was with us for two episodes about learning how to read and reading season in the last couple of seasons. So today we're going to talk about social media. So, Will, describe the work you do as an admission officer in this space.
Will Kieger:
The biggest bucket of what I do is as a supervisor and manager of our student blog, essentially the blog is a platform for students to write about their Dartmouth experience so that it is online and accessible to parents, to students, to guidance counselors, really anyone who has internet access.
The blog itself is a great way to learn about Dartmouth from the eyes of a student, from the perspective of a student. So my role is essentially making sure the time cards get approved, having PowerPoint meetings to kick off the terms and have updates and think about the content on the blog and just make sure that the machine is running smoothly.
Lee Coffin:
When you think about content, is there a narrative you're trying to communicate or are the bloggers basically off-leash and they can go wherever they hope to go?
Will Kieger:
Yeah, it's a pretty independent role in that there's a lot of freedom afforded to bloggers. We don't really assign topics. Bloggers also do a lot of this on their own time asynchronously. So it's a very cool, independent time for bloggers to gain that autonomy to just do whatever they'd like and write about anything that they care about. I mean, in my view, and I think this is true for our offices, the topics that bloggers want to write about are usually topics that are special to them and also topics that are probably important to high schoolers and others looking at Dartmouth.
Lee Coffin:
I think that's right. Okay. Will, you set me up perfectly to introduce are three student guests. So I'm going to just say a quick hello and share a highlight from their blog bio, and then I'll ask each of them to say hi and fill in a little bit more of the story.
So alphabetically we say hi to Sarah Hedgecock, who is from Burnsville, North Carolina, which she notes is about an hour outside of Asheville. She was a QuestBridge National Match Scholar. She's passionate about global affairs, public policy, disaster relief, and anything in between, which is a really interesting thing to be thinking about, Sarah.
Sarah Hedgecock:
Yeah, I am particularly into disaster relief for obvious reasons given the last two years in western North Carolina. I have been all around western North Carolina. I attended three high schools. I graduated from the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, which is a public boarding school, which is a really interesting situation.
Lee Coffin:
Okay. Next up is Daniel Seog. He is from Queens, New York. He is interested in government as an academic focus, and he writes, "I hope my blog serves as an entryway to learning more about Dartmouth." So I like the idea of an entryway. So Daniel, hello. Tell us a little bit more about your life in Queens.
Daniel Seog:
Because Queens is quite densely populated, New York is, my high school had the same student body number as Dartmouth, so it was just like 4,000 kids. It was a lot of kids, and so it was hard to get a intimate connection with some counselors in school.
However, I think that my school really did try its best to foster that kind of relationship. As a QuestBridge Scholar like Sarah, I ranked Dartmouth first. Growing up low income, I didn't have many opportunities, especially to the arts, but I realized that here at Dartmouth, I really do have an ability to embrace musical aptitude and get into that world.
Lee Coffin:
Third on our cast this week is Ariana Thornton, who comes to Dartmouth from Gaithersburg, Maryland outside of Washington D.C. On her blog bio, she says, "I want to build solutions to climate problems. I hope my blog can give you a vision of the abundant opportunities available to Dartmouth students." Kind of like Daniel. You're seeing the blog as a gateway to more info, but tell us a little bit about your life in high school in Gaithersburg.
Ariana Thornton:
So I did grow up in the D.C. area for most of my life, and I spent my freshman year of high school in a D.C. area school. I spent the rest of my time in high school at a boarding school in New Hampshire. So I had a slightly different high school experience. I applied to Dartmouth as a regular decision applicant.
So I received my acceptance in March and I took another unusual decision in that I decided to defer my acceptance for one year. I went on a gap year during which I worked. I did a bit of personal studying and I recuperated from the burnt out feeling at the end of senior year, and came to Dartmouth feeling really refreshed.
Lee Coffin:
Great. So you were a high school class of, let me do my math backwards, '24.
Ariana Thornton:
2024.
Lee Coffin:
2024. Okay. So the three of you are blogging. Let's go back to high school a little bit more. To what degree did social media help you explore college options? How did you use it?
