Season 5: Episode 14 Transcript
Admissions Beat Live: Parents and Seniors Take the Mic
Lee Coffin:
Live from Hanover, New Hampshire, I'm Lee Coffin, Dartmouth's Dean of Admission and Financial Aid. Welcome to the Admissions Beat.
Hello audience. We are live from Dartmouth's admitted student open house. We did this last year and it was a lot of fun, so we thought, let's do it again. So parents, thanks, and some students, thanks for joining us. Jacques Steinberg joins me as he often does, as my co-host, sidekick. But what we want to do today is have a conversation. First, Jacques will ask me some questions just thinking about the year we just finished. And then we're going to throw it open to your questions, comments, giggles, whatever you want to talk about, we're happy to talk about. So when we get to Q&A, I'll just ask you, you don't have to say your full name, but just say, "Hi, I am Sue from Los Angeles," and that'll be a way of helping the audience here who's who.
So Jacques, what do you want to talk about?
Jacques Steinberg:
Well, I first want to say how wonderful it is to see all of you. Some of you have emailed us. We see your downloads, we see your listens, but there's no substitute for seeing you here in person, and we are really grateful for the feedback you share with us throughout the year. Some of you have been with us since I suspect the junior year of your child's high school. Some of you earlier than that, perhaps some of you, this is the first time you've run into Admissions Beat. So this is your exit interview, as it were, at least on the application process. So we're going to put you to work and really we encourage you to share what you learned during that process.
But just to get things started, few of us in the course of our lives I think actually get to meet a dean of admission. At least I certainly didn't as a student going through this process many years ago. So Lee, just to get things started, you've been at this for more than 30 years?
Lee Coffin:
Yes. So 34 as an admission officer, 29 as a dean. Every time I hear myself say, "29 years as a dean, it's a long time," but I was a child when I started.
Jacques Steinberg:
And what made you initially want to go into this work?
Lee Coffin:
Well, the origin story of Lee as an admission officer happened as I was going through my undergraduate experience as a history major and pondering like, "Well, what comes next?" I think most of my peers who were history majors were thinking about law school. I started down that path. I took the LSAT and then I had that epiphany of, "What the hell am I doing?" I didn't really want to be a lawyer, but I was sort of following the herd towards that as an outcome. And a job was posted, an administrative role at Trinity where I graduated, in the alumni office doing alumni relations focused on young alums. And as part of that, pulling them into the alumni interviewing cohort. And as I went through that first year or two, I realized that admissions was the space that everybody focused on, that within the administrative cluster, that's where the action was happening.
And so when I went to grad school, I intentionally planned to use my grad experience to transition into college admission. And that happened and I've been here ever since. But the real kind of flame under this was my own guidance counselor at a big public high school. In Connecticut, I had a caseload of more than 500 to 1. When I went to see him in the fall of my senior year for advice, he looked at my transcript and said, "I don't have time for the smart ones. Go back to class, you'll figure it out." I did figure it out and I realized that there were other students like me in schools around the country who didn't have the family or school infrastructure to go from where they are to where they hope to be. And so I thought, "Let's explore admissions as an opportunity to be a bit of an apostle for higher ed as this life-changing arc," which it was for me.
I mean as a first-gen student, I look at where I am and where I might have been, and there's no question that earning my degree put me on a really different path. So that's why I'm here all these years later. Someone asked me this morning if today is my favorite day, and I said, "It's one of my two favorite days." So I said this morning on the welcome that watching PDFs turn into people as you all appear is exciting to see who was admitted in this real form called high school seniors. And then on Matriculation day in September, that's the other one where you see a class come together and this community takes shape and goes, and that's always really powerful and poignant to see the work we do turned into this thing called a first-year class.
Jacques Steinberg:
So for regular listeners of the podcast, they know you often talk about one factor among many in the admissions decision, and you certainly talk about grades and activities and essays and recommendations, but for careful listeners of the podcast: kindness, evidence of kindness, of decency, of empathy, of caring is one of your one factors among many. How did that come to be and why do you value it in the way you do?
Lee Coffin:
This answer might be more Lee-specific than I usually pine on the pod, but since you asked. My seat, whether it's here at Dartmouth, or when I was at Tufts before this, or at Connecticut College before that, the role of Dean is one where I think it's a great privilege to be asked by an institution to shape its student body. And in recent years, my observation just as a student of people in politics and campus culture is that it's easy for people to yell and it's easy for people to not listen to each other. And I personally see that as one of the great failings of the 21st century is that some degree of comedy in community seems to have been lost. I don't know where we got off track, but it feels that there's more tension between people than not. And so kindness to me is this really essential human quality that makes a community work where you care for each other, where you listen, that phrase "do unto others as you wish them to do unto you."
