Season 5: Episode 5 Transcript
Admissions Moms Who Know Too Much?
Lee Coffin:
From Hanover New Hampshire, I'm Lee Coffin, Dartmouth's dean of admissions and financial aid, and this is Admissions Beat.
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This week I have a reunion of sorts. Over the last month or so, I've had conversations with some former colleagues, all of whom have kiddos moving through or adjacent to the college admission process. And it occurred to me that somebody who has been a college admission officer, and is now a parent, has the inside track on all things admissions. And I started to wonder, is that a good thing or is it too much info that could clog up the journey of a 17-18 year-old through the college admission process with, in this case, a mom who knows a bit more than the typical mom?
So today we're going to have a conversation with three of my former colleagues, and I'm calling it Moms Who Know Too Much because they do each have an inside scoop. They've been admission officers, and now they are sitting in the seat adjacent to a child watching as this thing called the college search plays out. So when we'll come back, we'll meet our three moms and we'll have a conversation about how they use their professional expertise to inform a search or when they need to bite their tongue and let things play out without comment.
We'll be right back.
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So I'm really excited to welcome three of my former colleagues. I'll go in chronological order and start with Ronnie Bernier Burnett who worked with me, I'm shocked to say, almost 30 years ago, when we were both assistant directors at Connecticut College. Ronnie, hi. So good to see you.
Ronnie Bernier Burnett:
Hi. I'm equally shocked.
Lee Coffin:
And you are now the mom of a high school senior and you're living in Chicago and you were one of the people I had a recent conversation with that prompted the idea for this episode. So tag, this is all your fault.
Ronnie Bernier Burnett:
That's awesome.
Lee Coffin:
Kathy Cho Seldow, aka K-Cho to those of us who worked with her at Tufts in the early 2000s where she was an assistant director of admission for many years, is now a mom living in Southern California and she's got a junior in high school. And I've seen some social media posts of the Seldows on the road. So Kathy, welcome to Admissions Beat literally and podcasting-wise.
Kathy Cho Seldow:
So excited to be here.
Lee Coffin:
Rounding out our trio is Courtney Minden. Courtney and I had the longest shared professional adventure. She also was on the admission staff at Tufts for most of my tenure there, left to become Dean of Admissions at Babson, ultimately Vice President for Admissions and Financial Aid at Babson and is now the stepmom to an eighth grader, but already looking over the fence into the world of college admissions that he will explore sooner than we know. So Courtney, hi.
Courtney Minden:
Hello. And I'm already looking thinking 12th grade and 11th grade. I'll need advice in a few years. So this is all really good pre-work.
Lee Coffin:
You're a full admission generation behind Kathy and Ronnie.
Kathy Cho Seldow:
It comes quickly though.
Courtney Minden:
Oh, I'm going to a curriculum night tonight to speak about how ninth grade impacts college search.
Lee Coffin:
So Courtney, that's a great segue. So as we think about moms who know too much, I guess my first question for the three of you is: once an admission officer, always an admission officer? I mean, can you ever really let go of what you once did 9 to 5 or is it animating the way you think about this with your kids? So Courtney, it sounds like you're right there already.
Courtney Minden:
Yeah, well as fate would have it, I had a lot happen at once. I was vice president for enrollment management at Babson College while I was sort of entering into this adventure of parenting and being a new wife and relocating. So as I made the transition from 20-plus year career in admission into a today career in parenthood, it was really a stark contrast. So it was almost as if my attention at Babson got displaced right into navigating junior high. I've not been a mother for very long, but I have been a manager and an admission professional and basically soundpiece for adolescents for all these years.
So if you ask my husband and my son, I'm a terrible cook. I can't really make beds and carpool. I'm getting better at carpool and timing, but I can do college and I can do school choice. And so it was sort of my leaning into my strengths, which sometimes I think gets the better of me and I need to maybe take a cooking class or something. But right now it's how I can understand my stepson. And so I've become a very good sort of reader of body language of when I need to just, as Lee said before, bite my tongue and I've been really practicing the tongue-biting exercise quite a bit and I will be doing that tonight.
Lee Coffin:
So then Ronnie, you, of the three of you, your admissions experience was the most distant in terms of when you finished working in admissions and shifted to advertising and public relations, but you also have a senior in high school.
