Season 4: Episode 14 Transcript
Interview Tips: Let Your Life Speak
Lee Coffin:
From Hanover, New Hampshire, I'm Lee Coffin, Dartmouth's dean of admissions and financial aid, and this is the Admissions Beat.
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Let's talk about rural. What is rural? Small towns, places where there are fewer people than maybe trees or critters. For many students in the United States and around the world, that upbringing is the defining element of who they are. And as they look towards college, it should be an indelible front-and-center part of the story the student tells by way of the narrative that informs the application. So we wanted to spend some time as Season Four winds down and as we look ahead to Season Five to give some practical advice to high school seniors in some rural locations about how to put that personal spin on the applications that are due in a couple of weeks. And to our friends who are 11th graders, we're going to give you some thoughts about how to get going, how to stretch your imagination about what college might be for you, how to go from a small town community to a college nearby, far away, wherever it might lead you.
So this episode serves two purposes, but the unifying theme is we want to celebrate students from rural and small towns and to give you some guidelines about how to use that identity that you may never really thought about before as a springboard in your college admission process. When we come back, we'll meet two very thoughtful colleagues in this rural space and look forward to having a conversation with them about the ways in which a small town kid can go for gold. We'll be right back.
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We welcome Jack Steinberg back to Admission Beat, recurring co-host, former New York Times editor, bestselling author of the gatekeepers in the college conversation, guru of all things admissions, including rural. Hi Jack.
Jacques Steinberg:
Nice to see you, Lee.
Lee Coffin:
Always happy to have you behind the mic. And I will join Kim Jackson as a guest on this episode. Kim is the director advising and scholar support at Lenfest Scholars Foundation in Wayne, Pennsylvania. And Lenfest serves students from South Central Pennsylvania from backgrounds like the ones we're describing and helping them find their way from home to college. So Kim, it's fun to meet you and welcome you to the Admissions Beat.
Kim Jackson:
Great to meet you. Thanks for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.
Lee Coffin:
No, it's awesome to have you. Jack, you were the one that imagined this topic, and I wonder as a starting point, if you might lay it out for our listeners, why did you encourage me to add this as one of our season four themes?
Jacques Steinberg:
So a couple of lenses and perspectives. First of all, I grew up in a town of about 15,000 in southeastern Massachusetts and also have been fortunate over the last three years and counting to be a board member of the Lenfest Scholars Foundation. And as I thought about the mission of Admissions Beat and the students and families and counselors and admissions officers we want to touch, I thought there was an interesting case study here in terms of best practice and we use the expression often on Admissions Beat, "news you can use." And Kim is somebody who has taught me so much, Lee that I thought that there was much for us to share with us and our listeners.
So in that spirit, Kim, Lee talked about your role at Lenfest Scholars Foundation, and we'll go a little deeper on that and on the foundation, but talk a little bit about the experiences that you've had leading up to this current role.
Kim Jackson:
I grew up in a small town, not a rural small town, but I do have rural roots. My family is from southern Virginia, very small town called Blairs, Virginia, Danville, Virginia. And I'm a first generation college student, first person in my family to go to college. I spent about half of my career in higher ed, so I started out in residence life. I was an RA in college and moved into that area, residence life, student affairs, and then I pivoted and spent the second half of my career as a high school counselor in a suburban high school right outside of Philadelphia. So I've been on both sides of the college admissions coin per se, and discovered Lenfest, really wasn't even intending to leave my job, but discovered Lenfest as a place that where I could use both of those talents. And they're an organization that not only helps get students to college, but through college, which is something that you don't often see. So yeah, that's what drew me to Lenfest.
Jacques Steinberg:
First, let's define rural, Lee and Kim, and not assume that folks necessarily know what we mean by that, and it may not be as hard and fast a definition. So for example, the U.S. Census Bureau defines an urban area as having 50,000 or more people. And I mentioned that I grew up in a town of 15,000. I most certainly considered that town to be rural. An urban cluster is between 2500 and 50,000 people. But that's what the government might say. And in fact, just using those definitions, one in five people in this country live in a rural community and 97% of the land in this country is considered rural.
