Season 1: Episode 11 Transcript
Expanding Global Access
Lee Coffin:
Dateline, a campus near you. Read all about it: press releases, articles, blogs, newsfeeds, rankings, books, tweets, post, podcasts. The head spins and swims in admissions updates, news, spin lists, commentary, gossip. So much buzz, too much info, so many opinions. I'm here to help. When the beat is loud, I'll turn down the volume. I'm Lee Coffin, Dartmouth's Dean of Admissions. Welcome to The Admissions Beat, the pod for news conversation and advice on all things, college admissions.
(Music)
Well, everyone, welcome back to The Admission Beat. I'm Lee Coffin. And today's conversation was sparked by a holiday greeting. The Dean who hired me as an admission officer way back when (as in way back when) sent me a Christmas message framed around a family of bluebirds who had nested in the bird house she had posted in her garden. I thought, "Oh my gosh, that is so you," when I opened the message. Her message got me thinking about families—biological ones and the ones we create around ourselves as we meander through our lives.
For me, my admission colleagues from Connecticut College, Milton Academy, Tufts and Dartmouth have absolutely forged a familial network that endures long after all of us stop being office mates. And then there's the connection to a dean as mentor. For me, that dean is Claire Matthews, who I always thought of as a cross between Katherine Hepburn and Diane Keaton.
Claire hired me in 1990 as an assistant director of admissions. She promoted me a year later to an associate director role, and she named me as her successor in 1995. And all these years later, that five-year run still makes my head spin. I am where I am because Claire Matthews saw my potential and she helped me reach it. And so this is a conversation about mentorship, friendship and the serendipity of meeting the right person at the right moment in your life.
And we'll have it from the perspective of two deans who emerged from Claire Matthews team, myself and my friend Jim Bock, Swarthmore's longtime admission leader. But first let's check out this week's headlines on The Admissions Beat with Charlotte Albright.
Hi, Charlotte.
Charlotte Albright:
Hello, there.
Lee Coffin:
Lots of headlines bubbling up around college admission as we come into the new year. So what has struck your journalist eye as you're reading them?
Charlotte Albright:
Well, I like your use of the word bubbling because there's one story that broke in The Washington Post in mid-December and it's still bubbling. It's still getting reaction from all kinds of quarters. So I'll just read the headline.
Lee Coffin:
Okay.
Charlotte Albright:
"Harvard won't require SAT or ACT through 2026 (that is the class of 2030) as test optional push grows." And what's interesting about this story is it's not narrowly about Harvard. It really uses Harvard as a trend setter and goes on to report that more than 90% of schools on U.S. News & World Report list of top 100 liberal arts colleges, and top 100 universities, are not requiring scores. So it's a real trend.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, it's a pandemic-induced trend. There was certainly a movement of foot before COVID knocked, testing out of everybody's requirements. But as we've now gone through two cycles with testing being an optional element and in some places an absent element, there are a few places that have gone one step further and said, "Don't even worry about it." But for those of us in the optional space, as we move through the second cycle, I think the trend line is turning into a shift.
So Harvard made news by pushing their optional policy out for four more years. I can make some news in a less dramatic way by saying Dartmouth is extending the test optional policy for a third year. So we will extend this into the admission cycle for the class of 2027. And I think these extensions all center around the same question is, what's happening? And the need to do some analysis.
One of the uses of the SAT or the ACT is to predict first year performance. The first class that was accepted at a lot of these campuses with a test optional policy is moving through its first year. And there just isn't enough time to be able to look at and say, this is working, this has changed the demographics. This is producing different patterns, no change in patterns. So these extensions, and I'll speak for Dartmouth, it gives us time to say, "Let's be thoughtful about studying this and coming to an informed decision often with our faculty about the future role of testing in a college admissions environment."
But yeah, the story of test optional continues to be a pronounced one. I saw Harvard's news described as groundbreaking, and I think what surprised me about the announcement was the number of years it extended into the future. So they're taking a much longitudinal look at, okay, let's have a full undergraduate cohort move into and through the college and see what's happening. So stay tuned on this one.
