NACAC 2019 - Louisville

I've officially entered the double digit category, with this being my tenth NACAC conference. Each year has brought new experiences and this one is sure to be one of the most memorable yet.

As you may already be aware, NACAC is currently going through a very serious and intense DOJ investigation. The future of our organization and the landscape of college admissions is very much on the brink of some potentially major changes. I've gone through my own thoughts and feelings as I process this conflict between ethics and law and if I'm being honest I'm still grappling with how I feel. With my role as a delegate representing NY State (and my lack of personal legal representation) I'm not looking to turn this post into a rambling laundry list of what those feelings are. What I will share is this link to Jon Boeckenstadt's blog where he has shared some of his own predictions for the future of NACAC without a mandatory code of ethics. Saturday will be an eventful day, to say the least.

Today was already eventful though in its own right. I spent the morning visiting University of Louisville, a public urban school with about 12,000 undergraduate students. This compact campus doesn't feel overwhelming, despite the enrollment size. University of Louisville is an example of a school that I'm talking about when I say that students can attend schools outside of New York for the price of a SUNY. With a total cost of attendance around $37,000, over half of Eleanor Roosevelt's senior class would qualify for merit based scholarships. A 30 ACT/1360 SAT and a 90 GPA yields an automatic minimum of $12,000 in merit aid per year. Guess what school is now $25,000? And there are additional scholarships available, including application based avenues that go up to full tuition. Students in a similar academic range are also eligible to apply to the honors program, a great way to make a larger school more personal and rigorous. I also saw a meaningfully diverse campus-- with notable inclusion efforts for both students of color and LGBTQ+ students.

Next, I attended the NACAC opening keynote by Randi Zuckerberg. Again, in the spirit of not turning this into a rambling laundry list of my thoughts and feelings I'll just summarize by saying that the general consensus on her remarks were that they largely missed the mark. This keynote was a missed opportunity to present the membership with what could have been some really interesting and relevant topics (perhaps, I don't know, something about antitrust law?). I'm hopeful that this will be motivation to do better in the future.

For the first educational session, I attended a presentation called "Profiles, Grade Distributions, and Recommendations -- oh my!" -- a look into what high schools and colleges have found to be most important to communicate in applications. This is the time of year that I'm always revising our class profile and this session helped to remind me of a few tweaks to consider making.

Tomorrow is another long day - excited to keep great conversations going!

Boston NACAC - Day 3

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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Boston NACAC- Day 2

I realize I'm posting this on Saturday. Yesterday was really long.

The first session I went to yesterday was about how to most effectively write recommendations in an organized narrative format. In that spirit, I'm going to be entering this blog post as a series of shorter highlights instead of regular paragraphs. 

• 'Recommendations That Changed Lives' is going to be a NACAC session that people talk about for years going forward. I'm not saying that as a possibility, I'm saying it as a fact. Multiple people who were there with me used phrases like "The price of my registration was worth it for that session alone. If I left now, I would have gotten my moneys worth."
• This session was about a growing trend of high school counselors replacing traditional letters of recommendation with 'organized narratives' using bullet points and headers to give brief nuggets about the student instead of carefully crafted paragraphs. 
• The presenters did their due diligence in contacting colleges to make sure these new 'letters' would not negatively impact students and the overwhelming response from colleges was not just that it wouldn't hurt, but that the colleges preferred this model.
• The most important elements of the letter are explaining the quality of the student's character and any special circumstances in their life. This can be done efficiently and effectively with bullet points. 
• They also brought up the idea of using peer comments in letters - something I'm strongly considering piloting this year. 
• The Common App session was next for me. I always try to attend to be sure I'm aware of new changes within the application. 
• We've had confusion at ElRo about the new self reported transcript function. 
• ONLY the six schools that are requiring it will be able to see it.  
• Because we are an annualized school, if students do this they will need to be very careful and accurate in their reporting. 
• When in doubt, select the 'other' option and type in the text field the specifics about non-traditional courses/credits. 
• New integration with Google Docs to import text into the application 
• Fun fact - these schools founded the Common App in 1975:  Trinity, Lafayette, Amherst, Harvard, Emory, Goucher, Princeton, Oberlin, Colgate, Bowdoin, Colorado College, Vassar, SMU, Mills and Carleton. Nice to see a wide range of places, locations, and selectivity levels. 
• My final session was called - Uncharted Territory: Getting First Generation Students to Consider Broader Options. 
• Fewer action items within this session, but it is always a nice reminder to spend time with like minded colleagues in our mission to expose students to all of their college options.
• The rest of my day was spent in the exhibition hall, visiting vendors, and in the counselors college fair.  