Lee, for you as an admissions officer, what's your definition of rural?
Lee Coffin:
Broadly, to me it means students from less populated areas, often less resourced public high schools just by virtue of where they are in the demographics they serve, sometimes more regional in their composition. So instead of serving one town or a part of a town, it could be multiple towns or maybe even a county feeding into one school. I think other characteristics I notice is they tend to be smaller senior classes than larger ones where fewer than half of the high school seniors go to a four-year college. And I think if you peel that back, probably even fewer go to private institutions as opposed to maybe a nearby state institution.
But the landscape, not to make a pun of rural, could be everything from an area that's more farming and agricultural in its makeup to just a small town, not so far out from a city, but it's a place that is a community unto itself. It could be a Native American reservation, it could be on the edge of the Mojave Desert out west. I mean, there's a lot of different ways this definition could be imagined, but I think the link to me are students who are not always in the majority of our applicant pool historically.
Jacques Steinberg:
And Kim, anything you would sort of add to or sort of underscore in Lee's definition of rural?
Kim Jackson:
Yeah, absolutely. We have 23 partner high schools that we work with and I think there are schools that fall into all of the different rural categories. Some of them that are a little bit closer to a suburban area and some of them that are. I've been to high schools that are rural remote, where I am 30 or 35 minutes away from anything in terms of internet access and cell phone access and all of that. And sometimes that's an issue for our students.
But yeah, one of the other things I would say is that some of the challenges that our students and our communities that our students live in worry about is understanding financial aid, understanding fit. They have, and I remember this as a high school student, they have that core group of schools that they've heard of that most of the students in their high school, that's where they go. They have a group of maybe five or six colleges and they don't know much outside of that because they haven't necessarily had the opportunity to visit colleges just because they are so far removed from so many of them and they don't necessarily understand what it means to go to a private school versus a public school and what it means to go to schools outside of the few that they've heard of.
So that's one of the things that we do is try to help them understand a little bit better about what the college landscape looks like. Because sometimes they'll say, "oh, well this school has these things" and we're countering with "lots of schools have those things and more and lots of different opportunities." And so just introducing them to the number of opportunities that are out there and the numbers and the types of schools that are out there that they might not know about is sometimes a challenge. Sometimes a challenge.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Kim, as you were explaining, a thought occurred to me that when you said that students will go to a few places that they know—do those tend to be more local options?
Kim Jackson:
Absolutely. Absolutely. So the statistic that you gave about less than half of students going on to a four years college is definitely accurate. And yes, they tend to be the few colleges in the area where sometimes the students option is to stay home and commute rather than because they think they don't understand the financial aid piece so they don't understand necessarily that they might be able to go to a school farther away and not pay any more than they would be paying at the school that they're commuting from.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Jack, I would add, as we're talking about rural, there's a lot of overlapping cohorts in this space. So there's the geography that we're calling rural. There's often a high overlap with lower income, especially in the US. There's also higher proportions of students who are the first in their families to go to college. And then in some parts of the U.S. there's also racial and ethnic diversity that is concentrated in some of these geographies as well. So it's an interesting framing of the work we do as recruiters, but also in the storytelling that goes into an application, because you say rural, it's not a monolithic group. There's a lot of subgroups that overlap and correspond to lots of different priorities that a college will have.
Jacques Steinberg:
One piece of advice for students, Lee, as I listen to that is if a student is listening to this, if a parent is listening and thinks, am I or aren't I, should the error on the side of assuming that they are and to sort of explain some of the reasons why they believe that their experience is a rural one.
Lee Coffin:
I don't think there's a correct answer. And if you look out the window of your bedroom and you see an environment that feels rural, own it. Don't force it. It's not like we're saying this is a utopia that you must create for yourself, but if this is your truth, tell us.