Charlotte Albright:
Well, you speak about data points; there is one data point that we have from our friends at the Common App who have their own little newsroom online. And they're reporting that although nearly 91% of Common App members, that is colleges that use the Common App, are test-optional this year. About 51% of those applicants are reporting their test scores. So about half of these students who need not report them are reporting them. I'm assuming that's somewhat true at Dartmouth as well?
Lee Coffin:
Yep. And it was true last year, as well as this year, a majority of the applicants are including testing. And the college board has been looking at this as three different groups within the applicant pool. There are the people who took a test and then submitted it, so those are the submitters. There are students who could not take a test, and so they are testless. And then you have this third group, they took a test and they withheld the scores. And for whatever reason informed that decision, they chose not to include testing in the application.
But testing is one of those indelible elements of college admission. Everybody thinks about SAT when you think about college admission. And I think what the policy pause has done is it's taken what is overheated topic. Hasn't erased the topic, but I think it is starting to turn down the intensity and say, "These are optional. These are elements you can include if you think it tells us something, and to withhold, if you think they don't, or if you just couldn't take them."
I think it's going to take a long, long, long time for most people to surrender their assumption that testing really counts for more than it does.
Charlotte Albright:
Let me pivot to another trend story, but this is a trend that's a little more troubling. It also, I think, happens to be a trend that Dartmouth is bucking. So the trend I'm talking about reported by Inside Higher Ed is that enrollments have continued to fall nationwide despite a full in-person return to campus last semester. So their numbers are that since the pandemic began in the spring of 2020, enrollment across the board has declined by about 5%. That's not happening at Dartmouth, but it's still something be concerned about, right?
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. I think it's another example of supply chain. The path from high school to college of all types, community college, state universities, private colleges has been disrupted. Students are not in school, the pandemic keeps reemerging. I think the story within the story is "who?" Who has been diverted off the path to college? I suspect you're going to see it is true among low income students from communities where the college-going culture is less established. And that there has been no change in communities where the transition from high school to college is pre-ordained, like, everybody goes.
I think in those communities, there's been no disruption, I think. Because you move around the country, you will see different patterns. I think that's the story that needs to be examined a bit more closely. But you're right, my pool, that has not happened and we are moving through this school year with a record enrollment as continuing students come in and out of our student body as the pandemic allows.
Charlotte Albright:
Well, Inside Higher Ed also proposes an answer to your question, "Who isn't going?" This isn't terribly surprising, but high school juniors who believe they can't afford higher education are about 20 percentage points less likely to attend college within the first few years after high school. No big surprise there, but it's interesting to put a number on it, 20 percentage points less likely. Another worrying thought because-
Lee Coffin:
Yeah.
Charlotte Albright:
... some of them are wrong. They believe they can't afford higher education, but probably they can if they really looked at the financial aid packages available.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Again, there is a deleterious effect of the ongoing hibernation of all of us in this admission space. We are coming up on the second anniversary of my last high school visit. There's not another moment in my 30-plus-year career as an admission officer where I have not set foot in a high school for as long, and there's no planned visit in the near term. Those visits to schools, to community-based organizations, flying people to our campuses for in-person programs helps us counsel.
So it's not just the guidance counselors who may or may not have the bandwidth to work with students because they're remote or they just don't have the bandwidth. It's also admission officers have been sidelined from the outreach work we all do. And that's starting to add up where the programs... We offer programs via Zoom and other platforms, sometimes harder though not to just be in the room with people and to be able to reassure them that this process will work in their favor, that it is affordable.
Or they're just, "We're all so busy trying to keep up with all the different parts of our lives. We're just not paying attention to some of this with the same intentionality as we want to." So these are stories that as we get the pandemic behind us, we've got some rebuilding to do to get the infrastructure back in place.
Charlotte Albright:
And let me just end Newsroom with one bright spot having to do with COVID. The news is now out that President Biden has announced that pandemic relief for about 41 million federal student loan borrowers will be extended until May 1. So we've extended test optional, and on the other end of things, the federal government is expending pandemic relief for loans
Lee Coffin:
For loan forgiveness, great.
Charlotte Albright:
It's huge, right?
