Category: Commentary

To pacing prospective parents, waiting for letters to arrive

This one’s for you parents out there.

I think I might know what you may be thinking…

As a former Parent of a College-Bound Student (it’s a real title, kind of like “Queen of England”), I’ve been where you are right now.

Twice.

Five years ago (with my oldest daughter) and three years ago (with my son), I was anxiously sitting in the when-will-those-college-admissions-envelopes–finally-arrive-and-what-news-will-they-bring seat. (If the truth be told, I wasn’t really doing much sitting. Rather, I was running around getting ready for the holidays, reading the Lawrence applications assigned to me, and listening for the mail truck to roll down my street.)

Even though college admission is my profession—which means I’m supposed to have a pretty firm handle on “how this process works”—these were MY OWN CHILDREN going through this process, which meant that most of my professional perspective sat on the sidelines while the mother in me took center stage. Like any other parent, I was excited and proud of my kids. If I’m being honest, I was nervous for them, too.

What if they didn’t get in?

What if they did?

I knew that the size of the envelope mattered. Big ones meant good news. Small ones… well, I didn’t want to go there, but I wanted to be prepared for it.

For those of you going through this for the second or third or seventh (whew!) time, you already know what I’m talking about. For those of you who are newcomers to this process, here is a quick intro to the three types of letters colleges generally send—presuming the college still does things the old-fashioned way like Lawrence does by using paper, envelopes, and stamps:

The “Congratulations, you’re in!” letter. Hooray! The letter we usually* want our children to get. It’s an opportunity to put a school in the “this might be my new home next fall” pile… and start a whole different kind of planning.

*I say “usually” because sometimes—for various reasons that we might never say out loud—we may hope our children don’t get into a particular college. (For example, it might be really really far away… like anywhere farther away than the home in which I have raised them…)

The “Not quite yet” letter, which usually says something like, “The Admissions Committee has decided not to make a decision on your application at this time,” and then describes their process about how they are deferring their decision so they can consider the application along with a different pool of candidates.

This piece of news is neither good nor bad; it’s procedural. It usually means that the Admissions Committee wants to get some more information (fall term or semester grades, an interview, a box of chocolate chip cookies, etc.) from the applicant. Some deferred students will ultimately get the good news letter. Some will not. Some will take themselves out of the running before that college ever re-visits their application. A deferral is not a time to panic, but a time for students to reach out to the admissions office to see what else they might want to provide in order to help that admission committee come to a decision that delivers the desired results.

The “We regret to inform you…” letter. We don’t even need to read the rest of the letter, because we know what it’s going to say: Ugh. But it doesn’t mean that we parents won’t find our blood temperatures rising to a simmer or boil, because—really?—how could this admissions staff not see the good qualities and potential in my child? Who do they think they are?

“They” are my colleagues. I have been on that admissions staff, and I can tell you that most of us did not get into this profession because we like saying “no” to people. We agonize about these decisions each year. In the case of Lawrence, I know that the reason we choose not to offer admission to particular students almost always lies in our collective belief (and it is a group of people who must share the belief) that the students, for reasons as unique as each of them, are not likely to be successful in our academic environment, no matter how much we may like them as people and want them at our university. To knowingly put students into situations where they are highly unlikely to be successful would be irresponsible on our part.

I can tell you, after all the waiting, those letters did finally arrive at my house (and with a couple, I know I hugged my mailman). Most of them elicited happy dancing in my kitchen, phone calls to relatives—and, at least for me, because I am a crier—tears of joy (with some of the letters) and tears of frustration with some of the others. As a family, we learned a lot about each other during the college search months and before I could blink an eye, I was crying (again), this time as we drove away after dropping each of them off at their freshman dorms, which, whether they are in the same city or a time zone or two away, are still too far away from their bedrooms upstairs for my taste. I am so proud of them, and they are thriving.

There I go again. (Did I mention that I am a crier?)

This is an exciting time for you and your child. I encourage you to embrace each step of the process (even the tough ones), enjoy these last few high school months, and feel free to contact me (or any of my colleagues in the Lawrence Admissions Office) if we can be of assistance to you.

