I'm eager to return to ElRo simultaneously exhausted and professionally reinvigorated. It is never easy to be out of the office, particularly in September, but the opportunity to participate in this conference and connect with so many other passionate professions is truly a gift. Thank you to the PTA for their support!
Yesterday was the closing day of the conference and I attended three educational sessions.
My first session was called "College Applications-- The Importance of Managing the Helping Parent." The task of trying to encourage a healthy balance of parent involvement in the college application process is never easy. This session went over the profile of six common 'helping' parents and suggested ways to try and redirect toward healthier and more productive behavior patterns. Many of these scenes are all too common at our school and I hope we can continually strive to keep the focus on helping support our students and give them the chance to navigate this potentially stressful process with unconditional support.
The next session was "How America Pays for College" which is an annual look at trends in financial aid and family decisions around college funding. The presenters shared that while 85% of Americans view college as one of the most serious and important investments they can make, only about 20% have a conscious plan for how to pay for it. This disconnect results in the potential for a lot of family discord and challenge. To borrow from the world of financial investing, the panel encouraged us to suggest that the family take a portfolio approach to college applications -- making a list from all ends of the selectivity spectrum in order to diversity options. This not only will result in more acceptances, it also increases the odds that those acceptances will be affordable. One of the most useful facts I learned in this session is that the typical financial aid package provides about 35% of the cost of the school to be covered by grants and scholarships. This leaves the family with needing to come up with the rest of the cost 'pie' via parent contribution, student, contribution, and/or loans. So much of the financial piece has to do with application strategy. I strongly encourage all parents/guardians to have frank conversations with their children about the amount they can/cannot comfortably contribute toward college. Keeping this conversation behind the scenes is a huge mistake and rarely results in a happy home come spring.
My conference ended with a panel called "Holistic Admissions: Friend or Foe." Here they broke down the rather nefarious origins of holistic admissions and also debunked some myths around its current use. The concept of holistic admission gives the illusion of it being personal and something that is in control of the applicant, but that is not really the case in reality. Admissions offices are skilled at sussing out the elements presented in the application, but they are doing so in the context of the rest of the incoming class. Thus the control is with them, in deciding on the balance of things like institutional priorities, regional balance, gender balance, the balance of leaders vs followers, etc. All the applicant can do is embrace the lack of control and have faith that their personal qualities, the very most holistic parts of their application, will be what leads them on a path to success. Panelist Andrew Flagel from Brandeis put it best when he said "when we reject you, it is rarely about you. It is likely about us."
On to Salt Lake City for 2018!
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