Season 3: Episode 5 Transcript
Your Campus Visit Roadmap
Lee Coffin:
From Hanover, New Hampshire, I'm Lee Coffin, Dartmouth's dean of admissions and financial aid. Welcome to the Admissions Beat.
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So in this journey through the junior winter, toward spring, it's time to help you plot the logistics of a campus visit. It might be in person, it might be virtual, but exploration, discovery, "feeling it" means you need to explore. And starting this winter and going all the way through spring, summer, and even into the fall, campuses are open and ready to say hello. And we've built out virtual programs for you to do the same thing if you can't get to where we are. But I thought we'd focus first on the actual in-person experience of popping in the car, getting on a plane, taking a train, maybe walking to the campus, arriving in the admission office meeting those of us who populate that little beehive.
What should you expect? How do you make sense of it? Is it the same everywhere you go? Does the tour guide always walk backwards? These are the things we will equip you with. And I am joined this week by two deans who will help us think about campus visits and programming and how to make the most of it. So when we come back, we'll meet them.
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So this week on Admissions Beat, we welcome an old friend of the pod and a new friend of the pod. The old friend, Matthew Hyde, is an old friend with a new gig. So when we last met him on Admissions Beat, he was the dean of admissions at Lafayette College. He has since wandered north and is now the dean of admissions at Trinity College. So Matthew, nice to see you.
Matthew Hyde:
Hi Lee, it's an honor and a pleasure, as always.
Lee Coffin:
And we welcome to the podcast for the first time Elena Hicks, who is the assistant and vice president and dean of admissions at SMU, Southern Methodist in Texas. Elena, nice to see you.
Elena Hicks:
So glad to see you Lee and Matt.
Lee Coffin:
And Elena, like Matt, is in her second dean gig. She was formerly the dean of admissions at Loyola University in Maryland. And in addition to deaning, she has two really big gigs. She is the chair of the Coalition for College, which is a 160-member organization that supports low-income, high-achieving students and their path towards higher education. So we'll ask you about that in a sec. And she's the past president of the National Catholic College Admission Officers Association. So I believe you're the first guest we've had who has a background in Catholic school, so that's really helpful. Tell us a little bit about the Coalition for College, which isn't directly on topic, but it's interesting. Give us a little commercial plug.
Elena Hicks:
So the coalition is a wonderful organization. It is one of the applications that students use as they apply to college where you can apply to multiple universities, but to gain access to coalition in regard to university membership, we all have some things in common. One, we support students in a very strong way in regard to financial aid and scholarship. We have very high graduation rates and we are definitely committed to students getting through the process and knowing how to facilitate the college admission process. So though our focus is underserved, under-resourced, underrepresented, the coalition for college is for everyone and it's a great band of universities.
Lee Coffin:
Thanks. And is it fair to say it's a parallel to the Common App?
Elena Hicks:
To a certain degree, yes.
Lee Coffin:
Okay. So topic du jour, or topic of the week, is campus visits. And let's just start with some fundamentals. What is a college visit? It seems like such a basic question, but I think it's an important starting point for today. So Elena.
Elena Hicks:
I'll give it a go. It is I think a wonderful opportunity for students just to be able to put their toe in the water to get a feel of college campuses and what they're like. And especially as students do this in their end of their junior year and into their senior year, it gives them a benchmark of what they might like in a university. And so as students begin to persist throughout the college application process, those visits may be, for lack of a better word, more information-filled because they have a sense of now maybe what their academic interest is and maybe they wanted to do club softball, things like that. But at the beginning it is simply getting a feel of what a university campus is like and what it could possibly offer.
Lee Coffin:
The thing that I'm always struck by when visiting high schools is, they have the same purpose, 9th through 12th grades, but they're all really different…everything from the geography of the place and the architecture, but the curriculum and the colleges are the same thing. I don't think there's two of us that have the exact same campus map, but Matt, dipping your toe on the water—I love that. As a way of thinking about this, what are the components of a visit that we can come back and talk to, but what should a family come to expect when they plan a visit?
Matthew Hyde:
This is a visceral experience. It should be, whether it's in-person or online, a young person and their family visiting these communities of ours. These aren't just a set of buildings and structures with people in them, there's an energy here, and I'm hoping that those who are visiting us have done a little bit of homework and taken the time to embrace how we share who we are and what we're about. But that visceral experience is about encouraging, empowering young people to wrap their head and heart around sort of the feel of a campus. And that includes its structures and its people for sure, but I think they should approach a campus visit or a campus experience with that in mind. I had a wonderful friend and mentor who in my early career shared that it's my role as an admissions professional to be a purveyor of vibe. And we want our families to pick up and feel our vibe, not just to see where things happen. So important to have that on board, to think about this as a human visceral experience to enjoy and to celebrate, not to endure.
