Season 5: Episode 12 Transcript
Choosing Your Senior Year Courses and Why That Matters
Lee Coffin:
From Hanover, New Hampshire, I'm Lee Coffin, Dartmouth's dean of admission and financial aid. Welcome to Admissions Beat.
Hello Juniors. It's time for us to sit down and have a chat about course selection for your senior year.
When I do programs in high schools, I often tell the audience that the junior year is arguably the most important year in the transcript because it's final. You know, the grades aren't in progress. Those courses are usually quite robust, and we've got complete grades and teacher recommendations that flow out of what you did in 11th grade. So continue to focus on your progress through 11th as you think about college admission.
But connected to that is this idea that 12th grade also matters quite significantly, but it is a work in progress. So when you apply, we will get orderly reports, we'll get a mid-year report, we'll ask for a final report. So seniors listening, we're watching. Even though you've just been offered admission, we still want to see that final report card.
But 12th grade is important. And so today we'll have a conversation for juniors and their parents about what they should consider as the 12th grade schedule gets developed, and from the college side, what matters.
So when we come back, two of my pals, one from the college world, one from the school world, will join me and we will ponder 12th grade—what counts.
We'll be right back.
(music)
Today we welcome back to Admissions Beat, friend of the pod, Elena Hicks, assistant vice provost and dean of admissions at SMU.
Hello Elena. It's always fun to have you back podding with me.
Elena Hicks:
Hello Lee. Great to be here.
Lee Coffin:
Well, you have an awesome FM voice, so as soon as you start answering, I'm like, "Oh yeah, there it is."
And then laughing in the background is Eric Monheim, making his debut as a guest on Admissions Beat. Eric and I go way back, and I was telling him before we started that I can't believe this is the first time I've actually said, "Hey, let's put Eric in an episode."
Eric is the longtime director of college counseling at St. Mark's School in Southborough, Massachusetts, and before that at Sidwell Friends in Washington DC, where he was counselor to the Obama daughters, if I'm remembering that correctly. Yeah, it's a claim to fame.
Eric Monheim:
They were at the school, Lee. I don't know if it counts.
Lee Coffin:
They were at the school. Okay, but still, for the audience, that's-
Eric Monheim:
They were young.
Lee Coffin:
Elena is also the past chair of the Coalition for College, the coalition application being another application platform like the Common App that many colleges use. And way back, she was the president of the National Catholic Colleges Association. So two really different and really interesting ways of thinking about this.
And Eric, once upon a time, was the executive director of the Association of College Counseling in the Independent Schools, and he was one of the founding members of that organization.
And I add both of their extracurricular work to their resume because it gives you a sense of their work both in-house, but also more broadly across the country.
So hi to both of you.
Eric Monheim:
Thank you.
Lee Coffin:
And just as we start, Eric, you were at St. Marks, you were at Sidwell; where else have you worked?
Eric Monheim:
Sorry, thank you, Lee, and thanks for inviting me to be a part of the program.
I worked, as you said, at Sidwell Friends for nine years; prior to that at the Bullis School, which is another independent school in Potomac, Maryland; and prior to that, as a college counselor and history teacher at Northfield Mount Hermon School. Those of you who have seen "The Holdovers," that means I worked at two of the schools where that was filmed.
I also taught high school history and coached at a variety of places, and spent two years very early in my career at Kenyon College in Ohio in their admissions office, which were two wonderful years very long ago.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah.
But like so many people who do your role, that origin as a college admission officer is there.
Eric Monheim:
Yep.
Lee Coffin:
And even though it might've been a while ago, it's still informative around your work as a college counselor.
Eric Monheim:
Yeah, absolutely. I kind of draw on that experience, and it's helpful with students and with parents in just kind of understanding a little bit more, talking with and partnering with colleagues across the desk. Having some experience makes those conversations a little easier. So absolutely.
Lee Coffin:
Kind of an added bonus is your background as a history teacher. So as we talk about curriculum and course selection, you've been in a classroom teaching.
What did you teach?
Eric Monheim:
Pretty much everything, from eighth grade consumer economics, whatever that was, world civilization, advanced placement, US history. Mostly kind of world history to ninth and 10th graders.
Lee Coffin:
That's really helpful.
And Elena, you've had many leadership posts before SMU. Tell us a little about that.