And I think reading files and thinking about the personal qualities people bring to a campus is really important. And when kindness is present, the places where it lives feel to be more whole and more inclusive. And so I've always valued it as a quality, as a reader, as when I'm in the dean role shaping final decisions. But I think in the 2020s, it is valuable and I hope our visitors see it as they're moving around campus today that the place is more than just a collection of high-achieving ambitious people. It's those things plus a community of peers to have some shared qualities around what makes them people.
Jacques Steinberg:
So turning the tables a little bit to all of you, and I hope you'll indulge the question thinking about those listening and those who will come after you. We think about you, two years ago, three years ago, the search part of this, the self-discovery for your children, and we do have students in the room in addition to parents, and I encourage you students to also share things that you've learned during this process. But if we think about that self-discovery, that search process, the application, now the decision that is upon us and then what comes after the transition, there's a lot that you all didn't know that you know now and you probably know in an echo of Dr. Spock more than you think you know. So imagine those who are going to be going through this next year, the parents of current high school juniors as they become seniors, and we've got a couple of past microphones that colleagues will help us with. What would you want to share? What surprised you? What comforted you?
Lee Coffin:
I love that the first hand that went up is from a student.
Elizabeth:
Hi, my name is Elizabeth. I am a senior in high school, a prospective I would just say-
Lee Coffin:
And where do you live? Elizabeth?
Elizabeth:
Oh, I'm from Miami, Florida,
Lee Coffin:
Miami. Nice. Welcome.
Elizabeth:
Yes. Something I would say is just be as authentic as possible in your essay writing and in the way you tell your story, no matter how simple you feel like your passions are or how niche they are. I think something that comforted me throughout the process was really trying to get across the things that I loved and the things that I've done in high school that have made me who I am and that have taught me great lessons. And so I think that was a big part of my application.
Lee Coffin:
And the word niche is really interesting that you said that, because niche to me means you. If you're being authentic, you're sharing those interests, qualities, experiences, perspectives that make you you. And you might think, "Oh, why would I want to share this?" If you don't tell me, we won't know. So yeah, good advice.
Jacques Steinberg:
And is there a temptation, before you give up the mic, is there a temptation? Is there pressure to perhaps be inauthentic or to not be who you are but to be someone else who you think Lee and the other admissions officers might want you to be?
Elizabeth:
I think there's this idea that you have to be larger than life in the admissions process. And I think to be told that you can just be you as a person and just be as passionate as you are and as excitable as you are, I think that's a greater lesson to take away from it because those people are incredible, and I think it's what makes I guess the larger than life person it is to be realistic.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, larger than life is the cartoon character that haunts this process. Where I will say in September when the class enrolls, you are high-achieving interesting people; you do not wear capes and fly around campus. You're not super children who got into this college by virtue of some Marvel special quality. And I think it's good advice that you're pointing to around being larger than life is not the goal. It's be a 17, 18-year-old in Miami, in your case, and talk about the things that have guided you through the last several years, how this college will help you go forward in whatever way you're imagining you'd like to go.
And back to the kindness piece, what are the qualities that being one but not the only one that make you the person that you are so that we meet you and say, "This student adds to this campus." So yeah, good.
Elizabeth:
Thank you.
Lee Coffin:
I think that the challenge that also haunts this is this idea that this will look good to colleges, this perception that there's a secret equation, that if I do this, I do this, I do that, I'm going to get in. And if there were, Jacques and I wouldn't need to be here, I would've patented that already. Stanley Kaplan would have this guy named Lee Coffin in the future who was like, "Oh yeah, did you do the Lee Coffin prep?" It doesn't work that way
Jacques Steinberg:
In another life, I was a journalist and I literally spent a year looking for that formula at Wesleyan University in Connecticut and I couldn't find it. So I'm going to take Lee at his word that it doesn't exist.
Lee Coffin:
Back to back students, love this.
Elwin:
This. My name is Elwin, I'm from Hawaii and I'm also a prospective 20. And I think the biggest thing that I've learned in this process is not to worry about whether you're going to... Not to fret about whether an admissions committee is going to pick you or not. Because I think at the end of the day what I've learned is that committees are looking for someone who fits into their community, and if it's not the right fit sometimes, you just have to move on. And you're going to find your place, and you don't need to worry about whether you got a rejection or you got a waitlist or whatnot, because at the end of the day you're going to end up where you're meant to be.
Lee Coffin:
That's really wise.