Lee Coffin:
Well, and the vibe really is an important kind of concept, right? Because it can't always be quantified. You're going to walk into a campus and start to ask a big question: "Can I see myself here?" I can't answer that for you. I can introduce it, but you have to absorb the place and make some kind of selfie, take a selfie of it again and say, does this place feel like the kind of environment I want to be? So someone schedules a visit, they arrive in the admission office at SMU, then what happens?
Elena Hicks:
So someone schedules a visit, they have a little bit of, not a long walk, but a very scenic walk from the parking garage into the office of admission up to the second-floor welcome desk where they will find at least five student ambassadors waiting to check them in to their visit to give them their SMU backpack and information. And so students will interact with prospective students and their families for a few minutes and then typically head downstairs to the first floor to have an information session.
Lee Coffin:
What's that? That sounds formal.
Elena Hicks:
The information session is probably one of my most fun things to do as an admission officer, which is, it typically is an admission officer, sometimes a graduate student, and sometimes a student panel of folks that give you insight to the university for about 30 minutes. So it's more of a presentation to tell you basic demographic information, but also about things that are special about the university, majors that are the most popular or majors that need one's attention, what student life is about. And so what the information session does for many of us is, it's that preparation before going on a tour so that you have a sense of the university before walking around.
Lee Coffin:
So it's an overview.
Elena Hicks:
It's an overview.
Lee Coffin:
Okay. And Matt, does that sound similar to what happens in Hartford?
Matthew Hyde:
It does, we take the tack of putting students front and center. We recognize that a 17-ish-year-old isn't all that interested to hear from a middle-aged guy talking at them about a college experience. So we might do a quick, hey, know this about the college, but let's put some of our selected chosen students in front of you who are there just to open up their window into their Trinity experience and they invite you on in. So it's a low-stakes, no-pressure kind of experience where you just lean into it and hope to gain vision for your experience, your presence on that campus and in that community.
Lee Coffin:
Okay, so an information session is this kind of overview of the campus, it's programs, it's vibes, it's like who we are and what we do, how are we differentiated from the place you might just visited the place you're about to go. And then Elena, you mentioned a tour. So there's a campus tour that takes place as part of this moment on campus.
Elena Hicks:
It is true. And Lee, if I could add one more thing about the information session.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Of course.
Elena Hicks:
An information session is where you can find your "elbow" degree or "elbow" interest. And that means that if you're traveling with your family and you're with parent or supporter, they might elbow you as the information session is going on and say, hey, that might be something you should look into. Or hey, that interest area might be a good one for you. So I always tell students to be aware of the elbow that, and it might be very effective for them later on and something they might be interested in, so on-
Lee Coffin:
I've never heard that before. I really like that elbow kind of metaphor that you're like-
Elena Hicks:
You can be helpful.
Lee Coffin:
It's like an "aha."
Elena Hicks:
Right, an "aha." An "aha." And so-
Matthew Hyde:
Can I jump in on the elbow moment for a second, Elena? I really like this and I'd like to qualify it because generally it's the parents or adult supporters that are sort of elbowing, which is awesome. But at the same time, I want these adults to recognize that this visit isn't about them and what they think. So it's important I think to help cast the vision and view of your young person on the things that you think would be great, but just be careful about asserting your opinions on this one.
Elena Hicks:
Right. Because what we're in is the discovery. So I think everything's on the table in the discovery phase. So we lead the information session and there are, depending on how many people are here for that information session, anywhere from five to 10 student ambassadors who bring a small group toward them. They introduce themselves, people in the group introduce themselves to the entire group, where are you from, what high school do you go to? And we talk about interest area, somebody interested in playing tennis, is someone interested in knowing more about the performing arts? And then the tour of campus occurs.
But typically our tours are about 45 minutes to an hour and hit all the major buildings on campus. A consultant to many colleges and their visits says the three things that students really need to know top of mind on a visit would be where they're going to eat, where they would sleep, and potentially, if freshmen can park on campus, where they would park. And so we make sure that on the tour we not only handle the academic side of it, the recreation center, the student center, but also those other areas that might be of interest to students as well.