Elena Hicks:
I came to Dallas ... Texas is home, but I came to Dallas from Loyola, Maryland in Baltimore.
So with the Jesuits for quite a bit of time. Prior to that, I spent seven years at a, at the time, day boarding school called St. Mary's Hall in San Antonio, Texas. It's a day school now. And so that gave me my insight to a younger generation of students, which has been very informative as I came back to higher ed.
And then I started off my admission career at my alma mater, Texas Christian University, TCU, in Fort Worth. So I worked for TCU for about 11 years after I graduated.
So some wonderful experiences.
Lee Coffin:
This season, I've been asking each of my guests to just go back in time and share your own college admission story. So where'd you go to high school? How'd you end up where you ended up?
Elena, you went to TCU, but how'd you get there?
Elena Hicks:
I grew up an hour south of Dallas in a rural town called Corsicana. Corsicana is known for Collins Street Bakery fruitcakes that have been around for forever and they go throughout the world. I am not a fruitcake person, but that's what my little town is known for.
For a more contemporary nod to my small town, Netflix had this program called Cheer, and so that occurs in Corsicana as well.
So I wanted to be close to home. By the time I was graduating from high school, it was my mom and my little brother and I, and so going to Fort Worth was like going to the big city, coming from a small town of 22,000 rural.
I looked at both SMU, where I work now, and TCU and loved them both; and somehow or another, TCU had a slight edge in some way, and I believe it's the community at the time for me. But also, even though my mom was from Dallas, for me, Fort Worth was still the big city, and I thought Dallas might be too big for me.
So great experiences there at TCU that led me to admission, but I was looking for a medium-sized school where I could receive personal attention, because that's what I always had from first through 12th grade. In Corsicana, there's one high school, and so I had been with some folks all the way from first through 12th grade.
Lee Coffin:
I want to make sure I heard you correctly. Did you apply to just two places?
Elena Hicks:
Do you know what? Now, Lee, you're putting me on the spot here. I will tell you that, in the end, I fell in love with TCU and only applied to TCU.
Now that was back in-
Lee Coffin:
Wow.
Elena Hicks:
Yes. Isn't that the craziest thing ever? But it did work out.
Lee Coffin:
In that early decision, you just applied to one college?
Elena Hicks:
I did. I was in love.
And hey, here's the deal. One of the reasons why I've stayed in admission, Lee ... Now it all worked out for me, but a year after becoming an admission officer, my mom was a history teacher at my high school and I went back for the fair at Corsicana High on behalf of TCU. And when I talked to my mom a couple of days later, I said, "Mom, the wonderful people at my high school, I truly had no formal college counseling." We had a guidance counselor who was wonderful. And so that's one of the reasons I've stayed in admission. I was like, for people in rural areas to get the information like you're giving in your podcast, that's extremely helpful.
So my college choice was a great one. No regrets whatsoever. But yeah, I wonder sometimes about had there been a more college counseling type of setting, what opportunities would've been there?
Lee Coffin:
Yeah.
Okay. Eric.
Eric Monheim:
So I grew up right outside of Pittsburgh, in suburban Pittsburgh in kind of an interesting school district that at the time ... I graduated from high school in 1983, so at the time in Pittsburgh, the steel industry was collapsing. A number of high schools right in my area were really struggling. And so the courts in the state of Pennsylvania actually merged five school districts together into one, and I was a part of that merger.
Which was very interesting. I went from a small public high school with 60-some odd students in my class to at first a slightly larger high school with about 200, and then they collapsed from five to three to one. And so that was an interesting shift for me, just being a part of that. There were a variety of reasons for that merger, but having that experience in my junior and senior year was significant, and more significant now than I realized then. Then I was just focused on, "You're making us go to a different school and all of a sudden I can't walk to school anymore and come home for lunch", which were a big deal.
Like Elena, I come from a family of teachers. I think there are ... Both my grandparents, aunts, uncles, two of my brothers. So teaching is just kind of something we did. It was in my head all along. And history was my favorite subject in high school, I had some good teachers, and I thought that's what I wanted to do.
I ended up going to Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, largely because I had the opportunity to play football. Their coach showed up at my high school one day during our lunch period and talked to me. And I'd never heard of Gettysburg and; well, I had heard of the town, but not the college; agreed to go down and visit. Really loved it and had a great experience there, and worked in their admissions office, like many students or many people in the admissions side at some point volunteer as a tour guide or whatever. And partly because of the people that I met in that office and how much I enjoyed the experience, that's what launched me into admissions.