Alicia :
Hi, I'm Alicia. I'm from Kingman, Arizona. It's like a small town around two hours away from Vegas. And I think my advice would be to use your setbacks as a way to help your application. Being from a small town was kind of hard in the college application process because we don't have many opportunities. There's no SAT tutors or big places willing to give you internships. It's just like farms. And so I definitely wrote one of my college essays on being from Kingman and being from a small town and I think that was one of the big things that got me into Dartmouth. And so using things like not having extracurriculars or no SAT tutors or being from a small town or something that you think in yourself or your application as a setback, turn it into something that makes your application better. So turn it around.
Lee Coffin:
And what I would add to that really great observation is we read files contextually. So when you live in a small town like the one you're describing in Arizona, we know where we are as we read your file. And so the opportunities you have in that place are the way we frame what's possible as a high achieving student in that place. And that's not necessarily going to be true 50 miles away, but it's where you live. And the listeners trust that we do that, that we start with the local and we meet you where you live, and how have you maximized your opportunity. And not just setbacks, but just what's the truth of your space, and you have to be that person because that's where you are.
Neetu:
My name is Neetu, I'm from Sharon, Massachusetts and I visited Dartmouth with my son twice. And I want to congratulate you, I think kindness that you speak of. And I've been in corporate world for almost 25 years and I know that kindness not only takes you a long way in college application, but I think in corporate life it's the most important thing that all these kids are going to see will make them different in next 25 years.
And I think your college did a fabulous job in showing that in their process. And I thought to myself that maybe the first time I came in, it was the way all colleges led the tours. But the second time I did it, I think you cannot fake kindness. It is authentic. So thank you so much. And I think that's one thing that stuck to my son, and from all the colleges that he wanted to go to, this college has stuck to his mind. And I think that one kindness element that kind of just stuck to his head. And I think like you said, it goes a long way. Kids can feel it in the four years they're here and it'll take them a long way in their lives, in their careers.
So thank you so much for that. I just wanted to say that.
Lee Coffin:
Thank you for that.
Jacques Steinberg:
So before you give back the mic, if we were to translate that into advice. If you are somebody listening, whether student or parent, "Okay, kindness. Didn't think that I was going to rank that in the process as I look at places. I'm persuaded." How do you look for it? What's the evidence?
Neetu:
Like I said, kindness is a very authentic trait. When we went around with kids who were talking about the college, we are talking about different courses. When we met the admission counselor, the way they actually introduced the college to us. We went to many different colleges. Kindness just comes out and the way it is orchestrated... It is portrayed in front of everybody else. I think if you're kind, it just comes out naturally to others. And as parents who are older to these young teenagers, you can see through it. So I think it just comes out. It's a very authentic trait.
Heather:
Hi, I'm Heather. We're from Princeton, New Jersey. And I've spent my whole career in higher ed, and we learned two things through this process going back to back with two sons versus that we know nothing. And the second is that there's so many amazing colleges and universities out there. Each place we visited I was like, "Oh my gosh, I would love to come here." But it was such an authentic experience here. My guidance to anybody who is starting this process is visit. Visit as often and as early as you can because there's nothing like that. And we were so surprised by where our sons landed and so delighted.
Lee Coffin:
Can I ask you, when you say you knew nothing, tell me a little more?
Heather:
So my husband and I both went to college sight unseen. We had the big book, we were really dating ourselves. We had the big book and our parents didn't take us to visit. So we were coming back from a wonderful college with our son and he said, "So what was this like when you guys did this?" And we looked at each other and we're like, "We never had this experience." And it was really so wonderful to be able to experience it with our sons.
Lee Coffin:
What you just heard was her son moving the microphone back towards his mother's face.
Heather:
And he didn't really want to hear from me for two years. So this is all kind of retrospective.
Lee Coffin:
But you're sharing good insight for parents who remember an admission environment, 20, 25 years ago if they went to college. That is so profoundly different than the one we're in today. And I feel that way as somebody who graduated high school in 1981 and applied to five places and got into four and didn't visit any of them until I got in. And I would never advise that now, but then it didn't seem unusual. But also surrendering what you think you knew then to the idea that colleges like people evolve, and so places that are representing themselves today may have been really different campuses with very different vibes 25, 30 years ago.
And if you start your search juniors with a parent saying, "Ugh, I don't like that place because I remember..." Well, go and try it again, because it may still be true but it may have shifted in some way. But I think surrendering your pre-existing assumption, and also knowing that your kids are going to react to places on their own terms as well and what was right for you then may have a really different resonance today as you walk around and take stock of a place.
Yeah. Does your son want to chime in at all?
Jacques Steinberg:
Yeah, I have a specific question for you. I heard your mom say, if I heard correctly, there were times, maybe more than a few times where she felt you didn't want to hear from her. And I think a lot of us as parents in the room can relate to that and maybe some students do. What advice do you have for students who will come after you on how to take in your parents' advice, but sort of set boundaries for that? Did you guys have any tips on that?