Lee Coffin:
Huge. Yes, yes. Okay. Newsroom. When we come back, Roundtable this week will be a family reunion with my mentor, Claire Matthews, the former Dean at Connecticut College and my colleague Jim Bock, the Vice President and Dean at Swarthmore, and once upon a time, my fellow entry level admission officer at Conn with Claire. So it's a really lovely chance to catch up with the two of them and look forward to that conversation when we come back.
There she is. Hello, Claire.
Claire Matthews:
Hey. How are you?
Lee Coffin:
I'm well, how are you?
Claire Matthews:
I'm great.
Lee Coffin:
It has been so long since I've physically seen you. Even this is digital, but still seeing you is so wonderful. It's been many, many years and you look wonderful.
Claire Matthews:
Thank you.
Lee Coffin:
Hello, Jim?
Claire Matthews:
Oh my God. Oh.
Jim Bock:
Hi, Claire.
Claire Matthews:
Oh, this is so great.
Jim Bock:
How are you, Lee?
Lee Coffin:
Hello, Jim. Nice to see you. I just said right as you were logging on. I said to Claire, "When was the last time you saw Jim?" And she said, "Probably when he left Connecticut college." Would've been in the mid '90s, I think, early '90s.
Jim Bock:
That's right.
Lee Coffin:
That's insane. It's exciting to bring the three of us back together again. This episode is called "Family Reunion." And the idea, Claire, it was sparked by your holiday message with the bluebirds, where I started thinking about the way the people I've worked with over the years have become a professional family and network that just stretches on and on and on, even when I don't see people regularly, especially now. But when I step back and think about all the people who have moved through our respective offices, I've come to think of them as my family.
And some of them are like you, are the person who hired me and Jim and got us started. And then over the years, Jim and I have produced our own little networks. And I think that would surprise a lot of people to know that there is this constellation of admission officers who if this was ancestry.com, all these paths lead back to Claire Matthews in New London, Connecticut in 1990.
My guests today are Claire Matthews, who served as Dean of Admission at Connecticut College from 1986 to 1995, and as well as serving as vice president. And she left admissions, went on to a job in development at college and then museum work. But at her root, Claire was the dean who started me on my journey and my friend, Jim Bock, who is now a vice president of admissions and financial aid at Swarthmore College. But he's been their long time dean and VP for, how long Jim?
Jim Bock:
20 years.
Lee Coffin:
Wow. 20 years you've been in Swarthmore. That's crazy. But what's interesting about Jim and Lee in this story is the two of us were applicants for an entry-level admission job at Connecticut college in the spring of 1990. Jim was a senior at Swarthmore, and I think you'd been a tour guide and a senior interviewer, so the usual path towards entry-level job. I had been working at Trinity in alumni relations and development, and was coming out of my graduate program at Harvard Ed School without any direct admission experience but I would call it admissions adjacent.
And we both met Claire on that same Monday in mid April 1990, without knowing either one of us was interviewing for the same job at the same time. I've often stopped and thought, Claire about, what are the odds that in an entry level admission search, you would hire two people for those roles at Connecticut College, one of whom would go on to become the dean at Swarthmore, one of them had gone and become the dean at Tufts and Dartmouth. And that seems like such unlikely odds given how many people apply for these entry level roles.
Claire Matthews:
There was one thing that was really important to me when I read applications, interviewed and hired people. I wanted the people to smarter than I was. I didn't hire many duds.
Lee Coffin:
You did not hire many duds, but I remember having this conversation with you and you had my resume and you were quizzing me about my work in alumni relations and development, trying to imagine how would this segue into admissions work, and I think I made the case. And you said to me, "What job do you imagine for yourself in five years?" And I said, "Yours."
Claire Matthews:
You did. And I remember that.
Lee Coffin:
And you remember that and you left.
Claire Matthews:
And I was thrilled.
Lee Coffin:
Why? Because I, I felt if you had that ambition and that ability, then you were going to do that. And while you were with me, I was going to reach my goals. My goals were to bring in the best class at, at the most financially manageable level as I could for Connecticut college. And if I had young people working for me that were going to help me reach my goals and everybody was going to be served by it.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Jim, when you think back to that first job after college, like, what did you take with you from Claire's mentorship that still animates your work as an admission officer?