Lee Coffin:
That "eat, sleep, park" reminds me that this search process is first and foremost about an academic experience that will lead to a degree, but it is also for four years your life. You know, you do have to eat, you do have to do your laundry, you do have to play. And that is a big part of any undergraduate experience, whether you're living there or commuting there, that interaction with the community, with the people, how you move around it, really important. So really, really important reminder about the campus itself and what the tour showcases. Okay, so the tour guides meet people after the info session and off you go. And I made a joke in the opening about the tour guide walking backwards.
It is a skill set where you follow this enthusiastic person walking backwards and sometimes in the summer in flip-flops. And I just think that is a skill to walk backwards in flip-flops while you're talking to a group of people following little ducklings. What should a family—I'm going to split it up—a student versus the parent supporter guardian, the adult who might be with someone, what should each of those roles be observing? Like, what's the antenna trying to register as this tour moves around a campus?
Matthew Hyde:
You arrive on campus hopefully having an awareness of why you're there. At this stage in the game, you're still thinking about why you want to go to college, but you're trying to zero in, well why do I want to go to this college or that college? With that in mind, you've arrived having done some homework as knowing why you're there. The tour in my mind is really about capturing that you said the word, Lee, that feel of a place. And in this day and age, I think too often young people are aren't as present in a moment as they might need to be. So these devices, these phones that sort of suck them back into all the realities, I think have not made it comfortable for young people these days to be in a moment to be present. So I would encourage before you start adventuring and investing in campus tour and visit experiences, get comfortable sort of being in the moment and thinking about how am I feeling right now?
Because we're asking our ambassador, our tour guide, to again open this window into their experience and walk them around their home and their community that happens to be their college. Again, the visceral connection is what we're hoping for as opposed to just knowing where things happen and where things are. We're trying to allow our visitors to project themselves onto these selected ambassadors. These aren't random students we just chose out of the classroom. They're there for a reason and we want them to be an example of who you might be able to become. And here's the challenge, it's a role of the dice in terms of who your ambassador's going to be in most cases. It might be someone you click with and connect with and you're excited about or it might not. But this is where we know it's a high stakes moment that we hope that our families and our student guests that one experience.
Lee Coffin:
So the tour's a movement around the campus following a chosen undergraduate as the representative of the student body. And one of the things that when I greet our tour guides, every fall I say, you may be the only undergraduate that these visitors meet other than the people at the desk, but you're having a singular experience during this campus visit and you more than me are a representative of the experience. You applied, you got in, you're here and now you're representing your classmates, your peers, the faculty more broadly as you meet people and introduce them to us, it's an important role.
Matthew Hyde:
Well, it's a high-stakes moment for us and honestly, we're as nervous about it as you are.
Lee Coffin:
Why are you nervous?
Matthew Hyde:
No, we're hoping it goes well. That tour guide, maybe they had a tough day, maybe they just got dropped by their significant other and got a D in the chem lab. So you don't know how they're rolling into that space. So we're hoping that they are bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and the best representative possible, and in most cases they are, but we're exposing ourselves and we don't have control over that moment. Most visits are contrived. We want you to have an experience, we want you to absorb the message we want you to have, but the minute you step out on that campus with an ambassador or a tour guide and expose you to many other students and places and spaces and posters and sort of goings on day to day, we're vulnerable.
Lee Coffin:
So there's the plan that the admission office has mapped out for this tour and its route and where it goes and where it doesn't go. I've been on a couple of campuses where the tours are so big that the tour can't go into the buildings to show you where you'll sleep. So that really important part of the "eat sleep park". It's sometimes challenging to get a hundred people in and out of a residence hall, but what are the takeaways? I mean either literally, a student newspaper or the observations. I mean, what advice do each of you have for students and families about what are they gleaning? It's not just following a tour guide like it's a zombie apocalypse to point A to point B to point C to point D, back to the initial option, back to the car, off you go. But what are you doing as you walk around that campus?
Elena Hicks:
As one walks around, first of all, I think just taking in the landscape and the lay of the campus, sometimes you'll find that campuses are more pedestrian-oriented. Lots of times you'll see folks on bicycles. So just kind of get a feel of how big the campus is. Some people do not like huge campuses, so they want something just a little bit smaller. The other thing is as you're touring, the interaction between the tour guide and maybe friends that they see are professors that they see I think is really very much interesting. I have always told the tour guide here, if you see me, please wave. I'm happy to say hi, I don't have to stop if you don't want me to. And I always get a mix. "Oh my god, there's a dean. I don't know who's going to say anything, but I was like, hi people."