Jacques Steinberg:
Kim, in a moment, I really want to dive into some tips that you and Lee have for students and families and counselors. But just one last pause before we do. So much of what you're going to share with us today, Kim, has been learned sort of on the job by Lenfest Scholars Foundation. Can you just explain briefly what it is, how long it's been at it, and what sort of success it's had?
Kim Jackson:
Sure. So we've been in existence a little over 20 years. We are a community-based organization that works with selected students. We call them scholars in 23 partner high schools in South Central Pennsylvania. Scholars are selected in their junior year. The process very much mirrors the college application process. Last year we chose 45 scholars from the 23 schools and then we work with them, we support them in the college application process and we provide a lot of programming for them. We kind of expose them to maybe some colleges that they wouldn't have been exposed to otherwise. We help them to understand their rural identity. We help them with essay writing. They are provided with access to personalized test preparation. We're doing a program on financial aid actually this evening. We've done programming on selective college admissions. We work with them through the college application process and through their college journey as well.
So for our first-years in college, we are doing a program on preparing for finals in college. We recently did a program on registering for classes. It's not something that the students are familiar with when they're freshmen. They've been told what to take throughout high school and a lot of times even when they're in their first year. So we had a program and we had students that said, I didn't know what a prerequisite was. Thank you for explaining that to me. So some very basic, we've talked about the jargon that goes with college admissions and college in general. So just explaining some of that to them and helping them to understand that they have a support throughout their college years.
Jacques Steinberg:
You used the word "challenges" earlier. So let's drill down a little bit on that and I would say, challenges getting to college and then through college, which are certainly relatable to lots of different students, but particularly for rural students. You talked about fit. Let's talk about building a list and the sorts of supports that a rural student might need to sort of look beyond what, as Lee says, is right outside that bedroom window.
Kim Jackson:
I try to take the approach of being strategic. So I strongly suggest that every Lenfest scholar applies to at least a couple of schools that offer 100% financial need, that cover 100% of their financial need and explain what that means because they don't necessarily know what that means. So sometimes that means they think they see the price tag of a selective college, and you talked about this in the last episode that I listened to of this podcast about financial aid. They don't understand that the sticker price is not necessarily what they're going to pay. They don't understand that selective colleges often have larger endowments and can offer more money.
So a lot of times we'll take a comparison of a school that they are very familiar with, that they look at the price tag and say, this one is cheaper and it's closer to me. And then we compare it to a selective school or a private school that offers more generous financial aid and show them that once we figure it all out, they could be paying less, much less for that selective school than they are paying for that public school or that school that they're more familiar with. So we work through all of that with them.
My goal is for every student, our goal, I would say, is for every student to really come up with a balanced list of colleges that aligns with their interests and aligns with their intellect and aligns with their financial needs so that they are able to, I go on and on about options because I know what's going to happen. We are in the selection, we're in the application process. Some students have texted me excited about the colleges that they've gotten into, but I know there's another side coming in a few months when they get those financial aid award letters. So my goal is that when we get to March, when we get to February, March, when they're looking at those financial aid letters, that they have multiple options to choose from.
We talk a lot about strategy, we talk a lot about fit and looking at matching a student's talents to schools that have options for them that are really going to help them to soar academically, to soar personally, to really, and a lot of students are, despite what I think people think about rural students, a lot of our students are looking to get out of their comfort zone. And a lot of our students are also looking to leave. I hear a lot of students say, "I intend to go out, get information and then come back to my community and bring that information to my community so I can strengthen it."
And that's I think one of the distinct differences that I see in rural students that I don't necessarily see in other students just because they always are thinking about their community and they always bring that back. They're always bringing it home. So that's one of the things that I think is really valuable about their experience.
Lee Coffin:
And Kim, can I build off of that? To seniors who are starting to work on essays or framing their candidacy in a way, what Kim just said would be a really powerful theme of one of your written statements, I want to go to college to study X so they can come back to this community and do Y, because in my experience, I've observed Z and I want to address it. And I'm not giving you a mad lib to fill in the blanks, but the idea there is what Kim was saying is a really powerful voice when it comes to your application, when you're able to look at college, how do you take, a line I've often said is, how do I take my intellect to make a difference in the place where I am? And if you can fuse these things together and say, these are the things I'd like to study, these are some of the issues I see where I was raised and how I might address it afterwards, you've just written a really beautiful essay.