Ronnie Bernier Burnett:
Yes.
Lee Coffin:
So does what Courtney just said ring true for you too, even though it's kind of...
Ronnie Bernier Burnett:
Completely.
Lee Coffin:
Completely? How so?
Ronnie Bernier Burnett:
Completely. One of the things that came back around to me when I started to be able to read body language was when my son was in nursery school or preschool and they would say, you pick your kid up in the evening and you're taking them home and they're cranky and it's just not always the best parent child interaction and that's because you are the safe space. And they've been keeping it together for, I mean some kids from 7 A.M. to 6 P.M. And so finally when they see you is when they can release.
And I started to see and act from that place of focusing on being the safe harbor. And so if school was going to be a lot about college applications and friends talking about it and counselors checking on it, et cetera, there was a point at which I looked at my son and he was talking to me about just stress and I thought, he's not present and it's senior year, I want him to be present. And so we had a moratorium. He had maybe five or six applications in and it was October and it was like "we're going off applications for six weeks" or something like that. We just stopped. We didn't talk about it. Anything that was like if he was in the middle of something, we just dropped it. And that was from this place of thinking about we are the ones who can take the air out of the balloon.
Lee Coffin:
Kathy, how's your body language reading skills.
Kathy Cho Seldow:
Mine's a lot better than my husband's, but I think it's because I worked with you at Tufts and then moved into more general college admissions where I worked with parents and kids. And so I saw the good, the bad and the ugly of parent-kid relationships through this process and sometimes it was quite ugly. And so I could totally see why and how they got here, but I didn't want to be that parent. And so my mantra is always be a mom first.
My son and I recently went to a senior meeting, he's going to be a senior next year and course planning and "have you thought about college?" And he's definitely ahead of the curve, partly because I'm his mom, but also he's trying to get recruited for athletics. And so he's been thinking about it I think sooner than most of his peers. Most of his peers are just starting to think about 12th grade, SAT prep, that kind of stuff. And he's basically kind of done with it now he's just kind of, I don't know, hanging in there for dear life.
But so when we went to this meeting with his guidance counselor, I always start the meeting off with, "I work in college admissions" and then I take a step back and then I just shut my mouth so that everybody knows where we are and some assumptions could be had, but I always let him lead the meeting and it's his meeting and every so often I'll speak up and I'll get a dirty look from him and then, so that'll remind me. Okay, I need to stop talking and just let him kind of run the meeting. It's his meeting.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. So Kathy, let me lean into something you said a minute ago that's interesting. So you've witnessed parent interactions that you described as bad behavior. What is that? To parents listening who might say, "Uh-oh, is that me?" What mirror do you want to hold up right now and say, this is what I witnessed, that you don't want to generate the dirty look from your child?
Kathy Cho Seldow:
I think the process is really—there's a lot of stress, so there's a lot of stress that we can see, but there's also just things. So if I ask my son like, "Oh, how'd you do on that big test?" I'm just asking, how'd the test go? But he hears kind of like, "Oh, my world depends on how I do on this test. This means what my grade is going to be, which is going to dictate where I go to college. And then depending on that, I'm either going to be a success or a failure in life." And so sometimes I try not to ask those questions.
And so parents, I don't think, quite understand how stressful it is. They come to it like, "Oh, you have to do X, Y, and Z to get into college." And there's no clear roadmap. But I think parents have heard you need to do this to get this result Y when there's lots of different ways to get to college. And so the problem I think is when parents have a set plan or a set mindset and they're not open to maybe hearing their students or hearing the counselor who's giving them some good advice about how this is not kind of the end all be all.
Lee Coffin:
And Ronnie, you're in the midst of it. So your son has filed applications, but you are among a peer group in his senior class where seen parents doing all sorts of conversations and all sorts of worry. Does Kathy's characterization from the 11th grade seat carry through to what you've witnessed through mid-twelve?
Ronnie Bernier Burnett:
Yes, and certainly some parents are better at it than others. What I found that was good, in our case was, very early on freshman year or sophomore year, they do the PSAT and my son came back from having taken the PSAT and he got a headache in the middle of it—and I should correct it wasn't the PSAT, he did the practice ACT, and he got a headache in the middle, had to go to the nurse's office. And for me that was a lesson and became a theme frankly, that life happens. So he didn't have a practice. Okay, moving on and there were so many things for us that happened over the years where it was like this process is going to be what it is and he's going to show up as himself.