Sarah Hedgecock:
I can be boring and start. I downloaded social media for the first time about a year ago, and even then I was never on it. So I really wasn't on any social media. I did use YouTube a lot. There were a lot of really good YouTube videos I watched just bouncing around to different schools. I think maybe by virtue of the QuestBridge system, I had maximum 52 options. So I used a lot of websites because I had my scope narrowed naturally.
Lee Coffin:
For listeners, Sarah and Daniel were members of a national consortium of private institutions that partner with QuestBridge, which is based in Palo Alto, California. It helps match low income, high achieving kids to this set of colleges that guarantee to meet a hundred percent of their demonstrated need for four years. So it's a really wonderful pathway from usually under-resourced high schools to colleges like Dartmouth.
So when they talk about QuestBridge, that's what that is. The match is not unlike med school where they list schools and rank order and then we read the files and give back a rank order and by some magic people are placed in different campuses. So you're talking about websites and YouTube. I think that's social media. I would say the menu of social media is everything from a blog. Blogs were one of the very earliest types of social media back in the early 2000s.
I used to blog back in the day and thought, isn't this cool? I'm surprised in some ways that it's kept going because long form writing seems very retro in some ways. Anyway. Blogs, websites, I think TikTok is a way a lot of people find info. Instagram. Certainly YouTube is there. Podcasts. I mean, here I am on a pod platform that wasn't something I was doing a decade ago and now I do it every Tuesday. So there's lots of ways people do. How about Daniel and Ariana? Did you seek out information via social media?
Daniel Seog:
Social media did not play so much as a role in discovery, but it did play a large role in staying connected with people. So for instance, I participated in the Dartmouth Bound fly-in program. Super cool experience. Actually up until Dartmouth Bound, I had no idea where I wanted to go for college, and then I did Dartmouth Bound and then I realized I want to be in Hanover.
Lee Coffin:
So let me just before you keep going. So Dartmouth Bound to listeners is a fly-in program where we invite a group of usually low-income, but not exclusively, students to explore campus. These fly-in programs happen on almost every campus. So this sounds like you would like to explore, poke around websites, and find links to these programs and apply.
So they usually happen summer, fall, but they're really wonderful ways of getting to a campus where the college helps fund you. So if you need a plane ticket, here it is. You need to get on a bus. Here it is. It gives you that in-person piece to go along with what we're talking about today. Okay. Sorry, Daniel, I just want to...
Daniel Seog:
Yeah, so, Lee, what you were talking about how it may not be as feasible for a low-income student to visit Dartmouth. Dartmouth Bound was a great way for me to do that, but also it helped me stay connected with people. Social media helped me stay connected with people after Dartmouth Bound.
Then it's really cool to see those who chose to go to Dartmouth after Dartmouth Bound and those who chose to go to other institutions, just following up. Funny enough though, during the pivotal moment of my senior year of high school, like April of last year, I had completely deactivated all my socials and they're still deactivated. I don't know when I'm going to come back to social media.
Lee Coffin:
Fascinating.
Daniel Seog:
Yeah, I don't think I want to come back anytime soon. It's just...
Lee Coffin:
Wow. Okay. My head just went... Here we are on a podcast about social media and you have deactivated yourself from all platforms.
Daniel Seog:
I feel like I want my experience to just be a reminder that there should be no pressure to be on social media to stay updated on things. I just want to make that clear for listeners. While social media can be an amazing tool, I don't think it's necessarily a requisite to college searches and discovery. Those are just my two cents.
Lee Coffin:
No, it's interesting. So all three of you nodded when Daniel said that, so I think that's really interesting. So that you're kind of debunking the whole theme of this episode, which is terrific. Ariana, go.
Ariana Thornton:
Yes, I do have a counter example to provide because I was very much online during my college search process and application process. Like Daniel, I didn't use social media for discovery. I had one of those old school books that I was paging through. I was really on Reddit, just on the applying to college subreddit, which was good or bad depending on how you take a look at it.
I was also on Zoom for various colleges, just information sessions where they would have virtual tours, which was super helpful. What else? I was on Instagram because sometimes school ambassadors would have a live session, ask me about anything. I would be on that. I also did a bunch of things like follow a lot of school's Instagram pages, which really didn't do anything. If you think you need to do that, don't do that. Those were the main avenues through which I...