Today, Saturday, is the final day. I'm eager to attend the rest of the sessions and return to the office re-energized!

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Boston NACAC - Day 1

I started the day at a lecture hosted by SMU where we got the opportunity hear from Dr. Eric Bing, an SMU professor in the area of public health. This has become one of my favorite NACAC events, because I really value the opportunity to hear from college faculty, not just admissions staff talking about statistics. I love getting to listen to a lecture again, it brings back the days of being a student! He spoke to us about his work looking to make large scale public health impact using small scale interventions. Things like diagnosing cervical cancer with a cell phone camera and teaching surgeons how to practice performing hysterectomies using virtual reality tools you can buy at Best Buy. He was a dynamic speaker and SMU showcased once again what their campus has to offer. We also got a quick update from last year's speaker about the progress on SMU's cultural intelligence initiatives. They are doing great work across many disciplines. It shows.

The conference opened with keynote speaker Dr. Shaun Harper from USC. He spoke on the opportunities we have, as college counselors and admissions professionals, to break the cycles of racism that might not be as overt as what we saw in Charlottesville. This year more than ever, our work in this arena holds a tremendous amount of weight and we must all strive each day to push back against all forms of inequality and oppression.

I decided to start off my educational sessions with my favorite type of session: the ones designed for colleges. I opted to attend "Let’s Talk – Selective College admission Offices and Committee Based Evaluation" a session about CBE, a new reaching format pioneered at the University of Pennsylvania in 2013. In this model, admissions officers work in the office to read files as a team. The file is usually broken up into two sections and each member of the team reads one half -- either the academic side of the application or the personal side. They shared that this new model fosters unparalleled levels of office mentorship between veterans and new staff. It makes reading faster and prevents reader bias since every file has at least two sets of eyes on it for the initial read. They espoused the higher levels of efficiency and stronger professional development. Schools using this model of reading are increasing rapidly, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it become widespread in coming reading cycles. It is already being used at about 15-20 schools in some form (either just in the Early Decision pool, or for the entire class) -- places like NYU, Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, and Oberlin. Some of my fellow counselors have concerns about the impact of this reading model on applicants, but I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt for now. It seems to foster happier readers and happier readers does not have a downside to me. 

Tomorrow is the hardest day - the longest and most intense - but I'm ready! 

Pre-NACAC College Tours - MIT/Harvard/Wellesley

 Thanks to the generous support of the PTA, I'm lucky to be attending my ninth NACAC National Conference, located this year in Boston, Massachusetts. The conference starts Thursday, but I spent today on a pre-NACAC tour of MIT and Harvard (co-presented with Wellesley, even though we didn't get a chance to see the campus in person). Though I'd had peripheral exposure to these campuses before (I went to college only a few T stops away) it was nice to get to see the schools through the admissions lens and hear directly from staff about their missions and unique identities.