In Pittsburgh, you either went to Pitt or you went to Penn State or you went to Indiana, University of Pennsylvania. I didn't apply to any of those schools, because I wasn't good enough to play football at any of those, and ended up at Gettysburg. And it was a great experience, but different from a lot of the people at my high school.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah.
I love both of your stories; especially Eric saying in a lot of states where there's a big 10 kind of environment, that's the magnet that pulls everybody towards it.
Where I grew up, it was the University of Connecticut, and most of the students who went to college from my high school went there. They didn't even ask questions. It was just, "Here's the application. That's where I'm going."
And so coming out of those kind of places and finding your way to Gettysburg, you know, the serendipity of a football coach showing up in your school-
Eric Monheim:
Yep.
Lee Coffin:
... To listeners, that happens. A lot of us look back to those moments when we were you, and there's a degree of serendipity here. Which I say not to be scary, but just it's part of the way this unfolds, and you can't always know where it's going.
So thank you both for sharing that.
Eric Monheim:
Sure.
Lee Coffin:
Because I think one thing I try and do when we have these conversations is break the cartoon character that are college admission officers and guidance counselors and give a little wink to our listeners that, "Yep, we're people. We went to high school and we went to college and didn't always get in."
So okay, the topic today is planning your senior year schedule. And so I guess the basic first question is, does that matter?
I mean, Elena, when you think about the conversations we have with applicants, does 12th grade count?
Elena Hicks:
12th grade does count.
You know, I get a ton of questions every year, from students and parents, about social media. "Are you checking social media? Do you look at social media?" Lots of questions about social media. But rarely does someone ask me what my team is doing about the courses in 12th grade and how we're looking at that 12th grade. And we spend much more time on that than we do on social media, which we don't look at unless we're forced to.
It's extremely important. And there are many students who give great time and care and working with their college counselors and their parents on their course selection and really have a good balance of courses that challenge them, courses they're interested in; the progression and the sequence that they're taking courses that are sequential, that meets the needs of what they're doing in high school, but also meets the needs of the places that they intend to apply to college.
Lee Coffin:
When we look at a transcript, is 12th in some way a foundational part of what we're considering?
Elena Hicks:
I do think that 12th is foundational, for a couple of different reasons.
You know, I was talking to some junior admission officers the other day about life and career, and I said, "How you enter a job is really important and how you leave a job is probably more important." And I feel the same way about high school as well. And so for 12th grade, for those of us in college admission, that's where we spend the bulk of time, in a couple of different ways.
One, what are you doing currently? How have you challenged yourself? Also, where have you come from? Looking at the progression from freshman to sophomore to junior to senior year, you're hoping that students' grades have remained high, or if in ninth grade they weren't exactly where students needed that GPA to be, that over time they have learned and gotten stronger.
You hope to see that students have challenged themselves appropriately in the courses that they've chosen. You'd like to see that students have looked at what their school is offering and really maximize not only what's good for them for preparation for college, but those courses that are of interest to them as well.
And if by chance a student has an academic interest that they feel pretty strongly about, in engineering,, sometimes business or in the sciences, that they've done coursework that helps to make that more pronounced as they declare that major, or at least say, "Here's my academic interest."
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Yep. All right. So you just mapped out this whole episode, Elena. Thank you.
So Eric, from the high school side, what's your answer to the same question?
Eric Monheim:
Yeah, absolutely senior year counts, for all the reasons Elena just said. There's a number of different messages a student is sending through their continuation of trends or recovery from a tough spring and junior year.
You know, in a lot of schools, students have a good deal more flexibility or freedom in their senior year to take courses that kind of help them tell their story or that suit their interest or align with their interests more, and they're kind of done with the school's required courses. And so senior year gives them that time to personalize a little bit more their program, and so I think it matters for all those reasons.
Your senior year courses are the ones that are closest in time to the courses that you're going to take in college, and you are demonstrating hopefully a little bit more maturity, a little bit more readiness, and showing folks on the college side your readiness, or lack thereof. Absolutely it matters.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah.
Well, and I wrote down a phrase you just used, which I love. It's your chance to personalize your program; which is really the beauty of 12th grade in a lot of high schools. I've said for years and years, we expect a competitive candidate to have five solids.
What do we mean by that?