Carin Smith
Lawrence University Regional Admission Director

The not so fine line between irony and sarcasm

Lawrence gets a lot of compliments from students, parents, and counselors on the tone we use in our communications with them: it’s friendly, thoughtful, and sprinkled with humor and wit.

Just like Lawrence.

You probably know one of the first rules of email: you don’t get to use facial expressions or vocal inflection to add context to your words, so your words and intentions had better be pretty clear.

So when an email rolled out of here yesterday with the subject line “Don’t apply to Lawrence,” well… it didn’t really sound like Lawrence. It adopted what seemed like an ironic tone (the one where you say the opposite of what you mean for humor or emphasis), but came off as sarcastic (a more negative, off-putting form of irony).

This email really could have used a face, a voice, and some wildly gesticulating hands to get its point across, which, when it was first conceived many months ago, it was going to have–because it was part of a very loose script for a video that, at least in concept, could have been spot-on with its irony.

Alas, it was just words on a screen queued up in an email (without the accompanying video, which was never produced, much less included in the email), and then forgotten about… until it went out to some of our most interested (and interesting) students yesterday.

And for that, we’re sorry, and embarrassed… and hopeful that those students and their parents didn’t take us literally, because, well, of course we want them to apply; they’re interested and interesting students.

Since we are an educational institution, we will share a couple of lessons here. (Woohoo, lessons at our expense!)*

Lesson one is for all other colleges who email prospective students (when I last checked, that would be all other colleges): don’t queue up emails for a timed delivery if they don’t have all the right pieces in place.

Lesson two. Refer to lesson one.

*Stage direction for “Woohoo, lessons at our expense!”: force a smile, speak overly enthusiastically, add ironic thumbs-up.

A guest blog from one of our favorite people

Marty O’Connell is a force of nature… and a college search Zenmaster. As the Executive Director of the non-profit organization, Colleges That Change Lives, she has been serving up anecdotes as antidotes to the high-stakes, high-pressure, win-at-all-costs college admission game that repeats itself year after year. We have the good fortune this week of traveling with Marty O’Connell and nearly all of our fellow Colleges That Change Lives as we make our way up the East Coast this week at a series of information nights. We will do the same in August all over the country. (For locations and dates, visit CTCL.org.)

In the meantime, we’d like to share Marty’s perspective, in her own words, about how to approach the college search. It’s a perspective she recently shared with our friends in the Southern Association for College Admission Counseling, and one that we invited her to share with you. (Thanks Marty! ihrtluhc)

We trust you will find it equal part wise, calming, and invigorating. You may even find some surprises in it.

If I made a bumper sticker for how to approach the college search process it would read: College: It’s About the Journey, Not the Destination. Too often, students will race through their secondary school years, compiling tallies of courses and AP credits completed, joining activities to lengthen their resume, taking and retaking SAT and ACT tests and always keeping one eye on the prize of the college destination. These same students arrive at college only to repeat this process with a goal of admission to graduate and professional school or the perfect first job. We live in a goal-focused society where becoming a mindful, life-long learner, instead of an educational trophy hunter is not an easily achieved state of mind. If I had the magic wand for education, my wish would be that students might approach the college search, as well as their day-to-day learning, with a greater appreciation for the long view: it is not about the race to the end, but instead what you learn from each step in the journey to get there!

Too often the college search begins with a flawed approach by using ranking lists that tout the entering class statistics, rather than focusing on what happens during the four years students are enrolled. The late author Loren Pope, of Looking Beyond the Ivy League and Colleges That Change Lives, often known as the “Ralph Nader” of college admissions, said that choosing colleges based on the entering statistics of the freshmen class is like choosing a hospital based on the health of those in the ER—it’s the treatment that really matters; in the case of college, it’s what happens between the first year and graduation. Researching colleges based on student outcomes will highlight many colleges that outperform the Ivies and Name Brands but don’t have the benefit of name recognition. The research from the Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium on the Undergraduate Origins of Ph.Ds finds lesser known colleges listed in the top ten in various categories of producers of future Ph.Ds, often ahead of the usual suspects.