And so what is that like? The other thing would be as students, I'm looking out my window right now, watching students go to class, are they in groups going to class and talking and seeming relatively happy and doing so. One has to take in a day possibly that's rainy or snowy that may not give you, if this place like in Dallas doesn't snow a lot, it might not give you the sense that you would need. But then the student center I think is a great one. You have a chance to taste the food if you want to and to see where students convene because it is one other than the library, it is one of the most popular places here for students to just hang out and or study or meet with people from student activities and do leadership activities.
Matthew Hyde:
I would just add there you're there to listen for sure, to hear a student's story and what you need to know about various parts of campus, but you're also there to watch. I would argue that a great way to approach a tour is to be on safari and trying to see people, to see events, to see interactions happen. There are campuses and communities that will sort of shore their hand very quickly. Are students holding the door for each other? Are they meeting each other eye to eye in face-to-face and having a connection? Or are people eyes down looking at their feet and passing each other? To me there that's sharing something. It might be because it's a gross rainy day and people aren't in the mood, but there's a culture for you to try to get a feel for. And I think if you're watching the peripheral moments on a tour, those can be most interesting to you.
And that's where after this sort of planned experience that we want you to have, spend more time in that campus if you can, and go off-roading, find those places and spaces where you think you're going to spend your time based on the identities you claim and how you invest your time co-curricularly, extra-curricularly and socially. Figure out where those spaces are on campus before you get there and then step away for the students, step away from your adult hangers on and go to sort of sit and be and engage. You belong there, period. Hard stop. And honestly, those of us who receive visitors we're honored by your interest in your engagement. So we want you to have a worthwhile experience. That in my mind, might take some time beyond our prescriptive experience.
Lee Coffin:
Can they go to class?
Matthew Hyde:
Not always. Sometimes. Usually when you have that offer of admission in hand. But in my experience it's relatively rare to have that as a perspective student.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Is that true at SMU, Elena?
Elena Hicks:
It all depends.It all depends on what time of the year it is and if tests are going on. So we do have a little of that still, but not as much as we used to.
Matthew Hyde:
The virtual experiences can be wonderful. I mean more of us are sharing more opportunities for you to engage in the day-to-day classroom experience via the Zoom spaces. So you keep an eye on what's offered online that can augment your visit experience either before or after you come to campus.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, no really good point. And I raised that classroom visit on purpose because I know the answer was "not usually," but it is just in terms of expectation setting for families as they arrive for lots of people it feels very foundational. "I want to see a classroom," but you also don't want to disrupt that classroom while it's in session, particularly if the place is smaller than large. And having a family arrive unannounced is not always part of the lesson plan that day. And so I think Matt raises a good point though about the pairing of in-person with virtual, particularly in this post pandemic moment where we built out a lot of digital programming that for a while was the campus visit and now still exists as a way of saying, here is the piece that you can experience in person, touch it, feel it, smell it, and I say smell because there's some places you where I work in the spring when the pine trees are bloom, it's like aromatic.
It's like somebody lit a candle and that's real. Or you're in a big city, I smell the subway. It is part of the tactile experience of place. You get the info session and a tour, is that it? And then maybe you wander on your own and poke around, but are there other pieces that could be part of a campus visit?
Elena Hicks:
Yes, I know for us, we do information sessions two times a day and we coordinate with the academic schools because they have information sessions for prospective students.
Lee Coffin:
In the schools within the university.
Elena Hicks:
So say for instance, you did the university one in my office, I think it's around 10:00, 10:30, there is a 1:00 information session that the school of business will have with someone from business and sometimes a professor will come in and typically it is in a classroom. What's different here at my university is that there are not admission officers, but people who recruit for the different academic schools here that give information sessions except in our school of education almost every day. So that's a good thing for our students to sign up for as well. If by chance a student wants to spend specific time with one of our student ambassadors who has a certain interest area, and sometimes it's multiple interest areas, we can go to our database and say, hey, we found Bob who not only does painting on the side but is in the band, but also majoring in creative writing. You have those interests, make sure that he's on campus or he pops by the admissions office if you have any questions specifically of someone with your particular and specific interest.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. So the visit can be very personalized or it can be very generalized. I mean you could sort of go as deep or as high level as you want. Now I've been on places where there's an interview as part, I don't know if that's still true. It's not true at Dartmouth. Is it true at Trinity or SMU, you're both-
Matthew Hyde:
Yes, it is. We still want to meet these kids, Lee.