And so that was good for me to know because I remember when I was at Connecticut College, there were some things that were about test prep, which I had never done and did not realize the industry behind test prep. And I thought, "Oh, note to self. Test prep." To carry forth for 30 years, right? And then again, test prep didn't fit in the way it did for other families who maybe were starting test prep a year in advance, six months in advance. And every time we thought about test prep, it just wasn't the right time to do it for my kid. And so I had a lot of revising of the way the process was going to work.
Lee Coffin:
And Courtney what happened at the... Or you're about to go to the school to do a consult...?
Courtney Minden:
We're about to go to the school and what I'm sort of right now trying to process is I actually had a conversation with my husband in preparation for this night where I said, "Just so we're clear, over the next five years I'm in charge." This is my jam actually. I actually really like it. And he's like, "It is your jam, I give it to you."
But he will have a college counselor and I will not be the college counselor and I need to learn to put up boundaries with this person. And I have to prepare myself for that now because I don't think those boundaries will come naturally to me because I see myself as, "Do it. We're the same." We're not the same. That's my son's college counselor and she's being paid to guide him. I can give advice, I can watch, I can sort of try to help him interpret some things about what to expect from college, but she's in charge.
Kathy Cho Seldow:
So Courtney, it's so funny that you say you've had this conversation with your husband cause I've also had a similar conversation with my husband to say, I'm kind of the expert. Not that I'm a know-it-all, but I know more than you. So when I say something, it should land with some sort of weight. But it doesn't always, because like I said, it's like this process is fraught in emotion.
So I literally just talked to my husband this weekend and he goes, "You know, it's taken a long time, but I think I understand what you've been trying to say to me all these years that it's his process." When we think about the last time we were in this world, he was looking at colleges 30 years ago. I've worked in it, so I've seen colleges grow up over the last 20, 30 years in a way that he hasn't. So his perceptions about some schools are like, "Oh, I know this guy who went to that college from my high school and he's terrible, that college is terrible, but it's a totally different college now." And so that was part of his growth. And then the other part is just that emotional weight that you have to like, I need the best for my son. So just a warning that this might come up over and over again.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Ronnie, did you have a spousal conversation that paralleled this?
Ronnie Bernier Burnett:
Yes, I did.
Lee Coffin:
Yes, you did.
Ronnie Bernier Burnett:
And there was constant overstepping.
Lee Coffin:
By your husband?
Ronnie Bernier Burnett:
By my husband, yes. Constant overstepping by my husband. And what I have to say is what he is tremendous about is he understands our son. He's kind of a whisperer around him. And so for me, I was really focused on particular elements and "Okay, well let's make sure that we tick this box and let's make sure that the essays look this way or include this." And he really was very grounding for the whole family in terms of, "Is that really necessary?"
Lee Coffin:
It sounds like you've all laid down some guidelines around, this was my job. I have a little inside cheat sheet on how this works, but most parents will not have that. They may hear things, but they haven't been you. They haven't read files and they haven't been in the admission committee. So what's worked? How has that parental like, my role, your role? How do we keep our child in the central role? What's that like?
Kathy Cho Seldow:
Part of it is that I have to let go. I can't write the guidance counselor, I can't write the teacher reqs. The school does what they do and what I can just help my kid in doing is finding a path that feels good for him, where he feels like he found it because God forbid he's somewhere and then blames me for it because I told him to go here, which would happen I'm sure if I told him, go here, it would innately make him hate it and then it would be my fault. So it is kind of a, it is a bit of a process.
Lee Coffin:
For all parents who are trying to help their applicant move through this in an intentional, thoughtful, successful way ultimately, you do want to intervene sometimes. And I think whether you're a former admission officer who knows how the sausage gets made, cause you were once in the kitchen or you're just a parent who broadly understands how this goes, or maybe you're a parent like mine who have no idea how this played out, but I hear you recommending to your fellow parents, count to 10. Ronnie, you just giggled at that. Like that...
Ronnie Bernier Burnett:
Yeah. If I'm fully honest, I sent an email asking if there was an opportunity because as I said, the school gives the practice ACT, and I was thinking National Merit Scholars. So I did send that email asking about the PSAT, and they had a different process.
