In AB's third annual roundtable discussion from the annual conference of the National Association for College Admissions Counseling, a lively group of deans, counselors, and CBO leaders join Lee Coffin and Jacques Steinberg in Minneapolis for a candid conversation on a range of timely topics. The cast ponders essays that work ("Just be you"), the wisdom of early applications (“Make sure you love it…”), the emergence and drawbacks of AI as a writing tool ("AI can't feel..."), navigating college affordability (“The sticker price is usually not what you pay…"), and managing admissions angst (“Better isn’t always better…”).
In AB's third annual roundtable discussion from the annual conference of the National Association for College Admissions Counseling, a lively group of deans, counselors, and CBO leaders join Lee Coffin and Jacques Steinberg in Minneapolis for a candid conversation on a range of timely topics. The cast ponders essays that work ("Just be you"), the wisdom of early applications (“Make sure you love it…”), the emergence and drawbacks of AI as a writing tool ("AI can't feel..."), navigating college affordability (“The sticker price is usually not what you pay…"), and managing admissions angst (“Better isn’t always better…”).
Lee Coffin:
From the annual conference of the National Association for College Admission Counseling in Minneapolis, Minnesota, I'm Lee Coffin, Dartmouth's vice president and dean of admissions and Financial Aid. And this is Admissions Beat All-Star Edition.
(music)
Hi, Jack.
Jack Steinberg:
Good morning, Lee. I wish that our listeners could see what you and I can see, which is a square table surrounded by 10 of our go-to colleagues with combined decades and decades of experience and expertise to share.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. And for the third year in a row, Jack and I are back at the national conference and said, let's do a round table episode with friends of the pod and a new friend or two as we were able to add to our cast. But for listeners, Jack Steinberg, my recurring co-host, former New York Times higher ed reporter, author of The Gatekeepers and The College Conversation, and currently a contributor to US News and World Report. Jack wears lots of hats on the admission beat, little A, little B, as it covers college admissions. And I'm always happy to have these conversations with his informed journalistic experience. But I want to introduce our friends who are here with us, we're going to go around and say hello and introduce ourselves, what we do and where we are.
Steve Soud:
Good morning, everyone. My name is Steve Soud. I am the Director of College Counseling at the Isidore Newman School in New Orleans.
Eileen Cunningham-Feikens:
My name is Eileen Cunningham-Feikens. I'm Dean of College Counseling at the Dwight-Englewood School in Englewood, New Jersey. I'm also co-host of a radio show on SiriusXM Business Channel 132. My co-host is Eric Furda, and the name of the show is called The Process. Guess what it's about? Admissions process.
James Massey:
Good morning, everyone. James Massey, Director of Undergraduate Admissions at University of Maryland College Park.
Lee Coffin:
And James is making his debut on Admissions Beat. I'm so excited to welcome you to the show.
James Massey:
Absolutely. So glad to be here with you all.
Lee Coffin:
And our next guest is also a first timer.
Andre Phillips:
Good morning, everyone. Andre Phillips. I am the Executive Director of Admissions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Madison, Wisconsin.
Lee Coffin:
Thank you both for joining us.
Chris Reeves:
I'm Chris Reeves and I have perfect attendance at this session, third time. I work at the Craft Academy for Excellence in Science and Mathematics at Morehead State University. It's a two-year STEM college immersion program in the middle of Appalachia. Also, I co-host, sorry, Joel, The Reeves and Ford podcast, a college admissions podcast for all.
Lee Coffin:
Love that.
Ben Baum:
Hello. Good morning. This is Ben Baum. I am Vice President of Enrollment at St. John's College with our two campuses in Annapolis, Maryland and in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And I can also represent myself as the chair of the board of Colleges That Change Lives, the organization that includes 43 excellent small liberal arts colleges of which St. John's is one.
Matt Hyde:
I'm Matt Hyde, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Trinity College, and a very proud contributor to Admissions Beat.
Lee Coffin:
Very, very recurring guest.
Jay McCann:
Good morning. I am Jay McCann. I am based in Atlanta, Georgia at the Westminster Schools. And I also am the co-author of the latest version of The College Finder, which is a guidebook for students on finding colleges on a range and a myriad of different ways of looking them up.