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, so that's a lot, Ariana. So for the two of you who were a bit more muted around social media and Daniel who has deactivated, why do you blog? That's so interesting to me that you would work as bloggers.
Sarah Hedgecock:
I guess it depends on how you define social media, right? TikTok and Instagram, and I don't even know what else there is. Is it X now? I don't know.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah.
Sarah Hedgecock:
Those aren't great for me as an individual, and so I don't use them. I use the People Places Pines blog a lot while I was searching. Especially once I decided I wanted to go to Dartmouth, I would just read the blog and be like, oh, one day.
Lee Coffin:
Okay. So it gave you a good feeling.
Sarah Hedgecock:
Yeah. So I knew I wanted to be a blogger because I read the blogs a lot and especially because I come from a place that's much, much more rural than Hanover, and that was the one thing I swore I was never going to do. I went to Dartmouth Bound as well, and I literally was like, I am just going because Noah Kahan lives here, I'm not actually going to go to this school. I'm not going to somewhere more rural. I was certain I was going to be in D.C. or New York actually. Then I loved it.
So I really wanted to talk about that on my blog a lot because a lot of people's like, oh, I want to go to Dartmouth. They'd be like, it's in the middle of nowhere. I'm like, whoa, you should see my town. So yeah.
Lee Coffin:
Nowhere is relative.
Sarah Hedgecock:
Right. So I guess it again, depends on what you define as social media. For me, the blog is just a way to represent different voices. I guess that's what social media is too. I think social media comes with a lot more than just a blog.
Lee Coffin:
Well, it's interesting too because Daniel talked about staying connected and I think that's when I ponder my pretty limited social media footprint, I stay on Facebook for the reason Daniel just articulated. It connects me back to people.
I went to high school a long time ago that if I weren't there, I would've lost track of them many, many years ago because I don't live in my town. Many of them moved away. It's nice to keep track of people that way. I think some people, like my sister, are omnivorous. They're always on social media, commenting, posting, chatting. It's like, go outside.
Will, when you listen to the three of them, describe social media from their more recent high school experience. You are a college grad, I think 2023. So you graduated high school in 2019. So you are just a step ahead of them in terms of timeline. Does what they're saying resonate with you as a high school senior?
Will Kieger:
I don't think I got my first phone until high school, but yeah, so that meant that my social media journey, I guess you could say, my exposure didn't really start until high school. When it did start, it was I think in a space where the algorithms weren't necessarily fine-tuned.
Instagram, you actually saw a lot of what your friends posted instead of advertisements or other people. Snapchat was coming out and was becoming a really big thing. So people were using that as I guess visual form of texting. For me, if anything, YouTube was really what I was on a lot. Reddit here and there, not the college subreddits, but YouTube. I was a big YouTube watcher and I still am.
Lee Coffin:
What were you watching? Were you watching college YouTubes?
Will Kieger:
I also didn't do too much college research on YouTube or social media. If anything, a lot of what I learned about college was from my guidance counselor.
Lee Coffin:
Wow, you are really retro.
Will Kieger:
Yeah. Yeah. I didn't even have one of those books that I flipped through. In Ohio, I was at a public school, and so I looked at a lot of Ohio schools and there were only a handful of schools that I applied that were out of state. I did end up going out of state. The out of state schools were mostly by recommendation of my guidance counselor or things that were similar to schools that I had already was thinking of. So small liberal arts colleges, for instance.
Lee Coffin:
Okay. This is so interesting to me because I mean, if you are a representative sample, and I'm going to say, sure, why wouldn't you be? I think social media may be overstated a little bit. None of you are saying it was such a critically important part of my search. Ariana, maybe you may be the outlier. You seem to use it more than the other three.
Ariana Thornton:
Yes, I did use it more, but did I get value from it is the big question. I think that is up for debate.
Lee Coffin:
Okay. Why? Why are you scratching your head about that?
Ariana Thornton:
Okay. Well, one of the things that I was on Reddit a lot for was to commiserate with other fellow anonymous high schoolers about the struggles of the application process, in the final sprint to get an essay like…we were on there. It was more of just a way to not feel alone than for a way to really get necessary essential information.
