Season 5: Episode10 Transcript
Interpreting Testing: Your Scores May Be Stronger Than You Think
Lee Coffin:
From Hanover, New Hampshire, I'm Lee Coffin, Dartmouth's dean of admissions and financial aid. Welcome to Admissions Beat.
(music)
Hello friends. We have collectively made it to April. April, in my world, is the 13th month. Why is it the 13th month? It is the final month for the seniors to be participating in the college admission process as they move from having been admitted to making an enrollment decision by May 1st. And for the juniors in high school, it's really the beginning, the strong official beginning of the college search.
So for 30 days, we have two primary audiences: high school seniors wrapping things up and juniors who are now out and about using their break to visit campuses, taking their tests, getting ready for end-of-year junior things. And both share the stage at the same time. This week, we are doing a roundtable, meet the press, grab bag kind of episode, where my colleague, Charlotte Albright, and Jacques Steinberg, will bring their journalistic chops to Admissions Beat, and just talk with me about the cycle that is winding down for the high school class of '24 and the cycle that is winding up for the high school class of '25.
What should you all be thinking about as the days of April ticks by? How do you make good use of this 13th month and get to May with an enrollment decision, if you're a senior, maybe a waitlistto think about, and for the juniors, wrapping up 11th grade with a sense of purpose? So when we come back, Charlotte, Jacques and I will go where we go. See you in a minute.
(music)
So Charlotte Albright, Jacques Steinberg, welcome back to Admissions Beat. Not that you're ever really gone because as my producers, you're always behind the scenes, but welcome back to on air.
Charlotte Albright:
Hello.
Jacques Steinberg:
Hello.
Lee Coffin:
Hello. And for those of you meeting Charlotte and Jacques for the first time, Charlotte is a former journalist and reporter with public radio and public television in Maine and Vermont, and she and I have been podding together from the first second of my very first episode. She's been with me every blink of that way. And Jacques, former reporter, editor at the New York Times, author of The Gatekeepers, and The College Conversation, and my occasional co-host. So it's fun to have you both here for this early April conversation with our double-dip audiences. We're recording this at the last week of March, and I'm going to do two things at once. So while you're asking me questions, I am actually signing the decision letters.
Jacques Steinberg:
So in a moment, Lee, Charlotte and I are going to ask you to visualize a few scenes: a family of a high school senior at their kitchen table, perhaps, and a family of a high school junior, the two audiences you referenced. But in terms of scene setting, let's go a beat further. Do you have a particular color pen you use when you sign? Are there ways that you keep your hand from cramping? What is that like?
Lee Coffin:
People are always surprised that I sign the letter. This is my 29th cycle as a dean and I've signed every letter every year, because to me, the letter is both an invitation from the college to the student that concludes the admission process, and it's also a type of contract. I think it's a promise from the institution that just accepted you, that if you choose to enroll, you can. And I feel like the integrity of a signature closes the conversation we've been having. So I sign them. My shtick has always been, sign with the color of the college. So I work at Dartmouth, I sign with green. When I was at Tufts and Connecticut College, I signed with blue. Just note to listeners, blue pens are much easier to find than green ones, but you can find these Irish inspired green pens, and every day is St. Patrick's Day when you work at Big Green.
Charlotte Albright:
How many pens and how many hours?
Lee Coffin:
For regular decision, it's a big pile. So it'll take me about five hours to sign them all. And I've perfected this weird skill of being able to sign while I listen, sign while I talk, and now in this case, sign while I'm recording a podcast. I'll watch the NCAA tournament and sign while I'm paying attention to March Madness, I sign while I'm talking to Mom. As I do that, I also look down at the name. And so I'm staring at one right now and it's to a student named Julian, and I say, "Hello, Julian," and I sign the letter. So I am paying attention to the names that I sign. And it often brings me back to the decision point, like, when we were in committee and that student was on the docket and the conversation we had. So it's, for me, a poetic final moment.
Jacques Steinberg:
Let's stay on the subject of emotion for a moment, but think about emotions in our audience. By the time we release this episode, there will be high school seniors who have received letters that will be positive acceptances and that will trigger a particular set of emotions. But there will also be listeners who have received news that is disappointing. Can you speak a little bit to your advice to those listening and their parents and other adults in their lives who may be feeling disappointment?