Lee Coffin:
So someone could schedule a campus visit to Trinity College and in addition to the info session and the tour, there's an interview as part of that time on campus.
Matthew Hyde:
Yeah, no doubt. And generally it's with one of our senior interviewers and it's really a near-peer moment for you to connect with someone who's embraced a really powerful Trinity experience. So a moment for us to get a deeper sense of who you are and how you're approaching our awesome college and community, but also a moment for you to lean in and get a deeper understanding of what's it like to be a bantam at Trinity, who are you, what you about? And that interviewer might not have any shared interests and not have pursuit the path that you are thinking about and still give you a deep feel for the energy, the opportunity, and how students approach life and learning here. So we love the interview. I mean we're intimate enough in terms of our enrollment situation where we love having that moment. It's an ultimate expression of I'm really interested and it's a way to add more meat to the bone of your candidacy.
Lee Coffin:
And is it evaluative?
Matthew Hyde:
Yeah, it is. I mean it's certainly informational, but we also pay attention to our seniors. They write up their experience with you. The vast majority: it's like this is a great kid, happy to have them. Like I can see them here. So for those who are happy and willing to meet someone not that much older than you and have a conversation about you in a great college, have an interview. If you're someone who's hesitant and isn't comfortable in those moments, don't force it. It's not required.
Lee Coffin:
So I think there's a tip I would offer to parents or whomever might be the chaperone on the visit. Just like financial aid, as you move from campus to campus, the requirements might be a little different. You have to make sure you know what you're talking about as you go into each individual campus setting. I think the visit has a similar opportunity for a checklist for a parent to poke around or a website and say, okay, visiting Trinity in the morning and then we'll go on to campus two and three maybe in one day we'll come back to that in a second. But what does Trinity have as options during the visit? And you don't have to partake of all of them, but just knowing whether the options, you probably can't be a walk-in and say, hey, let's have an interview. So a little bit of pre-planning, really important in a good parent role in a lot of families to help do the logistical piece.
Great if the student wants to grab it on her own and say, I got this, but I know parents sometimes want a task. This is a good task to be able to say, hey, when we're visiting these three, an interview is possible. What do you think? Many families will plan multiple campus visits on one trip and depending on where, I mean I'm in New England as is Matt and there's a lot of colleges jammed into a pretty small geographic area, so it's not atypical to have a little circuit. When I worked at Tufts, it wasn't unusual to have a family start at Boston College, visit Wellesley, zip through BU, MIT, Harvard, Tufts, Brandeis, and then head off to Maine and do Bates, Bowdoin and Colby. That's a lot. What is your thought on pacing yourself?
Matthew Hyde:
It's an important question and I think you're right, the adult can sort of support here. They can be the wielders of the credit card for sure in sponsoring the experience, but also a scheduler and a planner. But I would encourage families not to over plan and over schedule because you're right at Trinity, the info session and tour packaged together as one opportunity. The interview would be the add-on, but if you also want that... And that'll be about 75 to 90 minutes if you want to grab a meal or a snack, always a good idea as you begin to off-road, I would encourage to plan and spend time in the local area.
If it's an urban setting like ours, check it out. If it's a small town, go downtown and see what's what. So don't over-schedule. Leave time for that. It was always hard to watch families that would roll in at the end of the day; we were their third visit, maybe even fourth visit, they're exhausted. The student is just done, was done hours ago and it was a waste of their time and it was just hard for us to sort of harness that moment and make it a good one. So over-planning, over-scheduling…just be very, very careful on that front. But yeah, this can be a fun adventure and a journey and not a forced march. So you got to plan for it.
Lee Coffin:
And Elena, you're in a geographic area where there's not as much concentration, I mean Dallas-Fort Worth colleges, but you probably have a different circuit landscape there where people maybe are coming to you as the destination as opposed to we're going to hit six places in Dallas this week.