Lee Coffin:
And Jay, before you were at Westminster, you had a long career in Colorado public high schools.
Jay McCann:
Yeah. I worked at George Washington High School there and I also worked at Valor. Yeah.
Lee Coffin:
And just to brag for him, he was the counselor of the year in Colorado.
Jay McCann:
One of them.
Lee Coffin:
One of them? It's okay. You still got the Oscar.
Erica Rosales:
Good morning, everybody. My name is Erica Rosales and I am the CEO of College Match in Los Angeles. We are celebrating 25 years of helping students transform their lives through education. We help low income students find highly selective colleges across the country and graduate from those colleges.
Lee Coffin:
And you mostly serve the LA public schools?
Erica Rosales:
Only Los Angeles. Yes.
Dino Koff:
Yep. I'm Dino Koff and I'm the Assistant Vice President and Executive Director of Financial Aid at Dartmouth College in beautiful Hanover, New Hampshire.
Lee Coffin:
Before we jump into some of the maybe topics, Jack and I thought it would be interesting to just ask this question of all of us. Why do we do what we do? What draws each of you to be a community based organization or leading admissions of a university or college or working in a school with kids and their nervous parents? What gets us up in the morning?
Matt Hyde:
This is Matt from Trinity College. I love my job for lots of reasons but chief among them is the fact that it's my job to engage and inspire young people at a really cool moment in their lives. I'm a face and voice for an institution and that's a great honor and I love that. It's my job to build community and create connection. And that's what my job had been for a long, long time.
Erica Rosales:
Erica Rosales from Los Angeles College Match. I do this work because it's my life story. I'm a first generation college graduate. My parents came to this country because they wanted us to have a better life and they didn't really define for us what that meant but we knew that we could get it through education. My high school, Garfield High School, had 900 students in our graduating class, one college counselor, and I was the only one who left California.
Lee Coffin:
Wow.
Erica Rosales:
And Wellesley College gave me a transformative experience. I graduated with little debt but at that time I didn't understand what kind of gift that was so I like to translate that gift and keep on giving back to more students. Because just like me, there are so many who just want a better life for themselves, their families, and their communities.
Lee Coffin:
Wow. Thank you for that.
James Massey:
It's funny, James Massey from University of Maryland, I was having this conversation last night and we were talking about this and it is always about the students. And no matter what has happened, changing landscapes, things that we've been challenged with, it's still about the students. And we were just celebrating the fact that we were still able to make classes, still able to bring students in. And that's part of the reason, if not the singular line through why we get up and do what we do each and every day. I believe in access and I believe in access for all students and that's been challenged over time, but still remaining committed to that has seen me through each and every day.
Jack Steinberg:
I'm a bit of a unicorn here. This is Jack. Unlike all of you, you all are practitioners. I'm a trained observer. I've been literally following all of you and literally all of you and other colleagues around for 27 years as of this NACAC, which is a lot of time. I do that work because I continue to be in touch with the high school student I was growing up at a high school in Massachusetts, a public high school, where somehow I knew that half the students in my graduating class were not going on to four year college.
My guidance counselor told me not to apply to the college I was later admitted to, which was Dartmouth. It wasn't “don't get your hopes up, they may break your heart.” It was “don't bother.” And yet I got in and it's not like you all tell us why we got in. And so that question of how they do it, how you do it is a throughline through my career for almost three decades, including right here at this table. Thank you.
Lee Coffin:
It's funny, Jack, my guidance counselor at my suburban public high school in Connecticut said the same thing to me. And when I showed him my list, he said, "I don't have time for the smart ones. Go back to class. You'll figure it out." And this is pre-internet, pre-guidebook so that was somehow I did figure it out. But there's this echo I hear a lot in college admission people that we are all the byproducts of those experiences and it carries us forward.
Jack Steinberg:
And I want to make clear, I don't fault my counselor.
Lee Coffin:
No, I don't either.
Jack Steinberg:
He knew what he knew. But at some point I thought as a journalist, I could use my notebook as a passport to try to inform and illuminate, including for people like him through moments like this.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. My counselor had a almost 600 to 1 caseload. Eileen, you were going to...