Lee Coffin:
The month of March brings a wave of decisions. Some places release even in late February. So we've been in a period of weeks where, one by one, places come to the moment of decision release. Last Thursday was the last big day where decisions are out. And you're right, it's emotional and it's both the excitement, the confetti of clicking the link and seeing the word "congratulations" pop up, as well as the bittersweet sibling to that, which is disappointment, for students who have submitted an application in very selective spaces, whether you're a senior, looking back a week or so and saying, "That didn't play out as I hoped it might," or you're a junior listening to your senior friends sort through this and starting to make your own plan. I think the most important thing everybody needs to do when the decision is made to apply to a very selective place is understand that selectivity means very few people get in.
It's not the point of our job. I've said this many times, my goal is to look for yes, but space and scarcity don't always allow the yes to come as fully as we would like to see it as admission officers. And so the no's, the declines, and you know this, Jacques and Charlotte, I'm not using a word that starts with R. The declines are often the byproduct of space and volume. And the way for people to digest the disappointing news is to say, "I knew when I applied that the odds of admission were longer than not and I have not failed because I was not accepted." And focus on the yeses.
I think, for the seniors, as we turn the corner into April, and for listeners, we're going to talk about April and what you should be doing as the open houses and accepted student programs and the wait lists, et cetera, play through, focus on where you have an invitation and celebrate that. Don't look backwards at what might have been. And for the juniors, keep this in mind as the discovery turns into more intentional decisions around where to apply. Don't overstack your list with the hardest places to get into. I say that every year. I don't know if it's really a balm, but it's true.
Jacques Steinberg:
So Charlotte, as they move past these emotions, the seniors and their families and our listening audience, and start digging into some of these decisions that Lee's describing, and another round of due diligence, Charlotte, you've been paying attention to some of the factors that will be part of that due diligence and you've been diving into some of the latest news clips on some of those subjects. So I'm going to throw to you to bounce some of those off Lee for the benefit of our audience.
Charlotte Albright:
Well, thank you. I have been interested, particularly, in coverage in The Chronicle of Higher Education. There is one article that I particularly liked in The Chronicle, and the headline is something like, "College Rankings Are in Trouble, Do Their Users Care?" And so to get an unscientific snapshot, The Chronicle interviewed only about a dozen students and they asked them, "What role does rankings play as you're trying to decide what college to go to?" We do know they play a role somewhat in making that initial list, but now that they know that they're into some places, not into others, they go back to them. Well, you know what? A lot of them don't. It turns out that students really have stopped looking at them. It's the parents that keep looking at them. So I guess I would toss it to Lee. How should they use them at this point?
Lee Coffin:
They shouldn't.
Charlotte Albright:
They shouldn't, ever?
Lee Coffin:
No, no. We've covered rankings from time to time and they're useful broadly as a way of getting information, sorting out your discovery. But at this moment, if you're a senior and you've been admitted to two, three, five places, the question that you should be asking yourself and parents should be encouraging your child to ponder is not, of these four, which one is ranked the highest? The real question is, of these four, which one seems like a good fit, will make me happy? Where do I see my people? Rankings aren't going to tell you that. Parents, a bit more than students, in my experience, will ponder this one in April and connect it to an investment and say, "Well, we're going to invest in the best place." Unless you're talking about you got into a top 10 and the top 100, that might be something to ponder.
But even there, a place that's ranked 100 might have the program you want and it might be in a city you'd love to be, 100 out of 3,000 is a really wonderful representation of quality. So I think what I would say to the seniors especially is this is not the moment to be analytical, this is the moment to have that emotional alertness to say, of the places that have indicted me, which ones feel right? And the rankings aren't going to tell you that. I think if you're a junior, using the rankings to get yourself organized, fine. The rankings suggest specificity. They're not. It's usually one outlet's way of adding up, dividing by, sorting schools according to their own criteria. Their criteria doesn't have to be your criteria. And so I would not let rankings be a big player during April.