Lee Coffin:
That is so interesting. As you go through college admissions, especially to places that are very selective, I think there's a nervousness about am I going to get in? Am I good enough? The commiseration is comforting in some way, finding other people on the same path. Sarah, you're nodding as you think about that.
Sarah Hedgecock:
Yeah, unlike Daniel, I was really bad at keeping in touch. I did a lot of fly-in programs. Honestly, fly-in programs are the way that I learned about schools. I specifically targeted a large research university, a really small public, or not public, a really small private liberal arts school. Then Dartmouth was my medium, same size research, but still liberal arts. That was my way of gauging it.
Then all the people I met, even through QuestBridge, I just was really bad at keeping in touch. I wish I had. Maybe if I had utilized social media more, I would've felt a little less alone. I was also one of the few QuestBridge, few low-income people at my school. Maybe I should have utilized that more. It was also kind of like you're just sprinting, especially with QuestBridge, you're just sprinting. There's not really time to think.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. The commiserating, it's catnip in some ways. It pulls you to it. I think Reddit and sites like it are hard to break. Once you find it, Ariana, did you find yourself going back a lot to read other people's comments?
Ariana Thornton:
Definitely, yeah. Honestly, there were a few hidden gems if you are really good at looking for it. If you go back into the old posts, there were some really helpful condensed articles or posts about just general application advice that I think is helpful. Besides that, it's just memes and rage baiting.
Will Kieger:
So for me, I actually, I didn't use Reddit when I was in high school for college admissions. In a funny way, I think when I was for instance, applying to Dartmouth to work here, and also early on in my admissions career here, I think I did use Reddit to see, I wonder what other people are thinking on here and, slash, I know some admissions offices will occasionally have ask me anything on Reddits where admission officers will just talk about their institution there. The rage baiting, the memes, that's why I left it.
Lee Coffin:
Daniel, how about you? As you're listening to this, let's give advice to the seniors who are about to make a decision, like Ariana a year ago was on the brink of getting in to regular decision.
Ariana Thornton:
Two years ago. I took a gap.
Lee Coffin:
Two years ago, right, you took the gap year. Then you have the juniors who are just starting. So let's give them some advice based on... You're now experienced veterans of the college admission process and you're part of the machine. What do you have to say, Daniel, as you're listening to this?
Daniel Seog:
Yeah, I mean definitely just get off. Just get off, get off.
Sarah Hedgecock:
Run.
Lee Coffin:
Run, oh, boy.
Daniel Seog:
Those subreddits like A2C and ChanceMe, they are, yes, they can be a form of allyship, but at the end of the day I view them as echo chambers, prospective college applicants, just kind of murmuring amongst each other. I really recommend stepping outside of those bubbles. You also have to understand that platforms like Reddit, they are... People are posting because they are voluntarily posting. People to their own volition are speaking and talking about their application. So whatever is on those subreddits that is not a representation of everyone applying.
I think that's really important to keep in mind because I think with social media and subreddits in general do is they give reassurance, but then you get too used to that and then you start relying on it. So now I use Reddit for anything. I use Reddit for advice on even non-college things. Then I just go into a rabbit hole, and then I have to wake up and I have to be like, okay, no, I need to step off.
So this is a habit that I've built over time. I regret it actually because Reddit, it can be great to get relatable advice that's not super polished, but it's an echo chamber. It's its own bubble, and it can be very scary if you keep putting yourself in those kinds of spaces. Then especially if you're comparing yourself against those people. So that's definitely something that I would recommend for prospective applicants. Just get off of those platforms. Yeah.
Lee Coffin:
Daniel, you're very wise. I'm listening to you giving that advice and that is a very insightful, clear-eyed way of guiding your peers forward. So thank you for that. I think among Gen Z where a phone is such a ubiquitous part of their identity, it's hard to do what you've just said.
Daniel Seog:
Yeah, thank you. I mean, I definitely feel like social media and online platforms do strip people of their individualism at times. There's a lot of homogenization when it comes to social media.
So when you asked if I don't have social media, why am I a blogger? Well, it's because blogging encourages individualism and it encourages me to speak about my experience. Meanwhile, I feel as if on other platforms, you're expected to act a certain way or you're expected to be a kind of person. On the blog, I'm just Daniel, I'm just a Dartmouth student. I'm a '29. It's kind of a refuge, the blog, I'd say.
