Season 7: Episode 2 Transcript
Junior Kickoff: It's Time to Discover!
Lee Coffin:
From Hanover, New Hampshire, I'm Lee Coffin, Dartmouth's vice president and dean of admission and financial aid, and this is Admissions Beat. On our season opener last week, my co-host, Jacques Steinberg, referred to a junior kickoff. And junior kickoffs are programs that happen at high schools, usually in the winter-spring of 11th grade where admission people are invited to the high school to lay out the groundwork for students and parents about how to get their college search started. So this week we have a pod version of a junior kickoff with a college counselor, and myself included, three deans to help 11th graders think about how to get the wheels turning on the college search. So when we come back, we'll be joined by an all-star lineup that will offer a pod version of this time-honored tradition of going to a high school and doing a dean's panel to the 11th graders. So we'll be right back.
(music)
Well, I'm thrilled this week to have three friends join me on the pod: two returning podders, and a brand-new friend of the pod. So we'll say hi first to the returning guest Darryl Tiggle, director of college counseling at Friends School of Baltimore. So Darryl, so fun to have you back. Thanks for doing this again.
Darryl Tiggle:
Thank you for having me. I'm excited to join you all tonight.
Lee Coffin:
It's a treat every time. And also returning for I think her third or fourth visit is... fourth, she's waving her fingers at me…Elena Hicks, the assistant vice provost and dean of admission at Southern Methodist University, SMU. Hi, Elena.
Elena Hicks:
Hi, Lee. Great to be back.
Lee Coffin:
For listeners, Elena and I did an actual panel about a month ago at Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale, so we're regrouping to do one more pass through this topic for all of you. And our third guest is a first-time podder, at least with Admissions Beat, my longtime pal, Karen Kristoff, the dean of admission at Colorado College. Karen, welcome to Admissions Beat.
Karen Kristoff:
Oh, I'm so excited to be here. This is going to be a great conversation.
Lee Coffin:
Since you're the newbie, introduce yourself a little bit more, Karen. So you're at Colorado College now. Tell us a little bit about the last 20 years or so of your life. I know you're a relatively recent arrival to the Rockies, but where were you before?
Karen Kristoff:
My stint at Colorado College started in July 2020. I've also worked at four other liberal arts colleges and they're definitely in my blood. So I've worked at Sarah Lawrence College, Bennington College, Grinnell College, and then right before I came to Colorado, I worked for 20 years at Smith College.
Lee Coffin:
So I ask all of our first-time guests to go back to high school and share how you got from high school to college. So what was your college search like?
Karen Kristoff:
I started looking at colleges in the early '80s, and I think that my mother was probably a helicopter parent before there were helicopter parents. She had very specific ideas about what I should do, and in her mind, a women's college or a Catholic college would be the right way to go. And so that's where the search was steered in that particular direction. I went to Smith College, had a great education, absolutely life-transforming, and got really excited about working in the higher education space. So I just fell in love with the liberal arts college model, fell in love with great classmates, inspiring professors, folks I still keep in touch with. And now it's really fun because my friend's kids are coming to college. So I have a good friend whose son is coming to Colorado College, so there's just lovely ways to sort of stay connected in this world.
Lee Coffin:
Let's put a quick pin in some advice to juniors who might also have a parent hovering over the search. So Karen referenced an early version of a helicopter parent. Darryl, what's a helicopter parent, for people who have not heard that term?
Darryl Tiggle:
A helicopter parent, visually, is someone who's hovering over their child while they're doing things that the child can possibly manage on their own. And in this process, it's parents who might begin the conversation with an admissions person saying, "We are interested in being pre-med at college," right?
Lee Coffin:
Right. Right.
Darryl Tiggle:
Or, "We are scheduling a time to visit." So parents who are, for good reasons, super invested in the process. Really excited just like they are about other things in their child's lives but might have trouble letting the child move into that self-control of the process.
Lee Coffin:
Okay. So we're going to start our junior program at the beginning. So the 11th graders are just at the starting line, this has been on their mind for a while, but we want to offer some thoughts about how to get started. And the word I use a lot for students to think about at this moment is "discovery." Step one, you have to discover before you apply. So applying comes later, we'll talk about that many months from now, but for juniors, you have to take stock of a couple of things. So I thought we should start with the most fundamental of all elements of taking stock. You have to look in the mirror and ask a couple of questions to yourself. Darryl, what does that look like?
