NACAC Toronto - Day 3!

Today is the final day of the conference here in Toronto.

My first session of the day was about Naviance. It was designed to let colleges see what counselors see on their Naviance screens and to let counselors see what colleges see when they receive documents online. A Hobsons representative (aka the owners of Naviance) was also there to give some updates about things that would look different this year in terms of the site's functionality. One issue that was raised had to do with additional letters of recommendation. What was shared is that every individual college has their own policy on if these letters are downloaded. And, a strong word of warning was sent out that if students do have non-academic letters sent it should be done with the knowledge that it could potentially trigger the application to be marked as complete (say if the school requires to letters and the second letter to arrive is the non-academic one) potentially leading the college to get only one academic letter during the review process. This does reinforce my general hesitance to encourage students to submit extra letters - but it was interesting to see it from the college's portal side of things. This panel also included a glimpse into the online reading that goes on at Franklin & Marshall. F&M uses a company called Slate to do their reading (a company I had just met the day before at the exhibitor fair, who got rave reviews from my former colleagues at Fordham). Wow -- has this industry changed in only a few short years. When I was reading files 7 years ago on paper, I never would have imagined the industry could change this quickly. Counselors now have the flexibility to read files on an iPad. I used to bring bags of files back and forth on the D train. Amazing! The presenters did a nice job of keeping the audience engaged and it was hard not to grin when the Hobsons rep's intro music was the Imperial March, seriously. Of the things she mentioned, it is important for us to take note that online Early Decision agreements can now be completed without the parent portion being done. This is good news in that I won't have to wait in order to do my part. But this is bad news because if a parent forgets to submit this I won't get a bounce back error letting me know. The responsibility is going to on the student more than ever before to verify that all portions of an application are complete. You've been warned!

My second session of the day was probably the most anticipated educational session of the conference: The Common Application Redesigned: An Open Forum. People obviously remembered the session last year, and how crowded it was, because people lined up like they were waiting for the next iPhone -- scratch that - like they were waiting for a free giveaway of the next iPhone. I was very happy to get in and get a seat. I can't go through every topic that was discussed but I think the biggest takeway for current seniors is this: prepare to be frustrated. And I'm not even trying to by cynical there - I'm really saying that this application was totally revamped and since you are the first class using it there are going to glitches. Many many glitches. Just know that you are probably experiencing the same glitch that many other students are experiencing and you will need to have patience in getting things sorted out. The good news is that 24/7 support will be offered starting October 1 - but as was the case before this help is going to be via email, not phone. There is also a helpful 'Known Issues' page where the Common App is listing major bugs they have found and the status of the solution. One thing they mentioned in particular is an issue where a student has completed all required elements of a section but the green check mark isn't showing up. They said this can easily be resolved (it is a bug, not anything the student did wrong) but that the STUDENT -- not the counselor or parent-- must contact the Common App support for them to fix it manually. A second word of note is that the FERPA confusion we experienced has been happening on a very large scale, but that once a student does complete the FERPA waiver it cannot be changed. So select carefully. They said they give students multiple pop up messages if they do not waive the rights just because it is so rare and they want students to know that they are in the vast minority. When the Common App sends you a pop up - read it! Another hot button issue had to do with the fact that in its current state, in order to see a print preview of the final application's PDF a student must first click on a button called 'Submit.' This is confusing to students because 'submit' sounds very final, even though the next page will include information about getting a print preview copy. I got the impression that The Common App people were genuinely listening to this concern and I'm betting this button gets updated before the end of the cycle with something to indicate that there are additional pages beyond the submit button that will be prompted to proofread. The issue of outside recommenders was brought up in this session as well. Here the strong recommendation was for academic recommendations to come through the school counseling office and the outside recommenders to use the Common App recommendation forms and procedure. If you are a person that is going to require a third outside non academic letter, see me if you need help deciding how to go about this. I could go on and on with other updates but the final two things I'll mention are that 1) a general resume upload is no longer an option and 2) the personal statement can't be cut and pasted directly from word because the formatting will not translate. The resume issue is mostly driven by the fact that colleges felt students should be able to explain their resume via the existing Common App and that colleges who were interested in seeing a resume could allow for document uploads on their individual supplements. Those that don't allow a resume to be uploaded are sending the message that they don't want to see resumes. In terms of the personal statement, since it is not a good idea to type the entire thing into the box on the CA itself, the recommendation is to complete and edit the essay in word, copy and paste it into a non-word program like Notepad, then copy and paste from the notepad into the CA. Weak sauce, but it is what it is. The other major bombshell dropped at this conference is that the same delays student users are finding with the CA are also happening for the member colleges. Member colleges do not currently have access to student applications that have been submitted and they have been told not to expect access until mid-October at the earliest. This means that if you submit your application, give me a transcript request form, see in Naviance that I've submitted your initial materials, and then call the college to confirm you could very well be told that your application remains incomplete. This is not going to reason to panic this year. We are ALL going to need to be willing to wait as the CA works out these kinks. This could even potentially trickle down to mean delays in EA and ED notification and will most certainly mean longer hours of reading for admissions officers during the month of November. Time will tell.