Lee Coffin:
No, I get that. The blog is a bit less transitory maybe. I mean, I don't know if that's the right way to say it. It's like you've written something, it's a document. It's not as fleeting as you're doom scrolling through a feed or going down the rabbit hole. Does that make sense?
Ariana Thornton:
At some point, it's just all play pretend. These people that you're communicating with who's people whose memes that you see posted, you don't actually know who they are. The stats that they share online, you don't actually know if those are true. If they are true, you don't know the whole story. So I think that it is pretty damaging sometimes to compare yourself to people on the internet whom you don't know and somehow come away with a serious position about yourself because it's impossible to do that.
Lee Coffin:
No, I think that's also really wise because it's easy to get a bit of an imposter syndrome from some of these posts. My caution to everybody, parents, especially when they're consuming other types of media, is know your source. There's a lot of opinions and opinions could make you upset. Ideally, like this pod, I hope to reassure people and say, take a breath. Let's get information. See what feels right to you. I hear you saying the blog is a source of that because it's unfiltered and it's whatever you want to say.
I think the itch to share and to not always know who's giving me this opinion. Daniel mentioned chancing, which to people who are uninformed about what that is, that's a part of Reddit where you can list your stats and other people will tell you if you're going to get in or not to a given college, which that's been going for years. When I first heard about it, I thought, oh my God.
Again, it's like Naviance, if you had that in your high school, it's like two data points, not the whole you. So someone giving a projection to you about, yeah, you're going to get in or you're not going to get in. They have no idea, and you're giving them power that they don't deserve.
So how about AI? Was that a factor in your college searches at all? You're all shaking your head no.
Ariana Thornton:
No, I think ChatGPT back then was still like a soup.
Lee Coffin:
Not a good soup? Just soup meaning...
Ariana Thornton:
It wasn't as robust that it is now, I think.
Lee Coffin:
So none of you used it as a type of discovery. To the degree you play with it at all, do you see potential there for a high school senior or junior to gather information? You're all looking doubtful.
Sarah Hedgecock:
I think I feel like I used AI more my senior year of high school than I do. I don't use it at all anymore. I think it is particularly good for when you are writing. I think at the time that I was applying to schools, I was doing QuestBridge, I was doing regular decision to public high schools. I was doing full ride scholarships. I was probably writing at one point 25 full applications with two month process. That is so mentally... Just trying to figure out who you are on paper and also market yourself and also deal with all that at the same time.
There is something to be said for when you're creative brainstorming that much, sometimes AI can help brainstorm. I thoroughly believe that when you're writing essays, especially writing things like personal statements, you should be learning about yourself the more you write them. I feel like I did learn a bunch about myself during college apps. AI isn't going to learn that for you, and it's not going to reflect that for you. So if you're using it to write your personal statements, you probably want to sit down with yourself a little more.
Daniel Seog:
There was this amazing piece of advice I received from the music librarian here at Dartmouth. She said, you can use AI for any research process, but AI is advanced and how are you going to use an advanced tool if you don't know how to use a basic one. Basically saying AI is so techie, it's so advanced and you can really use it, but if you don't know how to do basic research on your own without AI, how will you use AI efficiently? It's kind of like how do you break the rules if you don't know what the rules are?
So I definitely would... I think the thing is, yes, I like what Sarah's saying about brainstorming and creating frameworks for maybe organization, but when it comes to, I think the more someone uses... Your usage of AI can start with that. It could start with very objective and very systematic ways of thinking. Then I think at some point because anxiety and also just perfectionism of these applicants, then you're going to start going into using AI as some sort of consulting and some sort of therapist and some sort of consulting platform where you're like, "Okay, AI, what's the chances of me getting into the school? Can you reassure me? Can you tell me?"
Then it gets to a point where it's who are you talking to, or what are you talking to, and what's your goal out of using AI? AI can be definitely misused because of how capable it is and how fast it rose. So I would just tread carefully because we can all say, I use AI to plan. I use AI to create roadmaps, but it gets to a point of, okay, then you're going to want to start using AI for other purposes because you're just getting so accustomed to i. Just making sure that you do have that foundation of basic research at the forefront to make sure you're using AI well. Yeah.