Jacques Steinberg:
Kim, a lot of college advisors of course advise students whenever possible to visit the schools that they're applying to. That can be a challenge when you're hours and hours away perhaps from a major airport or hours and hours drive away from a campus. What sort of advice do you have for students in terms of the campus visit and sort of getting over that hurdle of distance and logistics?
Kim Jackson:
I think one of the benefits of the pandemic is that colleges have had to pivot and figure out how to bring their campuses to students. So there are a lot of resources. There's the Stars Network that is a group of colleges that is working specifically to help rural students. There's a coalition for college and they often host virtual college fairs and a lot of schools have college visits. We do a newsletter that comes out every other week where we will highlight a college and then we'll provide a link to a campus tour where they can take a virtual tour.
Our Lenfest scholars are very fortunate in that we try to help them with the college visits and try to help supplement financially the visits to colleges. And there are other organizations, other CBOs that do similar things. It's a joke in the Lenfest Scholars Foundation about my dream of having a Lenfest van that I will drive and help students visit colleges. But there are other organizations that do that kind of thing. They do college tours and they do pick up students and take them.
The other thing is that we put out information about the fly-in programs that many colleges have. Selective colleges have programs where they will cover the cost of students to come and visit their campuses. So then the money piece is not an issue. And I'm one of the co-leaders of the, I'm going to use an acronym, NACAC, the National Association of College Admissions Counseling. We have a number of special interest groups and there's one dedicated to rural and small town issues. And we put out a list and we distribute that to counselors, to people all over the country of all of the fly-in visits that colleges offer so that we can share that information with students. And it's very easy for colleges, for high school counselors to just download it and we put in all the clickable links, they can be taken right to where the applications are for those visits.
Lee Coffin:
Kim, if you're a student who's not in a CBO or has a counselor who's on that list or, how do I as that senior access this information and do that my own through the internet?
Kim Jackson:
That's good question. Yes. I would say because I've done this as a counselor, I've just Googled counselor visits or college visits, but that's one of the things that they can do. And they probably, because I actually have had, I had as a member of that organization, a random student reach out that somehow got information about it.
Jacques Steinberg:
One of the things that has come up often on the Admissions Beat this season and in previous seasons is the power of picking up the phone old-fashioned and calling a college admissions office or calling a financial aid office or lobbing in an email. Lee, what would be your advice in terms of how do you frame the question regarding something like a fly-in program or whether there might be an opportunity for support on travel?
Lee Coffin:
Well, that's why I asked the question because I think there's a lot of students who don't have the infrastructure around them yet. So you need to be a touch more independent to get things rolling.
And I would start with Google and find your way to the information broadly that we're suggesting. And when you find a program that seems appealing, look for a link, click it, send an email, pick up the phone and call and just simply say, I'm a prospective student who found information on this program. I'm really interested in learning more. How do I apply? And let the college take it from there because on the recruitment side of our work, we love it when people ring our doorbell and ask for information. I mean, we do a lot of the opposite where we come to you, but you can find us too and introduce yourself as a student who's interested in learning more about us and staying with the theme of this episode, you can say, I'm a student from a rural community who is really intrigued by fill in the blank and want to learn more about those programs on your campus. Who do I need to talk to?
Jacques Steinberg:
Kim, what about advice for parents in terms of mindset? Say a student is there, they're interested in visiting a school that may be many hours away with various modes of transportation involved, car, bus, plane, plane connections, yet they're willing to take that leap. What sorts of things do you say to parents who may be concerned about that time and distance away?