Darryl Tiggle:
We tell our students to look in the mirror and ask themselves a bunch of questions, and they may not know the answers to all of the questions, but to some extent, "What would I like to study? What would I like to do? What type of academic life do I want to live?" And then really simple ones, "How big? How small? How close to home? How far from home?" Or, "How urban? How not urban? How small-town?" And then they really should think about campus culture and where their lives will transform outside the classroom. So oftentimes my students and I pick on the Ivy League, they'll say, "Hey, I want to go to an Ivy League college." I go, "You mean a good college?" They say, "No, Ivy League." And I go, "You mean good." And they go, "No, Ivy League." I go, "Look, those places are all super different feeling, so make sure that you go and try to find out what place feels right to you." And that's a function of how big, how small, how close, how far, how STEM, how liberal arts.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. And do those questions reflect the person too? I mean Elena, as you heard Darryl lay that out, it seems to me that a student is also asking those questions about herself, "What do I want?" I mean, I would say to the student, "You have to figure out who you are before you can figure out where you want to go." How does a student do that?
Elena HIcks:
I think that's a great question, Lee. As you all were talking, I was thinking about this that, especially in junior year, it is about discovery, and it is about mindset. And the mindset that I always recommend for junior students to have is beginning to have the "take charge" mindset. What do I know about myself? What do my supporters say about me that maybe I don't see in myself yet? But they've known me all my life and they're like, "Here's your strong points," or, "Here are the things I think would be good for you to look at or think about." I think it's a balance of doing this search from a college search process that comes from a college counseling office, but also searching inside about who you really are, what you really want, what authentically makes you happy. Junior year, you still should be in the mindset of, "This is a fun process. I'm learning, I'm growing."
Lee Coffin:
But Karen, as Elena said that, that seems like a hard thing for a 11th-grader to do.
Karen Kristoff:
Yeah, I think it can feel daunting. And so I think I just love the way that Darryl and Elena framed the questions. You don't have to answer all the big questions today. You don't have to have your list of 20 colleges you're going to apply to, but you have some thoughts about who you are as a learner, who you are as a human being. And I might even venture to say, where do you want to develop next as a human being? What are your aspirations? Maybe not your career, your major that will all come, but what are the things that get you excited? What gets you out of bed in the morning? What are the things that bring you joy? What are the things you'd like to try? What are the things that challenge you but intrigue you at the same time? So I think there's lots of way to frame the questions so that they're insightful but they're not intimidating.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. I use three letters to organize thoughts around the discovery, and I call them the three Ps: program, place, and people. A program might mean am I looking for a university with lots of schools or am I looking at a liberal arts college? Am I looking for something pre-professional or do I want a program that lets me ponder, another P, what it is I might like to study? Because most first-year students aren't asked to commit to a major. However, there are some places that do where you're applying into the specific program. So the program piece goes off in lots of different directions, and for many students, I think it's the first time they stop and think, "What do I want to study?"
And the companion to that at Dartmouth, I will stretch the program question and say, "We're not on a semester system, we do quarters." That's a type of program. Those terms are 10 weeks. Our classes are small, like 15 or fewer. There's discussion more than lecture. That's all program. How does that feel? Do you want to be in a big lecture course where you can listen and absorb, maybe be a bit more anonymous, or do you really want to sit around a table with your peers and a professor and roll your sleeves up and every day have that kind of back and forth? Does that sound like a helpful way of advising 11th graders and their parents that think about program?
Darryl Tiggle:
Yeah. Well, I think program is a really good way to frame it because I tell them to think about academic experience. I'm at a place that's different than a lot of places. It's a private school, so it's different from public school and my place is different from a lot of private schools. And the way that we learn and grade and interact in the classroom speaks to our students and they really like that. So I go, "Look, academic experience is really, I think, synonymous with program," because they want to know and be at a place where it fits their scholarship.
Elena HIcks:
And Lee, may I add to you and Darryl, of the P's that you talk about, I want to throw in progress because, especially in junior year, senior year as well, that's what you ultimately want. That you progress through experiences and insights and learning and knowing and all those great things to know that by the end of junior year, you've really set yourself up and you are ready for summer and you're ready for everything that's coming from the college search process in senior year. So I'm going to throw that in as one of my words.