If you had to choose a spouse or partner for life, would you like to use a publication ranking them by income, IQ scores, and reputation as reported by others who have never met the person? As a culture, we love consulting consumer guidebooks and lists for a shortcut method to choosing electronics and cars; the college search requires a more thoughtful, personal and time consuming approach. It can’t be reduced to rankings with numerical values when it requires starting with who the individual student is and why they are going to college, their needs and desires, and learning styles and interests. This self inventory is the start for finding colleges that “fit” for the individual, instead of starting with the assumption that only the “Top 20” on the USNWR and other rankings lists have any value. These ranking guides sell big, but their value (or lack of it) in the college search process can certainly be diminished if students, parents and counselors go after fit, rather than name recognition. Students and their anxious, hovering parents would do well to add some lesser-known colleges to their search process, where the chance for gaining admission is greater and the outcomes the same or better than those colleges admitting a fraction of applicants.

NSSE: The National Survey of Student Engagement is a wonderful resource for gathering information about college outcomes and provides a list of the right questions to ask during the college search. Most importantly, how quickly students engage in the academic and co-curricular life of the campus will make the difference, not only in their early success as an undergraduate, but in on-time degree completion and in reaching their goals beyond college.

The current weakened state of the economy and worry over the cost of attending a four-year college has made the option of attending community college and transferring to complete the bachelor degree a very appealing one. It can be a positive experience if a student chooses it because it is a good fit for them and not just because it will save them money. Community colleges have changed dramatically since their rapid growth in the 1960s, when because of their “open admissions” policies, they were too often erroneously labeled as options only for those with no other college choice. This is a much different case today when community colleges attract top high school students with honors programs that rival those at competitive four-year colleges. If students apply the same investigative process in considering a community college as they do with four-year colleges: visiting campus, sitting in on classes, eating a meal, meeting students and professors, they are less likely to feel like they “settled” instead of chose…

Perhaps the Irish poet Yeats had a better idea for that bumper sticker with this quote: “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”…

[So, too, we will add, should be your college search.]

 Martha “Marty” O’Connell’s 35-year college admissions career includes posts at large and small colleges, beginning with Rutgers University in New Jersey and ending with McDaniel College in Westminster, MD. In July 2006 she began her role as Executive Director of the non-profit organization, Colleges That Change Lives, Inc., which has a mission to advance and support a student-centered college search process that looks beyond the college rankings industry.

(For the record, we think she is awesome.)

“You’re talking rot!”(or, “Why the Liberal Arts and Sciences Still Matter”, Part 2)

Yesterday, we left you with a cliffhanger. Today, the start of an answer.

It has always been the particular challenge of a liberal arts and sciences program to answer the question “What can you do with it?” The question has become increasingly pointed in an economy that continues continues to sputter, joblessness remains woefully high, and, college costs continue to rise. The problem has been exacerbated by legislators (Democrats and Republicans alike) that often equate “college education” with “professional preparation”.  The Obama administration’s drive to put the United States back on top of the list of nations with the highest percentages of college degree holders by 2020 illustrates this. (We’re not even in the top 10, according to the Organization for Economic and Cooperative Development.)

But there’s more to college education and professional preparation than just holding a degree.

It is necessary to have a well-trained, technically proficient citizenry. We need engineers, scientists, accountants, developers and others who can solve problems. But we also need people in these professions to be able to explain to others how they solved the problems. More important they need to teach others how to solve them for themselves. Purely vocational training likely will not get you all the way there. Strong writing, speaking and thinking skills can separate the merely good problem-solver from the great ones.

But limiting the discussion to the world of work is only part of the story. What of our lives outside our jobs?

What about being an informed citizen, one who can say not only what she believes, but make a compelling case for why she believes it?

What about being a critical consumer of information, one who is less likely to believe something just because it’s coming from an “authority,” like a newspaper, a news program, a blog, a politician, or even a professor.

The liberal arts and sciences can play an important role in developing the whole person—professionally and personally.