My final session of the day was about institutional aid (aka merit aid) and the ethics and standards recommended by NACAC. Technically this session is designed for post-secondary members but I sometimes find it useful to cross over and attend these types of things to gain valuable insight as to how things run from the college side of things. It is always useful to view things from a different lens and this session shed some light on some interesting topics when it comes to awarding money. Seeing some highlights of the statement of principles of good practice was really fascinating. For example, I didn't know that it says in writing that best practice is for colleges to not offer financial incentives to ED students that are not also offered to RD students. (I'm curious in fact though if the reverse is also the standard - is it ethical to offer RD students aid that ED students are not offered?). There is also a provision that states that colleges should not offer merit aid incentives to students who are committed to attending other schools (in other words no poaching) - but this has interesting interpretations and applications when it comes to the waitlist. It got me thinking, is this part of the root of why coming off the waitlist almost always means being a full pay student? The other part, of course, being that you were a borderline candidate to start with and colleges hold the upper hand by admitting you at all. If there could be one takeaway from the panel though it would be this - a quote from a panelist from a large land grant public university - "merit aid is about the institution, not about the kid." I know it sounds harsh, but it is the cold and hard truth. With the exception of the truly elite merit scholarship (and honestly, even then it is still about furthering the institution by enrolling a top student, not rewarding student accomplishments), most free money given to students by colleges via financial aid packages is about enticing you to enroll, not about recognizing or honoring your achievements. It is called a scholarship but it is really a calculated risk by the college to try and discount the tuition enough so that you'll enroll. As she put it, most colleges do not have "rewarding the student for their accomplishments in high school" as part of their mission statement. Admission and financial aid is a complicated dance - this session brought up some interesting ideas and definitely got me thinking in new ways.

I've already rambled on here for awhile, so I think it is best to sign off. I look forward to my return back to school on Monday where I can continue to think about the things I've learned and can jump back in to working with the class of 2014. I'm always thankful for the opportunity to learn more about this industry and I'm more energized than ever to see how this year's application cycle goes.

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NACAC Toronto- Day 2!

Friday is always the toughest day at NACAC because it is LONG. This morning I had the pleasure of attending a breakfast hosted by Reed College in Portland and it was a great opportunity to learn more about Reed and interact with other school counselors in an intimate environment. As another colleague at the breakfast described it, Reed is known as a school for the student who looks up and reads the paper cited in the footnote of the original research article they were assigned. But something important that was added by the Reed rep is that students don't need to arrive at Reed knowing how to do that. In other words, the reputation of being intellectual is not entirely false, but students are allowed to be in a raw form, only to be polished by the Reed curriculum. Many thanks to Reed for including me, it was a great chance to start Day 2 on a good note.

The first morning session I attended was "What Admission Directors Think" a share out of the results of an annual anonymous survey by Admission Directors. A few stats:

- 2/3 of responders said they had not met their admission goals by May 1
- 29% of colleges continue to pursue students after May 1 (aka poaching students who have already committed elsewhere)
- 1% of public colleges and 2% of private colleges admit to falsifying data when reporting to organizations like US News and World Report
- 7% believe there are systems in place to prevent false data from being reported
- Around 35% feel their boss judges them based on the school's ranking

I could expand on most of these topics, but for the sake of time I'll just say that this session left me with a lot to think about. It is also a reminder that colleges are made up of humans just like applicants and their moral compass can get just as turned around sometimes. The final piece of trivia that I learned is that the next predicted wave of international students after China will be Brazil. Expect to see Portuguese programs popping up where you might not expect them.

The next session I attended was "The Impact of Wait Lists in College Admission." This session was really a pleasure to attend. While I can't say I learned a tremendous amount of new information (contacting a school when you are waitlisted is recommended but not required, very few people traditionally get off the waitlist, schools waitlist way more students than they need to as an insurance policy to shape the class, etc), I did greatly appreciate the candor of the colleges that participated. The session was transparent and clear. Each participant college (Carlton, Pomona, University of Chicago and University of Michigan) gave both data and anecdotal explanations of their waitlist activity. My one criticism of the practices that were described would be aimed at the universities who both utilized what seem to be obviously bloated lists. But old traits die hard and it can't be easy for a director of admission to fix a problem that doesn't have a direct negative impact on them. I was interested to see how varied the response to join the waitlist was depending on the school. At Carleton, out of 1450 students waitlisted in 2013, only 385 ask to remain on the waitlist (none came off that year). Yet, at Chicago in 2013, 3000 students were waitlisted and 2886 accepted their spot (and, are you sitting down, 26 got a chance to move off the list and join the class). There were a few common practices among all four schools - mainly that the waitlist is not ranked or sorted at the time of decisions. Decisions about who to bring off the list, if any students at all, isn't determined until the shape of the class unfolds. Each school also gave more than the recommended minimum of 72 hours response time, in fact the panelists grant between a week and 10 days. All in all, this session was really well organized and extra points to the great moderator, a school counselor from Minnesota.