Darryl Tiggle:
I've got a P.
Lee Coffin:
Go ahead.
Darryl Tiggle:
An additional P. An additional P.
Lee Coffin:
What's your P?
Darryl Tiggle:
Plan, and we talked about, right? But for students, I think plan is maybe a good way to also think about major or what they might... So they may not know their major or what they want to do with their life, but they maybe have a plan for college to travel abroad, or to do an internship, or to discover their academic calling. So I think that's something also we might put in the group of Ps. I think-
Lee Coffin:
Our alphabet soup.
Darryl Tiggle:
Indeed.
Lee Coffin:
And Karen, you introduced yourself by saying you've worked at several liberal arts colleges, some co-ed, some not. How should people think about that?
Karen Kristoff:
That's a really interesting piece. Thank you, Lee. It is because I think it's one of those things where it's a little bit like how I think about my work at Colorado College right now. We have this one-class-at-a-time block system. So when you think about academic experience, we have turned this on its head. We have said we think learning happens in three-and-a-half-week jumps. We think there's a lot of learning that happens from the inside out and not trying to cram information in your head but giving you the habits of being a chemist or an anthropologist or a psychologist.
So in some ways, I love this question of how do you want to learn? How do you imagine what your classroom will be like? How do you imagine your peers, so much of that is the professor and the subject, but also, do you imagine yourself the kind of student who's walking to the dining hall from lunch, continuing a conversation that you may have started in class, or do you imagine your world looking a little bit differently? I think that's both the excitement about colleges and the challenge because there are so many different ways that we do it or think about it. And size is one of them, how we deliver education, who you're with. That vibe piece I hear students talk about that all the time like, "I just want to get the vibe. I want to know what this place is going to be like."
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Well, and Karen, you just touched on the other two Ps, people and place. It's interesting that you just introduced Colorado as a place where you take one course at a time. One course over three weeks, and then you've got Elena, are you in a semester system?
Elena Hicks:
We're a semester system, yes.
Lee Coffin:
So just the three of us here representing three really different institutions. You have three-week term, 10-week term, 14 or 15-week term. And Elena, at SMU, are there multiple schools, or is it one college?
Elena Hicks:
There are multiple schools here at SMU. For the undergraduate population, about five. So students have a lot of bandwidth to get to know themselves once they get here and what they want to do in regard to academic interest.
Lee Coffin:
How would a student know though, "I should be in the school of blank"?
Elena Hicks:
For folks looking at SMU, we have a business school, we have the arts and sciences, we have the Meadows School of the Arts, and we have the Lyle School of Engineering, and we also have a school of education. Every time the central admission office has a program, the schools are always a part of that to contrast what they do, how they do it. So if I may give you an example, so many students, because our business school is well-known, "I want to be a business major." And then the next question from us is, "Okay. What do you want to do with a business major?" And that's usually where we stump students because they've just heard, if you're business, you can always get a job if you have a business major. But some of my alums in arts and sciences are some of the strongest businessmen and women in the nation. And so it's our goal to help students to not understand what they think they might know about our schools and colleges, but also what they don't know and how they can leverage a really strong liberal arts education.
Lee Coffin:
And Elena, is it possible that within the umbrella of SMU, so one place has five programs, do they have five different vibes as well?
Elena Hicks:
They definitely have different vibes. They do and that's why it's important for students to spend time in those buildings around those classes and students. We have, I guess, 80 or 90 student ambassadors and we are very intentional in making sure that our student ambassadors, the folks that are giving the tours and talking with students, come from a very diverse background of majors and interest areas here at the institution. So yeah, I think you make a good point, Lee, about how does it feel to you and does it bring you closer to saying this might be something for me.
Lee Coffin:
Well, and what the listeners are hearing, the news they could use, if you will, is program varies across institutions, but it also varies within an institution. So just starting out your search saying to your college advisor, "I want to go to SMU," because you've heard of it. It doesn't really scratch the topic very thoroughly because you could find a very different path through it based on the school or college you're considering. So step one, as we're laying it out, is get your mindset around what I have to say is an existential selfie. Think about what it is you like to do, how you learn, are you verbal or more mathematical.