In terms of the relationship that I try and have with Gideon's counselor and foster for Gideon with his college counselor, my experience in admissions was further back, but also what they know is where other students from my son's school have gone and flourished and currently what schools could be supportive for him based on what they know of his academic trajectory. And so I wanted to stay in my lane in terms of the aspect of the process that was important to me and not step on the relationship that he genuinely should have with the college counselor and what the college counselor can bring that is far beyond what I can because of just the particulars that they know about the situation that my son is coming from.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Well that was what you, answered a question. I was about to ask that. Have any of you shared your professional history with the school? Kathy, have you outed yourself?
Kathy Cho Seldow:
Yeah, I do. It's the first thing I say, just so that it's clear. And at that meeting, the counselor said, "I'm sure you know more than I do then." And I said, "No, no, I'm sure you know a lot. I am sure I know a lot, but you know is things that I don't know. A lot of things about the school, the inner workings of how their process goes." And also I think it's okay for my son especially to hear it from somebody else. I mean, I can't tell you how many times that I've called a friend or my brother to say, "Hey, can you call him and tell him this?" Because if it comes out of my mouth, he hears it one way versus someone hearing it from another person's perspective. And also I have my own bias about what's a good school and what's a good fit.
And so I don't want that to be so powerful of a voice in his mind. So I do try to keep my mouth shut, but there are certain things where I've really like, I was like, "This is how it's going to go guys," both for my son and daughter. I'm like, "Here are the classes that I want you to take. It's not written in stone right now, but before we enter high school, this is what I think is going to happen unless something catastrophic happens, this is kind of the plan. Here's where there's some flexibility. Here's where there's none."
In terms of extracurricular activities, it's easy with my son. With my daughter, I was like, "Come on, what do you want to do? Let's find something. We can't just stay at home and bake all the time, although that's not a bad thing, but let's create a life with friends and people your age and find something that you're passionate about." And so that's the kind of role that I've decided to take. And so I try to bite off just a little bit and then just lean into that. And then the rest I'm like, "That's on you guys. I can take you to the watering hole, but then you need to drink it or not."
Lee Coffin:
And Ronnie, are you seen as the expert by your son?
Ronnie Bernier Burnett:
Oh, he challenges me on everything. "What's the data behind that? How old is this information that you're referencing? I think I'd like to go to speak to my college counselor about that." I finally was just like, "Oh..."
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. But I think that's also a broad piece of advice to parents is having an ally who's not the mom who can move the conversation forward in a way that sometimes there's tension between mom and child or dad and child or maybe dad and mom, letting your children see you as a resource as they welcome it. You may be very eager to have this conversation and your daughter is not ready yet. And so let her catch up to you and know when you need to say, "Okay, time for a parental intervention to move this thing forward because the clock is ticking and I haven't seen movement yet." And you're all smiling at me, Courtney. That sounds right.
Courtney Minden:
Oh, we're going through something like that right now. Not around college, around a project, but the parents are supposed to be hands off on it and he's not doing what he's supposed to be doing. And I said, "Do you remember a week ago when I said do this and this and this so that you don't arrive where you are now?" I said, "Do you remember that?" And he said, "I wasn't listening."
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Which is normal.
Courtney Minden:
But I can't make the assumption that he's always going to do what I say and then make the assumption that it's always going to be a struggle for him to listen to me. That's my first lesson is that it is going to shift.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. And how do your friends know you each, have you shared your professional background with your children's friends? Do they seek you out as a resource?
Courtney Minden:
They're starting to.
Ronnie Bernier Burnett:
I mostly don't.
Lee Coffin:
You hide?
Ronnie Bernier Burnett:
Well, I just...
Lee Coffin:
You're on a podcast now Ronnie, so we…all of Chicago knows.
Ronnie Bernier Burnett:
Oh, there you go.
Lee Coffin:
There you go.
Ronnie Bernier Burnett:
I let people have their own process. And so there are some friends who do know, and probably really it's just in this past year or two when I've been going through this as a parent that I've come to share with more people. I've had a lot of really interesting conversations and they've asked for advice and I'm honest with everybody.