The morning portion of the program was held at MIT. I'll start by saying, the table centerpieces at breakfast were Rubik's cubes set inside glass containers -- a pretty great way to embody the spirit of MIT: quirky problem solvers that fancy themselves to be the kind of people who live on being just a little bit tongue in cheek. The campus buildings are often interconnected - a series of hallways that vastly improve quality of life in the winter but that also represent the intellectual intersection of departments across the transcripts of the students that walk through these spaces. All students are admitted undeclared, so all students are expected to be able to handle core requirement classes that include the likes of calculus, chemistry, physics, biology, AND the social sciences and humanities. This is to say that even the Literature majors are finding derivatives and the Computer Scientists read Shakespeare. This is a place for innovators that are both book smart and who thrive in hands on learning experiences. It is best for students with creative minds -- we were told they are the kinds of students who like to build things and break things. Loners are the ones who struggle - collaboration is valued. In fact, one of the slides we were shown said something to the effect of "we are looking to choose a 1,100 person team to climb a fairly interesting and rugged mountain--together." MIT isn't the kind of place one applies to on a whim. They use their own application platform and don't follow the same tune as many other highly selective schools. Do a ton of activities? That's nice, but MIT will only let you list four and they should be from grades 10-12. Have a super polished longform personal statement? That works other places, but here you'll need to complete 5 short answers instead. The students we heard from on the panel were clearly very intellectual, but they also had palpable passion and clearly viewed their time at MIT as a journey (complete with some high highs and low lows). MIT seeks those who are brilliant enough to tackle the world's problems and who can be bold enough to find solutions for the 'greater good.' It was an impressive morning and a great way to kick off the conference week.

Next we headed to Harvard, for a co-presentation about both Harvard and Wellesley. As a women's college, Wellesley's mission remains the same now as it has always been: to educate dynamic female leaders. Core tenets of a Wellesley experience include confidence, leadership, and sisterhood. The majority of the faculty is female and students are involved in running all aspects of the school -- from the Trustees meetings, to residential life running the dorms, to sitting on the admission committee (yes, you read that last one right). There is an honor code, so students are expected to uphold high levels of ethical decision making. One of the most exciting initiatives to emerge in the past two years is the new career advising system that gives every student a personal career advisor for all four years - an individualized program giving unparalleled attention to outcomes and employment opportunities. I hope that I get the chance, sooner rather than later, to see this place in person!

As for Harvard, the description of the students is that they are organized and disciplined leaders. We were told that admission decisions are driven by the gut as much as the head and heart. This makes sense in a way because in an almost universally strong pool like theirs, relying on the gut can be a much more reasonable endeavor. The risk is low and the payoff can be huge. Their committee is, of course, looking for phenomenal academics but also outstanding character and for the student to have a full and meaningful life beyond the classroom. Unfortunately, the Harvard 'tour' is not much of a tour at all in that we didn't go inside a single building. I think this is an effort to not have tour groups gawk at Harvard students as they try to go about their studies? But, it makes it harder to get a tight grasp on the community (not to mention that it also doesn't move the needle much when trying to fight the ivory tower stereotype). What is clear is that Harvard does an outstanding job of identifying young people with strong potential for success. Whatever their methodology is, it's working. Their historic campus and reputation make them both highly sought after and rightly proud of their legacy and achievements.

Tomorrow is the official opening day of the conference, and I look forward to seeing my colleagues from around the nation (and world!). Thank you to MIT, Harvard, and Wellesley for their time and attention to today's program.

Columbus NACAC Day 3!

For the closing day of NACAC I decided to go to two sessions: one about the national job outlook and one about the teenage brain.

The job outlook session was presented by the Department of Labor. While it was, admittedly, not the most lively of sessions, I did get to learn a lot about the careers that are projected to be growing rapidly in the coming years (along with those that are on the decline). Healthcare is the fastest growing sector and jobs in this field are the ones that are expanding at the fastest rates. This doesn't mean doctors though, it mostly means nurses (including nurse practitioners), home health aides, and other health support occupations. There are anticipated to be many job openings for people without formal education, but those jobs are expected to pay very very low wages. The earnings for a person with a bachelor's degree outpaces those without by more than double in terms of annual income. It is also projected that the sector of jobs with the most hiring will actually be careers that require a Master's degree - something to keep in mind for anyone concerned about the cost of college. One of the most useful things shared at the session was the website that will give state by state job predictions for different career paths. This can help show the landscape of how many openings there might be in New York in the next eight years.

http://www.projectionscentral.com/Projections/LongTerm

For a national look at job trends, you can also look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics job outlook

http://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/

The most interesting trivia is that the job with the fastest job growth in the nation is wind turbine technicians. It only represents about 4800 jobs nationally, but no other job is expanding more quickly.