Jacques Steinberg:
So if those shouldn't be criteria in your recommendation, as students and families do a final round of due diligence, including, perhaps, some campus visits or revisits, what criteria might they consider without being over-analytical?
Lee Coffin:
So that is the right question. I think you need to get to a campus, either on your own, or if you're a financial aid student, reach out and say to the college, "I've never seen this place, and can you help me get there?" And most of us have resources to do exactly that. So you just need to ask, or sometimes you'll be invited without asking. But visiting can go in a couple of different ways. All of us plan and host open houses for admitted students and parents and guardians. In April, we've got two that we say, "Come to campus, spend a day and a half, two days with us, see the place, feel the place, smell the place." I mean, I emphasize smell because spring, where I work, brings out a whole different aroma. The pine trees here really do smell. And that's this role. And experiencing it is important.
When you're on campus, you can go to class usually or meet faculty and touch the campus personally directly so that you can say, "Is this my place?" Meet other students, not just the ones who are here, but the other admitted students who could be your classmates. What vibes do you pick up when you're there? Wander around, just see the place in more than a flyby where you're on your campus tour, you did an info session, you got back in the car and you drove off to the next place. This is a longer, deeper moment of exploration. And what you really need to own as you come in and out of these programs is, do I feel it? And if you don't, let go. And if you do, narrow your options down to the couple where that campus speaks to you.
It's like for parents going into a real estate office and saying, "We need to buy a home," and the broker will bring you to multiple properties. And you're going to tour them, you're going to look at them, you're going to feel them, and maybe one of them pops out as your home, maybe none of them do, but it's less about the price that's certainly part of it and more about, can I see myself living here? And that's what happens in April for seniors. And then for those of you around the world, around the country, a lot of colleges will do programs where you are, admitted student events hosted by alumni in your hometown, go, it's a chance to meet people who graduated from here, who are working in your area, other admitted students, social media, very live active space. You are spending four weeks absorbing as much as you can.
Jacques Steinberg:
So, Charlotte, Lee mentioned price, which makes me think of cost. One of your many journalistic beats on the Admissions Beat has been all of the delays and other anxiety around the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, the FAFSA, and it's a subject you've raised several times, both on the air on Admissions Beat the season and also behind the scenes as we plan, we can perhaps throw to Lee for some of the moment advice on how to factor in price and cost when you may not have the information you need as a family just yet.
Lee Coffin:
So this is important. The news from the Department of Education around FAFSA continues to be muddied. It is not moving forward as efficiently or purposefully as it must. And as we move through April, there's urgency there now. The good news for some campuses is there's a bunch of us, I work for one, that require, what is called, the CSS profile, which is a second companion financial aid application. So for the Profile institutions, we were able to calculate need, and to offer financial aid on time. The conundrum is for the majority of places that are FAFSA-dependent, that may or may not be possible. And so you see places beginning to extend their enrollment deadlines from May 1st to May 15th or beyond so that there's more time for the flow of data from FAFSA to campus back to the home to happen. So this is going to be a college by college assessment, of where are we in our ability to calculate need and offer aid using federal resources especially?
I think if you're a family that is caught in this conundrum, where you're not getting the aid offer because the data's not there, don't wait to reach out to the admission office, the financial aid office and say, "What's the status? Do we have a projected date when we might get an award? Is there an extension of the enrollment deadline that's possible, or has the deadline moved for everybody?" I think there's going to be a lot of coverage this month. So again, if you filled out profile and you've got financial aid from a place that is using profile, you're probably in a more confident spot around, I know what this college is offering. FAFSA doesn't change the definition of need. FAFSA just determines how much of that need might be, a federal loan or work study or L. But I would still know, this family needs $47,000, and if we meet full need, we will cover that. I wish I had better news to share, Jacques. And this is one that Charlotte's been watching all winter, and it hasn't resolved itself.
Charlotte Albright:
Yeah, I have been watching it, and there is yet another delay since the episode that we dedicated to FAFSA. I would point listeners back to that one because most of that is still very useful. But there just are a couple little speed bumps that it keeps encountering in terms of its calculations. Meanwhile, though, there was a story, I believe it was in Vermont that I read that really brought up a whole new ball game, a side story from FAFSA, which is that as these delays have been delaying people's decisions, a lot of students, maybe more than usual, are choosing gap years because they're figuring, well, I'm not going to know in time. I've been thinking about a gap year anyway.
