The last three sessions of the conference happened today.
I started my morning at a session about letters of
recommendation at highly selective colleges. The presenters gave insight as to
what information is most useful and general guidelines for writing effective
letters. The theme was mainly to emphasize that the role of a letter of
recommendation is to place the student in context and help the reader
understand how the student operates in comparison to their peers. This doesn’t
only mean repeating how their grades stack up compared to the rest of the
class. It means giving background on things that might not already be included
on the application. For example, one of the panelists shared that she was
having an issue with a student who was late for a meeting with her. When she
went to go find him, she discovered that he was in the cafeteria tutoring a
peer in AP Calculus. This anecdote gives context beyond the fact that he is a
strong math student, but that he is also someone willing to sacrifice his own timeliness
to help a peer understand complex coursework. There was also an emphasis on
keeping letters to one page (something, with over 100 letters to write per
year, I already do). There was also some discussion of helping put the the
student in context compared to the rest of the state/nation. This might mean
pointing out that a student is in the top quartile band of test takers for
males in the state, etc.
Perhaps the most buzzed about session of the conference this
year though was the session I went to next: The Coalition For Access,
Affordability, and Success. For those that haven’t seen the press release from
earlier this week, there is a group of about 80 colleges (all of whom graduate
at least 70% of their students in six years and who are either private and meet
full demonstrated financial need or are public and have affordable in-state
tuition for residents of their state) who are rolling out a new approach to the
college search and application process called the Coalition Application. In
full disclosure, I also feel obligated to share that I have been asked to join
the Coalition Counselor Community (CCC), a group of 46 high school counselors
and CBO representatives from around the nation to serve as an advisory board to
the Coalition, so I have a bit of a unique perspective. For the purposes of
this blog, I’m going to present the comments that were brought up in the
session with limited personal comments of my own. I do this partially because
I’m in a fortunate position to have a way to directly comment to the Coalition
Board via the CCC and partially because this has been a highly volatile topic
of discussion in the counseling community over the past week and I don’t think
a blog post is the most productive forum to use as a soapbox.
Some background: two years ago, the Common Application 4 went live and
there were admittedly some major bumps in the road. Students were frustrated,
school counselors were putting out fires left and right, and colleges felt
betrayed by the roll out of an application that clearly hadn’t been well tested
and wasn’t technologically sound. Reading schedules were impacted, hours of
overtime was put in, and many colleges felt they needed to take action.
Discussions turned from the theoretical to the concrete when the Coalition
was founded in June of 2015 and this group has now made public their plan to
roll out a brand new way to reach students: using technology and reflection to
serve as an alternative to the Common Application for these 80+ partner
schools.
The session opened with a transparent disclosure that the
Coalition is a work in progress. They have lofty goals and they know it. They
want to level the playing field in admissions, giving low income students the
chance to better understand how to be matched with high quality colleges that
will reduce their debt burden. They feel that technology, and this Coalition
site, can help to do that by giving students a virtual locker. This locker will
be a place to store academic achievements, upload video, write reflective
essays, and keep track of their high school involvement both inside and outside
of the classroom. Students will have the ability to share their locker contents
with the influential adults in their lives, and even its been proposed with the
colleges themselves, to get feedback in the years leading up to the fall of
senior year. These locker items can then be utilized in the 12th
grade to include in their Coalition Application. The locker will be rolled out
in January of 2016 and the application is proposed to go live in the summer of
2016. This is a pretty major power play from some of the most selective
colleges in the country. They are taking a bold stance in saying that the
college application process should welcome innovation and that the market share
of the Common App was turning into a monopoly. They believe there is room
for more than one option for students. Coalition schools want more autonomy in
their application design than the Common App was giving and they feel that the
transactional nature of applying to college during one semester of senior year
is missing a chance for innovation and creativity. The aim is make the application to college
more reflective—a chance for, in their words, self-discovery.
Before opening up for questions, the presenters commented on
the three themes of repeated concerns they have already heard this week.
1)
Concern: This will feed the frenzy. Response:
They hear us. They reiterated that colleges will not have access to the student locker
contents and will not be viewing anything in advance. If a student puts a paper
there in the 9th grade, it won’t be shared with anyone unless the
student chooses to share it. The locker can be used by any student, even
students not planning to file a Coalition Application.
2)
Concern: Feedback was that the word
"portfolio" was bad - it sounds evaluative. Response: They are calling it a locker now. It
is not evaluative. Aim is to help student see their own progress and connect
their work in high school with their path to college.
3)
Concern: This will create additional work for
students and counselors. Response: For some students/counselors this will be
less work because colleges that used to have their own separate non-Common App
application will now all be able to be submitted on one platform. (Example Given: a
student can apply to Maryland, Clemson, Emory, and Smith on one site. The
current system would require three sites).
The following topics were brought up during the discussion.
Again, I’m listing them here without my own comments. I’ll leave it to you as
the reader to ponder:
- If the goal of Coalition is to help not overburden the school counselor, but this is rolled out without segmented communication to the different stakeholders, the questions will be directed to the school counselor who now has to serve as the liaison to explain what this is, what it means, and how to use it.
- Instead having essays on the Coalition Application, call them reflections
- Won’t this longer process favor wealthier students who have the ability to get better and higher quality feedback? Is there going to be a surge in demand for independent college consultants?
- Will students be so busy preparing for their college application that they miss out on high school? Are we pushing kids toward goals they aren’t developmentally ready for? Are educational psychologists and mental health professionals being consulted to keep cognitive development in mind?
- Is having that feature of getting feedback on the locker contents letting everyone play college counselor, even if they may not be qualified to do so? Perhaps an answer to this could be that there would be transparency to show who exactly has given feedback and what their relation is to the student.
- From a college admission perspective, who is going to be evaluating the Coalition Applications? How will this change the reading/committee process?
- If this was born from the ill-conceived and rushed roll out of Common App 4, is this roll out also being rushed? Is there a risk that the speedy timeline will result in the same kind of difficulty for everyone involved? People feel they need hard deadlines with lots of advance notice.
- If the mission is access, why are some colleges excluded?
- If the aim of this initiative is college access, why isn’t this application only for low income students? (Many of these comments/questions got applause from the audience – think of it like Congress clapping at the State of the Union-- but this comment/question got, by far, the longest and loudest sustained response from the room)
- How will student privacy issues be addressed? How can the feedback feature maintain confidentiality and privacy?
- Colleges, even with the best of intentions, might think they know what it is like on the high school side of the desk, but they have no idea. Is involving school counselors this late in the game, three months before the locker goes live, a problem?
Frankly, we ran out of time. I’m certain these issues are
only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the thoughts that counselors and
colleges had in the room. I’m eager to continue the dialogue via the CCC and
will sit back and watch, like everyone, how the Coalition’s first year goes.
My final session of NACAC 2015 was about the redesigned CSS
Profile. Frankly, the best thing I took from this session was a helpful analogy
to help families understand the purpose of the Profile. If a GPA gives you an
overview and a full transcript gives the details, a FAFSA gives you an overview
and the CSS Profile gives the more nuanced details.
Just like every year, I leave NACAC feeling energized and renewed. Working as a college counselor alone in school with 560 college bound students is a lonely job. I'm fortunate to have a network of New York City colleagues that proactively meet together every few months, but being lucky enough to be supported by the PTA and my administration to attend a national conference of this scale every year is something I value deeply. I recognize the privilege I have and take this time to reflect on the thousands of other counselors that work in the trenches and don't have the chance to participate in this yearly gathering. Until next year-- in Columbus, Ohio!
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