Kim Jackson:
It takes a lot of planning. I have done this as a parent. It takes a lot of planning and preparation and thoughtfulness. I mean, I think you want to think about why you're going to visit the college. As a parent looking at the time that you have and the time that students have, I often suggest that students look at their high school academic calendar and say, oh, here are the days that we have off and here are days that we could possibly make a trip somewhere and kind of work around that with their parents. Yeah, having done that, it does take, it takes a lot of preparation, but it's also worth it because sometimes, and this can work both ways, sometimes students go to a college and realize that they don't want to be there once they have gotten to the physical campus. And sometimes they go and they fall in love with a campus. And we hear about both sides of that.
And I often tell students, it's just as important if you found out that you don't like a place as it is that you find out that you do; it changes your mindset. However it happens, I think it changes. You say, oh, well I thought I would like this place. I might need to dig a little bit deeper before I decide where I'm going to apply because I've seen this place, I've heard of it, I thought I'd love it and I didn't. And I think the same goes a lot of times that visit where I just had a student contact me this morning who says, okay, I loved that place. I told you about it. I'm going to apply early decision. Can we meet before November 15th to talk more about my application and run through it?
Jacques Steinberg:
So let's stay on that point of high school seniors and let's imagine the run-up of a few weeks to an application that's due at the end of December, early January. And let's imagine a student like those that you work with applying from a rural community. What's your advice for this sort of end game of the application process for them?
Kim Jackson:
I'm going to steal from Lee and say, I think you said this on multiple podcasts, but I just think it's a really good piece of advice people don't get rejected. Applications do.
And I think because I know that for a lot of these students, this is going to be the first time that they are going to be under such scrutiny and they might not get the outcome that they want, that it's very important to craft that application so that they show all the pieces I talk about, and I've seen other people do this too, but I like the analogy of a puzzle piece, of a puzzle and that each piece of that application is a piece of the puzzle and they want to show as many puzzle pieces as possible. So I say when I write my letter, what is something that I can highlight? When your recommender writes their letter, what is something they can highlight other than you got an A in that class? When you write that essay, what is something that you can highlight?
I just had a conversation with a student that talked about, he said, should I do this topic or should I talk about my rural piece? And I said, you should talk about the rural piece. Why is that? And there was some talking about what does that mean? Why is it important to colleges to admit rural students? What is so special about that? And then I'm talking with them about the community mindedness and being from a small town, what that means, the work ethic, all of the things that I see that are just a little bit different than students from other places. But it takes time. It takes time to dig into all of that and to be able to present it in a way that is going to enhance their application. So we kind of have to work through all those things.
Jacques Steinberg:
So Lee, you and colleagues at Dartmouth and at institutions around the country will be recipients of these applications and these essays. What's your advice as a reader, as a decider of topics and areas that students might consider?
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, thank you for that. One of the episodes in season three, I advised juniors to take an existential selfie, hold up their proverbial phone, take their picture and say, who am I? And I think in this rural example, do the same thing. What does that existential selfie reveal about the way your environment has informed who you are?
One of our supplemental essays this year is a question that says there's a Quaker saying, let your life speak. Describe the environment in which you were raised and how it's impacted the person you are today. And that's, the flavor of that question is what I'm getting at. The existential selfie of your rural identity could be things that are very day-to-day for you. And you don't see them as a signature or as exciting perhaps, but it's like, tell us.
So for example, you live in a small town with a significant agricultural footprint around it, and whether you're on a farm or not, and you're like, I've noticed that as the climate in this part of the country has changed, so have the crop patterns and I'm interested in taking what I've learned in science and applying it to what I see in the fields in my neighborhood. Or I noticed during the pandemic that healthcare was really hard to locate when we were so far from a town and my commitment to being a pre-med is informed by maybe rural public health access. Or you're in this political space where rural places are often described in the United States as red, and maybe you see more purple or more blue, or you think there's a mischaracterization of the politics of place. Talk about that. Or you've somehow become a particularly liberal political person out of a particularly conservative town. Talk about that. You work on a farm, you live on a farm.