And so if you combine those students with the ones who might be getting the news that they are getting deferred by their favorite institution, or maybe an institution—I remember my daughter was accepted to Brown but not until the spring term, she thought, well, I might as well take a gap year. She didn't. But I think that is a really interesting question, Lee, because if my kid takes a gap year, what are my kids' chances for getting in if I get out of line like that?
Lee Coffin:
For listeners, a gap year is a decision by the student to take a pause between high school and college. There's a gap in the sequence from K-12 into undergrad. Sometimes, the gap year is connected to an enrollment decision. So you got in, you said, "I'm coming but I'd like to gap forward." And so instead of starting September 2024, you start September 2025. Some students, in the scenario Charlotte's describing, decide, I don't like my option, so I'm going to take a year off and I'm going to reapply. And to your question, Charlotte, you start all over, and you're filing a brand new application that is now going to include information about what you did in this gap experience. So you might be doing a program abroad, you might be doing a service project, it's an election year, maybe you're volunteering on a campaign. That all becomes part of your story. And that's not risky so much as it's just, you join the juniors doing an admission cycle from square one again and you've learned things along this way, but you're doing it twice.
Jacques Steinberg:
So before we pivot to the juniors in our audience and their families and their counselors, anything that either of you think a major hot topic for the seniors that we haven't touched on in this grab bag conversation?
Lee Coffin:
I would raise two topics. One, for our friends who have a wait list, or two or three, offer, and they're staring at that saying, what does that mean, love to give you some advice about waitlistexpectations. And then connected to that is, I think we... as you move from getting your offers to making a decision, you have to start to eliminate a couple of places. You can't carry five offers all the way to May 1st. So those would be two topics I'd like to poke around a little bit more.
Jacques Steinberg:
So let's imagine those in our audience who've received an offer to join the waiting list.
Lee Coffin:
Yep. And that's a good highlight on the word, "offer." A waitlist offer must be accepted by the applicant. You have to respond to the college and say, yes, I'm interested in being considered if a spot opens up. And what the wai list means, there's two ways of thinking about waitlist. There's the transactional piece, we just didn't have enough space, and we're saying, "We like you, Charlotte, but we can't give you an offer until, at least, May 1st when we see how the enrollment has played through." And there are a couple places that might give you an early read in April, but that's unusual. Usually, May 1, or connecting back to FAFSA, this could extend into May in different ways because of that. The college is looking at its class. And like at Dartmouth, we have 1,200 seats. And so we get to May 1st and I look and I say, "Oh, we've got 1,188 people enrolled. I need to go to the waitlistand fill these last 12 spots."
Or it may be, "Oh, I need 1,200 and I enrolled 1,262." Waitlist is not activating this year. So that decision happens at the institutional level, but the people who could be considered waitlist candidates have to be on the active waitlist. That's step one. But the more existential question, Jacques, is the waitlist isn't a better option. Sometimes a student gets a waitlist and they fixate on the one they didn't quite get. And my advice is if you've got a place that's asked you to join the waitlist and you really love it and you would sincerely consider it on May 17th, activate it, and then spend the rest of April pondering the three, four, five, six places that made you an offer. You might be sitting in early April and say, "I got into six places, I got wait listed by three, I love the six," then let go of those wait list.
You don't need to stay on the waitlist just to stay on the waitlist. So it's important to be clear, not just collecting yeses, but to ask yourself, if this institution were to call me up on May 17th and say, "Jacques, we have a seat, are you interested?" If you're not, don't stay on the waitlist. But connected to that is this other very pragmatic journey, and parents can help with this. Start the month of April with an assessment of options, like, where did you... a friend of mine just texted me yesterday and she said, my son got into bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. There's five of them and there were two wait lists and some declines. And she said to me, "What do you think?" And I said, "It's really up to your son." As you go to the open houses, some are going to resonate and some are not, or you may come right out of the gate and say, you know what? My choices between A, B and C, there's no way giving these options, I'm going to consider D and E.