Jim Bock:
To be smart and to be creative. It was okay to try things and fail, but you just needed to be creative. And it was just someone was paying me to recruit students. And I remember getting a salary that was about the same as my loan debt. I can get a job, I can pay my loans and I can see the country. And so it was just a great entry into higher education and working at a place that I believed in. There was just a lot happening that really made Connecticut an exciting place.
There wasn't a huge endowment and there wasn't a lot of fiscal support, but there was intellectual support, creative support and I tried to hang onto that.
Lee Coffin:
I remember the creativity. When I was considering the offer she ultimately extended to me, I remember thinking, "This is a hungry campus. It's got an ambitious president, it sees a vision for itself to move forward in a way that feels really interesting." And I remember saying to one of my mates, as I was saying, "I think I'm going to take it." And she said, "Why wouldn't you?" And I said, "Well, I think in going to work with Claire," and that was a proactive decision to work with Claire.
I saw in you a, a mentor who I really thought I could learn from. But I also saw a campus that was going to teach me how to tell a story, how to recruit. How to be clear about this is who we are, this is where we're going. It had a view of the future, and that ambition felt really exciting. And all these years later as I've moved on to other campuses, that hunger has been something that stayed with me as part of my toolkit as an admission officer and as a Dean like don't be lazy. You can work for a highly ranked, well-resourced place, creativity still counts.
But I would dispute the idea that you hired people who were smarter than you. I thought you were very, very smart and always really welcomed those moments when you would pull the staff together and teach us, because you did that a lot. I'm sitting in a seat at Dartmouth once occupied by Carl Furstenberg, who was the dean who hired you-
Jim Bock:
That's right.
Lee Coffin:
... way back when at Wesleyan.
Jim Bock:
That's right.
Lee Coffin:
And it makes me just shake my head sometimes at how our respective offices, people move among them. And you see once or twice remove somebody from your colleagues' team show up in the role you once had. It's fun. Claire, I never asked you this. What's your origin story? Like as an admission officer at Wesleyan? Tell us about that.
Claire Matthews:
I stayed home and to raise my children for 10 years. And then I decided to go to work, but I didn't know what I would do. And a neighbor of mine and friend, Jerry Cunningham, was director of financial aid at Wesleyan. And we're sitting around his pool one afternoon and he said, "Well, Claire, why don't you come work for me at Wesleyan? I need someone in the financial aid office." So I decided to go to work for Jerry in financial aid.
Carl hired me immediately to do admissions interviews, so I was part-time in financial aid and part-time doing admissions interviews. So I was like senior interviewer kind of person at the time. And I like to tell the story to students who ask me, used to ask me, senior interviewers and people who say, "Well, how did you get to be where you are?" And two things, I said, yes, even if I didn't know how... I didn't know how to do anything I was asked to do, but I said yes because I felt, I didn't know what I was being asked to do, I worked harder.
I probably worked harder than the average bear. And I did end up from being the lowest paid person at Wesleyan to being the second-highest paid person at Connecticut College. That wasn't bad for an old lady who stepped into the workforce late in life.
Lee Coffin:
I wrote down in my notebook something that I remember you saying all the time, which was, "change is the only constant." That was another lesson of your deanship, where you... Who knew in those moments of the '90s how much change was heading our way as admission officers. Because I think the jobs that Jim and I are doing today, having our DNA in the job you did, but in so many ways, they've been appended and transformed and shifted. But the change is constant and the creativity is always there.
Claire Matthews:
Well, just to say, since I'm what, the grandmother of this crowd, just to say, I continue to work. And among the things I've done was I've been working as a gardener in the soup kitchen garden, and I decided to take it to nonprofit status so we could raise some money. So we ended up, I did that. I think that was in 2009, I created the nonprofit. And we grow on a half an acre of land about 9,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables that we give to soup kitchen pantries.
And so I'm always recruiting people. I'm recruiting people, I'm mentoring people, it just goes on. I also ended up being president of the local library, so I'm telling the story, I'm selling the library. I'm building a staff, I'm working on that. And I'm currently treasurer of the Connecticut River Gateway Commission. It's a state commission and the responsibility is to maintain the historic river scene and healthy ecology of the Connecticut River as it flows into Long Island Sound.