In a landmark study, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (University of Chicago Press, 2011), Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa attempt to address a variety of questions about the amount and type of learning occurring in American colleges, based on a five-year longitudinal study of 2,300 students on 24 diverse campuses. One of the questions they address—are students improving their critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills during college?—finds a positive correlation between academic rigor and the amount of gains seen in the development of this set of skills. Their Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) used performance tasks and holistic assessments (instead of surveys) to measure not only what students know, but what they don’t know.

In the study, students in the liberal arts and sciences fared far better than their peers in professional programs like business, engineering, communications, education and health. One of their hypotheses, according to Arum at a recent address to more than 100 college enrollment officials, is that the traditional arts and sciences is where the most academic rigor and, as a result, the most learning occurs, largely because of their heavier requirements for reading, writing, and intensive study—three activities that tend to be more independent endeavors. The study finds that students who spent, on average, more hours of independent study per week during college fared far better than those who spent, on average more hours in group study with peers during their college careers.

An interesting side note to the study is that those students who spent more time studying independently were also far more likely to read print or online news daily, and to discuss politics and public affairs.

So back to that question: “What can you do with the liberal arts and sciences?”

In an uncertain world, where the commonplace idea is that the most in-demand jobs ten years from now don’t yet exist, being a nimble, flexible, adaptive learner equipped with finely tuned reading, writing, speaking and thinking skills can be advantageous. A liberal arts and sciences curriculum can prepare you for your first job (though vocational experiences like internships will undoubtedly enhance that preparation). Perhaps more important, a liberal arts and sciences curriculum should prepare you for all of the jobs you’ll have after that.

And lest we pigeonhole ourselves merely as workers, a liberal arts and sciences curriculum can broaden the skills essential to a meaningful life outside the world of work. Such as being able to detect when a “man is talking rot.”

Or, as Andrew Delbanco, cultural critic and author of College: What it Was, Is, and Should Be, said in an address in 2012: “You’re going to spend the rest of your life inside your head. You may as well make it an interesting place to be.”

“You’re talking rot!” (Why the Liberal Arts and Sciences Still Matter)

Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life, save only this, that if you work hard and intelligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education.

—John Alexander Smith, 1914

Even though it was more than a century ago when John Alexander Smith, a University of Oxford professor of moral philosophy, opened his course with this counterintuitive utterance, the core of his message is as essential today as it was not only then, but for centuries before that.

Today you’ll find few people calling out someone for “talking rot”. (Using an anachronism like that is a quick way to get an eye-roll.) However, the ability to identify shaded truth, logical fallacies, slanted rhetoric, even demagoguery, or—to quote so many college admissions publications—the ability to “think critically” remains one of the most important things an education should develop and sharpen.

It’s something liberal arts and sciences programs—either liberal arts colleges (like Lawrence University or Williams College) or liberal arts core curricula at some comprehensive universities (like Marquette or Notre Dame)—have been doing for generations.

But the liberal arts had been around long before these academic upstarts started delivering them. Since the time of the Roman Empire, the liberal arts were those things studied by free persons—grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, music, astronomy.

You might recognize their allegorized images (below) from their class picture, painted in the late 16th century by Flemish painter, Maarten de Vos.

Today’s liberal arts and sciences typically comprise the arts and humanities (like literature, languages, philosophy, history, fine/performing arts) and sciences (math, natural and social science).

A liberal arts and sciences education tests our ability to investigate and understand the nature of an organism, the application of a theory, the behavior of a crowd, the principles of a political system, the meaning of a poem, the causes of an event, the consequences of an argument, or the composition of a symphony. They help us see the complexity of both/and, rather than either/or.

At its best, the study of the liberal arts and sciences develops the abilities to find similarities among dissimilar things, common ground among the uncommon, meaning in the midst of meaninglessness. It can transform one—as David Burrows, provost of Lawrence University, often says—from “merely reflecting the light of others to generating one’s own light.”

“Sure. That’s the nice stuff you find in college admissions brochures,” people will often challenge. “But will it help you get a job?”

We’ll take up that challenge tomorrow. (Rest assured; we have an answer.)

Note: A long (really long) version of this appeared in an article I wrote for the American Society of Quality in June 2011. IHRTLUHC on myself, I suppose.