I mean, I used to work at Tufts, and Tufts had a six-semester foreign language requirement, and that was part of program. It was what that faculty decided was a core outcome for people earning the BA at that institution. And I remember my nephew who thought he wanted to go there until he heard. He goes, "I could never..." I said, "Then this is not the place for you." The program overrode the name recognition he had. So you have to think about, "Do I want a core curriculum? Do I want an open curriculum? Do I want a great books curriculum? Do I want to be really technical?" I mean all of this lands in the step one. What is it you like? How tolerant are you of requirements? Some places are more deliberate about that than others, and that's for you to explore. But then step two, Darryl, they do the self-assessment and then they need a list. What's that embryonic list look like? Where does it come from?
Darryl Tiggle:
I think the list is still part of the exploration, right? Because we want to make sure that we're getting an idea of what type of schools they think appeal to them already. And we want to expose them to places, if we can, that we think are good fits for them. We categorize our types of viability as foundation where we say, "This is where your process begins and we're building it upon the places where you're the most viable student." And then we say, "This is your middle ground. This is where we think you're still a viable student, but your odds are a little less good because everyone's are less because of the selectivity there. And then these are the places that you'll reach for where you'd be a perfectly wonderful student and citizen, but a couple factors maybe selectivity et al, or your current profile makes it a place you'd have to be on your tippy-toes to reach. So go out and take a look at them and tell us ones that we've missed. Ones that you like that we should be thinking about for you and let's bring those into discussion."
And then we say, "Let's on the front end before you go out and do a bunch of visiting everywhere, look at a little bit of data so you can understand why I might think this school is a reach for you, or why I might think this foundation is a place you should visit right away because it will be awesome." And then tell them, "After you visit a few different kinds of places, go and visit places like that." And we're fortunate in Maryland that every type of institution exists, small liberal arts, big university, highly selective type of institution. And I say, "If you go to Maryland and you love it, then go to Delaware, then go to Connecticut, then go to UMass. If you go to Hopkins and love it, then go to Tufts, then go to Penn, then go... Right? So go and see what might be a good feel for you and then wade out a little deeper into schools that might be those types of places."
Everyone likes the places they've heard of before or that are in New York, Boston, D.C., Atlanta, Los Angeles, what have you. And I say, "Look." Whenever they say, "Oh, that place is in the middle of nowhere." I go, "I need you to understand this and pay attention to this. That place is the where. You're going to that place and that's where you are going. New York City, lovely and lovely people there. I don't know that they're just sitting there waiting around for the kids to show up at Columbia and NYU and at Barnard. I don't think they're waiting for you there, but the places where the institution is the where, they're still waiting for your life to be amazing there.
Lee Coffin:
I love that, Darryl. That place is the where.
Darryl Tiggle:
That's the where.
Lee Coffin:
I think the three of us are going to start using that. So, Darryl, you start with this list that builds off of the early discovery ideas and then it starts to build out. Karen and Elena, as you hear that, what guidance or advice do you have for parents and kids about starting with that initial list?
Karen Kristoff:
Darryl's describing such a thoughtful process that understands the student, puts the student at the core. So I think it's a great place to start. I also love this idea of, "What else do you like? What did we miss?" Because I think that also may involve some things that the student is just becoming aware of. My challenge when I talk to juniors and parents is how about throw a college on the list you've never heard of? Which makes it hard to throw it on the list, but I think the attention is not that you've never heard of it, but it's not the 50 that we always all talk about in the attractive places like the cities that Darryl just mentioned.
What are the places that you're intrigued by? Or we often talk in our office about the popular student from that school got admitted and that starts this generation of students that are like, "Well, if this person wanted to go out and look at Colorado College, for example, I think it's worth checking out." So those accidental, "Hey, let me check this out. This sounds really interesting," or, "I read something," or something like that. I think that's a really good way to do it very scientifically and very much student forward but also allows for a little bit of creativity and a little bit of thinking outside the box.
Lee Coffin:
Well, and when we met, you were working at Grinnell and I remember you doing presentations inviting people to a small town in Iowa.
Karen Kristoff:
Right. Right.