So in all these things, I'm telling the story, I'm working with people, I'm bringing young people along. And the last thing, at least two newly retired women called to ask if they could meet with me to see how to retire well. The circumstances changed, but the beat goes on. Who you are, who you were when you were young and took your first job and who you are now in the wonderful positions that you now hold is who you will be after you retire and you get involved in the next phase of your life.
Lee Coffin:
Well, as I listen to you tell us what you're doing now, I thought, "This is all really consistent with who the woman I worked for in the 1990s." Especially the gardening piece, because I remember one day, I don't remember what the what was, but there was something really stressful going on. And you said to me, "I'm going to go home and dig in my garden, because that's where I find the space to think." And something so simple is that, Claire.
I'm also a gardener and if you talk to admission officers who've been with me over the last 30 years, they will say, "Lee goes to his garden and he thinks, and he makes decisions." So I also took that from you where I-
Claire Matthews:
Aw.
Lee Coffin:
I remember that one day you were planting daffodil bulbs and you said, "The daffodils made me hopeful." And I thought, "That's great."
Part of our storytelling on this podcast is, "What's the news you could use?" And I was wondering to myself, "Well, what's the news you could use?" Aside from this little family reunion among the three of us, what would a listener glean from this? And I think part of it is for admission officers, I hope you're hearing this enduring connection between people who once worked together and the way mentorship continues to ripple through your life and how you pay that forward.
And for everyone else, applicants, parents, media, those of us in these jobs are people with connections, with friendships that are enduring. And also, but the mentorship, Claire is what I always really appreciated from you. I was four years into my time with you and you came into my office one day and you said, "I've just nominated you to be the dean at Colgate." And I said, "What the hell are you doing?" And I said, "Why?" And she said, "It's time for me to open the bird cage and see if the bird flies away."
I don't have to remember doing that either, but it was for me such an endorsement of my potential. And I remember doing the cover letter and got invited for an interview, which seemed bananas to me at the time. And I went up to Hamilton, New York and interviewed and came back and you said, "How did it go?" And I told you, and you put your head down on your desk and you said, "What have I done? I've just sent you away." And I ultimately withdrew from that search because I didn't feel like I was ready.
But my lesson from you that I continue to try and live by with people who are on my teams is, it's important to let someone grow and to give people permission to stretch beyond where they are. And that vote of confidence you had me by nominating me to be the dean at Colgate. And then a year later saying, "The president has asked me to work on the campaign. You're ready to be the Dean here." I was 31 years old, that was crazy, but you set me on my way and here I still am.
And Jim has had a similar career arc that I was counting… how many dean grandchildren you have, Claire? I've produced eight direct deans, one of my teams, plus two, I'll call them, stepchildren because I can't fully claim them as people who came out of my stuff. And Jim, you've had at least two probably more, but how many deans and directors came out of your Swarthmore team?
Jim Bock:
That I know of now, about five, at least.
Lee Coffin:
Claire, you have 14 admission grandchildren who have moved on.
Claire Matthews:
I have?
Lee Coffin:
You do. Between Jim and Lee, you've got 14 Deans and directors-
Claire Matthews:
Oh, fabulous.
Lee Coffin:
... who carry your DNA. And Jim, do you still think like Claire in some ways as you do your job?
Jim Bock:
Yeah. Another thing, and it's going to sound negative, but it's positive. How to say no. I remember her saying no a lot, but that she was listening. I remember just the office being beautiful with the... Where admissions is located in her office on the second floor and having the time of day. So I never felt like I was a burden by asking, she was hearing me out. Again, you'd come up with ideas, let's do this. I remember Ken and I'm forgetting Ken's last name now, but Ken was the women's soccer coach. And he would feed me information on why we should go test optional, get rid of tests.
And so that was my mantra is, before it was popular was to get rid of tests. It was happening at Bates and Bowdoin and we weren't ready to do that back then. And maybe it was more some of the creative pieces, but it was often related to budget, but it was how can we do this without the budget? You're asking. So how to say no, but how to hopefully have the person heard in a way that they are. And I harken back to that a lot, both on budget and being creative with problem-solving.