Eric Monheim:
I'm surprised it's taken me this long to use the phrase, "It depends."
Lee Coffin:
It depends.
Eric Monheim:
Yeah.
I think that's a key phrase in pretty much any conversation, but in this conversation, the five solids would be the five core areas of academics: English, math, science, language and history. Social science. Those would typically be seen as the five core areas in most schools. And so encouraging students to get that breadth across all those core traditional disciplines would be that.
Once you've done that, in a sense taken advantage of what your school offers; and this is something Elena talked about, and it goes back to the 'it depends' things; as an admission officer, you're looking at an application in context and you're reading that and determining, "Well, what's available at this student's high school and to what degree have they taken advantage of those opportunities?" And that's breadth and depth. You know, have they specialized, have they over-specialized?
And that's something we'll talk a lot about with students is, yes, it's an opportunity to personalize your program, but there's a balance to be struck there, and you can go too far in that direction. And that's one of those questions you really have to spend some time talking with advisors and parents and teachers to do that carefully.
Lee Coffin:
I'm going to come back to that.
Eric Monheim:
Yep.
Lee Coffin:
Elena, when you think about the five, does the student have to have one of each? You know, one science, one English, one math? Is it that prescribed, or is there a little bit more flexibility in terms of curricular choice based on where you've worked?
Elena Hicks:
For the most part, at the very least, at the very, very least, a student's doing the four years of language and three years of math and science. But more than that, it's always helpful, as you're looking at a student's choice in senior year, if they choose to go to that extra math course or the extra science because it's going to support the interest that they have when they get to the college level.
One of the things I was talking to a group about the other day ... In fact, I was doing a program for accepted students where I asked alums to stand and tell us at the end of the day about some of the things that they learned. And one person in particular, and we all know this, but she said that the communication side of the house of what she did was very important because it parlayed her into jobs that, no matter if they were technical or not, her ability to write was key. And so she said, "I'm so glad that I focused in on that in college because that's been a great launch pad." And no matter what job is out there, she will always have that great writing skill.
And so I think for all colleges, even though one may come in and major in the sciences or in the performing arts, the liberal part of it, the liberal studies, and students having that classic learning to be able to pivot helps us as well.
So I think the students choosing courses that are of interest, but also challenges them a little bit also helps them to have an even greater array of options when they get to college. Because you know what? That academic interest that you write down in 12th grade may or may not be the academic interest that you have later on.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah.
So Eric, as the college counselor, are you working with a student and parents on the schedule? Or does that happen through academic advising and outside of your areas or overlap?
Eric Monheim:
Yeah. I'd say at our school, we're fortunate that it happens in both places. So our students have a primary academic kind of social advisor who's their point person for their whole experience, but certainly with juniors, we're talking with every one of them about their schedule for senior year.
We also, and I think this is a point worth making, we also consult when asked with any student. And I think there's room to have conversations in ninth and 10th grade about a four-year plan or a three-year plan. And that's an important ... Depending on your school, what are your goals? What courses do you want to take and what courses are going to be necessary for you to take to get into that advanced class or that AP class, whatever? And so we are very much involved in those conversations.
And I just had this conversation with a colleague this morning. Our job is to bring the college piece into those conversations and make sure that we're helping students and families, and our teaching colleagues, our faculty colleagues, we're helping them be aware of the college perspective. But I don't think it's our job as college counselors to dictate every decision and say, "Well, every decision should be made with the college thing being the strongest voice in the room." It's something we have to talk about, and we have to weigh the pros and the cons.
But yes, we're involved a good bit in those conversations with families and students.
Lee Coffin:
So what are the kind of questions that come to you? You know, if someone's looking at the course catalog and saying, "I can take lots of different combinations of things that adds up to five or six ... " Or maybe seven. It depends on the high school, but let's stick with five solids. And someone comes in and says, "Mr. Monheim, I am someone really interested in literature and history and French, and the idea of doing another year of science really doesn't sit well with me", what does that student do? I mean, is it okay to end science after 11 and swap a second something into that fifth slot?
Eric Monheim:
Yeah, I think it is. I think it depends, again, on what you're going to ... So if you move away from the kind of traditional core of the five, what are you moving away to and how does that decision help tell your story as a current student and a potential applicant to college?