Elena Hicks:
Typically, here one could, say for instance, if you wanted to visit SMU, but you had another university in Arlington or in Fort Worth, you could definitely get two in one day, usually a half day at one and a half day at another, half day meaning two or three hours. But yes, typically in Texas in general, you could probably do two. If someone was going down to Waco, that's an hour and a half. So they could do SMU and a school down that way. Austin is a little bit further, so you're right. If someone's driving, they would really have to make sure and plus the traffic sometimes in different areas if they're flying and hopefully things are going well, especially if it's a southwest puddle jump from Dallas to Austin, that could work that you could definitely do two schools in one day if all of that was going accordingly. But yes, one would need more time in Dallas area.
Lee Coffin:
But you just touched a really important kind of hidden topic, which is getting yourself to and from the campus for the visit is also a preview of getting yourself to and from the campus as a student, as the terms come and go and as you move around. And I think Matt's point about it's the campus visit, but the campus is also in a place. So that place could be Dallas, a giant metropolitan area, could be a small New England city like Hartford, it could be a college town in the woods like Hanover. And those three examples are different.
And part of this visit is also feeling that, what's the landscape around the college itself and does it have what I want? Is there an art scene? Is there sort of a vibrant community of color nearby that I might find peers, food? All the things that go into life are also part of the campus visit. And I think people forget that sometimes if they're zipping through campus checking does it have the pre-med program? Does it have a English major? It's like, yes, but these are the other things that you're going to want to know.
Matthew Hyde:
And I would want students to trust their gut instinct on this. And I think for a young person that's a learned skill and this is a great moment in time for them to get comfortable with that. You have feelings, honor them, embrace them, and take and make note of them so you remember them.
Lee Coffin:
So you took me right to the next topic: trust your gut. It's a gut-check moment where you're going to arrive and have reactions. Wow. Yuck. And in ways that might surprise you. I mean I've always been struck when I hear people talk about a campus visit to a place that has a reputation of whatever kind and the in-person visit disrupts the reputation and talk about that, that surprising moment of, oh wait a sec, I didn't think I was going to like it and I feel like I love it. Or oh, I was expecting more and somehow the air is coming out of the balloon really quickly while I'm here. How do they process that?
Elena Hicks:
I think students, we want them to remain open no matter what they feel ahead of the visit to be open to loving it more than what they thought they would, to be open if it's the top school, but yet it didn't click the way that they thought that it would. And I was doing a program where I believe my colleague from Vanderbilt was saying, he said, this is the college search process is of a family process, but choosing a university is a student choice. And I really love that because I think if one is, and most times traveling with supporters or family members that you all have a chance to get a feel. But then the students feel is the one, as Matt said, that's the most important, but you're able to talk that through.
Did you not like this feel of this university because it was raining today or was it because the student interaction you had just didn't seem as authentic as what you would've liked? I think thinking about that a bit more than just, I didn't like it, if that's what one's take is might help a student. There are sometimes, especially I think if a university is closer in proximity, easier to get to that it might take a second visit to truly get the feel of whether you would really like it or if that's not on your list anymore.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, no, I mean that's right. As the list narrows, you can go back either as an admitted student certainly, but even as a prospective student and say, let's look again and see if the buzz holds or if I just happen to be there on a happy vibey day. And maybe the second one is it shifts a little bit, but these reactions are important. I'm going back to the elbow in the and the ribs. I always advise families to, especially the parents, to let the visit play out without a running play-by-play commentary. And even when you're back in the car on your way to wherever the next stop is, let it steep like a teabag a little bit.
Don't immediately be like "I loved it" or "oh my God, can you believe... " Let the experience kind of sit for a bit. And because we phones have notes on them now just jot some thoughts down: How did it feel? What did you notice, what do you need more information about? What did you love, what didn't make sense? And then later have a conversation about what did we all experience on that visit. Does that sound like good advice in terms of how to unpack what the visit kind of showcased?
Matthew Hyde:
I would say it's mission-critical for parents and the adults in this movement to have a really good poker face. The students can be excited and show it and energized or not like they can show their poker face. But I think for the adults here, keep it close to the chest. Ultimately I think the moment will come for you to share your thoughts. But I'd like to think that it's the perspective students going to invite that over time, but also be willing to allow oxygen in room for this young person to process and to think deeply about it on their timeline, not on yours. And they can't necessarily articulate why they love the police. It's just going to be like, I just loved it. I felt it. Because again, these teenagers are visceral creatures, so don't expect the beautiful articulation of how and why they thought it was the perfect fit. It just felt like it? Then let it happen. And then to be careful about your opinions and when you share them if you're the adult in this relationship.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Well it's the part of the discovery where reason and emotion have to have equal footing in the way this plays through because you can only crunch the numbers so far. You know, you've got the data you need to know about all the things we all know and then there's the field part and the let it live. But there's also, I wanted to just throw out a couple of comments, I have heard people say after visits and have the two of you react to it that I'm crossing this off my list. I didn't like the tour guide.