The next session I went to was a talk by author and physician Dr. Frances Jensen. She presented a session called 'The Teenage (and Young Adult) Brain: Neuroscience You Can Use.' She shared that some of the behaviors that we marginalize (like risk taking and poor decision making) are actually neurologically appropriate behavior for teens. That isn't to say that unhealthy choices should be encouraged, but she encourages instead looking at it through a lens of normal human development. It turns out the brain is the last organ in the human body to fully develop. Research indicates that the brain is not fully connected and functioning until the mid to late twenties - far after college is complete. The parts to mature last are those connected with things like empathy, decision making, executive functioning, and impulse control (all located in the frontal lobe). The brain has connections within it called synapses and those synapses are insulated by a fatty substance called myelin. It takes years the the myelin to fully wrap around the connections and this it the reason teenagers can have a somewhat 'uneven' behavior and decision making. If this prognosis is feeling bleak though, it isn't. While these 'unfinished' teen brains might sometimes be thrill seeking or highly emotional, they are also at their peak in terms of learning new things, building new and strong connections faster, and being plastic. This means that the teenage years are actually a wonderful window within which one can build new (and very strong) habits. If teens can work on practicing positive behaviors, those behaviors can become second nature. 

In this same way, teens are also much more highly susceptible to addiction. Bad habits can become addiction in teens much faster and with much less exposure than adults. This is why exposure to drugs and alcohol during the teen years, while the brain is not yet fully mature, can lead to much more serious lingering issues (including not just addiction but also some mental illness.) Her comments on marijuana and alcohol were very interesting, but the one I found most enlightening is that marijuana has lingering results on synapses (aka brain connections) for about four days. So for a teen that is choosing to 'let loose' on the weekend can absolutely see lingering cognitive effects well into the school week. Her advice to help the teenage brain operate at peak function is to maximize quality sleep and minimize distraction (particularly from screens). 

Overall, I had a wonderful experience at NACAC. I got to visit three great (and very different) campuses, connect (and reconnect) with colleagues, and get essential updates on some of the things changing the most quickly within college admissions. I want to take this opportunity to thank the PTA for their generous support of my attending this conference (and the college office in general). Next year, Boston!

Columbus NACAC Day 2!

Today started bright and early with my first in-person meeting of the Coalition Counselor Committee. I shouldn't really call it a meeting, since it was more of a breakfast meet and greet, but it was the start of my day all the same. It was nice to finally put a face to the names on the emails that have come through my inbox during the past year. If nothing else, there certainly seemed to be less anxious buzz about the Coalition compared to last year. At ElRo, I've encouraged only students applying to the University of Florida to use the app this go around, but time will tell how the platform performs during this its first cycle.

My first session of the morning was the overview of Naviance. While they spent a little too much time talking about Naviance for elementary school (yes, that is apparently a thing), it was exciting to get a sneak peek at what is in store for the site. There look to be some pretty overdue cosmetic changes, along with other nice improvements like embedding net price estimates based on income band and letting students know about college open houses and local fairs. They are also working on some pretty powerful data analysis that will allow counselors to predict the relative 'risk' of a student's list (and thus know which students to reach out to first when it comes to troubleshooting).

Next Thursday evening, September 29, I will be sharing with students and families information about the 2017-2018 FAFSA. As such, I wanted to make sure to attend the Department of Educations FAFSA session at NACAC this year. I left the session feeling like the Dept of Ed actually has a pretty decent handle on this rollout and I hope, hope, hope I'm right! We got some nice resources to be able to share with students and I also got the impression that the new FAFSA will be far less complicated than it has ever been in the past. The key for any senior reading this post right now is that you should go ahead and get your FSA ID if you haven't already. Your FSA ID (one parent from the FAFSA will need one too) is your electronic signature and you'll need the ID before you can fully submit the FAFSA. Imagine how crowded that site is going to be on October 1 when the FAFSA goes live? Can you picture it? Ok, now go get your FSA ID right now. Here is the site: www.fsaid.ed.gov

My final session of the day was about working with students with learning disabilities. As we have more and more diverse learners at ElRo, I want to do my best to be prepared to work with them and serve their needs. The session covered a lot of ground but I'll leave a few of the more useful tips here:

• Students who have been previously evaluated with a WISC probably should request a new evaluation once they are 18 because the C in WISC stand for 'children' that tool is not going to serve a student in adulthood. 
• There is a big difference between a "support program" and a "students with disabilities tutoring center". Most colleges offer the latter, often in the form of peer tutors, but the ideal setting for a student with a learning difference is to have a professional special education in a formal support program. About 75 programs have been identified by the presenter and he directed us to the NACAC textbook to see that list. (*I had no idea there was something called a NACAC textbook!)
• A great way to help students focus (especially if they have ADHD) is to have them stand in a 'power pose' for two minutes (recommended pose: hands in fists overhead). This helps release testosterone and combat cortisol - an ideal combination prior to giving a presentation or taking a test. 

The final portion of the day is the annual Counselor College Fair. This is about as overwhelming as you might imagine, with every college present and every high school counselor going from table to table picking up material. It is certainly a nice time to reconnect (and see who has moved schools!) but it is exhausting.

Tomorrow is the final day of the conference and I look forward to a few more sessions before leaving Ohio!

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Columbus NACAC - Day 1

The NACAC conference is officially in session!

I spent the morning at a lecture sponsored by SMU where we got to hear from a wonderful SMU faculty member, Dr. Maria Dixon Hall. She spoke to us about a new initiative at SMU to try and shift the culture around race and culture on campus. The plan is to not just implement orientation trainings or hire faculty of color but to instead try to help all students increase their cultural intelligence. Her recommendations for how to do that in your every day life is to try and not just talk to a person from a different culture but to instead try and understand their culture through exposure. Perhaps her most interesting suggestion is to visit a grocery story -- a place to observe very nuanced cultural behaviors. It was a wonderful talk and a great way to start the day.

His head is a Buckeye! (Ohio State mascot, tree byproduct, and delicious peanut butter and chocolate treat)

For the afternoon, I checked off one more college visit by going to see The Ohio State University. As the third most affordable school in the Big 10 for out of state students, Ohio State should probably see more traffic from ElRo students than it does. In and out of state students are evaluated on the same 10 factors and preference is not given based on residency the way it might be at public land grant universities in other states. Letters of Recommendation are optional and OSU is on the Common App. Best of all, there is merit money available to students to the tune of full tuition. In order to qualify for merit aid, students must apply by no later than November 1. There are also some additional essays to complete in order to compete for some of these merit dollars. To learn more, look up the National Buckeye program and Morrill Scholarship on their website. Like other Big 10 schools, the benefits here include endless academic options, massive amounts of research, and serious school spirit.

The Oval

I also want to point out that when I try to explain to families that the cost of living in the Midwest will help pay back the cost of the plane ticket, here is what I mean:

This cost me $6.80. That salad had Kale and quinoa in it. KALE. Plus a drink and banana.

In an interesting stroke of luck, the Geology museum on campus has this gorgeous quartz found in the 1800s in Ellenville, NY -- home of the ElRo senior trip!

I finished out the day by attending the annual NYSACAC meeting and connecting with fellow New Yorkers here at the conference.

Tomorrow is always the hardest day with an early start and late finish, so I'm signing off for now.

OH-- IO!

Thanks Oberlin!

Today I had the opportunity to visit Oberlin College and I can now understand why we have had five ElRo students in the past four years enroll at this school.

Oberlin is a small liberal arts college with two divisions: the college and the music conservatory. It is known as a place that is progressive, open-minded, expressive, and creative. I think the thing I was most struck by was the people. The students seemed genuinely happy to be there and the environment was accepting and warm.

Unique elements of Oberlin include the fact that they have 3 required January Terms (J-Term for short) for all students where they undertake a project or internship. These can range from doing science research to writing a screenplay to exploring their career interest. Many peer institutions might feel isolated or exclusionary (with literal gates around campus), but not Oberlin. They pride themselves on being well integrated into the town of Oberlin. The conservatory at Oberlin is unique for its focus on undergraduate students (many conservatory programs allot huge portions of the resources to graduate students, but Oberlin hardly has any graduate students in music). About one third of conservatory students earn a double degree in the Liberal Arts. I should also add that it is very unique to see an Admissions staff with so many veteran members. Almost everyone in the office has been there more than 5 years, with many people there over 15 years. That is not the status quo and is a sign that people really believe in the mission and are treated well by the administration.