And so if you're doing that because ... If you've decided that you'd prefer to take more humanities courses than perhaps a STEM course in your senior year, as long as you've had three years of science, to me, that's fine. But then if you turn around and say, "I want to apply to an engineering school", and say, "I want to be an engineer", or, "I want to study chemistry", well, your story is no longer making sense. And so that would be a bad decision and we would say, "Yes, you can do that, but it really is important that you think about, how does that story help shape your application?"
And again, you could make a decision to say, "Well, I want to take ... In my high school, it's possible to take four really demanding courses, and so that I can balance my life and I can have some time to sleep and do my athletics, or do my community service or my out of school job", whatever it may be, "In order for me to pull that off, I can't take five incredibly difficult classes. So I may take four and I may choose this other option that is a little less demanding."
Lee Coffin:
Mm-hmm.
Eric Monheim:
That's fine. And I think there are opportunities for you as an applicant to explain that in your application so that you're not leaving it to an admission officer to determine why you did that. You have an opportunity to explain your choice, and you may have a college counselor who will do that as well. And I think that that's fine, again, as long as you're making informed decisions.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah.
Elena, did you want to jump in?
Elena Hicks:
I just wanted to add ... Eric just spoke to something that happens quite a bit here is students reaching out and saying, "You know, Dean Hicks", or whoever their admission officer is, "I'm thinking about doing this academically and not this. In regard to SMU, how would this affect me and the admission process?" And I'm always glad to answer that question, and to also have a student talk to someone in the possible major that they are thinking of or somebody from our advising if they need to do that as well.
But we are happy to talk with students about that, because I think it's nice if they can go through this process knowing that they've checked in with a couple of the major schools that they're looking at to know that it fits. It goes back to, "It depends" for each university.
Eric Monheim:
The question I probably get the most, "How would this look for colleges?" The kind of typical question is, "Should I take the more advanced class and potentially get a B, or take the slightly less advanced class and get an A?" And you've known me long enough, you know my smart Alec response is, "Well, take the more advanced class and get an A in that. That's what they really want."
But then backing off and saying ... "Should" is a hard way to approach questions in my mind, because it would indicate that there's a right answer and the right answer is the same for everybody. And that of course isn't true.
So really thinking through, "Well, how's it going to look?", that should be one of your questions, but it shouldn't be the only question. You should be thinking about as well, "What are you more interested in? What are you going to get more out of? What aligns with courses that you've taken already and done well in that is going to feed your senior year and make it more than just grinding on to impress an admission officer, but also something you might enjoy?"
And enjoying senior year is actually okay. You're allowed to do that.
Lee Coffin:
You are.
Eric Monheim:
Yeah.
Lee Coffin:
So when they ask you that question, "How will this look?", what are they worrying about? And is it a student or is it a parent? Who's asking that question?
Eric Monheim:
It's definitely both. They want an honest answer, "How will this impact my admission chances?"
And of course, it's all relative to the school that they may be considering. They want to know, "Well, if I don't take science in my senior year, does that mean I'm not going to get into this set of colleges?" Well, of course I can't answer that question definitively. And it's never one data point that's going to make a decision, of course.
I do think that's primarily what they want to know, is, "How's this going to impact my chances?"
Lee Coffin:
So they're looking at curriculum and the rigor of the curriculum strategically.
Eric Monheim:
Yeah.
Unfortunately, in the schools that I've worked in, the reality is that our families are paying a fair amount of money to come to schools like this. Part of the goal is they want to get into a group of colleges that is selective and highly selective. You know, admit rates continue to crawl down; that generates a fair amount of anxiety. And so they're convinced that there's a formula that we just have to discover and that will be the key to get into whatever school it is. And so this course selection piece is just a part of that formula.
And that's, again, where we're going to come back to and say, "Well, should is a challenging thing and we have to talk about you as an individual, and we have to talk about each school because what you're doing, your course selection, how it plays at this particular school may be very different than this other school. And we have to understand that."
And that takes more time. It's a little bit more nuanced. And we're fortunate that we have that kind of time with our students. Not all students have that kind of time or have an adult that's accessible to them at the same level to kind of talk through those things. But that's important to be able to do that.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah.
