Author: Ken Anselment

Civil Disobedience and the College Admission Process

But, to speak practically and as a citizen… I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.

-Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience” (1849)

Although the context may have been quite different 169 years ago when Thoreau crafted his manifesto about the role of government and the responsibility of its citizens, his words still resonate today, as we see increasingly active citizenship from all over the political spectrum.

In the wake of yet another school shooting, this time at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., we are watching not men, but children—high school boys and girls— make known what kind of government would command their respect.

Some are walking out of classes, some are marching on their state capitols, and some are directly challenging federal lawmakers to hear what they have to say.

A number of students are facing suspensions from their schools in light of missing class. We understand that high schools must require classroom attendance from their students in order to ensure that they are receiving an education.

However, we also note that many of these students are applying in the real world what they are learning in their classrooms by engaging in civil disobedience of their own and demanding for “at once a better government.” They may not be old enough to vote—yet—but they are old enough to raise their voices and take action together.

This is the generation of students we are admitting to our universities.

These are the students we will prepare in our colleges to lead us.

…and they are not waiting until they graduate from college to start exercising those leadership qualities.

For students who have been suspended or who face the threat of suspension, fear not: we at Lawrence University will not change your admission or scholarship decision in light of a suspension related to this kind of peaceful civil action.

We support you now, and are eager to welcome you in the future as we work together to create a brighter future for you and the generations who will follow you.

Be well and do well.

Keep Calm and FAFSA On, 2017

Editor’s note: I’ll acknowledge right here that FAFSA isn’t a verb, but neither are most of the other nouns that people will shoehorn into the “Keep Calm and [Something] On” meme to suit their purposes, much as I am here. (Thank you in advance for extending me some creative grammatical license.)

As if high school seniors don’t already have enough on their plates this fall, with…

  • the start of the school year and all the academic, co-curricular, and extra-curricular activities that come with it (I’m looking at you, Homecoming);
  • the college admission process kicking into higher gear;
  • preparing for the next season of Stranger Things to drop on Netflix;

…we now have a bunch of emails and social media posts reminding us that October 1 is the go-live date for the 2018-19 FAFSA (which means that you can now file your FAFSA for the 2018-2019 college academic year starting on October 1 using your family’s tax returns from 2016).

Here’s the part where I refer again to the title of this blog, but this time with an addendum:

Keep calm and FAFSA on… when you are ready.

Here’s the thing… while the FAFSA is now live, that doesn’t mean you must drop everything and file for financial aid now—though you might hear some chatter from well-meaning and/or freaked out classmates, parents, neighbors, or random strangers who are jumping on their financial aid applications immediately.

This is not the same as concert tickets going on sale today. You won’t find yourself out of a seat if you file your FAFSA on October 15. Or November 15. Or January 15.

More to the point, two things generally have to happen in sequence before you will even receive a financial aid offer from a college:

  1. You have to apply to that college.
  2. You have to be admitted to that college.

And considering that colleges have many different application and financial aid deadlines, we encourage you to check the websites of each of the colleges you’re considering (like Lawrence, for example) to learn when all of their deadlines fall.

Then you can start prioritizing the steps you’ll need to take to move through your own college admission process. To help with that, here are a few College Applicant Power Tips (capitalizing them makes them seem more important, somehow)…

Tip #1: Build your own college admission calendar and plug in all the important deadlines for each of your colleges.

Tip #2: On that calendar, plug in your own dates where you will get things done (e.g., draft application essay, review application essay, file FAFSA, jump for joy with admission from Lawrence, etc.)

Tip #3: Do those things you scheduled using Tip #2.

As for the FAFSA, if you haven’t yet explored the FAFSA and you happen to find animations with a soothing voice-over and a calming piano to be a nice, inviting way to explore unfamiliar topics, we recommend this video, designed by the U.S. Department of Education.

When you’re ready to file your own FAFSA, visit the Department of Education’s FAFSA website where you can dive into way more detail about the FAFSA and, finally, file it.

You can do this.

If you run into questions, feel free to get in touch with us at Lawrence. We’re happy to help.

kcafo

With 99% placement within six months of graduating, Lawrentians have been reporting good news for the past several years.

The better news is that Lawrentians do well in their careers long after that, by many measures:

But they didn’t just get there by themselves. Support, encouragement, and guidance by their professors is a major trajectory-changer.

(And there’s research to support it.)

In surveys of thousands of college graduates, Gallup finds that those who report “being emotionally supported during college are two times more likely to be engaged in their work and thriving in their well-being later in life.” This support comes from having a professor or a mentor who:

  1. makes students excited about learning;
  2. cares about me as a person;
  3. who encourages my goals and dreams.

With one of the lowest student-to-faculty ratios in the country (8.5 to 1), average class sizes of 15, and hundreds of one-on-one courses available to you, Lawrence provides an environment where you will engage with your professors at a level few colleges in the world can offer.

From your first day of Freshman Studies through the completion of your Senior Experience—and long after you graduate—your Lawrence professors are deeply invested in your success, whatever form that might take for you as an individual.

Because of highly engaged professors, Lawrentians are “being well and doing well” in their lives. (It’s one of the reasons Lawrentians invite their professors to attend their alumni reunions every year as special guests.)

Just in Time for the Holidays: The Book of College Admission Spells

I wrote this for a column that appeared in the Post-Crescent, Appleton’s newspaper, in December 2015. Given that the holidays are once again upon us, the spells contained herein might prove handy.

As we approach the height of the holiday season—and all the gatherings and celebrations that accompany this magical time—we also enter the thick of the college admission season, where many high school seniors are in various stages of applying to colleges, or waiting to hear back from colleges to which they have applied.