Oberlin was the first college to graduate a person of color and the first to award a degree to a woman in a co-ed setting. This is a place that wants to break barriers, tackle difficult questions, and honor their own moral and ethical code. I don't get the impression that this is a campus where students spend energy on surface things like clothing, hairstyles, and makeup. The 'come as you are' vibe is palpable. It is the kind of place that cares about the environment, LGBTQ+ rights, and equal pay. If those are not the kind of conversations you want to hear in the dining hall, this school should not be on your list.

ElRo takes Oberlin!

A highlight of the visit was getting to connect with Caley W. - ElRo Class of 2013. She is a student athlete (soccer) and said that she has loved her experience at Oberlin. She is a fourth year majoring in Economics and told me that she feels like Oberlin helped her grow more than she ever expected. I am so proud of her!

I'm now in Columbus, eager to reconnect with colleagues and attend sessions at NACAC!

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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USD and SDSU Tours

Day two of California touring brought me to the University of San Diego and San Diego State University.

This picture was taken out a dorm room doorway at USD. Not a dorm building doorway, an actual dorm ROOM. Repeat, this is the view from a dorm room.

First up was the University of San Diego, USD, a Catholic college with 5,700 students. They were voted the most beautiful urban campus and I can't disagree. It honestly feels like you are walking around a Disney park or a movie set, with the palm trees and the pristine buildings. (In reality, the school is modeled off of a university in Alcala, Spain). A little under half of the students here are Catholic, but it I got the sense that it really doesn't play an enormous role on campus. They are run by an independent board of directors, not a branch of the church, so religious influence is not quite as salient as it might be at a place with priests and nuns present on campus. This medium size school does have a core curriculum and it isn't going anywhere any time soon. Something that DID noteably go away is Early Action - a few years ago the school went back to just having a single regular decision deadline. They might be bucking the trend, but it is a welcome relief to the frenzy that surrounds the November deadlines. Instead, just apply by December 15 and expect to hear back by early March. Academic offerings range from studio art to engineering. In pretty starck difference from the quiet Claremont schools yesterday, USD was buzzing with activity (despite having a similar number of students enrolled - when you combine the 5 Claremonts together). The campus felt busy and dynamic and students walking around looked happy. Maybe the best part though is that the admitted student profile for USD is almost identical to that of the typical ElRo students. They admit about 50% of students that apply, making them a nice way to balance out a California-centric list.

In the afternoon, I went to the largest school that I'll be seeing on this tour: San Diego State University. This is also the only public school that I got to see. With about 30,000 undergraduate students, the vibe here was understandably different. On our way into lunch we passed by a full-on concert from a student band. This is the kind of school I think people imagine when they picture college in the movies -- an endless list of clubs and organizations, greek life, athletics, many majors, and lots and lots of people. I couldn't help but notice that SDSU has multiple construction projects going on - usually a sign of financial health and expansion. This school also did something I've never seen before, they had their student body president address the crowd. It was neat to hear from her and a refreshing change from the normal academic deans or faculty members. Maybe most noticeable for me was the price. SDSU is $33,962 for out of state residents, and that is WITH room and board. Considering places like Michigan are now pushing $70,000 per year, this is a nice opportunity to get that Division I experience for only a few thousand dollars more than a SUNY. And did I mention it is in Southern California? Because it is public, the admission process is a little different. California public schools have something called A-G requirements and they recalculate self reported grades into a new GPA-- more information about this can be found online. Like any big school, this is only a good fit for students who are going to be responsible about going to 500 person intro level lectures and who can learn in that type of setting. But with understanding of how to navigate the system, it could be a great fit for the right students.

Thanks to these two schools for hosting us. Conference starts tomorrow!