Say, "No, thank you," today to D and E. Just send back the response card and say, "No, thank you," because what you're doing is you're helping the waitlist cohort clarify so that as those no thank you's, arrive, the deans can start to look at the admitted student group and say, "Are we on track to fill?" My honest advice, too, you don't want to have five, six or more places to ponder in the latter half of April. You want to make your decision come down to, it's A or B, or it's A, B, and C. But you don't want to have six of them saying, maybe it's this, maybe it's that. So push yourself to be honest as you wander from the euphoria of early April. I get into these places to yes.
And in my mind, I don't need to consider these two, three, five. I saw someone last year who got into over a dozen, unless you need to let some of them go politely. And for all of you, when you get to May 1st, you need to tell all the other contenders, "I'm not coming." You'd be surprised how many people ghost us. We get to the end of April and there's no answer, not a yes, not a no, it's just lights out. Don't be rude. It's like, if you got invited to a wedding, you would say no if you couldn't attend. So you need to tell the college that too.
Jacques Steinberg:
I like that expression, collection of yeses, and that this is not the time to be collecting. What about that student, though, who has gotten a waitlist offer and it really does fit your criteria, this is a place they're extremely interested, they really do feel if they came off the wai list, there's a good chance they would go, should they do more than just activate their spots? Should they write you a note? Should they give you an update? Should they declare their ardor?
Lee Coffin:
All of those things. If you have a waitlist offer from your first choice, it's always been your first choice, tell us, we didn't ask you that but it's fair to pop up right now and say, "Dear, college, you have been my first choice for months, and if I'm so fortunate to have a spot open, I will take it." No harm in doing that. If you can't say that, then you shouldn't say that, but an update, third quarter grades, a letter explaining why you're remaining on the waitlist, is fine. In the supplement, we ask, "Why us? Reanimate that. Why are you continuing on in this conversation with us?" And spell it out, because the admission officer who manages your docket will read that and say, "Charlotte is still with us." You want us to know that.
Charlotte Albright:
But if Charlotte is in high school, not that I can remember that, but when I was in high school and I was trying to do all those things…at the same time, you have to be in high school.
Lee Coffin:
You have to be in high school, right.
Charlotte Albright:
Not only do you have to be in high school to enjoy it and have a good time, you have to be in high school to keep your grades up, because this invitation that you offered was based on information that needs to be remaining to be true.
Lee Coffin:
Yep, yep. We ask for your final grades. So if you read the acceptance letter, my friends, there's a sentence that says something like, this offer is made with the expectation that you'll maintain the level of academic and personal qualities that characterize you as an applicant. So if, on the personal side, you get senioritis and get naughty, you're going to have the visit from us in your mailbox saying, "What happened?" And if your grades come in, in June and you were an A student and now you're a C student, that's a problem too. You're right, you have to stay present in high school, but you also, in this 13th month called April, this decision is front and center. So you do have to be paying attention to the moving parts of the last step in the college search. You do need to do some visits, you do need to be thinking about this. But that's why I said earlier, start to narrow your options. If you got into 10 places, try and figure out where are your four true contenders and let the other six go.
Jacques Steinberg:
So let's pivot, if okay with you both, to the juniors in our audience and their families and their counselors. Lee, you've said, a number of times on the podcast this season, that this has, in many ways, been an admissions year, an admissions cycle unlike any other. It began with a bang over the summer with a decision from the Supreme Court that limited the degree to which you and colleagues could consider race as a factor in admissions. But in terms of lessons learned from this cycle just completed, thinking of those juniors, what did you and colleagues learn that would be helpful to the juniors in our audience and their parents and counselors?
Lee Coffin:
It's a great question. I think my takeaway from the cycle that just finished is there was a lot of wind telling me that this was unprecedented, upside down, a cycle like no other. The word "chaos" crept into some headlines. It wasn't. It was a cycle that had some unknowns. You mentioned the Supreme Court and the first admission cycle in which race was removed as one factor among many, replaced with a concept called life experience. Back to that in a sec. But it felt familiar in all the other ways. For a place that reads holistically, we read holistically, we made decisions, we've rendered them. So I think for juniors and their parents, we're in a moment where every cycle seems to have a couple of curveballs tossed into it. Doesn't mean the process broke, doesn't mean the system is somehow indecipherable.