Will:
So my brother, he's a year older than I am and he went through the college admission process, and I really did not want to hear about it because it sounded really stressful. So what I did is I didn't really want to think about it until basically the end of junior year and then that's when I started listening. And I think that you should definitely listen before, and I was very lucky that my mom was able to reiterate the information again and again.
But yeah, I guess just listen and try and get as much information as possible because even though it seems stressful... Well, I guess I can't really say because I don't know every single applicant, but it isn't as stressful as it has to be. And I think that you just have to listen to as much as possible because you're going to get more information and you're going to make a better choice and you're going to be in a better place than if you don't and if you wait for that stress to just kind of overload. And yeah, listen to your parents.
Lee Coffin:
I love that story too because mom is validated as actually having known something thing.
I want to ask to the students in the room first, what is the stressor. When we talk about college admission being stressful, what's stressing you out?
Braden:
I'm Braden, I'm from Atlanta, Georgia, and I think that honestly the biggest stressful part of college admissions... We have deadlines obviously for when we need to turn in applications, when we need to get in essays, letters of recs and whatnot. I think that the majority of stress in the college admissions process is like, "I've done all this work for four years, I've spent time building on my application, will I really get into this school?" And that's more of the stress is mental. It's not about the deadlines, but it's more about, "What am I doing all this work for? Will this even work out in the end?" And I think that's the majority, especially as these college has gotten a lot more selective in recent years.
Lee Coffin:
So it's the uncertainty of outcome.
Braden:
Yeah.
Jacques Steinberg:
And before you give up the mic, any stress reduction or stress management tips that were helpful to you that might be helpful to others?
Braden:
I don't really have that many tips. I talked with my parents a lot. I have a great mom and I feel like just talking to her more... And my parents, my mom went to college, but it's like she kind of told me about her experience, and just hearing from her and other people that I knew around me that went to college and like might've gone to a more selective college, that kind of helped me feel better about myself. It's more of a confidence thing sometimes I think.
Shiva:
Hi, my name is Shiva. I'm from Dallas, Texas. This is not about the stress, but I want to share my thoughts on the process. And as stressful as it is for the kids, I feel like I want to echo most of the students and parents thinking that they will go to wherever they're meant to be and they will thrive. But one thing is the ED process, there's a lot of stats on where to do ED, does it increase your chances of getting in? And after a lot of debate internally... My daughter is a prospective 2028 here and we said, "If you don't get the feeling or the vibe, we don't have to use ED." And I'm glad that we did not.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, I think that's right. My advice has always been to students pondering an early application, especially a binding early is, right now, April, May, June, July of the junior early senior year, too soon. September, October, if a place has emerged as a clear choice, then think about it but don't push it. I think the narrative that it's easier to get in is I think once upon a time that was truer than it is today. It's good advice, waiting for regular decision. And here we are in April of a senior year with a lot of regular decision admits running around campus today as proof points that you got in. And almost everyone I've spoken to today has said, "We're deciding between 1, 2, 3," 4 is the biggest number I've heard someone carrying into this mid-part of April. That's impressive, four regular decision offers of admission. And for the juniors, it's okay to wait.
Apple:
Thank you. Thank you very much. My name's Apple, like the fruit. I'm from Boston and we went through this process with my oldest recently and I reiterate the comments about feeling incredibly clueless and not even really understanding how little you knew about the process until you came to the other side of it.
I also think it's funny that you mentioned what would you tell the future parents because a lot of us do have younger kids, so the future parents are actually us as well. But I think one of the main things I learned going through this process that I really had no understanding of prior to it is that of all the things that your child does: their grades, their scores, their activities, and how important it's that those are authentic first of all, but then how important it is in the actual application to have those things have meaning. That you can have a laundry list of all the best things, the best grades and the best numbers and activities, but bringing those things to life, which would take place in your essays, and we also know probably carry different weight at different schools depending on how, as they say, holistic the reading of the application is, but how essential it is to tie that all together in the actual application. And I think that was probably the thing that I learned the most in this process.
Lee Coffin:
Being able to tease out what matters to you and not just list things, but occasionally put a pin light on a couple of them and say, "I do this because I love it and I learned this and here's my impact," is valuable. And we were out in the hallway talking about our big entrance for this pod and Jacques said to me, "Your theatricality is always so spot on." And I said, "Once a drama club kid, always a drama club kid." And I make that reference because I did a lot of drama in high school and I learned a lot around presentation, around confidence about being able to sit up here with a microphone and not just mumble my way through everything. That was a high school activity that all these years later is still instructing me.