Claire Matthews:
Can I just say to Jim, I finally took your suggestion. And when I was on the College Board's board, I told him I was not going to require the SATs at Connecticut College anymore. People said, "Oh, that was a courageous thing to do." I didn't think it was courageous, I thought it was right for our college at that time. So Jim, you lived on after you left.
Lee Coffin:
Well, and you jumped ahead, I was going to ask you about this question, because from '90 to '92, 3, when I think Jim left, I would say, Claire, you were a fan of the SAT. I can remember being in committees and we would talk about testing and you had certain thresholds you would like us to uphold as readers. And Jim, on the other side of that, polarity would be leaning over the table, chewing on his pencil like a little rabbit. And though saying, "I think testing shouldn't count. I think testing shouldn't count."
I remember the day you made Connecticut College one of the first places to be test optional and I think it was 1993. And I did see that as a courageous move because it showed me that you can switch course, the policy no longer made sense to you. And even though you were on the College Board board and you were someone who saw value in testing, you also had the confidence to say, "This policy at this college in this moment can change."
Claire Matthews:
Yeah. The college board did not understand. They were not happy.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Well, but now, look where everybody is, we're all in some type of test optional pandemic-induced. So if Jim in that early incarnation of him had a crystal ball saying, "Hey, in the early 2020s, Harvard University is going to announce their test optional through the class of 2030." That would've been impossible to imagine and yet here we are. But that was another lesson from you, was just pivot when you need to pivot and don't just dig in because it's the way we've always done it.
And I think that philosophy has been one of my trademarks as a dean at four places at this point, where I go into each cycle with a Claire Matthews' twitch and say like, "Okay, how might we rethink this?" Now, that was the gift I think you gave all of us who worked with you at Connecticut College, was this openness to experimenting. And also just back to the mentoring. It's not an accident that there are 14 admission leaders right now who can trace their professional lineage back to you.
But I think a lot of us end up as admission officers and then with a degree of serendipity. I don't know that many people as when they're growing up or certainly even when they're in college say like, "I'm going to do this as my career." And that's one of my goals as I move into what I feel like the final act of Lee as a dean, is to continue to champion college admission and dean in particular as an important job. College is a transformational pivot point in so many people's lives and telling that story to the next generation feels like such an exciting job to have had.
And so now, as I look around my younger peers and think, "You want this. Avoid the temptation to go make big money doing consulting and keep the good fight and being a college admission officer. And ultimately a Dean who has the ability to help shape the trajectory of a campus and the student body and enrolls." Jim what's kept you in it for all these years?
Jim Bock:
It's a great question. Well, a big reason is because I never thought I'd get into Swarthmore, was qualified for more, much less graduate from Swarthmore. And it was the most expensive school on my list that ended up being the most affordable. And that's true, being raised by a single parent in Texas. She sent me to the farthest school away from home, and it was less expensive than staying in Texas, which still is hard to believe. And even though I graduated with loans in 1990, it was still worth every penny and our average debt today is less than what my loans were in 1990.
Lee Coffin:
Since I'm calling this family reunion, anytime the family gets together, you sit around the table and you dab about... We touched testing a little bit, but I'm eager to talk with Claire about International Financial Aid for a second. And when I go back to the early '90s, I think one of the first moments I became aware of the journey of international students in our student body was when I met you. And you had begun to accept one or two South Africans per year to Connecticut College with a full scholarship.
And I always saw it as like a little defiance against apartheid, but you were bringing South Africans to New London. And for me it was that first awakening of like, "Oh, there's this global access that we can do." And you flash forward to the present, Dartmouth just announced last week that we are knee blind for international students.
Claire Matthews:
Wow.
Lee Coffin:
So for me, the full circle from that South African or two at Conn, and then the Bulgarians a few years later to being able to say the world, "You're all welcome in this policy of global equity." When you about international access and the work you did initially with the South Africans, but you teed that up for Connecticut College to become a much more internationalized place than it had been.
Claire Matthews:
Well, I think in that period, selective colleges were pushing to build diversity in their classes for the educational value that that would redound. So that just seemed like a natural addition to diversity. And I was not thinking of race, I was thinking of ideas. And so you bring people from different places and you make up the advantage of having some racial diversity, but more importantly, you get people who have been living in different systems who think differently, who've been educated to that point differently.
