Mid Year Grade Reports

When you hit a point in the college application process where you feel lost - take a few deep breaths and go back to basics. I've had multiple panicked conversations with students in the past two weeks who are trying to fill out the transcript request form and get to the last box and don't know what to do.

The last box on the transcript request form asks if you need me to send mid-year senior grades to the college. Many students appear to be confused or tripped up here but I promise there are no trick questions. The form is simply asking: do you need this college to get a copy of your senior report card? If you do, check the box. If you don't, leave it blank. If you aren't sure - look it up!

Let's break it down:

Senior grades or mid-year grades are exactly what they sound like: your senior report card. 

There are three categories of colleges--

1) Schools that require senior grades. Example: Syracuse.
Evidence of this policy:
http://admissions.syr.edu/apply/firstyearrequirements/appchecklist/

Note you see in the requirements list: "Senior Year Grade Report" - other terms you might see include: 7th semester grades, mid-year report, or senior grades.

2) Schools that don't allow senior grades. Example: Penn State.
Evidence of this policy:
http://admissions.psu.edu/info/future/firstyear/apply/  

Note you do not see anything about senior grades in the requirements list. In fact, they also don't consider teacher letters of recommendation "Penn State does not require letters of recommendation, nor are they used in a student’s evaluation (unless required for a specific program)."

3) Schools that will look at them if you send them, but don't require them. Example: Fordham. Evidence of this policy: http://www.fordham.edu/info/20541/how_to_apply

Note, you don't see any mention of rules mandating submission of senior grades. But, you also don't see any mention that they are not allowed.

You are in charge of 10 applications (or less). I am in charge of approximately 1,400 applications. I sadly do not have every school's policy memorized and since most schools fall under the third category I have no way to know if you do or don't want your grades sent. You have to tell me, that is why the box is there :)

If you are applying to a school where grades are optional, and you feel not so confident in your senior grades, DON'T CHECK THE BOX. If something drastic changes and you change your mind later, you can always tell me via email (please list every school name, please don't just send an email saying 'send all my schools my senior grades.')

So when will grades be sent? Early round schools (EA/ED/Priority/REA/SCEA) will have senior grades sent after the first marking period. Regular Decision schools will have grades sent in January after the second marking period (the middle of the year, hence mid-year). All deferred students from Early will automatically have their report card sent in January since the college is saying they need additional information before their can make a final decision. (Though, I should add, this will only happen if the student accurately records being deferred in Naviance. If you don't record it, I won't know you are being considered in Regular.)

Reminder: Your mid-year grades will come in the form of your report card. So teacher comments and attendance records will also be included. (Psssssst: this is the part where you are inoculated against senioritis). 

Like most of the the college process - when things seem overwhelming just slow down. Read the instructions. Be mindful. It will speed up my document processing if your forms are accurate, which helps you in the long run because it means your application becomes complete faster.

One more week until November 1!

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NACAC San Diego Day 3

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 12^th 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 9^th 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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NACAC San Diego Day 2

Day two of the conference started with a breakfast hosted by Irish universities. We heard from three college reps who gave reasons as to why an Irish education might be a good fit for international students (aka, kids from US high schools looking to attend college in Ireland). Among their points: Ireland is safe, English speaking, and well respected on the international stage. Unlike the UK system, Irish schools last four years, just like American schools. While the admission criteria is a little different (here, similar to the UK, essays need to be about the course of study and why the student is qualified to pursue the field), the process seems significantly easier than navigating the UCAS system. In fact, one is even on the Common App. The cost is also attractive, particularly because US students are eligible for merit scholarships. While a student would be giving up Federal and State aid to go to college in Ireland, they may still save in the long run net cost in comparison to US Private colleges.

Next, I attended the Keynote address by Sal Khan of the Khan Academy. In anticipation of the speech, I read his book this summer, so I was already familiar with some of his anecdotes and his educational philosophy. I have to admit, he is one impressive man. Unlike a lot of other 'rising star' experts in education, I actually believe he has an authentic passion for his mission. I found him to be endearing and genuine and the additional features he demonstrated from his site were impressive. I myself will be trying the Khan Academy Redesigned SAT prep this winter. Part of why I was a little suspect of him before was that I couldn't help but pre-judge someone that would get in cahoots with the College Board. But I have to say, it seems like this really is just a case of the College Board getting lucky in finding the right man for the job. Their quest to knock the test prep industry down a peg by offering high quality free test preparation and his quest to provide full opportunity to anyone willing to learn really does seem to be a smart partnership for both sides. One of my favorite clips that he showed was this-- a great reminder that if you go back far enough we were once all on a level playing field. Everything you do now, you had to learn. He said that our goal as educators is to help young people find a growth mindset - believing in themselves that working through failures is just part of the process of learning. It was an enjoyable talk, particularly nice because it really had a direct connection to our work (something that all Keynote speakers don't always have). I'm particularly excited to also check out the Khan Academy College Counseling resources - found here.

My first educational session of the day was on understanding student Search. What that means, for those of you not in the industry, is that it was about understanding how colleges utilize the services from the ACT and College Board for purchasing the names of students in order to use that data to guide their enrollment management. I often try at NACAC to attend sessions that aren't necessarily for high school counselors because I think it is useful to be able to understand the intricacies of the other side of the desk. One of the more interesting points that I learned here is that of the search criteria offered, only about 16% of colleges buy names using race/ethnicity as a criteria for selection. I think this speaks to the often over-exaggerated impact of race and ethnicity on college admission. The fear that racial diversity trumps all is not shown in the data. Colleges remain most interested in high test scores, GPA, and perhaps most interesting: Geography (where the student lives). (These criteria each had between 75-98% of colleges using them to buy names).