So if this sounds like you and you're going to talk about drama club in this example, it's not just that you had the lead in the play. What did that teach you? What's the role of drama in your life, whether you're on stage, behind the stage or writing it so that someone else can perform it? Those are really interesting, different ways of representing drama club than just writing it on the activities section of the Common app.
Harry:
Hi, I'm Harry from Chicago, Illinois. I'm a prospective 28. And I guess just two things really fast. You were talking about kindness earlier, in the sense that not only do you want to be kind in your application, but when you go to a school you want to be in a kind environment. So when I visited Dartmouth a couple of years ago or a year and a half ago, I got unlucky in the sense that the day I chose to come, there were no engineering tours available. So even though I'm not an engineering major, I was still interested a little bit. And when I walked in I was able to get a one-on-one meeting with the undergraduate programs director, Ms. Jenna Wheeler. So that was the one thing that really stood out to me was being able to like, "Hey, even though I messed up, this is my fault, but thank you for accommodating and being kind enough to realize that this is something that really matters to future student and future citizen and just being there," I guess.
Lee Coffin:
Sometimes these tiny moments, I think the phrase is random acts of kindness, but you have these interactions with people on a campus and they mean something. So I think you're right to dial into showing up in someone's doorway and saying, "My bad, but can you help me?" And when someone responds, I think that is a way of understanding the place you're meeting.
Jacques Steinberg:
And in terms of translating that into advice, your radar was up for kindness, you noticed, you listened and you noted, and that's a pretty good piece of advice I think for those who will come after you.
Harry:
And then a second thing, sorry, is I guess in terms of just when you're writing your essays, the best thing I could say to a prospective student is like, "Don't care." Not in the sense like don't put care into your essays, but go into the essay writing process in a way that you shouldn't overthink it. Where you go to college does not determine your self-worth, does not determine how good of a person you are. And I feel like where I got the best results in terms of admissions were where I was able to like, "I'm going to write this in two hours and just write from the heart."
Personally for Dartmouth, the essays that I wrote were, there were polished obviously. I spent a lot of time editing them, but I didn't edit them in a way that completely changed the meaning or I didn't spend hours on hours coming with the idea. I believe for one of my essays, it only took me 10 minutes to come up with the ideas, 30 minutes to write and then sure, maybe another few hours to polish. But those were the most passionate things I've ever written in my life.
Lee Coffin:
Print that out, put it on a poster. A plus. I think overthinking is one of the stressors. As Braden was talking about stress, about the uncertainty, but there's also the stress of like, "I get stuck thinking about what's the right answer." And I think if you can let go of that, you move through in a much more fluid way.
Grayson:
Hi, I'm Grayson from Denver, Colorado. I'd say the biggest thing that really helped me when I was thinking about putting my application together and telling my own story is thinking about the idea of resonance, in that the things that you're saying you want to do in college and beyond college are lining up with the activities you've done in high school and even what your teachers might say about you in a recommendation. And that not only they're lining up with each other, but that they're building together and they're telling a really compelling story. And that just really helped me sort of think about how I wanted to put myself forward.
And then the other thing I'd say is, especially when you're entering your senior year, is just to let your accomplishments speak for themselves and just take a step back and relax and even detach yourselves from outcomes if you can and not get too committed to one idea of what a college experience could be.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, you're singing the gospel of authenticity. And the other thing, as you were sharing that, that popped into my head is you also forget that you have other allies in this storytelling narrative space. So your teachers, your guidance counselor, your interviewer, if you have one, will also help you tell your story. And so it's very, very rare in all the years I've done this to see a teacher act that doesn't like you. They do exist, but it's unusual. They almost always come to bat and make the case for you. It's easy to overlook that because you don't see those letters, but they go in your file and they're powerful and your guidance counselor will do the same thing. And interviewers are prone to loving everyone they meet, which is great. So you are not the only one having to make your case is what I'm trying to emphasize here.
Jacques Steinberg:
So Lee, stay with that for a moment. I mean, as writers and in this case students, you are writers, we think about audience and you are a proxy for the target audience for these stories. Give us a sense of what it's like for you as you scroll through recommendations, essay, peer reference in some instances, and how do you process the story?
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Well what was your first name again?
Grayson:
Grayson.