I think that was the eye-opening experience for me at Wesleyan, was to me, so many young people from so many different backgrounds, and it made me fall in love with Wesleyan. And so when I came to Connecticut College, we were a very... The student body I would argue was not very diverse at any level. And one of the things that I felt I could bring to that school was to change that.
Lee Coffin:
But that's another example of the way admission policy is going to evolve over time, but your commitment to diversity that you did. I saw you point back to Wesleyan a lot and say like, "That's how it's done." And now, Jim and I sit in seats where we champion diversity, but the legal framework around it is under attack. What's your take on that, Claire? What would be your rallying cry for those of us who care about the things you championed 25, 30 years ago, but we have to do so in a different landscape?
Claire Matthews:
I would extend it beyond admissions to every walk of life today, and that where our society is in crisis and it's affecting every aspect of every work that people are doing. And what I'm doing with it personally now is paying attention to the stories of heroes. People are going to have to make a decision, am I going to do what's expedient or am I going do what's right? And it is right to build diversity. And I don't know how you're going to do it, but you have to do it.
Lee Coffin:
Right. It's not negotiable.
Claire Matthews:
Not negotiable.
Lee Coffin:
It must happen. Yeah. Well, Claire, you are my admissions hero.
Claire Matthews:
Thank you.
Lee Coffin:
I think Jim would agree. And it's been-
Jim Bock:
Yes.
Lee Coffin:
... such a treat to have this conversation with the two of you today and to reminisce, but also to look forward. And as someone that's been chugging along the dean-path since 1995 because you gave me my push, thank you for that and for giving me a career. I don't know that I could have imagined when I left college as a history major thinking, "What's next?" And you showed me, this is possible and I had never looked back. So that was the gift you gave me.
Claire Matthews:
It's my pleasure. One of the things I would say is about why young people should consider really dedicating themselves to this as a career, is that there are so many benefits. Not the least among them is, well, there's a benefit of being in an academic institution and always being stimulated by your faculty. That was just a rich part of my life. But also being stimulated by the students and what they brought to bear on the community. And to live as long as I have and to feel the value of family. The people that have stayed with me throughout my life, people that I met through my career, many of them are family.
And even the ones I don't stay in touch with or communicate with regularly, in my heart, I feel that they're family. So you have a community and there's nothing I think more important. And it's an intellectual community and it's a talented community, and it is a community committed to social justice. And it's just what kind of community you want and you can have it the rest of your life. I think that's the message I'm always giving now, don't ever think anything ends. It never ends.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. That's a beautiful poetic comment to end this episode on. Jim, my admission brother, I hope to see you in-person sometime soon. So thank you both for joining us on the Admission Beat. See you soon.
We're at a point in the admission cycle where two cycles are starting to overlap. On the one hand, we have the seniors who have submitted applications and are awaiting outcomes. And then the high school juniors are just taking those first steps. So I have a feeling inbox has questions that land on both sides of the journey. So some start-up and some concluding questions. Right, Charlotte?
Charlotte Albright:
Absolutely right. And as usual inbox questioners are a little worried. Why would you ask a question if you're not worried about something? If you're all fine, you don't ask a question. Here's the first one. Does a teacher recommendation count if the class was fully remote?
Lee Coffin:
No, of course it does. The transcript still counts. There are courses and grades from however many terms, semesters, years were remote. So as we move into this evaluation space, we now have a couple of classes and a couple of academic years, we're all are part of the learning environment. Could have been done virtually and a recommendation from a teacher who navigated this space with a class is valuable. Especially for the current crop of applicants who were juniors during the big surge last year.
11th grade is foundational as it sets up senior year and it sets up the transition to a college curriculum. So a teacher who still has the perspective of, here's how she learned, here are the papers she submitted. These are the questions we asked even with the caveat that this was on the Zoom and not an in-person conversation. But I think there's also qualities emerging around adaptability and resilience and focus and determination. And our campuses at the college side are still scrambled as well as we move through our latest surge and we've gone back to remote on many campuses.