Year by year, the longer I do this, I say, it's late March, I'm tired, as I always am, but the process I just led didn't feel profoundly, even fundamentally different from the one I did last year, the year before, the year before. So take comfort juniors as you move forward, volume is what it is, and testing may return in some spaces or not. You're still going to write your essays, hopefully, on your own. One thing I would say, as I just touched that, Jacques, there was so much chatter about AI last fall and then to the early winter, and people kept asking me, "What are you going to do about AI? What are you going to do about AI?"
And I kept saying, "Can you wait and let me actually read a file before I answer that question?" So here I am, having read lots of files. It didn't come up a single time. I did not hear any of my colleagues ever say, I think this is an AI-generated piece of writing. Am I naive and think there was none? No. Did it erase the integrity of writing in a college application? Not that I saw. So to whatever degree, it was there, it was mild enough that it never gave us pause. I think that's true for so many things. Tell your story.
Charlotte Albright:
The other worry that people had was that the application pool itself would not be as diverse because of the Supreme Court ruling, that people from a variety of racial backgrounds might not apply and just think they didn't have a chance. Did that happen? What did the pool look like?
Lee Coffin:
I don't know. The ruling removed all that information from my work. So as we released decisions last week, for the first time in my career, I do not know the demographics of the class that was admitted to Dartmouth, nor do my peers around the country. We have no way of knowing who was in the pool, who did we admit? And even as they enroll, I don't know. Can I open a file and have a sense of it from the way a student represented herself? Yes. Is it coded in any way? No. Can I run a class profile and say, "We have X and Vs and Y of those? Nope.
We'll know later this summer. I think we'll be back sometime in June with a special episode after all the enrollments are in, and we can unmask that demographic data and see what happened to the question you've asked, Charlotte, but right now, we don't know. It didn't feel less diverse. This'll be more atmospheric than specific. As I was reading, I didn't say I'm noticing less of someone in the pool. It felt like a wide interesting heterogeneous collection of people from around the world who applied, and TBD, how that all adds up when we see the actual data.
Charlotte Albright:
Fascinating.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, it's fascinating. I'm glad you asked that question because I think people are going to continue to say, "Who got in?" I'm going to say, "I don't know. None of us know." And that was the whole point, I think, in the Supreme Court, they wanted us to not make decisions with that in mind, and so we didn't.
Charlotte Albright:
But on the other end of things, this podcast, as well as many admissions counselors, worked mightily hard to make sure that anyone who was legitimately capable of doing college work would find their way to an application. So let's hope that happened on that end.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. And I think the other lesson of that is I heard some guidance counselors saying to me that they told their students of color not to write about their identity. And I said, "Oh, God, they should, by way of framing a life experience through that lens, if they choose to." If they didn't, they didn't. But I think advice to juniors is to think about the story you're telling through the different components of the application you're completing. And if there's an opportunity to introduce, not just a demographic fact, but a fact coupled with a perspective that helps us say, this enhances the community, the conversation, the dialogue on this campus, you have represented yourself well on that point of a diverse student body.
Jacques Steinberg:
So picking up more broadly on the point you make about life experience and conveying it, and for those who may be new to the podcast, who may be new to the process, who soon are going to be diving into drafts of their essays, you and colleagues have just come off a process of reading collectively tens of thousands of essays. What are some tips on making your life experience, whatever it might be, come alive for this audience, the audience of you and your colleagues?
Lee Coffin:
The thing that I saw from the very first files we read is even when the question was presented, everybody didn't answer it in the same way. And some students said to us, "It's not the story I want to tell about myself." Fine, then it's information that's not part of your decision. Others use life experience to talk about things that were important to them but didn't touch identity. Fine. I think a lot of us thought, oh, we'll ask a question and the information will come because we asked the question. Sometimes it did, but it didn't always. And again, I won't know until this summer when we'll go back and say, of the applicants who I now know come from an underrepresented background, how did they answer this question?