Lee Coffin:
Grayson just said it. The pieces are like Legos. They connect to one another and this little pile of blocks turns into a house. And as we read, the best files are the ones where piece by piece holistically, the story comes together in a way that makes sense. And you're talking about debate in your extracurricular space. And the social studies teacher is one of the recommendations and says, "Grayson's hand is always in the air. He brings current events into our US history course. He asks provocative questions. He's a leader of discussion. He's somebody who makes this AP course hum with a different kind of energy when he's there." And then you get to the interview, and I've just turned you into debater Grayson, the interview starts to go in a similar way and by serendipity, the person starts asking about the headlines of the day and the conversation goes accordingly. You didn't force that. It was piece by piece. This application resonated in an authentic way throughout it. And that's not something you manufacture, it happens because it's true.
Jacques Steinberg:
And I think for listeners, for those who are be doing this process next year, the idea that you can connect with somebody like Lee having never met him and yet come alive through your words and the words of others.
Lee Coffin:
And if I can offer a word of encouragement, it happens more than you think it does. I read over a thousand files this year in some way, and in our system, I am the final approver on all the offers of admission. So I touched 1,684 files through that, not that I remember the number. And the storytelling that generated those final decisions were the result of all these different pieces adding up to something that both spoke to achievement, spoke to potential, spoke to a good fit with the place we are. Because I work here, I don't work at any of my peer schools, and so my job is not to fill that class, it's to fill this one in this place.
I more often than not read files and I learn things. For whatever weird reason, last year a lot of people wrote about mushrooms. There was a bunch of mushroom researchers in last year's applicant pool. And I learned a vocabulary word, it's mycology. But those mushroom researchers were, to a person, really interested in fungi, and it was one by one, I thought, "Okay, I get it. You're talking about the organic farm at Dartmouth and the biology program and using your science brain to do something interesting with this particular type of botany. Great."
And it wasn't like there were too many of them. If we ended up with dozens of mycologists in the class of 27, hooray. But the students who wrote about... They write about literature and they write about playwriting and they write about, someone wrote about wanting to build prosthetics, and it's like I never know what's in the file as I start reading it. And more often than not, I'm like, "This is impressive." This high school senior has ideas, and whether or not they do them when they actually get to college, the ingredient is you're a thinker, you're creative and your ideas could shift, but the impulse towards those ideas is what matters.
Fred:
Hi everybody. I'm Fred from Palo Alto.
Lee Coffin:
Hi Fred.
Fred:
This is my wife Tina.
Tina:
Hi.
Lee Coffin:
Fred, you're a very rare parent. It's been almost an all-student conversation, which is nice.
Fred:
Well, I thought I might have an insight for parents who are thinking about this whole ed process. And that's because we just had one of our kids go through one way and another one go through the other way two years ago. So one of them was more leaning towards the ed route, and the other one went more what I call the spray-and-pray, and see what happens. And literally applied to 27 schools.
Lee Coffin:
Oh my God, is that this year's kid?
Fred:
And the nice thing is that it worked out for both of them. It was a little more work for him, but we felt like it helped our daughter get into a school she really wanted to get into. And then we feel like August, it's worked out really well for him. He's here. So that's a good thing, checking it out.
Lee Coffin:
So I have a couple of follow-ups here. So 27 applications makes me really sweaty as a dean of admission thinking.
Fred:
Well, the Common app does make it a lot easier-
Lee Coffin:
I know.
Fred:
... than it used to be, right?
Lee Coffin:
Yeah.
Fred:
And all the UC systems are similar, so he had a nice-
Lee Coffin:
So was spray-and-pray a byproduct of point-and-click? Like at the deadline, did he just go click-click-click?
Fred:
It's still a lot of work.
Lee Coffin:
Or were they 27 intentional places to explore?
Fred:
It's still a lot of work.
Lee Coffin:
Well, and I'm engaging this topic for everybody because one of the things that keeps me up at night in April is this, where it's my responsibility to figure out how many people do we admit to fill the seats in the class on May 1st. And what I don't know when you apply is, did you apply to 2 or 6 or 27? And I can't know, we don't ask, but I know there's some rainbow out there. Last year on the mid-student survey, I think the average was 12. So in most individual instances, assuming you got into 12 places, we have a 1 in 12 shot of enrolling someone in April.
So I have a question for all of you in the spirit of this back and forth with Fred. So May 1st inching closer, everybody has to enroll somewhere by the National Candidates Reply Date. So this could be for seniors who are out there saying, "It's down to two, it's down to three." How to decide what wisdom do we have to take multiple offers of admission and squeeze it down to the final one. When do you know? As you're each going through it, what's going through your head as you take six offers and bring it down to three or three down to two, or maybe it's head-to-head? Braden's back.