I had an essay from a student a couple years ago who said, I live on a farm in Vermont. The driveway. It's five miles from the road. We don't have wifi on the farm. I don't have a TV and books are the way I entertain myself and the animals on the farm are my playmates. And there was a lovely essay about her backyard.
And to the question one of us posed a bit ago, why do we care about that? Well jump forward and imagine that perspective in a classroom, in your college environment, you're talking about literature or politics or economics or environmental science, you bring a lived experience that informs that classroom discussion in a way that somebody who grew up in midtown Manhattan probably can intellectually understand what you're saying, but they haven't lived it. And so that lived experience bubbles up out of these life stories that originate from the place where you are.
And so for the seniors thinking about storytelling right now, pause, take out a pad and pen and just start to write down what are some of the things I do day to day? And if you milk a cow, that's interesting, talk about that. If you are the paperboy and you're driving on your bicycle across wide open spaces to deliver the newspaper, talk about the neighbors you meet in doing that. There's just so many things you could introduce that are noteworthy and will inform the person we're meeting. Does that make sense, Kim, as I say that?
Kim Jackson:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Jacques Steinberg:
And Kim, anything you would sort of say, imagining when you're sitting at a student's elbow or at the elbow of a student and family and you're trying to draw out some of these perspectives and experiences that Lee is hoping to see in his inbox? Any prompts, any ways that you help them draw that out?
Kim Jackson:
Yeah, my biggest thing is tell me a story and a specific story. Because sometimes they'll tell me, they'll submit a very well-written essay and they've shared it with me and I'm like, okay, if I don't know, if there's no name on this and I don't know who wrote it, then we need to work on it. What happens? Tell me something specific. And sometimes I'll say, let's have a meeting and we'll talk about it. And I'll ask for, okay, but I want something more specific about this. Tell me about a time when this happened and give me some details about that. Sometimes that works. And then sometimes they just don't think about how their experiences are unique. We had a student who raised chickens and they don't see that as interesting, but admissions people see that as interesting.
And the other thing that sometimes I will make a tie, I'll say, that is not only interesting, but it also speaks to some very tangible pieces that are going to help you in college. It speaks to your work ethic. You don't tend to the chickens whenever you feel like it, you tend to the chickens early in the morning, all those things that they're doing. And sometimes they're working on family farms and orchards and things like that, and they don't see how that work ethic and how that discipline translates. But then I explain it and then they're like, oh, well yeah, I guess I didn't think about it that way, but I'm like, I've seen a lot of students. I know what these students look like and what their work ethic is, and what your work ethic is very different. So if you can tell me a story that will give me a piece of something that's going to show how that will translate to you being successful in college, then we've done our job in the essay writing.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, I give you a specific since Kim just asked for one. So had an applicant a few years ago to Dartmouth from Bosnia, so extending this rural kind of conversation outside the United States because a lot of the world would fall into the same category and we see applicants from all over the planet who have rural or remote origins. And this student raised chickens and that's what made me remember this story. And she was science-oriented and she noticed that the chickens in her coop generate a lot of feathers, that were always flying around her backyard. And she started doing research on chicken feathers as an energy source and ended up coming to Dartmouth doing that exact research. She's continuing to do energy-based chicken feathers, and it seems so simple. It seems kind of cool as I say it, but that was a real day-to-day perspective she had from her backyard.
And I think the trick of this existential rural selfie is to not discount your experience as not important or not interesting. It's your life and it's always a trick to see your life as special. It is and trust that what you're telling us is worth telling us not, oh, they don't really want to know this. Don't presume what I want to know. Tell me your story in your own words based on what's happened in your world. And that's how we build the class and that's how we meet you in the context of where you are.
Kim Jackson:
Yeah, I see a lot of students with independent curiosity, I think more on the rural side where they see something in their world and then they go and research it and find out about it and do something independent. They don't even realize that what they're doing, but they are really displaying their intellectual curiosity and by doing that kind of thing, again, showing a college why they would be a valuable member of their community. And something that having looked at, again, having seen a lot students I see more in the rural students that I'm working with.