Will Kieger:
Yeah. I think what I'm also hearing and my philosophy too is I think if you think about social media, AI and even longer form content like YouTube or blogs, each of these, if you're using it for the college application process, these are tools. I think with the tool they have the expression of if you have a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.
So I think for instance, in my... Now that I work in marketing communications, that space, I see, to me at least social media like Instagram and these algorithm driven things can be a great way for, for instance, discovery of what is out there. Just as AI, you can ask AI, "Hey, this is who I am, this is what I'm looking for. I want a small college with this thing, rurality is important to me," or maybe it's not. Then ChatGPT can help you brainstorm. These are some different colleges and help you discover in that way.
Just as for instance, if you were to maybe want to get to know and narrow down colleges after you've discovered them, I think longer form content, for instance, YouTube, podcasts such as this, things that can give you the proper context behind things and really flush out the experience. I think those are maybe what you go to if you want to get to know a school better and to narrow down choices.
So I think just really thinking about what's the purpose of going and using this tool, I think can be helpful. For instance, maybe quick TikTok or Instagram Reels are not going to give you the same level of depth and context and idea about what a school is. They're helpful for discovering schools, but maybe ChatGPT might know a little bit about Dartmouth or maybe you can go to the website and read the blog and get to hear from students.
Lee Coffin:
I have to say this conversation has surprised me in a good way because I started to sketch out the episode thinking the three of you were going to tell me, oh, social media is such a critical part of my exploration of colleges. You didn't say that. As a dean of admission, it makes me smile to think that some of the other more traditional ways of introducing colleges to you are still holding their place.
Ariana, I know you have to run to class. So what's your concluding thought about the conversation we've just had before... What class are you going to do, by the way just as an interesting...
Ariana Thornton:
Yes. I am going to geopolitics of energy and natural resources, which is a senior seminar, but freshmen can take it.
Lee Coffin:
Wow. Wow. You're a first year in a senior seminar. That's chutzpah. Okay. So before you zip off to geopolitics, what's your concluding thought about social media as part of the admission process?
Ariana Thornton:
I think there definitely can be an impression among ourselves or among older generations that Gen Z is constantly online. While that may be true for some, I think that there is a pervading sense that we just really want to connect with something that's real. Social media oftentimes is not real. Social media is fake and just constructed. We connect with it sometimes because we don't have anywhere else where we can feel that someone can understand us. That's why we go on social media.
As soon as there is some other outlet, I think there is a natural tendency to go towards the in-person, physical, tangible, knowable connections. I think that's where People Places Pines to me is so much more different than other social media because there's no ads, there's nothing flashing at you like, "Hey, buy this," sponsored.
It's just, yes, it is edited by other people in the admissions office, but only for things like clarity and hey, are you communicating this in just the right way so that it makes sense to people who may not know about Dartmouth. The rest of it is just our raw, unfiltered thought. In an age where everything is so filtered, that is just a breath of fresh air.
Lee Coffin:
Wow. So you're an influencer in a very little "I" kind of way. You're organically just sharing a perspective with your peers. Well, Ariana, thank you for joining us. I don't want you to be late for your senior seminar.
Ariana Thornton:
Thank you.
Lee Coffin:
So we'll wrap up with Daniel and Sarah and Will in a sec. Thanks so much for joining us.
Ariana Thornton:
All right. Yes. Thank you so much.
Lee Coffin:
You're welcome. Bye, Ariana.
Ariana Thornton:
Bye-bye.
Lee Coffin:
So, Daniel and Sarah, what's your takeaway? If you were going to give advice to a senior, junior in high school about using social media as a tool for their college search, I think Daniel's going to say, "Don't do it." So Daniel would you say don't do it?
Daniel Seog:
I can't control what people do and that's not my goal, but if they were to be on social media, I'd say question everything. Always stay skeptical. Whenever you read something, just stay alert, stay questioning, have inquiry, stay curious, look for receipts. Don't just take something because it's said. Go behind the logic of things, make sure things are reasonably coherent.
Just have that principle because that's not just with admissions or being on social media. That applies to everything. That applies to everything in life. So please, just stay curious, stay questioning, always have a root of wanting to know rather than just accepting facts for what they are. Once you just accept things or you just let information come to you and you just accept it as truth, that can be very dangerous. So just stay questioning. Keep questioning.
