What to do about those looming deadlines?

As someone who has been working in admissions for nearly three decades, I have noticed a steady change in the way students perceive deadlines—especially these days. “Apply by January 15” did not used to mean “wait until 11:55 PM on January 15 to hit the magic submit button.”

But oh, the times they are a-changin’ (I’ll save my theories on this for another day). For many students deadlines are not the last day to submit the application—they are the only day to submit the application. Not a minute, or hour, or day before. (Let’s not even go down the road of a week or month before).

I lived this phenomenon only a couple of years ago with my middle child. For the most part, he had embraced the process. He spent some time investigating “good fit” schools, visiting campuses, listening to admissions officers extol the virtues of the school they represent, and pared his list to those he felt were worthy of an application.

And then…
And then…
And then…

Well that’s when rubber hit the road in my mom world.

I frequently found myself asking – usually as he was watching Sunday football or late-night SportsCenter – “When do you think you might want to start working on your college applications?” This question usually elicited one of the following (wonderfully verbose) responses:

“When they’re due.”

“Soon.”

“When I’m ready.”

I countered with some award-winning questions myself:

“Do you know when they’re due?”

“What does ‘soon’ mean?”

“When do you think you will be ready?”

The conversation usually ended there. So, I spent weeks encouraging, cajoling, nagging and yes, at times, raising my voice (OK, yelling); still no movement toward the college application websites. I went through ALL my “internal mom rationalizations.”

Maybe if I stop asking, he’ll actually work on them. (Reverse psychology)

Maybe he’s silently trying to tell us he’s not ready to go to college. (Oh, really?!)

Maybe I just need to be patient and let him figure this out for himself. (But this might bring about my early retirement from motherhood, if you know what I mean.).

In the end, this is how it unfolded in my house with my middle child.

The primary application deadline happened to be on a Saturday (not great timing, in my opinion). My son played his final high school football game on Friday night. Sadly, it was a colossal play-off loss for my son’s team (some bad mojo). At noon on Saturday, he was still sleeping. At 2 PM, his bedroom door opened and he found his way to the family room and SportsCenter. It really was more than I could take. And so, at this critical juncture, I left the house – just walked away.

I spent the next several hours walking the dog (again), running every errand I could think of, and pruning bushes in my yard, and then my neighbor’s.

When I finally did come home, the applications had been submitted.

“What?! You mean you actually submitted them? Who proofed your essay? Who double checked your work?”

His answer shocked me: “No one; this is my process. Haven’t I often overheard you say to the prospective parents you work with that this needs to be their child’s journey?! You’re certainly welcome to read my essay now if you’d like.”

I nearly knocked him over getting to the computer. I tried to remember if there was any way to un-submit, fix errors, and then re-submit a college application.

Until I read it. And he took my breath away… and—yes—brought me to tears. (If you read my previous post, you already know that I’m a crier). His essay almost caused me to ask, “who wrote this for you?”

The topic was simple: his last high school football game. The content was spot-on and moving. As an admissions officer, I would have loved reading this essay! As a mom, I couldn’t have been prouder.

While I (like many parents) might have some micro-managing tendencies when it comes to my children, I had to take a big step back and realized that possibly, that football game had to happen, and the application deadline had to be looming for the submission to actually (finally!) happen.

Knowing what I know now, would I have handled this any differently? I like to think I would nag less, trust more, and embrace the “last minute” for the good work it can often produce. I would encourage parents new to this process to do the same—including walking dogs, and running errands (your own and your neighbors’) The deadlines will come and they will pass, and in all likelihood, kids will get their applications submitted.

Happy New Year!

Carin Smith
Lawrence University Regional Admission Director

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

We’ve added another application deadline: December 16

We have heard from more than a few students who experienced technical problems submitting their Common Applications for our November 15 Early Action deadline.

In recognition of those technical difficulties, and wanting to accommodate those students who don’t want to wait till Regular Decision to submit their applications, we have opened another application session—call it “Early Action, The Sequel”.

The deadline for this session will be December 16 with a planned notification date of January 15.

If you wish to apply by this deadline, simply complete your Common Application, choosing “Early Action” as your decision type.

We have one more application deadline after this one: January 15, our Regular Decision deadline, with an anticipated notification before April 1.

In the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Happy Early Action deadline day!

That may be one of the few times the words “happy” and “deadline” have shared a sentence, much less one punctuated with an exclamation point. (Then again, “I’m happy I made that deadline!” comes to mind.)

Today, November 15, is our Early Action deadline day. As we head together into this day and the weekend that follows, here are a handful of things to keep in mind:

  1. Lawrence University is a Common Application school.
  2. The Common Application is not yet perfect, which means that some students, their counselors, or their recommenders may encounter technical issues—I believe the technical term is “gremlins”—when they try to submit their applications or supporting documents.
  3. If you find yourself beset by a Common App gremlin, don’t worry: even though our application deadline is today, we build in some grace time after that deadline for students and their supporters to get everything in.
    • Think about it: if you’re interested in Lawrence, we want you to be able to apply, and we don’t want the mechanism of the application to prevent you from being considered.
    • Grace time=till Tuesday, November 19. That should allow you (and us) most of Monday and Tuesday to work through any technical issues you have. If we need even more time working on this together, know that we will be flexible.

If you are a student applicant experiencing Common App problems, please get in touch with your Lawrence admissions counselor, with the understanding that issues you experience over the weekend will be best addressed when our offices and high school offices are open on Monday, November 18.

If you are a counselor or a teacher trying to (but not succeeding when you) submit materials on behalf of your applicants, we have built a counselor portal and a teacher recommendation letter portal.

In the meantime, be well and do well.

To college counselors and teachers endorsing Lawrence applicants

We appreciate the hard work the folks at the Common Application have been doing over the past few months as they continue to perfect Common App 4. We eagerly await the day—and we believe it’s coming soon—when its function matches its beautiful form.

But we know everything isn’t perfect yet, especially when it comes to those things that are—as our friend, Patrick O’Connor, associate dean for college counseling at Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School (Mich.) calls them—the “grown up” pieces of the application: the school report, transcript, teacher recommendation, etc. (Those things that grown-ups submit to support students’ applications.)

That’s why today we have launched two special portals at Lawrence—one for college counselors and one for teachers—to use as a back-up plan in case they run into snags submitting materials through the Common Application for their students who are applying to Lawrence.

Counselors and teachers, we urge you to give the Common Application the “old college try” first. If that proves not to work, then go ahead and use the Lawrence University portals.

Now might be a good time to remind everyone that the Lawrence University community abides by an honor code* and, therefore, trusts that the only people using these portals will be those for whom it is intended (i.e., college counselors and teachers).

*No Lawrence student will unfairly advance his or her own academic performance or in any way limit or impede the academic pursuits of other students of the Lawrence community.