I mean, the part that's most interesting to me about my experience walking through this is I had to come to terms with, I have an individual who I have wanted to be his own person, and early on I put him in Montessori school and then he's someone who trusts but verifies, and he wants to do his own research. And so he's independent in so many ways. And then I kind of swoop in and have these ideas that I believe are good ideas and well-intentioned ideas. And so when I talk to parents now who are close to me, I talk to them about the fact that I have had to rethink my approach because my approach wasn't working for the child that I have. And that was very interesting because again, I had banked so much knowledge.
Lee Coffin:
Cause you're a good student.
Ronnie Bernier Burnett:
There you go.
Lee Coffin:
And Kathy. So you've got two right behind each other. So son, how old's your daughter? She's a sophomore.
Kathy Cho Seldow:
Freshman.
Lee Coffin:
Oh, okay. So she's got a little bit more runway ahead of her, but are you already starting to see how they're going to be different?
Kathy Cho Seldow:
Oh my gosh. From the womb they were completely different. Yeah. And yeah, they're wildly different. I mean, Gabe, my son's confidence is like, he steps into a room and he's like, "I got it." Whether he is got it or not, I don't know, but he feels he's got it. Where's my daughter's like, she's very talented, she's very smart, she's got a lot of things, but she's always wondering, "Do I have it? Is it enough?" And they're very different individuals. And so how do you help? One needs, I think, a little bit more support. The other one just needs to, I don't know. I let him kind of just fly. I just take them there and I'm like, "See you later. Come back when you're done."
Lee Coffin:
So as former admission officers who've gone on campus tours now, what's that like? To be, a couple of you might've been tour guides, you might've managed a tour guide program. Now you're following somebody walking backwards and listening. Is that, I would think it would be fascinating. I did a tour with my niece a few years ago and it was like an anthropological experiment. I was like, "Wow, look how this campus does it differently than where I work. Oh, and look how this one does differently than the last one." Are you doing that too, or are you just quietly following along and keeping your own counsel? I can't really picture any of you keeping your own counsel.
Kathy Cho Seldow:
I loved it. Loved. I love every single minute of it. And unfortunately, or fortunately, one of the first visits was to my alma mater. And so they ask, "Any alums in the audience?" And so of course my hand shoots up. And second, if I were to relive my life, I would not have raised my hand because the tour guide kept asking me, how do you compare this to when you were here? I felt like I was speaking a lot, and my son definitely thought I was speaking a lot, so I learned a lot from that.
But anyway, I silently walk around and I do the same thing. I'm like, "Oh, wow, they did a good job of the tour guide, educating the tour guides here," or "Ooh, they might need to do a little bit more training for the tour guides in this one area as we walk around." But I love it. I love it.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Ronnie, what's your time been?
Ronnie Bernier Burnett:
My assessment had to do with the presentations, the pre-tour presentations.
Lee Coffin:
Which makes sense because it's sort of your professional space now.
Ronnie Bernier Burnett:
Yes. And so what information were they sharing and what were the opportunities going to be to experience the culture of the campus? What was also interesting for me was watching my son, because my process and his process were completely different in experiencing these tours and information sessions. So I might lean over to him and say, "Hey, don't you have a question?" "No, I don't." "How can you not have a question? I've got 12."
Lee Coffin:
Wait, so Ronnie, hold that. So as a communications professional now, as a former admission officer, as a mom who's done these tours, what advice would you give fellow parents about those info sessions? What should they be listening for?
Ronnie Bernier Burnett:
Well, first backing up, the first thing I would say, which I didn't do, but now wish I had, understanding the stress and the way the stress manifests for seniors particularly. But I would have sorted out the, I'm a big school kid versus "I like medium or small" within our community. And I'm in Chicago, so I would have just simply done University of Illinois, Champaign and DePaul and Northwestern. I could go on.
I remember on our way for vacation we were going to see Boston University and we were on our way to Cape Cod, but we landed in Boston and I'd actually scheduled for Boston University, I think Babson and Boston College, but the flight was delayed. I had to cancel two of the three. And so we land with 30 minutes to get to Boston University, and I was like, "You guys go, I'll wait for the luggage." And it was like this OJ Simpson through the airport and come to find out, he is not a fan of the urban school right on the trolley track. But we could have sorted that out here under less stressful circumstances. And he wound up being a small liberal arts to mid-size school guy, very interested in interdisciplinary studies. And so with that knowledge that could have informed, okay, so where do we go from here when we fan out?