Braden:
I think my main thing about narrowing it down... So looked at a lot of the schools I've applied to where I've got in. Let's take Dartmouth for an example. So two major areas I want to look at is computer science and economics. And I'm looking at Dartmouth as a school. Obviously it's ranked highly in both, and that's kind of where I want to take it. So if I choose, maybe I don't want to do computer science anymore, and I can switch to something else I like. There's so much fluidity in which you can do at a school. And I think that's kind of how I've narrowed down my college choices a lot is the fluidity. And then there's other stuff to consider money, like how much money am I getting? But besides that part, it's probably the fluidity of my career and how I see it prospering at a school.
Elwin:
Elwin again. I think the two biggest things that I've used to narrow down is one is money is how much money I'm getting or how feasible it is to go there. And the second is visiting. I think that's given me the best picture out of anything of a school is actually getting to go there and meet students and ask questions, sit in on classes to actually see the school.
Marie:
Hello, I'm Marie, I'm from Richmond. Kentucky. I have to say something about the spray-and-pray. I think I might have a differing opinion, I apologize.
Lee Coffin:
This is civil discourse, this is good.
Marie:
It might be the difference in the fact that it's our first, our oldest. And looking for something different than what's offered in our community, and really looking at a curated list of her interest. Urgency that is pressed upon you as I think as a student, Caroline could attest to it, but as a parent it's also pressed out there as, "Gosh, you should cover your bases because the schools that your child's looking at are lofty goals. Are those the correct goals? What pressure are you putting on your child?" And I would say that if I had to do it all over again, I would tell a first-time college parent to allow you and your child a fair amount of grace and courtesy. The whole process can feel overwhelming at times. My girls can attest that there may have been a moment, there may have been a moment where I was running out of the house in a bathrobe with such joy. It's true.
Lee Coffin:
That's a visual.
Marie:
It's a visual.
Lee Coffin:
Caroline is on TikTok, did you capture it?
Marie:
No.
Lee Coffin:
No,
Marie:
It's recorded and will never be shown to public, but apparently broadcasted to the world. But the process is hard I think for so many parents because the unknowns are undefinable and you seem to cling to things that you want definitions. You'll cling to whatever nugget is out there. But for a parent who isn't currently at an institution where that track is laid out, this is how you do this, I would say you find your place that speaks to your passion. You hope that people see your child for who they are. Because that's what really matters and you love each other first, and just forget the stress and look to the future because that's what you're doing. You're setting your child up for their future and you've reached a goal in your life, you're putting your child forth, completely ready to take on the world.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Well, we're back on this uncertainty question. The space where I work is dominated by scarcity. Lots of applicants, a tiny class, that generates uncertainty about, "Will I get in or not?" And good news, at least in this audiences, you're beyond that question. But I do get it. And I think what you're hearing, whether it's spray-and-pray or ED or a targeted curated list, there's not one size fits all here. If you're a junior and you're going forward, you do have permission on the Common app anyway to go up to 20 applications. I don't advise that, but it's not wrong. You can go to three. I don't advise that either. But that's not risky. It's just you might have a very precise way of thinking about this.
And I think the challenge for juniors and their parents is you hear a lot, you read a lot, there's a lot online. And what's hard is to figure out what makes sense for me in the way I am going from where I am through this process. And if I'm giving you any kind of permission, it's just what my fourth grade teacher used to say, "Mind your own business." Like focus which I had a hard time with, which is stay focused on, "Who am I, what am I thinking and how do I get there?" And some of you live in places very different from our friend from Arizona who was describing an under resourced rural place where probably her peers weren't all charging towards the same goal. Some of you listening live in communities where everyone's after the same outcome, and that's stressful in its own way because there's a little bit of a Hunger Games vibe going on where you think you have to knock out everybody else. That's not true, but it happens.
Suzanne:
Hi, I'm Suzanne. We're from Mystic, Connecticut, and I want to go back to the kindness thing and maybe an ironic statement around the SAT. And I think reinstating the SAT is actually an act of kindness. And we visited a few times and we visited in the fall, and before you made the announcement of going back to the SAT requirement, but that day listening to the admissions officer speak saying, "We want you to submit your score. If you have one, please do so." And I understood they're asking because they want to admit you. They're not asking because they want to reject you. And it was just this dawning on me. And so I want to say to people out there, do not be afraid, that they know what they're doing in admissions. They know where you come from, they know your high school and just don't be afraid about that.
Lee Coffin:
No, thank you for that endorsement.
Jacques Steinberg:
Are there a few final points, parents, students, what are we missing? Is there anything you'd like to amplify in our final moments?
Will:
Hello, I'm Will, son of Heather. So I come from one of those competitive high schools where everyone is striving to get that Ivy League admission or just get into a good school. And what I'm curious about is, how do these schools accept students from the same school? Because me and my friend both came from the same school, early decision. And I think there's a lot of anxiety around people thinking, "If this person applies and they're better applicant than I am, I'm not going to get in." So I'm wondering how do you analyze applications if there are multiple from the same school?