Eileen Cunningham-Feikens:
I grew up in a lovely... This is Eileen from the Dwight-Englewood School. I grew up in a lovely suburban community out on Long Island, Garden City, which is one of those pressure cooker communities where people are always watching to see where their neighbor's children are going to school. And I had the great benefit for which I'm very, very happy, my mom was an admissions director at a local university on Long Island, Adelphi University. She was very involved in my college process, so much so that she marched into the Garden City guidance office and handed them a list. And I had no idea what was on that list at the moment. I recognize how fortunate I was and yet at the same time, I also recognize the pressure that a lot of our young people are under, no matter where they're coming from to this point in their lives.
Getting back to your question, if I can mitigate that stress in any way, if I can help them present themselves and their narrative with confidence and authenticity, I feel like I've not only helped them but I've helped the world because they're the future.
Jack Steinberg:
Listeners, one of the reasons we ask that question is because it's important for you to know that the people who are working with you in your schools and who will be considering your applications in admissions offices, they are people and they're doing this for very particular personal reasons. There's lots of other things they could be doing. The fact that they chose to do this is something that you should bear in mind as you navigate this process.
Chris Reeves:
Chris Reeves here from Craft Academy. First of all, I guess my podcast partner Joel will be very upset with me if I didn't just teach our listeners that guidance counselors is old terminology and professional school counselors is new terminology. Professional school counselor here, I love figuring out what each kid needs because every single student needs something a little bit different. You don't have a formula. You can't come to this business with a plan, maybe broad outlines, but every kid needs something different and I love being that for each kid.
Jay McCann:
This is Jay from the Westminster Schools in Atlanta, Georgia. And I agree with what you're saying there because I've always been interested in counseling adolescents and had a different journey with that. I think there's so much stress around this process to recognize not only to remind the students that they're not fully cooked, they're not fully where we want them to. And the gift of higher education is how it transforms them and how they start to see not only opportunities for how they can go and make an impact in the world, but also how they want to present themselves and the way that they're able to, as we were talking about as well, present themselves in terms of the college essay and the ways that they start to see something in themselves that they didn't before and realize, no, that story really is important to share. I'm just so grateful to be a part of that.
Lee Coffin:
What made you co-author a guidebook?
Jay McCann:
When I was working at George Washington High School, Steve, I met him at this conference. It was in Indianapolis. And I remember being like, "I love how you just nerd out on a list about colleges for introverts or college for flip-flop wear, who wears sandals and socks to class." That was really fun to me. Or even just biology. And so for me, when I was diving into this work, it felt like the resource that college counselors told me I needed to use. For me, why I love it so much is it opens up a broader conversation. The school that I'm at is also a high intensity school and quite often the kids come with a list already.
The book is about not necessarily giving a ranking but more giving broader exposure of here's great schools for people that want to go on to medical school, whatever the major is, what the activities, how you see yourself a little bit more presenting on a college campus and making an impact.
Lee Coffin:
That's great. Ben, you started as an attorney so I'm going to guess among us that's unique. Why did you pivot from the law to admissions?
Ben Baum:
I wanted to do something that really inspired me, that I could throw myself into and be very proud of the work that I was doing. I think I'd be remiss in this conversation, not to mention as a representative of St. John's College in particular, that it's what's happening in the classroom that I think drew me to this profession and it's what draws so many students obviously to our institutions. That transformative process that students go through in college is often about finding the thing they truly love, which maybe they've never had the opportunity to explore before they get to college, whether that's they love great literature or they want to study mathematics, they want to throw themselves into physics. These are the passions they uncover in the classroom and our institutions are transformative in what they are doing for these students in that space. And so for me, it was the opportunity to come into an environment where I could draw people in to something I truly loved and they could be as inspired as I was in my own college experience.
Lee Coffin:
Thank you.
Jack Steinberg:
I've heard the word stress come up a couple of times and which leads me to think a little bit about mood. And you all represent... As near as I can tell, the 10 of you are from 10 different states, 10 different communities, 10 different institutions, both colleges and universities and high schools and community-based organizations. For listeners who only know what they know where they are, I'm curious just to take the temperature.
And Andre, maybe starting with you at the University of Wisconsin, as you and colleagues gear up for the recruitment phase of the admissions process before you get down to selection, what's one question, Andre, that you're... It's early days, but that you're hearing from parents and students as they come to your campuses this fall? What's on their minds that is striking to you?
