I have the distinct pleasure of working with a variety of students applying to college. I absolutely love what I do. I see students walk in for career and personality assessments and leave with a new pep in their step from assessing their personal strengths and weaknesses and investigating potential career and college major options. I see students bubble with excitement after visiting a college campus that felt just right. I bond with students as we brainstorm ideas for essay topics as they share their most vivid childhood memories and accomplishments. I love it all.
But there’s one part I hate … the angst they experience jumping through the hoops and waiting for decisions.
So here’s a message to college administrators – here’s what I think you could be better! If you’re really there for the students, and not the adults, here is how you could meaningfully lower the anxiety I see students experience.
1. Tell students exactly when and how they will receive their admissions decision. Tell them when they apply and stick to it. This guessing game of which day admissions decisions will come out is paralyzing to an 18 year old – especially in the middle of exams.
2. Stop marketing to kids that have a 6% chance of admission! Stop buying lists of students who meet a certain standardized test score benchmark. Stop luring them in with seemingly (at least to them) personalized letters about how much you want them – only to reject the vast majority of them. I am paralyzed by the boldness of the letters some of my students have received!
3. Get together all you colleges and standardize the admissions process! It’s absolutely ridiculous the research that has to go into understanding each college’s admissions peculiarities. What’s the point? Your “unique” hoops to jump through are the reasons these poor kids and families are fueling a boom in college counseling.
4. Let students just self-report their best standardized test scores (thank you to those colleges like Columbia and Swarthmore and others who are heading in that direction). Be uniform – let everyone just give their best scores. Why add to the racket at the College Board and ACT? And SAT Subject Tests? Get rid of them. Telling students that their mastery of a subject can be determined in a one hour test is insulting at best.
5. Similarly, adopt one uniform admissions application platform. Having now used the Common Application and the Coalition Application, I can clearly argue that the first is better than the last. And you claim that having a Coalition application would make things easier? Try again. I sit with these kids. I see them input the same identical information yet again. Why? The Common Application platform is superior – it just needs all colleges to be on the platform.
6. And for scholarships, why bury them within separate website pages that aren’t even linked to the application? If you really want to get the best scholarship candidates, have a drop down function for all the college specific scholarship applications right there on the application. Why do these students need to hire me to go dig around for the application links and due dates?
7. And last but not least, create a common back-end platform once all the applications are submitted. I see students almost wilt when after they finally get applications submitted, I alert them to the fact that they now must set up a portal at each college they applied to and carefully track that the university has everything they need. Create a common platform linked to a common application platform that shows this all easily, thereby eliminating yet another hoop for over-worked and over-anxious high school kids. Or better yet, you colleges take responsibility for pursuing the information you are missing (you can learn something from Notre Dame on this one). Colleges could all input their decisions right to that platform on a set date eliminating so much of the anxiety producing components of college admissions.
8. My comments above reflect my experience with paying clients. I additionally spend very rewarding time helping pro bono students apply to college. I can’t even begin to express how befuddling the current admissions process is for low-income students. It’s truly heart breaking. And it’s no wonder so many give up in the process.
One college president remarked to me, “I’m not sure what’s going on – but by the time kids get to us, they’re like tea cups – they crack.” I recognize that we helicopter parents are blamed for most of this discouraging trend. But as a parent and independent college counselor, I can say with confidence that we share the blame with college admissions departments!
Let’s put the student first. Let’s get off the ego-kick of announcing “another 12% increase in applications this year.” Let’s streamline, standardize, and unite the process for all. Let’s make the scholarship information clearly evident. Let’s put an end to the misleading marketing materials. Let’s let their records and resumes define their teen years instead of an hour or three hour test. And, for goodness sake, let’s just tell them exactly when and how they will hear admission results.
And hopefully one day, I will know I’ve been the best advocate possible for my students … when I’m out of a job!