Jacques Steinberg:
So we're having this conversation in the lead-up to the application deadline. But Kim, while we have you on the podcast, I know you provide, you and the organization provide a lot of support once students have enrolled on campuses, arrived on campuses, and sometimes these may be campuses whose population is many multiples of the community from which they've originated. There's a density that may be unfamiliar to them. For those who may be so fortunate to be admitted to one of these institutions and considering going and daunted by the size or the concentration, what's some advice to sort of get over that challenge? A challenge of mindset, a challenge of imagining yourself in that community?
Kim Jackson:
Yeah, I think one of the things is finding a community in the place where you are. And I have a couple of first year students who are really like the poster children for how to do this the right way. Some of them are very, they are pursuing their faith, so they're looking for a place where they can find that community. They are looking for whether or not the college has a rural student affinity group. They are looking for students that share some of the same interests that they do, and they are just trying to figure out how to navigate the balancing of the academic piece and the social piece. But I think going out and finding it, because I think there are also are students who don't do that. And then sometimes they struggle because they haven't gone out and tried to figure out where they could, a smaller piece of where they could fit if they're in an unfamiliar place.
Jacques Steinberg:
Lee, any advice from you in terms of a student who may be wondering if they'll fit in, if there will be support for them, if they'll find their place? And if so, how?
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, I think part of the assessment of place for all students is where do I feel comfortable? And so it's not a straight line that I live in a city. I have to go to school in a city. I live in a rural place, I have to go to school in a rural place. But those two examples, your comfort space may be city and rural in these two examples. But I was talking to a first year student in September who had just arrived from northern Maine, so very rural. And I said, how's it going? And he said, oh my God, it's so fun to be in a big city. And Hanover, New Hampshire is not a big city, but for him it is. It was a town of 10,000, which is Hanover, or 11,000 was Gotham City to somebody who grew up in a teeny tiny place in the remote parts of northern Maine. And so this felt comfortable.
I remember as a high school senior visiting some campuses that were really large, and I was a suburban kid, but I dialed into, ooh, this is too big for me. And they were suburban campuses, but the scale even in suburbia was just too much. So I think wherever your point of origin is, there's this important sense of your own fit and where do you want to be and which campuses represent that or your own sense of adventure. I'm from a rural community, I have not ever ridden on a subway and that sounds cool. And okay, here's your moment to try it. Or you say, no, you know what? Small town America, small town around the world is what I know, it's where I thrive. This is where I want to be for college. And there's a lot of campuses like the one I represent, which are in just such a place. So the good news from a rural lens is there's probably more supply than demand for rural campuses and rural kiddos. So that's a nice ratio.
Jacques Steinberg:
So I want to close this discussion by coming back to the broader point about community-based organizations. Regardless of that view from your bedroom window, whether you're looking at apartment buildings of many stories or farmland or suburbs or somewhere in between, there are community-based organizations that are serving lots of different students in lots of different locations. And just to give us a sense of scale, Lee, just as one data point, you are the dean of admission of a highly selective institution. How many community-based organizations would you say you and your admissions colleagues have a touch point with in the course of a year?
Lee Coffin:
Hundreds around the country and around the world as well. So over the course of my career, I think the presence of community-based organizations is much bigger today than it was. And they continue to pop up and do important work often where the schools just don't have the resources or the people power to do it as fully as they might like. And so the CBOs in a lot of these spaces are almost auxiliary units to school systems that are stretched or for whom a lot of guidance counselors have ratios between themselves and students that are just impossible to manage and the CBOs do important work there as well. So, they're very present in the recruitment work we do and behind the scenes a lot of ways in the selection work we do because they're helping prepare the applications with their cohorts.
Jacques Steinberg:
And in terms of there being a formal role for community-based organizations at the table, when students are filling out the common application, should they keep an eye out for that dropdown in the application where they can signal that they've worked with a community-based organization and actually name it?