Lee Coffin:
Talk a little bit about that because that was a good example of a wonderful place in a very corn-heavy part of the United States.
Karen Kristoff:
Yeah, corn was the big attraction. No, just kidding. But I do think it was a location that I have had colleagues that have called Iowa, one of those states in the middle that starts and ends in a vowel as though you can't distinguish them from Indiana, or Ohio, or Iowa. So I mean, I don't think there's a lot of knowledge of Iowa as a state and then you take a small town sitting between the two biggest cities. But we talk a lot about the fact that the community was so strong there. Anything, any band that was performing driving between, say Chicago and Denver would always stop in Grinnell, Iowa. There's always a ready audience, there's always a lecturer, and everything was free. I mean, when I think about a college campus that everything was free, that was because there was real intentionality and purpose around creating community, creating things for people to do to feel connected.
But I always think of that as this amazing campus where students had not only a lot to do but in fact, were inspired by their location in many ways. You found the beauty in this place, even if you knew you were going back to Baltimore, or Dallas, or Los Angeles after you graduated. But I often talk to students about that when it comes to location like, "Wow, this is a really cool way to check out a place for four years." Los Angeles will always be there, Dallas will always be there, Baltimore will always be there. And so this is a real opportunity to see how that intersection, when you talk, if we go back to Lee's first three Ps, because those three Ps, that intersection of people, place, and program can also be very intriguing.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Well, and you just gave a definition to Darryl's, the place is the where. Grinnell was a destination unto itself for lots of things. Okay, so we've got the Ps, you've got list organized. How do you find info? I go back to when I was a high school senior in those ancient pre-internet moments. So part of this challenge has gone away because most people can type on a keyboard and find things, but what's the gathering info phase? You've done your selfie. You've got a list. How do you discover things? Elena, where do you go? If you're an eager mom who wants to help, where does she turn first?
Elena HIcks:
So I think there are a lot of great paths in that regard in college admission and especially in COVID, we got really good about doing things through Zoom and webinars. And I think many of us retain some webinars for students because students are far away, and for many of them, that's the first time that they'll be able to take a glance at a university and gain information. And also typically, we would add that here are people that you can talk to. You can have a Calendly appointment to talk to them, or you can talk to student ambassadors, that type of thing.
My little side thing I've been doing for the last year, colleagues, is in AI and enrollment. And so a great friend and colleague, just last week on a panel we were doing said, "You know, Elena, we are teaching students how to use ChatGPT to start their college search, to do some searching there." And so I appreciated that because I hadn't thought about going to ChatGPT or generative AI to just get some information because that's how I use it now. I use it very broadly. I need to know about something so this gives me a broad overview.
The other thing, Lee, is that as people are socializing and supporters, family friends are around, I think it's interesting to talk to people who have been out of school for a while, especially those who are still connected as strong alumni to their institutions to say, "Oh, my gosh, you still go to the games and you've had tickets for 30 years. Why is that? What about that experience has you, 30 years later, feeling so invested in that college or university?"
Lee Coffin:
Darryl, are there websites you send people to? I mean the institutional website is the obvious one, but are there broad college access sites that you would recommend?
Darryl Tiggle:
Yeah. So there's a few that are things that we use as a tool. So I think College Board has really good resources for students to do college searches, and there are other things that they do through those kinds of sites, but with our students, we use and other schools use different platforms. We use a platform called Scoir. Some people use Naviance, some people use MaiaLearning. And what these things do is they give you really good connection to the school and their websites, but it also integrates it with your school's data over time and how your students have done in admissions. So I have been a little narrowly focused in recent years, spending most of my time there and not in other spaces, but I often tell students that they should go and look at resources definitely on the school's website because that's going to give them the best information.
Lee Coffin:
So the parents that might be listening, and you're coming into this college search for the first time, go to your high school of any type and say, "What platform do we use in college advising?" And I'm pretty sure they will all have something with a name that could be one that Darryl just sent as well as others where they're organizing themselves. But I think, yeah, there are also simple things like you go to the bookstore and you get a college guidebook. I still like paper, but things like the Fiske Guide and the Peterson's Guide, Colleges That Change Lives. There are lots of materials that will offer some editorial assessment, but often an overview of the places that are starting to pop on the list. And you know want to be a marine biologist and you can quite literally say, does this college have that program?