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, great question. So again, back to my Hunger Games quip, you're not in competition directly with each other from the same high school. So the story I like to tell is a bit ago when I was working at Tufts and I used to read Washington DC and I had a school with 12 applicants and I brought 10 of the 12 to committee as projected acceptances. And my committee mates almost laughed me out of the room when the docket appeared. And they're like, "Just because you're the dean doesn't mean you could take everybody on your docket." And I said, "I read one by one and I saw 10 valid cases for admit. You can disagree with me, I'm just one of many people in the room. But individually, I think they each have earned consideration." We took 9 of the 10.
It happens. Does it happen often? No, just because of scarcity again. But the idea that you are in this tug of war with each other is not true. And you characterize a peer as maybe a better applicant, and you don't know what your peer's application looks like. You're writing yours. And the message to everyone is what I already said, focus on you, tell your story, use the application in all of its parts to bring yourself forward, include as much information as you can, whether that's testing, whether it's... The things that are optional are optional, but they're there because we're hoping you might do some of them. More is good. It's a little more work, but it rounds you out in a way that lets us meet you and give us permission to say, "There are two people from this high school and they've both earned a spot." Maybe there are three, maybe there're four, maybe there's no one. There are some schools around the world where multiple people applied, nobody got in. That wasn't intentional, it just was the byproduct.
So if you're in one of those schools where you're all jockeying for position. I often talk about my niece who is now a senior in college, but when she was in high school, she was near the top of her class and she looked at one of her classmates who is a fraction of a point ahead of her to be valedictorian. And I heard for a year and a half how she had to get an A plus because he was going to get the A plus. And I was like, "It doesn't matter if you're number three and he's number one. If you're number two and he's number five. You're at the top of the class. Stop." It's nice to know who the valedictorian is, but that's not always the person who gets in because someone ranked 15 places lower, if there's rank, could be the one who holistically made a better case. And that happens all the time.
So son of Heather, good question to remind everybody that when it's time to apply, don't pay attention to who's applying where, and to the degree you can, don't talk about it juniors. Just keep your own counsel. Parents, same thing. You don't need to tell everyone where you're looking, what your SATs are, who got what grade on what test.
One of my very good friends in high school was in this category. She just did not share anything about her academic work. She was in the honors courses with us, but she never talked about her grades, she didn't talk about her testing, she didn't talk about where she was applying. We got to the spring of our senior year and off she went to Duke. And nobody knew she had applied, nobody knew she got in and she said, "It was my search, I did it my way. I didn't need to share." And all these years later, Cammy Meyers, if you're listening, I think you are the patron saint of how to do this, because the discipline it takes to just do it quietly in a world where we post a lot of things is refreshing and will mitigate some of the angsty worry you have about who else might be in the pool with you. It's with you, not instead of you, I think is my final piece on that.
Jacques Steinberg:
As a journalist for 25 years, I had plenty of people say to me, "No comment," in answer to a question from me, including Lee. And you might be able to find a polite way parents and students to say in effect, "No comment."
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, or, "I like the way my search is playing out, I'm happy with my choices." Stop. That also works for nosy relatives. We do a Thanksgiving pod every year around what to do at Thanksgiving when Uncle Joe wants to know where you're applying and then you start getting a homily from Joe about, "That search makes no sense." You don't need to tell Joe. He's well-intentioned, but you don't need to tell him.
Jacques Steinberg:
And as you all have learned firsthand, this is a very personal process and it's very personal to your family, to your child, and that's where first and foremost your allegiance lies. So to bring things to a close, I'm looking for one final comment from the floor, from this group of experts, and then we'll throw to Lee to bring us to a close. Who has the last word?
Grayson:
Hi again. I'm Grayson from Denver. I just say that the greatest lesson that I learned is that this process can feel like overwhelming, unfair at times, super complex. But at the end of the day, this process is a means to an end, which is education. And it's not the end of itself in and of itself. And so I'd say keeping that in mind, that the end goal is to become an educated person and to go to a school that wants you and that you want, and to put the process in the back of your mind and not make the process your goal, but have education be your goal. And I think that is the best way to having a successful application process.
Lee Coffin:
Boom. So Grayson, thank you.
That's why I love these live episodes. I couldn't have written that better, so thanks for that outro. Outro is a journalistic word I've learned from Charlotte, my producer, which is the way I summarize an episode and get out of it. So my outro is amen to what Grayson just said, and thank you all for joining us today for live studio audience version of Admission Beat.
For now, this is Lee Coffin from Dartmouth College. Thanks for listening.