Lee Coffin:
Sure. I think bringing that information into the file is useful. Sometimes it's a director like Kim that we know, and the admission officer can reach out with questions or say, hey, we'd really like to do an interview. We don't have anybody in that rural location who could do an alumni interview, but can we set up a Zoom so that the student takes advantage of the interviewing opportunity that's part of our process? So there's lots of reasons why making sure the CBO connection is present in the file. It can matter.
Jacques Steinberg:
So Kim, as you know, and as Lee knows, I worked for several years for a community-based organization called Say Yes to Education. It has chapters in Buffalo and Syracuse, New York as well as Cleveland, Ohio. None of those would be defined as rural. Also, an affiliate in Greensboro and High Point, North Carolina and now known as shift__ed. But there may be somebody listening to this podcast saying, I wonder if there's a community-based organization that serves my community or through which I might connect. What advice do you have for a student trying to ask and answer that question?
Kim Jackson:
I would tell students to use the internet and Google—well now I think it fills it in for you—community-based organization near me. And they'll probably get a list of possible organizations where they can either apply or that provide services and they can look up the information about specifically because every CBO is different. So some of them are like Lenfest are working with a particular group of partners or particular schools. Some of them are working with just a particular area so they can find out what organizations they might be able to apply to or connect with to help. And some of them are really just trying to provide students with resources. There are lots of them that they are based in college admissions and trying to help students get information. So if they are looking for information, they can probably find a CBO that's helping that can be a resource for them.
Lee Coffin:
And Kim, just as a practical question to a parent or a student listening to that, when do these CBOs meet with students? Are they afterschool programs? Is it on the weekend? Where does it fit into the Monday to Friday school day schedule?
Kim Jackson:
That's a good question. I think it depends. I think it is with many admissions, the answers, it depends. I think it depends on the CBO, what their mission is, how they operate. I think there are a number of them that do afterschool programs and weekend programs. We do both. We work with students during the week. We sometimes meet with students on the weekends and definitely in the evenings. And then we have some in-person programming as well. So it really depends on the organization.
Jacques Steinberg:
So Lee and Kim, we've, thanks to you, brought a tremendous amount of information and advice and news you can use to our listeners. I can imagine that some of it might be sort of daunting as they consider it, as they try to process it. What's one note that each of you would like to end this conversation with in the spirit of giving them confidence and hope?
Kim Jackson:
I would say rural students are a really interesting mix of small town charm community values, but many of them have a lens toward progressive, like a modern progressive lens toward the future. And they're really looking to see how they can contribute to not only their community, but to the world at large. And they are valuable.
Jacques Steinberg:
And Lee?
Lee Coffin:
I think to students from a rural background, I would say to certainly don't be daunted by anything we just said. I hope you listen to this episode and think, wow, there's an opportunity here I might not have fully appreciated to explore colleges, particularly some of the very selective colleges that are deliberately focusing recruitment work in my area or if not in my area, in my broad landscape and I'd like to say hello.
And to all students, I always say the same thing, trust your story. Tell what you know. If you're a rural kid and that's your story, tell it. Don't try and turn yourself into some suburban version of yourself. That's not who you are. And the authenticity of representing your small town roots, values, charisma, pluck. I think the American dream often lives in a lot of these stories where a college is a bridge to a new chapter for your family, not just for yourself. That's valuable. That's a story we always appreciate and cheer. And when it's yours, put it in the file you're sharing with us.
Jacques Steinberg:
I want to thank you both for this conversation, and I wish it was one that I had had the benefit of when I was a student from a rural community applying to college. And with that, Lee, passing the mic back to you.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Well, Kim and Jack, thanks for joining Admissions Beat. It's been fun to have this conversation with both of you. I've learned things. Kim, I really appreciate the work you're doing in South Central Pennsylvania. And Jack, thanks for teeing this up for our listeners worldwide.
For the rest of you, we will be back next week for the season finale of Admissions Beat season four. As always, thanks for listening. Please give us a five star on Apple or Spotify so our listeners next season can find us. For now, I'm Lee Coffin from Dartmouth College. See you next week.