Elena Hicks:
That's a hard one because Matt and I both, and you know it Lee, that truly can happen and we never see the student again. And that's where I hope if a supporter or family member is there that could say, if you really, really think that this could be a place for you, why don't we try it again with a different tour guide or why don't we do a Zoom and try to have you with another group of students to talk to just to make sure because Matt's right, you said at the top of the program that sometimes our students are having a bad day and don't realize that maybe they're not as happy.
Matthew Hyde:
I think when that happens, Lee, it's a nice time to lean into your network if you have one that includes a lot of folks who've had college experiences where you might know someone who has had experience at that college or actually currently goes to that college and work with your family, your friends, who might they know, a great time to begin to exercise that sort of now in your college. First be like, where do I know people and where do I know people who know people that are sort of filtering out of my list of targets in the spring and summer?
Lee Coffin:
How about the opposite? "Oh, that admission officer at Trinity was so funny. I'm applying because I loved him."
Elena Hicks:
(Laughing) I think that's okay.
Matthew Hyde:
(Laughing) The tour guide's funny? Apply, apply early decision.
Lee Coffin:
Because it happens. I've had people say to me, you were great, but I'm just the representative of this campus. I delivered a story that you like, but don't apply because you think I'm swell. It's hard. There's this charisma piece that most admission officers are not introverts. So when we do what we do-
Elena Hicks:
I hope that if I were the admission officer, that I could convey the things about SMU that are of interest to you and might be suggestions of things you might be happy with here. But the end of the day you've got to feel that connection to those items. I can tell you about them, but your reaction to them, your engagement in it, you're going to be living the life, not me. And so it's nice to have a kind face in the admission office that you may have met and felt a connection with, but at the end of the day you do the work each day as you go to class and make the grades and become a productive citizen with a wonderful college degree.
Lee Coffin:
How about when you hear someone say, oh my God, this place is so pretty. Is a pretty campus a valid thing to kind of notice?
Matthew Hyde:
That "pretty" can mean lots of things. For me, it's lots of vernacular space for people that connect and to engage and be together that's meaningful. If it's got pretty trees and flowers, maybe that's not the reason. But that all feeds into this human experience that you're having and you need to honor that. But as a Elena just said, you need to blend that with the more structural in terms of what they have to offer you and what the fit and matches on that front. So I would say that the look of the place feeds into the feel of the place and it does have a role to play.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, no, I think that's right. I think it also goes a step beyond that. Is it peaceful and you feel like you can do your best work in that kind of space? Is it really dynamic? And there are people everywhere and there's traffic and noise and you love that and that energy is also something that could be pretty, but no, because I hear people saying that, I work on a pretty campus and I hear people leaving the building and they're struck by the beauty of place and that's true. But in and of itself, not the only arbiter.
How about a campus visit with an institution that has a religious identity, does that come into this at all? I mean, for a family that really wants that to be part of the undergraduate experience, is that a topic on a campus visit or is there some advice from maybe when you were at Loyola where the religious perspective comes through the visit?
Elena Hicks:
The majority of our students, and at both of my institutions, whether they're Catholic or Methodist, the students who identify with a religious preference, it is typically Catholic that is largest. But when you look at the university as a whole, most students aren't identifying that way or the majority are not and may or may not want that type of life. But for those who do, you can definitely find it. And I'm glad that you brought this up, Lee, because here at SMU, let's say for example, someone is Catholic and they want a strong Catholic kind of life to go parallel with their education, we would refer them to the Catholic Center and different things that they could do here.
If a student was Jewish and wanted to know more about life here in that regard, we could tell them more about Hillel. And so we can, just like with any activity on campus or cultural group, we can get students involved in that and contact with those folks that are a part of those groups. I think for students who are looking for in particular a religious school or a school where religion for them can be a part of their life, so not necessarily religious school that they can find that, I think they can find that at any university though if they ask the right people and get those connections.