I'm always struck when I'm reading an application by someone who says, "I'm passionate about fill in the blank," and it's not a major we offer. Well, then why did you apply? If you know so clearly that that's what you want, this feels like a miss in terms of discovery. So you're gathering info, you're sifting it. Parents, I would give you a tip and say, this research and analysis is a good parental task. If you're looking to be helpful, maybe do a little sleuthing and write some summaries. The other tip is your mailbox is going to be a popular place. Karen will buy names from College Board, ACT and mail them brochures. We all do that, I'm just, I'm teeing up the question for Karen. So when you get a brochure in the mailbox from Colorado College, Karen, what does that mean when you've sent something to Darryl? What are you inviting him to do?
Karen Kristoff:
Yeah. So I might have a little bit of intel about Darryl. I might have a little bit of intel if I license his name from the College Board or I might know where he lives, or I might know something about something he does outside of class. But I'm hoping that he at least opens the brochure. Although he's a very savvy guy, so he might just leave it on the kitchen counter and then a parent could take a look at it. We know that sometimes the paper is for the generation like Lee and mine that are a little bit older and still like the paper. But we send students lots of emails, probably more emails than paper these days in terms of getting them excited about at least putting their hand up and saying, I'd love to learn more. And then you can start that process with a virtual visit, a virtual information session.
But the idea is that we might know a little bit about you. We might know not very much about you, but we're hoping you're going to raise your hand and say, "Hey, send me some more stuff." We always tell students, "If you don't want to get more stuff from us, all you need to do is scroll..." We're going to hide it a little bit but just scroll down to the end of the email and say, unsubscribe, it will be there. We are legally obligated to do that and want to do that because we want to talk to the students who most want to talk to us.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. But the tip we're offering everyone is if the mail is arriving electronically or in the old-fashioned U.S. Post Office brought it to you, it's a clue that the college is flirting with you. Doesn't mean you're going to get in, but it means they know just enough to say, "This is someone we want to put ourselves on that radar." Parents, read it because you might discover some places you can see program-
Karen Kristoff:
Might I also suggest to parents that maybe when they see one of these brochures that they allow their student to speak first about the institution. Because I often think that can be a spot where parents can be a little bit like, "Oh, I would never want you to go to Hanover, New Hampshire." I think part of that is also hoping that your student will be looking at that and that it is not a guarantee of admission. It's not even a guarantee that we exactly want to date you, but we're at least interested enough to see whether you'd want to continue having a conversation but allowing the student to have a lot of agency in whether the conversation continues. Maybe the parent's like, "Yes, SMU, make it happen." Or maybe the parent is like, "Ooh, anywhere but Colorado." But allowing your student to also have an opportunity to speak first about what appeals to them, what doesn't appeal to them, those kinds of things.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Well, Karen, you brought me organically to step four, which is place and visit. And Darryl, when does that happen? When does someone hop in a car, hop on a plane, a bus, take a walk, and start to visit a campus? Or you can do it anytime virtually, as Karen just said, there's a lot of resources on their websites for virtual info sessions, tours, Instagram is a very lively stream. But for the traditional boots on the ground, you're going to go to that campus and walk around, when do you do that, Darryl?
Darryl Tiggle:
Yeah, I think the natural travel seasons happen at convenient times. Maybe spring break where colleges also go on spring break, right? Summertime, where colleges also sometimes spend the summers away. So I think those are convenient for both students and colleges, but I tell students whenever they can, if you can see a college in live action, try to do that, right? And those are the schools that you can see there that are maybe closer to home where you don't have to take as far a trip, but that might get you a better gauge on whether you're a small liberal artist or a big university type of student. So I think anytime I think in life, if it's summertime, sophomore year, junior year, what have you, but I think the seasons tend to be spring break, summer, and then fall of senior year. So think about maybe putting together a game plan with those times in mind.
The other thing I just wanted to get back to with the brochures that arrive and things that might come and what parents might say, the, "I've not heard of that place." That's something else I tell my students and parents to be wary of because I say, "Look, that doesn't say as much about the place as it does about your knowledge of places." And there are lots of things in life where you may not have heard about the best-in-class of that category, so don't use that as your gauge for goodness, right? Make sure you're doing a little bit more of that exploration and the brochure will come to you so that you can explore that place and maybe find out when they're doing an open house or coming to your town or the like.