So the insights from a teacher rec from a virtual classroom help tell the story of how this student will thrive on a college campus where the same conditions are playing out. So yes, absolutely the recommendation counts and students who have either submitted one as applicants to the current cycle or for next year they're already worrying about this. A teacher recommendation is a teacher recommendation. A teacher is in a classroom in-person or virtually they count.
Charlotte Albright:
Here's another question about an encounter that an applicant may have that could very well be on Zoom, and that's the alumni interview. So this questioner is worried: "Should I be worried about the alumni interview?" I think you're going to say no.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, no. No worries at all. I think you're right, most interviews of all kinds will be conducted via Zoom rather than in your local library or Starbucks. I think that's just the reality of the pandemic. And in some ways it's helping us reach more students through the interviewing platform when that's part of the process. The interview itself, no matter who the interviewer is is a conversation. So there's no need to worry about the conversation. There's really no preparation you need to do before the interview either, other than to be serious about the conversation that's about to happen, to think about why this option, this college is on your list.
It's almost always going to be a question someone asks and your thoughtfulness around, "Why did I apply?" Is a meaningful part. And also to be able to say to the alum, "Tell me about your experience. And how did your academic personal experience play out? What's happened since you graduated?" Those are really important conversations for you to have had. And depending on the college and whether the interview is evaluative or informative, if it's informative, you're having a conversation and that's where it starts and stops.
If it's evaluative, the alum or the interviewer will file a report saying, "This is the person I met." And I think learning how to represent yourself verbally with someone who does not know you is an important life skill. You're going to have job interviews, you're going to move through life in lots of moments where people make impressions. You make an impression on another person, and that person will use that impression to make a decision. Same thing.
I wouldn't worry though, I would be yourself. Try not to be scripted way back. When I was at Con College with Claire and Jim, we would doing in-person interviews as admission officers. And my goal was always to disrupt the script that the student would show up in my office thinking, "I'm going to talk about X and then Y and then Z." And I would throw them a curve ball and just get them to be less guarded and less robotic, I guess in the way they were answering questions. So interviewing it's fun, it's a chance to talk about yourself and just relax.
Charlotte Albright:
Final question.
Lee Coffin:
Final question.
Charlotte Albright:
"I submitted my application, now what? I feel like I should be doing something." They've been doing so much all along, it's weird to have it all come to a halt.
Lee Coffin:
And that's why this question's posed, it feels like there's this journey around from discovery to preparing an application, to taking tests, to submitting everything. And then it's like, pause. So the work is now happening on my side of the process where we're reading, and then we'll be making decisions in advance of saying yes in March. If you're a student, the to-do is pretty simple. Make sure your midyear grades come in strong and get submitted to the colleges where you filed an application.
If there's an interview component, schedule that and complete it according to whatever guidelines the college is telling you. And if you're a financial aid applicant during regular decision, the deadline is somewhere around February 1st. So make sure those documents are submitted if affordability is going to be part of the decision you make in the Spring. And besides that, enjoy high school, take the next few weeks and just let your senior year play out.
The big decisions coming, you can't do anything at this point to influence it besides your midyear grades and your interview. I know it seems counterintuitive, but you can take a little nap from all things college admissions for a bit and wait for the Spring.
Charlotte Albright:
Except.
Lee Coffin:
Except.
Charlotte Albright:
I've heard you say this before, so many students text and that's their primary tool for-
Lee Coffin:
Oh, yes.
Charlotte Albright:
... communication and they don't check their email enough.
Lee Coffin:
Yes. Thank you. Check your email, everybody. Whatever email you included on the common application is the email your colleges will be sending any updates, if anything's missing, if we're still waiting for that teacher rec to show up. That's where you'll know. So moms and dads, permission to poke and say, "Hey, have you checked your email to see if college X might have sent you some news?" Sometimes we'll text you, but almost always your email is going to be where you know about your status. So that's an easy thing to do, doesn't take a lot of time, but don't drop your ball.
If you have a question you'd like to pose to me please send it to admissionsbeat@dartmouth.edu, and we will include it on a future episode. If you like what you heard, please subscribe wherever you find your podcast. Until then this is Lee Coffin and Charlotte Albright from Dartmouth College. See you next week.