And I think to the question, "How will this look?", it goes back to your personalizing the program comment. And I would say to students, "If you go into your search and you're discovering campuses that have a particular program that's in your wheelhouse ... "
I'll just make it up. You're thinking, "I'm really interested in international relations, and I'm looking at a set of colleges that have that as part of their strength, and I might like to study Chinese as a companion to that potential major or international economics." And your senior schedule then allows you to say, "You know what? I'm not as interested in taking the fifth science class, but I would like to replace that spot and take European history or a second foreign language ... "
I read a file this year where the student was kind of in this characterization I had just made, and she got all the way to AP French and AP Chinese in her high school. And I thought, "Wow." And in terms of the storytelling, that double foreign language over four years and having two big languages in the 12th grade was a statement that she made on her transcript, but it also made sense in terms of what she told us she was thinking about studying. It doesn't mean it wouldn't change. Those curricular choices of physics dropping out and AP Chinese taking that spot, there were five and that made sense. Right?
Eric Monheim:
Yeah.
Lee Coffin:
So I guess the question that you're pointing us to, Eric, is this idea that rigor is an element of our academic assessment. I would say fundamentally that's true, but it's also an element of our overall strategic assessment.
Elena, what role does curricular rigor play 11th grade, but also into the senior year? Are we paying attention to the strength of schedule in this competitive admission space?
Elena Hicks:
We are. We are.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. We are.
Elena Hicks:
Even in COVID, we were still paying attention. Did we have grace in certain areas and information from counselors about the course changes and things like that? Of course. But it does matter, because the preparation to be ready for the rigor that's going to occur, especially in the first and second year of college, we want students to be ready.
Even though their confidence may not skyrocket; you know, they think they're ready, but think, "Oh my gosh, I have anxiety"; yes, that's normal. But we can look at those grades, especially from junior and senior year, and project out how students will do here and what the selections that they've chosen will pan out in their time here at the university.
So it is important, but once again, and we've talked about it a million times, go back to what is appropriately rigorous for one student may not be appropriately rigorous for another. And so we want students to really take that into consideration.
The other thing that I would say, it might be a little bit provocative, but when you have that special choice, say, for instance, you've taken three or four sciences and you're ready to do something different instead of taking a fifth, and you're thinking about the formula or how it's going to look to a university, or, "If I take the extra science, will that get me admission versus something else?", for all of us in the enrollment world, we want students to be authentic about who they are, what they want, what they want for their future, what their dreams are. And so if taking that extra Chinese, or whatever else it is, makes you happy and it's something that you're truly interested in, you should do that and allow the universities that you've applied to to say, "Hey, that makes good sense to us. That says something to us." And for the university that maybe it doesn't, then maybe that might not be as good of a match as another.
So I think students being authentically themselves helps in this, and to be honest about what they really want out of the rigor and the coursework that they choose.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah.
And I'm jumping out of the host role just to add a second college voice to this answer. I work in a space where the admission outcomes are very precise. I mean, we've got volume and quality that make us really need to pay attention to lots of different variables. And rigor is one of them. We are looking at the quality of program, especially in these very selective spaces, because most of the applicants have A's.
And parents, I don't mean to get your blood pressure up as I say this, but there's some great inflation afoot in the secondary schools of the world, and you're seeing one report card. It comes home with a lot of grades that look spectacular. And what you don't always know is that's the norm in your school. That's not a bad thing. It just means other variables help us assess it and sort it.
So it might be someone comes to me and says, "She has a 4.0. Why didn't she get in?" I said, "Well, it's a 4.0 in a curriculum that had more room for advanced work, and this student with a 3.98 was in that advanced curriculum." That's a more impressive framing of the transcript and the opportunities, and we notice that, especially within the same high school.
You're both nodding as I say that.
Eric, do you have to have that conversation all the time?
Eric Monheim:
Yeah, we absolutely do.
The overall rigor of a program within an applicant pool, that's a critically important perspective. And as a parent or as a student, you have one perspective; your own.
Lee Coffin:
Mm-hmm.
Eric Monheim:
And we're a very good school, but we're also a small school with a hundred students roughly in a class. That's a small little bubble on the grade landscape. And it's easy to forget that when you're the parent of a high achieving child who, throughout their high school, has done exceptionally well. That's awesome and that's great, but they're certainly not alone in their school, not to mention the broader landscape of all the schools in the country and the world. And that's not always an easy message to remind people of, but it's part of the job.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah.