Lee Coffin:
And Karen, so on a typical visit, no matter when it is, are there a couple of things that a family should expect when they show up in the admission office?
Karen Kristoff:
At minimum, it would be a 45-minute session that would be led by a member of the admission staff. We generally call these information sessions, and the idea is to introduce you to five or six pretty broad topics. What makes us who we are, what's in our DNA, so to speak, and then a fair bit of information about the admission process and about applying for need-based financial aid. So it should be very informative. I always tell students and families, "There is no question we probably haven't heard. There's no question that's too silly or too small." So ask your questions. I think that sometimes we are not intimidating. Even if you might say like, "Oh, I don't know if I should ask this. Are they going to write down my name?" We're not writing down your name. Ask the questions you need to. This process can be unnecessarily opaque. We want to make it as transparent as possible. So even the thorny questions, feel free to ask those. Ask them respectfully understand the answer or try to understand the answer and go into it with an open mind and an open heart.
And then there's an opportunity to see the campus generally through the lens of one or two of our current students. At the moment, we divide up the students and parents in my office. So the students have their own tour guide, and the parents have their own tour guide, which is a really interesting system. I think we mostly like it and I think it works really well that parents get to ask some questions that are different than their students. It's always fun to watch which group gets back faster. Often, the parents are always the slowest because they have the most questions and we're always empowering the students like, "Keep asking. Keep asking."
And so you get a sense of the physical campus, you get to see some buildings, we get to show you some flashy features, but mostly you also get an opportunity for conversation. You get an opportunity to say, "What makes this experience special? What might you change about it? Why did you decide to be at Colorado College?" So really using that time both for human interactions as well as an opportunity to see the campus. And that's the minimum. And then often we do have more open houses with panels and presentations, sort of special features, but at minimum, we ask people to spend about two and a half hours with us to make sure they get both of those things done.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. And Karen, you just described the campus visit program everywhere I've worked. We have some combination of an info session and a tour, not necessarily in that order. And the question you're asking juniors is, "Can I see myself here? Can I live here?" I think something gets lost in a lot of college searches is this idea that this will be your home. You're going to live there for four years. So you're studying, of course, and you're having an experience, but you also have to be comfortable with the place where it is, ease of getting to and from your own family to that campus. The neighborhood where the college or university is. I met a kid years ago who said to me, "I don't know where I'm going, but wherever it is has to have a jazz scene close by."
Karen Kristoff:
Love that.
Lee Coffin:
"I'll look for it." If that's a non-negotiable, and that's a word I think you all should write down, what are the non-negotiable factors? In this kid's case, a jazz scene. It might be parents who are like, "We have to be able to drive you there. We're not putting you on an airplane." It might be financial aid. It could be lots of different things. What are the non-negotiables? But the visit is like when you're buying a house. The real estate agent takes you out and you see properties and you react to them. And some of them feel right and some of them feel off. And you can't always articulate why something is a yes or a maybe, but you have to trust your gut as part of your campus visit. And Darryl, when does the reaction happen? So people go off on their visits. What's the rabbit hole a family tumbles into at the end of a campus visit?
Darryl Tiggle:
So I'd say there's two different things. So I always hear about the, "Oh my God, the minute I arrived on campus, I immediately wanted to leave. I knew it wasn't for me." Where they didn't really give the place a really good chance. And I think the rabbit hole they go down if the visit went really well is if they can see, either visibly see people that resonate with them, look like them, would be people with whom they'd be friends. Because the majors in many ways are going to be similar at schools. The learning experience might be different, but the seeing themselves there and making sure it's a good fit.
And if you've done the things we've talked about before, the discovery, the exploration, and the research, if you've done those in earnest, then you can put a lot of value and trust into how it feels to you. So if you go in and say, "Mr. Tiggle, I don't know, it just felt awesome. I could see myself there." If you've done the discovery, the exploration, and the research to make sure the other things are in place and then it fits well, then that visceral feeling is a really... That's science.