The thing that I would say to parents is to let their student have their process in terms of the way that they tour. And I spoke to a cousin of mine who is a college professor, and when she took her son on college tours, she'd say, "So what do you think?" And he'd say, or, "What did you think of that school?" And he'd say, "Yeah, it's on my list. They have a great cafeteria."
And she said it was all about the cafeteria. And I said to her, "I'm so grateful to you for saying that because that's going to keep me from getting worked up about, well, the cafeteria. I mean, who's paying for a cafeteria?" And there's an evolution through the process and through their thinking over time. So from the first school we visited to the last school we visited. The last school, he was just reading the brochure during the info session the whole time, just page by page by page. Again, his process is different from mine. I was focused and paying attention, but I also was looking for what's the culture here? And kind of breaking off and trying to ask questions of current students in the library. Or I'd ask questions of the people working in the coffee shop. And so trying to get a sense of, so what could this be like where I am leaving my kid for four years?
Lee Coffin:
Well, you broke off the tour cause I think when you're talking about the cafeteria, I'm smiling because I think all of us, when we've been in an admission office, you think about what's the story we're trying to tell? What are the publications, what's the info session? And we never focus on, maybe you mention the food in passing, but it's not usually headline news during all these programming. And the kids go there and we're talking about biochemistry and they're thinking about, "What kind of cereal do they have every morning?" So you do have those moments of the 17, 18-year-old view of what resonates versus the adult version. And Kathy, you're also a planner, so you're looking at Ronnie's experience as true.
Kathy Cho Seldow:
Yeah, I think what Ronnie said about the process is going to look different in the beginning than the end is huge. It is a hundred percent. And so I remember, I guess it was a couple years ago now, my son was like, "I don't want to go to a school that's the same size," or he wanted to go to a much larger school. And as we visited schools, now what's bubbling to the top of his list are these small schools.
So it's interesting to see that kind of path that he's taken. Going back to my own advice that I kind of live by is just be quiet because in beginning's going to look different than the end. So if you say too much now, you are revealing too much and your kid's going to pick up on it and it's either going to be too much of an influence or it's going to drive them in the opposite direction. Neither one of which I think you really want. And there are definitely times when I've had to put schools on our visit list because I think maybe this might be a good fit. And sometimes there was a hit, sometimes there was a miss, but I did it very quietly because I am the planner, I make the plane reservations and I make the hotel reservations. So it was kind of easy to do and then you just kind of sit back and see what hits, what doesn't hit and then he'll change his mind.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Courtney, of the three of you, you were most recently an admission officer and you were also most recently a parent. Interesting overlap. Do you witness in your conversations with Raymond, things that sync up with what you would say when you would do a talk to other parents? Does the admission person in you hear herself saying the same thing at home?
Courtney Minden:
Yes and no. I actually think what's really interesting, I think my time away has sort of, away from admission, has shifted my mindset because of what I see from Raymond it's shifting my mindset of what I should be thinking about for admission. So the food is a perfect example. Raymond tells me what he has for lunch every day because this is the first year he could get cafeteria lunch and not brown bag lunch. And so the fact that last week the lemonade was gone for a week, no one knew why and every day, "Is the lemonade coming back?" And that's really important to him.
But what is really on my mind these days and what I can control is the soft skills and the things that I think collectively in this room always annoyed us about different applications or emails that go into the application, like an improper greeting, "Hey, my testings coming. My teacher will send it next week. Thanks. T-H-X." Where, you know, "Dear Dean Coffin, thank you for thinking of me." Or writing an acknowledgement after an interviewer or some sort of, I mean he's not looking at colleges right now, but really being a good human and really being able to talk about, well, when you do go the extra mile and thank them for a great conversation, they're going to remember you when you really need them and you really love your conversation. So you want this relationship to keep going.
So when I put myself my admission hat back on, I'm thinking, I wish I had put that into the presentations just to have a whole section on the things you don't think about when submitting an application. Are you saying all the right thank-yous? Are you on time for your interviews? They're now on Zoom, so it's really easy if it's three o'clock to push it to 3:02 because your zoom was installing, well think about that ahead of time and make sure there are no glitches. Those are the things that I'm thinking about to impart to him now.