Lee Coffin:
So we've spent a lot of time, this whole episode really, talking about in-person. But the virtual visit continues to be a component of what we do. And one of the things I kind of noticed during the pandemic, I said the serendipity of having to build out a digital kind of campus visit program was that it erased geography as a barrier to recruitment. We were able to do what we do with families around the world without saying, oh, you want to meet Dartmouth, you have to come to Hanover, New Hampshire. We now have lots of what we're talking about on our websites. We do Zooms, social media as part of this. How should families think about that blending? Do I go in person or do I spend the beginning of this discovery in a more virtual format and then we go later? How should families think about this?
Matthew Hyde:
Yeah, it's asking a lot to do the homework ahead of the time, but I think that's where you'll better invest the resources for the in-person experiences. So inform where you decide to visit in person by experiences online, our virtual offerings, you can pick and choose, sometimes they're live, sometimes they're recorded, very low stakes. But your engagement in that space, many of us are watching and you're behaving as a prospect now and when you're registering for these experiences that's meaningful to us to varying degrees depending on the institution. But it's a great way to get a feel for what's affirming your initial belief of "I think I'd like this place, we'll do a little more homework." You can click something on and turn it off pretty quickly. You can step into a program and enjoy it for the length of it or just tap out when you're not feeling it. So it's very low stakes, but still important and it will better inform a more worthwhile in-person experience when the time comes.
Lee Coffin:
Okay. What's your last piece of advice? What mistake do you see students make when they come to campus or where do they overlook? What's the tip we want to leave them with as they do these visits over the next several months and their list kind of comes into focus?
Elena Hicks:
Mine would be, before they come to campus, because what we find sometimes is that in a junior class, a senior class, maybe a good handful or two handful of students are going to x, y, z university. And these students are popular and friendly. And so many people are saying, okay, that's where I'm heading. And so I would say to keep your list as open as possible in the beginning as you can, explore some universities that you've never heard of. And here's the deal, when your school counselor says, Bobby, I have been to this university and I know you haven't heard of it, but this might be, or these couple might be some matches for you. I would take that seriously as well, because your school counselor knows you, they know the curriculum you're coming from and the environment and you might come upon something that's just really, really special.
Matthew Hyde:
Having that willingness to be surprised I think is important. Open up your heart and mind to new opportunities, new possibilities, and new institutions that you've never heard of before. Because that leads into what I would lead of our listeners with is that prestige does not equal quality. And when you step onto a visit, you feel like because it's a prestigious place with a big name that people would sort of rally around your interest in it. Don't force it, if you're not feeling it, do not force it just because of a name brand, because I think there's so many wonderful institutions out there that you haven't heard of yet that might be wonderful fits.
Lee Coffin:
I think that was going to be my advice too, is when you feel it, look for more places that have those qualities and when you're not feeling it, be confident in letting it go and realizing that the list that I started with is going to shift and get refocused as I explore and realize, oh, I really do love "fill in the blank." And that's a clue that other campuses with those attributes are important. And this is an organic process. The list that you start with will unlikely be the list you finish with because these discoveries on the campus. And I think the other tip I would just give is a mistake I made many, many years ago was I thought, I will wait and visit the places that accepted me as opposed to as a junior or senior fall doing pre-application visits. Because what happened is I got into some places that when I actually visited them, I was like, I don't like this place.
So sometimes you can't visit because finances make it impossible to do what we're talking about. And I will just on that point, put a pin in, for those of you listening who might come from more low-income backgrounds. Another type of campus visit are where called fly-in programs where the colleges will host two, three day programs for students on campus that you can apply to join. You can just go if it's just an open signup, sometimes there's funding to do that. So once you have a set of places that you're exploring, poke around and see if there's an open house or a fly-in program that might give you an opportunity to visit when you don't have the resources to fly from California to Connecticut with that being a challenging proposition. Or another way of thinking about this is you live in Maine and you're like, I want to look at SMU.
And that's important. It's a very different part of the United States and going and getting a sense of it. And that's true in the reverse. The Florida kids who say to me, what's winter like? I'm like, you need to come and see it and decide for yourself whether this white stuff is your friend or not. But doing the visits is a way of sorting things out.
Elena and Matt, thank you for joining me on the Admissions Beat today and extending this conversation with juniors one step further as they continue to explore and discover. Next week I'll be joined by a student affairs colleague from Duke and a college counselor from California, and we're going to talk about how do we lower the stress of a college search? How do we give you some reassurance that this search as it unfolds? It does not need to be as anxiety-producing as overwhelming as I think it often can be. So that's next week. Until then, this is Lee Coffin from Dartmouth College. Thanks for listening.
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