The afternoon was filled with the exhibitor fair and college fair. The picture above comes from one of the Exhibitor booths.  One highlight from the fair- props to Williams College who includes their SAT Subject Test averages in their printed profile material. Very helpful!

Tonight I attended receptions hosted by Northeastern, Colleges That Change Lives, and the National Catholic College Admission Association. Big thanks to them for the chance to network, I can't believe we are already 2/3 of the way finished with this year's conference!

More to come tomorrow!

NACAC Toronto - Day 1!

 

Thanks to the generous support of the PTA, I am currently in Toronto, Ontario to attend the National NACAC Conference – an annual gathering of high school counselors, admissions representatives, and various others who work within the world of post secondary education.

I started my day with a morning trip to the St. George campus of University of Toronto, the largest university in Canada. It is only my second time on a Canadian university campus, so it was exciting to get to walk around, especially at a time of year when so many students were on campus. Our tour was standing outside of the building where the largest lecture hall is located (it seats 1700! But don’t worry, I think the tour guide said the the largest class tops out at a measly 1200 or so) and let me tell you, we could tell when class let out. So many students bustling about! There are five schools within U of T, Art & Science, Architecture, Engineering, Kineseology, and Music. In addition to these divisions, the university is also divided up into 7 colleges – each student taking their place in a Harry Potter style group which is purely symbolic (students get to rank the colleges that they want most and it is not based on major or interest). No doubt this is designed to help students build communities within communities since the urban campus has so many undergrads. Application to the University of Toronto is completed on the OUAC website (like the Common App, for Ontario) and students are then contacted for a second phase of the application based on what their particular program requires. The average admitted student has an 1800 or above on their SAT (26 or above on the ACT) and has a B+/A- average. Students must also submit either two AP scores or two SAT Subject Tests. All in all, I think this school would be most appealing to students looking to be at a top research institution (Harvard is the only North American school that publishes more than they do). It is also an interesting option for students that are not US citizens and thus won’t be sacrificing Federal or State aid by popping up to Canada for college.

Next, I attended the opening Keynote address by New YorkTimes columnist Thomas Friedman. I would be remiss to try and summarize all the different things that he touched on, but suffice it to say, his message was focused on asking us to consider the new reality of the modern world – that the intersection of technology and education is not going away and that colleges will need to adapt and adjust. Just as Mr. Friedman has seen the advent of the internet and blogs drastically change his work in print journalism, colleges will need to be ready for the new wave of online education, MOOCs, and a new highly interactive admission experience. He also discussed how technology is making average obsolete. New jobs being created are not average. Average tasks are now done by machines, and done more efficiently at that. Instead, the new college graduate is going to need to be more innovative, more entrepreneurial, and more passionate so they can create the job that they need.

There was only one education session today and I decided to attend the session with College Board President David Coleman. The title of the session led me to believe that we would learn more about the ‘new’ SAT revamp that is on the horizon to align the SAT more closely with the Common Core Standards (guess who designed the Common Core Standards? It rhymes with Lavid Boleman). I genuinely went into the session with an open mind. Not expecting to like what I heard, but expecting to at least glean some concrete advance information about the changes to the test and the trajectory for the future. What I experienced instead was a whole lot of hot air with little to no actual information. I had my pen in hand ready to take notes and I couldn’t even find a single thing to write down for the first 25 minutes of the session. Even then, the only two things I really learned about the revised SAT is that it is projected to launch in 2015 and that it will try to replace esoteric “SAT words” (see what I did there? :) with more commonly used words like “distill.” Mr. Coleman waxed poetic about the beauty of the changes. In my opinion, he spoke in a patronizing tone and essentially said that we’d get more details in January. The aim apparently is to integrate the new design with the best of the course work that is going on in the high school classrooms. And instead of just being asked to give the right answer, students will need to give evidence for why it is the right answer. What will that look like? I guess we will find out in January. 

More tomorrow!

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Class of 2014 Kickoff - Part 1!

Today I made the first of two presentations to the senior class about the college application process. The second one will include parents/guardians and will take place on Friday at 7:30 am (sorry!).

The two presentations have some overlapping themes, but the content is different. Today, we focused a little more on college office policies and procedures and pieces of advice for seniors as they start to kick this process into high gear.

Friday, I will talk more about some general college application process strategies and go into a little more detail about application terminology. I will also spend some time talking about the essay.

At today's assembly, students were given their yellow teacher recommendation signature forms. Over the next two weeks, students should get that form signed again in order to lock their recommendations into place. This is also an opportunity to have a brief conversation with the person writing your letter to find out if they require any additional steps (Do they want you to email them a sample of your work from the class? Do they want you to fill out a certain form or worksheet to help them write a better letter?) and to give them a heads up about your earliest deadline.

And we're off!

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