Eric Monheim:
I also think in the rigor question; this doesn't happen as much here, we're a boarding school, but it does a little bit because we have some day students, and we have an international population and students in all categories that go home for the summer; there's this kind of chasing credentials. And so our program is rigorous and strong, but it's not enough. So we've got people who would say, "Well, what else can I do to demonstrate just how strong I am? What courses can I take over the summer on a college campus? If I live in an area where there might be a college where I can enroll in a college course while I'm in high school, will that help me? What can I do to distinguish myself in all of these pools?"
And those are valuable questions to ask, important questions to ask, but they're important to ask for the right reasons. And if you're just doing it for the credential, clearly that's oftentimes easy to see from your side and doesn't demonstrate the authenticity that you were talking about, it demonstrates a kind of competitiveness that is not always attractive.
We see it to some degree here. We've seen an increase in students, quite honestly, paying lots of money to be involved in summer research programs that may not signal the kind of credential that they think it does. And I just think ... Again, I would echo the necessity of the authenticity piece and also the piece of, it's okay, while you're in high school, including that transition from junior to senior year, to be a high school student, to do things other than chase credentials, which might include getting a job and scooping some ice cream and reading some books for fun, and not just worrying about how that's going to look.
Lee Coffin:
No, that's right.
And it gets to, as Elena and I talk about rigor as an element of the admission processes we manage, we're not saying just load up for the sake of saying, "Here we are. I can take a piece, so therefore I am." The balance that Eric mentioned earlier is really important. Students should be selecting courses for 12th grade that are curricularly appropriate for the sequence you're in.
And when you have the capacity, the stretch, and flex little muscle, do it, both because it will look good for college, but it looks good for college because you're showing your academic chops. You're able to lean into that curriculum, get a teacher recommendation who can say, "John excelled in this area, and here's how and why, and the kind of ideas he brought to the table." And John could write about it in essays that say, "You know, I hadn't been thinking about political philosophy before, but it popped up in this western European history course and something clicked and off I go."
That's how we use it. It's a way of understanding the narrative that a student brings into the application and the ways in which the narrative connects to the academic journey that you're on.
So Eric, when I mentioned APs ... I mean, the worry that I hear parents articulate when I visit schools is, "My school doesn't have any advanced courses or APs", and, "Aren't I going to be disadvantaged?" And I say, "No. We look at what's available here and assess your rigor based on what's offered." But as St. Marks is not an AP school, what counsel do you give your families when they come to you and say, "I'm going to be disadvantaged because I don't have an AP?"
Eric Monheim:
So again, the point of admission officers reading an application in the context of the school from which it comes. That's important we talk about with our families, that we spend a good deal of time educating or communicating with our colleagues across the desk to make sure that they understand we are not an AP school. Not from a deficit standpoint, and I think that's important, but from a, "Here's what we offer." In our case, it happens to be ... We call them advanced courses; not terribly creative, but that's the top of our curriculum, so to speak.
In some cases, those top calculus courses look an awful lot like an AP course, but we're teaching ... It's an independent school. We can design the curriculum in the way that we want, and we think that's valuable and we do that. But we also have sequential courses. We have courses that you have to kind of not necessarily apply into, but be approved for based on your work in earlier courses. Those advanced courses across our curriculum are a way of demonstrating your ability to take on the more rigorous classes.
So we'll talk about it in that way. We talk about, "Look, we create a school profile. Every school does. That's our document to help readers understand our curriculum." And this is now ... I think we're 11 years into this. We talk about the fact that we are one of many schools across the country who've moved away from the AP curriculum for a variety of reasons. And that's one of the nice things about being an independent school; we can do that.
But mostly it's about the value of our courses across the board, whether they're the advanced courses or not; the value of the experience in our classrooms.
Lee Coffin:
Elena, what's the college admission perspective on what Eric just said?
Elena Hicks:
It's exactly the same. We know some schools will have advanced courses, some will have AP. There's lots of different labels out there for the rigor that schools have implemented for their students.
What they are providing and what we know from the school, having admission officers typically being at schools from more than just a year at a time, like staying with the school as their territory manager, and the school profile gives us the information we need for the context of what's being offered and how students are using it.
One thing I wanted to add quickly, Lee and Eric, is that, also, when we talk about advanced courses or challenging courses and rigor, you have to think beyond the admission office a little bit as well. Some of us have honors programs that students love to get into and want to be a part of that will factor it in; also, some that are honors and leadership based; and those of us who have schools on campus that are direct admission. You know, for us, getting into the business school is another ramp and hurdle. That rigor is going to play a key role in admission to the business school beyond the admission to the university.