That's homework for the future. That will be interesting to see. You can't do anything about it directly, but it will be interesting to see whether the opportunity of questions crafted in the spirit of Justice Roberts' ruling that nothing prevents us from including life experience and the way we meet a student. It depended on the student sharing that life experience in a way that felt important and meaningful. And it happened but it didn't happen universally.
Jacques Steinberg:
So I take your point and hear you that, in so many ways, this process this year was like any other, and which is probably reassuring in some ways, particularly to the counselors who are guiding students through this process. What are a few time-tested tips from you, Lee, for juniors and their families in April?
Lee Coffin:
It's time to start. February, March, it was a soft start. April, if this is a race, the starting gun just went off. You got to start to sprint. It's a marathon and you have to start to move forward. And if you're not visiting campuses, you are starting to gather information. Your mailbox is probably filling with invitations from us to say, hello, email the same thing, maybe you're getting texts, start... you're digesting all of that and trying to make some decisions around what feels right so that as you move into the summer, this discovery continues and it gets you to September, where you're able to make more informed decisions about, okay, I've seen a lot of places, these resonated, these did not, now I can start working on my application to the places that resonated. And the question to ask yourself, as April turns into May and June is, is there a type of institution that resonates more than the others?
If you find yourself on an urban campus and you think, this is where I see myself, own that, and the list should shape itself accordingly, or you're in a city and you say, "This makes me uncomfortable," own that too, and start to visit some places that are suburban or rural. Do those feel more comfortable or you just nervous about going to college? And so it wasn't urban so much as it was just your own uncertainty about this next step. I don't know. But that's what happens in April. You're not making decisions yet, but you're exploring in a more tactile way.
Jacques Steinberg:
Charlotte, as we start to bring this conversation to a close and leave Lee to the signing of those final letters, anything you-
Lee Coffin:
I'm only on the Bs, I've been signing... I've only gotten to Bailey.
Jacques Steinberg:
So all the more reasons, Charlotte, to give Lee back his time. But what are we missing? What haven't we touched on that you feel would be of help to those listening?
Charlotte Albright:
I think, in past years, we've spent a minute or two talking about how to get the news and how to share it. And because social media is that place where people get the news now and they share it on social media, here's what comes to my mind, I had a brother-in-law who was a fierce competitor, lived into his 90s. He had a ping pong table in his basement, and above the ping pong table, there was a sign that said, "Win with honor, lose with grace." And my sister added to that, "And play another game." I think the play the other game is very important. So yes, win with honor, lose with grace, and do that if you're going to be sharing the news, do it gracefully, one way or the other, so that everybody feels okay about what happened and they're willing to play another game.
Lee Coffin:
I think that's a really beautiful thing to say. And I love the ping pong sign. I would call it digital citizenship. I don't know that, that exists, but maybe it does. But what I mean by digital citizenship is be mindful of how your peers absorb your news. I think so much of social media as this curated conversation that you put out what you want people to see. And I think for the students and parents, I think parents especially, to remember that with the confetti comes Kleenex. I mean, there are some people who are moving into this April conversation with some expectations that didn't play out. And just be aware of that, and kind to your neighbors, your classmates, or fellow applicants who jumped into a pool with a tiny admit rate and you got an invitation, someone else didn't, and you can be happy but don't gloat. And maybe you didn't get in somewhere too. And so this whole thing is like we're connected in some way. But I love the ping pong, live to play another game, or play another game, I think you said.
Jacques Steinberg:
I'm hearing, celebrate, Charlotte, with empathy and celebrate and share respectfully, just taking a moment to think about others seems as good a note as any to end this grab bag, meet the press moment. Why don't I throw back to you, Lee, for final thought?
Lee Coffin:
Well, thank you, press friends, for joining me on this episode and helping our two audience of seniors and juniors navigate the prime time moment of April. And we're heading towards our season finale in early May, but the next few weeks, we will come back with a couple more episodes, helping you think about decision-making, how to explore with intentionality, how to make a decision when it's time, and how to wrap your arms around this thing called college. For now, this is Lee Coffin, from Dartmouth College, signing away in green ink. Thanks for listening.