Next, I attended the session about how students transition from small high schools to large colleges. Many of my college meetings consist of conversations with students about the size of the undergraduate student body and the interest in going to a huge school after attending a small high school. Unsurprisingly, the message of the session was that it all boils down to fit. Some students are able to thrive with anonymity and turning larger schools smaller by finding their niche. Others aren't cut out for life at a huge university and will do better in a small college environment.

The rest of the day was spent at the exhibition hall and counselor college fair. This overwhelming and exhausting endeavor consists of all of us walking around a college fair (just like students) - trying to catch the eye of college reps to have quick conversations. I tend to err on the side of making quick connections via a huge smile, wave, and badge scan so I can be on mailing lists to get the real details throughout the year via email. By the end of the day on Friday, full on exhaustion has set in, but my smile is always wide as ever after getting to see so many colleagues from both sides of the desk.

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NACAC San Diego Day 1

Today was the first official day of the conference. I had the chance to attend an event hosted by SMU, go to two educational sessions, and go to the NYSACAC membership meeting.

SMU, a medium sized university in Dallas, Texas, did an innovative thing by hosting a lecture with one of their faculty in the morning before the conference started. This was an awesome idea, both because it reminded me of why I loved college so much (I was a 'never skip a class' kind of person) and because it let us see one of their best assets in action. Admission stats can be viewed online, but hearing directly from a professor talking about the subject they are an expert in is at the core of the college experience. We heard from Jeffrey Engel, a History professor about the importance and usefulness of the liberal arts - in this case a specific analysis of how the events of 1989 were viewed differently by America, Western Europe, Russia, and China. These viewpoints then have an impact on foreign policy now and illustrate how the lessons learned in the past can be used to gain a deeper understanding of current conflicts. He spoke on how the study of history - a liberal arts subject - is essential to make economic and business decisions. I especially liked his commentary on how while majoring in business might get you your first job, majoring in the liberal arts is what will get you your first promotion. This is due to the ability to read critically, write well, link interdisciplinary ideas, and see things from a broader context. SMU has about 6,500 undergraduate students and 5,200 graduate students on a campus that looks like something more out of the southeast -- thing white columns, brick, sprawling quads, etc. There are five undergraduate schools: Humanities & Sciences, Business, Engineering, Arts, and Education & Human Development. Dallas offers one of the best placed in the country for job opportunities and the campus is the home to the Bush Presidential Library (the only campus to be able to say they have a Presidential Library on campus). I couldn't help but notice that SMU consistently brands itself as SMU. I'm not sure if it is intentional to avoid boxing themselves in as Southern and Methodist or if it is just habit to use the letters instead of the full name. I am curious though to know how a New York City student would fit in. It was encouraging to hear that on pretty much every metric, if Rice is the number one private college in Texas, SMU is right behind them at number two. Considering about 50% of students are admitted, like USD earlier this week, this is a nice target option for many ElRo students. Reliable academics without insane competition for admission.

The first session I attended was the one on the Common Application. I like trying to attend this one every year so that I can be in the know when students ask me questions. I think most counselors would agree that one of the most exciting changes for this year's site is the ability for students to preview the application, page by page, without going through the motions as if they are going to be pressing submit. This reduces stress and allows students to see how the page will look to the reader. It was also nice to hear about some new initiatives for providing help via both phone and online chat - though it wasn't clear if this was only for counselors or if was also for students. It was also revealed that later this year there will be a Common App App for iPhone that will allow students to track their deadlines and organize their 'to do' list. While it isn't an app that will allow for editing of the application (this makes sense) it will help students as a companion to the web based application site. The final piece of useful information that I gleaned from this session was a new turnkey site for counselors to get ready-made lessons to help support students in filling out the Common App. This site, called Common App Ready, is something we could maybe use in Advisory to help further give instruction to students about how to be more comfortable with the site.

The second session I attended was called 'Behind the Curtain of Financial Aid.' While I'm not sure it was a full peek behind the curtain (this, by design, is kind of hard to do in a panel setting because the inner-workings of aid are different at every single school), it did help me connect a few things that I think are helpful in navigating the financial aid website. The first thing that I hadn't fully connected before was the idea that two schools, both that say they meet 100% of demonstrated need, can offer the same family significantly different packages. This has to do with the fact that while the Federal EFC from the FAFSA is constant at both schools, the Institutional Methodology formula for institutional aid is different at every school. So even if both schools require the CSS profile, they may or may not weight certain factors in their algorithm and that can skew things for the student. So, it behooves the student to research ahead of time how every question on the CSS is, or isn't, used by the college if they are trying to create a list that will yield maximum aid. It was promising to hear about a website that the presenter found helpful in looking through the data surrounding aid and packaging - in fact, the session crashed the site with so many people logging on to check it out. The site is called Common Campus, but I was disappointed to see (once the site was up and running again) that it is a subscription service.

The day of sessions ended with the annual NYSACAC meeting - a gathering of NY professionals from both sides of the desk. It is always great to see so many familiar faces. This year, the NYSACAC conference is being held in Staten Island at Wagner College, which means I may have a chance to be able to participate. I can't wait!

Tomorrow is another long day - starting off with the Keynote address from Sal Khan of Khan Academy!

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