The overlap of these two seasons often gives rise to a peculiar phenomenon for those high school seniors, especially at the aforementioned gatherings and celebrations.

Just a year ago, they may have been ordinary teenagers, small players in polite conversations with relatives and family friends:  How’s school? How is [insert activity here] going?

But now they are College Applicants, elevated to the leading role in conversations of a different sort from those same relatives and family friends:

You should apply to College A; I loved it.

I’ve never heard of College B.

How did you do on the SAT?

We applied to College X, Y, and Z.

I heard that [some shining star not in the room] just got into [name that evokes approving noises from everyone else in the room].

To the well-meaning folks asking questions or making observations, these may seem like friendly bits of conversation. But to the College Applicants in the room—for whom the college admission process can be an intensely personal choice—the public appraisal of that choice can create some challenging moments.

Luckily for those College Applicants, there is help from an unusual source: The Book of College Admission Spells. (We keep it in the Very Special Books section of the library at Lawrence University.)
magic book

The book is not available for check-out, but I have been authorized by our Very Special Librarian to share a handful of charms and hexes that can help College Applicants and their loved ones make it through the holiday season and beyond with their sanity and self-worth intact.

Perspectum Widensis – When cast by a College Applicant upon a person, this charm helps the spellbound become aware of colleges that don’t routinely appear on ESPN College Gameday. Useful for applicants to liberal arts colleges and other schools that may not be household names, this charm counters the effect of the Neverheardof Hex, a minor curse that causes one to think that not having heard of a college must mean it’s not worth considering.

Morthana Testscorus – A culturally subversive charm, it is best used upon students who have done very well in and out of school, but are suffering from the disappointment or anxiety that accompanies a low ACT or SAT score. When cast upon such students, it reminds them of their worth, and also opens their eyes to the more than 800 four-year colleges that do not require standardized test scores for admission (including the one where this spell book is housed).

MeNotWe – When around parents who use the first-person plural pronoun as the subjects in statements about their child’s college search (e.g., “We got into College A” or “We got a scholarship from B University,”), whisper this simple little spell, and the speaker will only be able to say the child’s name in place of “we”. (This is a diluted version of the more powerful charm, Notaboutyou, which prevents parents from holding up the College Applicant as proof of their own parental achievement.)

Non Overdoitum – When cast upon parents of middle schoolers and younger high schoolers, this charm enables the spellbound to encourage their children to challenge themselves in subjects they enjoy and excel in, but not to pressure them to take academic courses far beyond the child’s capacity. This charm counteracts the Youwontgetinunless Hex, which leads parents to believe that getting into college requires children to fill every slot on the class schedule with AP and honor classes, and to program every hour outside of class with activities carefully selected to impress admission officers.

I understand there may be other copies of The Book of College Admission Spells hidden throughout the world. I hope others with access feel free to share their favorite spells with those who might benefit from them.

Image credit: Magic Book by Nikita Kozin from the Noun Project

Keep Calm and FAFSA On

Editor’s note: I’ll acknowledge right here that FAFSA isn’t a verb, but neither are most of the other nouns that people will shoehorn into the “Keep Calm and [Something] On” meme to suit their purposes, much as I am here. (Thank you in advance for extending me some creative grammatical license.)

As if high school seniors don’t already have enough on their plates this fall, with…

  • the start of the school year and all the academic, co-curricular, and extra-curricular activities that come with it (I’m looking at you, Homecoming);
  • the college admission process kicking into higher gear;
  • preparing for the revival of Gilmore Girls, the arrival of Luke Cage, or any of the other gifts Netflix will give us.

…we now have this:

Co8MEXKXgAAqgWY

Yes for the first time ever, you can file your FAFSA for the 2017-2018 college academic year starting on October 1 using your family’s tax returns from 2015.

Here’s the part where I refer again to the title of this blog, but this time with an addendum:

Keep calm and FAFSA on… when you are ready.

Here’s the thing… while the FAFSA goes live on October 1, that doesn’t mean you must drop everything and file for financial aid on October 1— though you might hear some chatter from well-meaning and/or freaked out classmates, parents, neighbors, or random strangers who are jumping on their financial aid applications immediately.

This is not the same as concert tickets going on sale tomorrow. You won’t find yourself out of a seat if you file your FAFSA on October 15. Or November 15. Or January 15.

More to the point, two things generally have to happen in sequence before you will even receive a financial aid offer from a college:

  1. You have to apply to that college.
  2. You have to be admitted to that college.

And considering that colleges have many different application and financial aid deadlines, we encourage you to check the websites of each of the colleges you’re considering (like Lawrence, for example) to learn when all of their deadlines fall.

Then you can start prioritizing the steps you’ll need to take to move through your own college admission process. To help with that, here are a few College Applicant Power Tips (capitalizing them makes them seem more important, somehow)…

Tip #1: Build your own college admission calendar and plug in all the important deadlines for each of your colleges.

Tip #2: On that calendar, plug in your own dates where you will get things done (e.g., draft application essay, review application essay, file FAFSA, jump for joy with admission from Lawrence, etc.)

Tip #3: Do those things you scheduled using Tip #2.

As for the FAFSA, if you haven’t yet explored the FAFSA and you happen to find cartoons with semi-funky music to be a nice, inviting way to explore unfamiliar topics, this video, compiled by our friends at the National Association for College Admission Counseling, might be a helpful start.

When you’re done watching that, you can move on to this video designed by the U.S. Department of Education (complete with soothing voice-over and calming background piano music). It provides more detail about how the FAFSA works.

When you’re ready to level up, visit the Department of Education’s FAFSA website where you can dive into way more detail about the FAFSA and, finally, file it.

You can do this.

If you run into questions, feel free to get in touch with us at Lawrence. We’re happy to help.

kcafo