So students have lots of ways to help portray what they are doing and how it factors in to their interest.
Lee Coffin:
Yep. Yep.
So it comes back to the opening question: does 12th grade count? Yes. The ways we evaluate the academic part, it's ... I always diagram it and say there's question one; is this student prepared for the curriculum we offer? If the answer to that question is no, the rest of the application is moot. Because there's this foundational existential question, "Can you do the work?"
And so one of the things we're doing as we look at 12th grade, 11th grade, the whole sequence, is to say, "Has your school prepared you for us?" And the good news everywhere I've worked is most applicants pass that question. Yes.
Then there's a second question: "So you're prepared, you're qualified. Are you competitive?" And for places that have a really tiny admit rate, that urgency is higher than places where there's a bit more flexibility in how many offers can be extended. But for those of you mapping your college search and thinking, "My ambition is pointing me towards places with low acceptance rates", then rigor is part of the story.
Not the most important part, but it pairs up with the overall quality of your transcript, the grades you're getting in 11th and 12th, the progress reports. You know, those midyear grades in 12th grade, that's kind of the last checkpoint in my process where we get those reports from the high school, we add them in, and some students fly into the final round and others were like, "Uh-oh, this midyear report is not a strong off-ramp." So that 12th grade map is important.
But before we wrap, I want to turn us back to 11th grade just for a sec.
So we're talking about picking courses for senior year. This episode airs mid-April, so there's a month, maybe eight weeks to go before 11th grade runs out. How should students finish? Like does 11th grade count? I say that's one of the most important years. Why? What happens, Eric, on the strength of a junior year?
Eric Monheim:
The consistency across four years is a trend, and it is noticed. The end of junior year is a great time to, If you've got eight weeks left, you've got time to kind of start telling a different story. If the start of your junior year didn't go the way that perhaps you wanted, and there was reasons for that, you've got a chance to kind of turn it on at the end and really end on a strong note.
That strong note may not show up as much in your grade, because of course it's a full year grade, but it may show up in momentum that you're building, it may show up in a teacher recommendation, and that's important to establish both of those things as you head into senior year.
It may also, in some schools, qualify you for a different set of courses as a senior, because if you end the year, you know, you've got to get a certain grade in order to get into the next level, that could really help open up some options that wouldn't be available to you if you went in the other direction.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. And I think people forget that they're on the clock. 11th grade is part of the story that we're going to see in admission.
And for any of you listening who have already said, "I think I'm going to apply somewhere early", the other thing I'd like to flag, if you are in that category of early applicant, those deadlines are November. Senior year has not really had a lot of runway at that point. So someone coming out of 11th without a lot of umph in the transcript is setting up an unhappy early conversation, because we need more time to see how 11th grade turns into 12th. If you end 11th with a lot of vim and vigor, and you get to the fall and you say, "I have a first choice. I'm applying to SMU early", the strength of 11th grade is carrying a lot of water.
Elena nods as I say that. Why? As I'm saying that, Elena, why are you nodding?
Elena Hicks:
Because if you apply early ... Early decision for us or early action, we have ninth, 10th, and 11th. And so really, when you think about it, 11th and 12th grade, as you mentioned, are the twins, and those are extremely critical in our review. And so we won't, as you mentioned, have the 12th grade first semester, and so 11th grade is key to where that student is heading and the momentum, and it also gives us a feel of what 12th grade will look like.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah.
Eric Monheim:
You mentioned being on the clock. As that clock continues to tick, there are things that you are increasingly losing control over, and how you finish your junior year, how you start your senior year, that is still under your control.
You know, standardized testing may be a part of your package or not, depending on the schools you're applying to. At some level, you have some control of that, but not as much. You don't have as much control over some of the other parts of your application. But this final push in junior year, starting senior year, and doing the things to kind of establish a strong foundation to start your senior year, that's very much under your control.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, you own it.
Eric Monheim:
Yep.
Lee Coffin:
You're taking the tests, you're writing the papers, you're picking the courses, you're driving this story. It's a great place to end.
Eric, Elena, thank you-
Eric Monheim:
Thank you.
Lee Coffin:
... For joining me on Admissions Beat. Hope you both come back.
For now, this is Lee Coffin from Dartmouth College. Thanks for listening.