Indianapolis NACAC Day 3

      

       Because I didn't attend the College Board session about the redesigned SAT earlier in the conference, for today's first morning session I decided to go to "Strategic Sophomore/Junior Recruitment--Understanding the Impact of the Redesigned PSAT and SAT." Though designed for colleges, I find that attending post-secondary sessions can sometimes actually be more informative than sessions designed for high school counselors. As with the previously announced information about the new exam, some key changes on the new test include: a new focus on relevant words in context, command of evidence in reading, an essay that requires analyzing a source, math focused on 3 key areas, problems grounded in real world contexts, and some analysis of science and social sciences. There PSAT will also now be scored on the same scale as the SAT. The first redesigned exam will be offered in March of 2016 and the College Board warns there will most likely be delays in score delivery and concordance publication as the exam is carefully normed. In advance of the changes, colleges are encouraged to take an inventory of all places where SAT scores are used (beyond admission - places like course placement, financial aid, etc) and emphasize to all staff across these departments what the official stance of the college is going to be. Because decisions about what scores will be accepted are going to happen on a college by college basis, it will be essential for students and families to keep organized notes about each school's policies and procedures. This issue is of particular importance for current 10th grade students, who will be straddling the shift, having taken the current PSAT, the new PSAT (next fall) and the new SAT (Spring 2016). As a high school counselor, I am curious how student behavior will be impacted. Will 10th grade students opt to take the ACT because it has less of an 'unknown' factor. Will they instead take both versions, in the hopes of doing better on one exam compared to the other? As the panel pointed out, we can hypothesize that most colleges will continue to take whatever data makes the student look most favorable, but I'm sure plenty of people who are vulnerable to the pressure cooker machine will be fearful of picking the wrong test (old vs new). 

        My second session was possibly the best session I've attended this conference, mainly because the presentation was well organized and it made me ponder some philosophical questions about the industry, application process, and enrollment data. I like thinking big and this session was the type that makes your brain overflow. The session was called "Matching the Under Matched Student: Big Data and Small Colleges Offer Strategies for Success." The panel included representation from Franklin & Marshall, Carleton, and Third Coast Analytics. Anyone interested in seeing the powerpoint can download it from the Third Coast website. The session looked into how small colleges can use data to identify and recruit high achieving low income students (the ones that Hoxby and Avery identified in their study -- students who have the profile of what highly selective schools are looking for but who are not applying to highly selective colleges). Research shows that the most significant factor that prevent students in this group from going to college is family issues. Certainly this is something that colleges can't control, but if the recruitment process focuses on recruiting the family and not just the student the yield usually improves. I'm not going to regurgitate the entire session here - but the discussion got me thinking: if these small selective colleges do, in fact, find a way to yield a higher number of these low income high achieving students that were previously not applying to selective colleges, what will the trickle down effect be on the colleges they used to go to? Are we, as an industry, placing our own values (that highly selective colleges are better colleges) on these students and families when for some students the less selective school they were going to go to (where they were the most high achieving student in the pool) would have maybe been a better fit? Will we be creating a system that guarantees that the 'top' schools get better and the lower tier schools don't have a fighting chance of improving their academic profile. This isn't to say that I don't think low income students should not be actively recruited. Or that I don't encourage ElRo's own low income students to add highly selective schools to their lists. But, I fear that the study dismisses the possibility that for some students (of all ability and SES levels) a less selective school might be the right fit for them. 

        The final session of the conference this year was tough for me to pick. I was being very indesivie and honestly ended up just going in to the session that an admission counselor friend was also going into. The topic was similar, about the same low income high achieving students and their enrollment patterns. Though the topic was similar to the earlier session, the presentation and information was, in fact, different. The key takeaway was that even though we aim to have higher education act as a bridge to help level the playing field for low income students, trends indicate that barriers remain and there is still much work to be done. 

        As always, I thank the PTA for their generous support in sponsoring my trip to NACAC. As someone that works in an 'office of one' it is deeply meaningful for me to get to spend a few days per year in a large group of colleagues, peers, and friends. I think Indianapolis was a wonderful host city and I am already looking forward to next year in San Diego. 

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