Lee Coffin:
Wow, that was a really terrific piece of advice. Sarah, I'm going to spin it the other direction to you because what was so striking to me about your story is the value of in-person as a part of your search. So to the high school seniors and juniors, convince them that in-person counts for something in their search.
Sarah Hedgecock:
Yeah. I'll one up that even and say that it doesn't even have to be in-person. Ariana talked about Zoom calls and information sessions. I think when you're applying to college, and especially with QuestBridge, your income is a factor. How much money you make depends on whether or not you can do this program. That's also my thing on Reddit is I remember searching through and people were dropping their income and I was like, oh no, do I have enough siblings? Oh, no. Am I poor enough? That's a horrible way to think. Don't do that.
So the truth is that especially when you have such a complex background, college admissions is complex. No one's going to look at you one dimensionally. Dartmouth Bound was the first fly-in program I did. Meeting the admissions officers and seeing that they're actual people and that this is the process that they look at you with, it gave me a lot of confidence in the process where I was like, okay, I'm going to put my best self out there.
I also, I genuinely had trust that the admissions officers would be able... As long as I presented myself as best as I could, they would pick me if I fit. If I didn't fit, I didn't fit, and that they knew that. So in-person was really valuable that way. It was great to have different experiences and go see things in person, and meet people who are in the same boat as you, and interact with the people who are going to be reading your applications because it just sustains trust in the process.
Lee Coffin:
People are such an indelible part of the college admission process, and many people may hear me say that and say, what a silly thing. Of course they are. Well, I think people forget that Will and I are not cartoon characters, but putting the person behind the persona I think is a really important thing to do. Will, person who does admissions and coordinates social media, what are your thoughts as you listen to what we just discussed?
Will Kieger:
Just having a level of intentionality around how you use these tools. AI is a tool. You can have it write an essay for you, but then as Sarah mentioned, you're not going to be learning about yourself. It's not even going to be about you necessarily. So instead, you might decide to use AI and ChatGPT or something to help you brainstorm about yourself. It can help prompt you to pull out what are some questions I should be asking myself? What are some things, some ways I could be digging into my own experience. If you have, for instance, writer's block.
Similarly sounds like Instagram can be a place where you commiserate. Same thing with Reddit, but it can also be a place where you discover these are different colleges that are out there. Then maybe once you've discovered that, a blog or a longer form of media can be a way to dive in deeply and learn more deeply about that school so you can make a more informed decision.
I think when I think of social media and AI and these different tools, like what Daniel said of having a framework or principle in mind, I think of you have algorithm driven things. For instance, very emotionally charged content can be pushed, and then you also have longer form content.
Do you want an algorithm feeding you information or do you want to be intentionally looking at stuff yourself? Or do you want something that's very quick? You can discover a lot that way, but maybe you're not going to really get a lot of the context. You're not going to get in depth, the meat and the bones, and that's what maybe a longer form piece of content might be helpful for. So that's how I think of social media is don't let that control your life. Instead, use it as a tool and take back that autonomy.
Lee Coffin:
Amen. Daniel, Sarah, Will, Ariana in absentia, this has been fascinating. I've learned a lot, which will help me think about guiding our admission process forward. I have to say, I'm heartened. I often say I'm a remnant of the 20th century. I still have a spiral notebook and a pen, and I like to write things that way. I've often wondered, am I just the grandpa in the admission process now where I'm like, oh, where's the Facebook, which is how my mother calls it.
What you've told me is the traditional avenues of admission communication in person as well as paper and long form still count. I think to listeners and parents, that's important to know and to fellow admission officers who listen, hey, some of the things we do are still relevant. So thanks so much for joining me on Admission Beat for this conversation, and thanks for blogging.
Daniel Seog:
Yeah, of course. Thank you.
Lee Coffin:
You're welcome.
Sarah Hedgecock:
Thank you.
Will Kieger:
Thank you.
Lee Coffin:
We'll be back next week for a peek inside application reading. Every season it's one of our most popular episodes, so I'm going to bring another group of admission officers forward and have a conversation about how we read a file. That's next week. For now, this is Lee Coffin from Dartmouth College. Thanks so much for listening.