Lee Coffin:
And to your earlier point, when it feels good, look for other places that seem like [inaudible 00:41:49] so you can find other options of what's feeling good. So I think the other thing that I've heard colleagues do on panel is to say, don't react immediately. Don't get into the car and say, "I loved it. I hate it." Or have a parent say, "I loved it. I hate it. What did you think?" Just let it like tea. Sometimes you need to put the tea bag in the water and let it steep for a little bit. And visit number four might erase the bling of visit number two and just go one by one and see how they unfold. And if you've done six visits and number one still resonates, that was a good visit. Something about it spoke to you in a way that that was organic.
And I think step five on my list of five steps is keep assessing and refining, which Darryl said earlier. You like Hopkins, add places that are like Hopkins. You didn't like Hopkins, go in the other direction, and maybe go smaller or more suburban or rural and adjust the map as you explore and get going. Before we run out of minutes, I wanted to give each of you the chance to offer one tip. The 11th graders and their parents, they're in this discovery phase that goes from now... Really, it doesn't end. I mean, until you make an enrollment decision, you are constantly in discovery, but prime-time discovery to me really takes you from 11th grade into the beginning of the 12th when you start to apply. But what one piece of advice would you give students and parents about discovering options with purpose?
Elena Hicks:
I would say as they're discovering options with purpose, as you say, Lee, I also think they need to look at the end game and what the end game is, is that there are a myriad of schools that will be a good fit, a good place for their students. So going into it with hope and knowing that, at the end, it will turn out okay. In fact, it'll turn out wonderfully, but we've got to get from this step to that final step in this two-year period. So I would go in very positive that even if there are colleges, universities that at first glance aren't what you thought they might be, or maybe even more so that you just stay open to the opportunity. And grow in the knowledge that you gain, especially in that junior year of who you are, what you want, and how that is leading you to several options that will be great ones for you, and you'll be making an informed decision when that time comes.
Lee Coffin:
So be hopeful.
Elena Hicks:
Be hopeful.
Lee Coffin:
Karen,
Karen Kristoff:
I want to echo what you've just heard, which is that there's no perfect college, there's no perfect applicant, and that what you're looking for is a place where you can fit in and feel comfortable, but also where you will be a different person the day you arrive and the day you graduate and that you're anticipating getting excited and maybe a little nervous because that would be very appropriate with this transformation. So I think that is such a lovely challenge to think about, "What will fit me today, and what will fit me at the end of my journey?"
And so keeping the options open and then just trusting in the process because I also think that was said so beautifully. It has a good outcome. Those of us that have been doing this for a very long time, get to see it. We get to see students come in their junior year. We get to see them apply. We get to see them say yes to us. Well, we say yes to them first, then they say yes to us, and then we get to see them graduate. So it is this wonderful cycle and having an... I guess my advice is open mind and open heart.
Lee Coffin:
Darryl batting cleanup.
Darryl Tiggle:
My advice and encouragement is because they're doing exploration and discovery and the like, the one thing they can rest assured, you know who you are. That's one of the things I think is just a really powerful tool for this process. You may not necessarily know what you want or where you want to go or where you're supposed to be, but you've got a really good idea and I think really good knowledge of who you are, so use that as your guiding light.
Lee Coffin:
And my one tip is, remember, discover is not apply. That's act two. Discovery means you're exploring; you're trying things on. Different metaphor, if you're going shopping, you don't buy everything you try on. So give yourself the space to consider lots of different things and add one place to your list that's different. When the college counselor says, "Look at the women's college," don't just say no. Just see how it feels. It doesn't mean you have to do it, but it gives you exposure to lots of different ideas.
Well, Elena, Karen, Darryl, thank you for joining me for this junior kickoff and helping our friends in the high school class of 2026 start to discover this thing called the college search. Because I think the beginning always seems overwhelming, and I think, listeners, what you heard us saying today was just come up with a plan. We added plan to my three Ps along with progress. When you have a plan, this feels less frantic. Be prepared to trust your instincts, follow what feels right, let go of what doesn't, and be open to discovering something unexpected.
I'll be back next week for a conversation with Logan Powell, the dean of admission at Brown on merit and meritocracy. So we'll be going a little philosophic next week to think about what counts, and when we talk about college admission, what are the things that matter as elements of an application? So come back for that one. For now, I'm Lee Coffin from Dartmouth College. Thanks for listening.