In the meantime, you're talking about the lists and the tours. I can't wait for that part, but I know that's not my time yet. If I start talking to him about touring BU he'll turn me off. But I can talk about saying yours sincerely, instead of peace, at the end of an email. I did notice that as the admission officer.
Lee Coffin:
So I'm curious before we wrap up. So the three of you spent time in an admission office and you read this is called the Admissions Beat because there's lots of headlines that swirl around the work I still do. And I wonder how you come to the news as a mom who can listen to it, read a story, or listen to a podcast and be like, yeah, I'm hearing between the lines here. How do you look at the contemporary admission moment from your previous admission roles? Ronnie, what do you see all these decades later? You're still paying attention.
Ronnie Bernier Burnett:
Yeah, well, so I'm a data geek and I am very interested in the trends and also the process of admissions and the people who do admissions. I have respect, but also I feel connection to the way they see the world. And that notion of we're building a community of people and the care and thoughtfulness that goes into that.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah.
Ronnie Bernier Burnett:
We all know certain things have happened in the landscape. And so one of the ways that my former admissions work has informed how I am looking at a search with him is when the Supreme Court decision came down. I became very intentional around we don't know what recruitment's going to look like coming out of this. And so what are the schools that have shown a commitment to diversity of every sort, in terms of financial aid, providing financial aid in terms of diversity and in terms of bringing together groups of individuals with different thinking. And so that became an important piece of putting together that search list. And so we've had different motions of re-reviewing and saying, is this the right list based on where we are now? And I think a lot of that comes out of my experience sitting in committee and the way that we all thought about what is this community of students we are creating?
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, I think that's probably the most hard to capture part of the work we do is, when you're in the committee room shaping the class, and by shaping a class, you're also shaping a community that that class joins. And I always think about that part of the cycle, which we're about to go into, as really the heart of the matter. Where you're, and if the place is small, even more heightened because you're thinking really carefully about what does this community represent. And I think Ronnie, what I hear you saying to listeners, especially parents, is thinking about climate and community and culture through your family's own view on all these topics is important. However you might answer that question, the campus that welcomes your child whenever, should sync up with your values as a family. And to be alert to that I think is another way of saying it.
Courtney Minden:
Yeah. I also think that if you think about what is in the mainstream media, so let's take away all of the insider journals, the Chronicles and the Insider Higher Ed, but go into more of the hometown newspapers, the networks and the major urban newspapers, I don't know that they always get it right and they're very good at the headline without the what does it mean. And so over this past year, what I've really tried to do is act as interpreter. And this doesn't even, isn't limited within the family, it's within the community and within my outer family of like, what does this mean for your son or daughter? It doesn't mean that they're not going to get into college. It is not as doomsday as what the journalists are trying to say in order to sell newspapers. So I always try to think about why should you care? What does it mean and what are they not saying?
Lee Coffin:
So let me close for each of you, like what, drawing again from your history as an admission officer and now you're at various stages of college admission with your own child, what guidance would you share with your fellow parents? College admission, particularly in the very selective space where I work, generates a lot of buzz, but maybe the buzz is just noise.
Courtney Minden:
I think that's it Lee, I think it is... The first thing I will, and I will always say to parents is block out the chatter and really just think about how it impacts your child and your child's success, and what does that mean based on his or her personality, unique personality? And I also, a few years ago, I read in a journal, a business journal, this one reporter, every time he had a hard decision to make, he went through this checklist of should it be said, should it be said now, and should it be said by me? And I think you can think about that as a parent. So should I say this at all? Is it going to be a value-added observation for my son or my daughter? For me is this the right time? Is mid-eighth grade the best time to be talking about SATs? Absolutely not. And should it be said by me or should it be said by the counselor or somebody else who doesn't see this child 24/7 and can see the broader picture than I can at this point?
Lee Coffin:
Thank you all for coming to Admissions Beat as listeners. Thanks for listening always. But thanks for indulging this conversation around pulling from your experience and thinking about admissions through the prism of being a parent in the college. It was really fascinating. And Kathy, Courtney, Ronnie, always fun to see you. I miss you. It's been great spending time having this conversation about parenting and admissions. And for the rest of you, I'll be back next week with another episode of Admission Beat.
For now, this is Lee Coffin from Dartmouth College. Thanks for joining us.