Andre Phillips:
That we continue to hear from parents asking the very basic question, "What does it take for my son or daughter to get admitted?" And it starts from, we believe, what's the formula? What test score puts me in the conversation, or if you will, on the playing field? What sort of GPA does my son or daughter need to be on the playing field? And so really trying to unpack the work that we do is not formulaic. We're not saying that the magic story, numeric story you have to have is informed by numbers. Quite frankly, your numbers are not even secondary in the process. And so if we have enough time, we are trying to talk about what has happened from freshman year to now senior year. And trying to engage that kind of nuance takes time and we don't always have the time.
Jack Steinberg:
Steve, let's travel from Wisconsin to Louisiana to a counseling office in a high school. What are your students and parents asking you about and what are they anxious about?
Steve Soud:
This is Steve Soud from Isidore Newman in New Orleans. They're all anxious about an outcome that they can't control and this is one of the first times in many parents' lives, not all, where they've encountered something that they can't control. And that and the fact that you're sending a child out of the nest, I think there's a root degree of stress and fear and anxiety that goes along with that. Now, the more immediate stresses that we're dealing with are the timeline. And my staff and I were looking at each other a couple of weeks ago and saying, "This September just has felt really pressure packed and stacked more so than in the past."
And one of my issues with the way the current college admission structure is designed is that we force students through early action and early decision, and I understand why those programs exist and I understand their value, but we force students to make decisions in October when they might make a very different decision in April. In six months, it's not so high a percentage of my lifetime because I'm old, but it's a high percentage of a 17 or 18 year old's lifetime. And I think all of this creates stress. Over 90% of our kids will have applied to at least one college by November 1st. Just a couple of decades ago, that number might have been 40% or 50%. It's really changed dramatically.
Erica Rosales:
I'll weigh in from California, November 30th. All of our students applied to the UCs but our goal at College Match is to get them to see all the different options available to them. And yeah, it's a rush process. It really is so we need to have a lot of intent in the application process. But because everything is so rushed now, students feel like they just need to pick a college or they're missing out of something. And the reality is when you have more time and you really craft a list, it's a process that is reflective of who you are because you are spending your time doing the research. And unfortunately, a lot of our students, we do take them on trips but they don't have the access to many of these institutions so there is a lot of time spent on researching websites and talking to alumni and talking to staff people. But when things are so rushed and a lot of our students want to do QuestBridge because they really believe-
Lee Coffin:
Just describe that.
Erica Rosales:
QuestBridge is an application for students coming from low income backgrounds and they get to apply early by... I think it was due September 30th. They apply to up to 10 colleges with one application. If they get matched with a college, then their process is done by December. And it's not just to rush the application but it's also the financial aid piece because our students who are coming from low income communities don't have the resources to pay for these colleges. You're not only doing the research like is it a good academic social fit, but also is it a good financial fit?
Dino Koff:
This is Dino from Dartmouth College. And I think, Erica, to highlight that point, we're going around the room and we're talking about the pressure of the admission cycle, and the financial aid is being left behind because there's so much work to do on the admission cycle and looking, is this school right for me? And there's so much pressure on the deadlines, we have to make sure that we get the financial fit into the conversation earlier. Because you can apply everywhere and it's something that if you're not looking at financial fit, then at the end you're looking at what are my options? I see this increased timeline that we're all talking about here. We have to be able to get a word in on finances and sometimes that's really difficult with the number of schools people are applying to, people are listening to, and it's something that definitely needs to be highlighted.
Jack Steinberg:
And for listeners, a little bit later in this conversation, we're going to come back to Dino and colleagues to go a little bit more in depth on their advice for financial aid applications, including for the federal application for student financial aid.
Lee Coffin:
As I'm listening to so many of you talk about the mood being rushed, we're at the national conference and it makes me sit here thinking, how did this happen? Can we dial it back? What's the news you could use if you're a student or a parent to the junior families that are listening and still have some runway ahead of them? Does someone have to apply early? How did this tsunami of early swamp us? Eileen, do you have a thought there?
Eileen Cunningham-Feikens:
Eileen from the Dwight-Englewood School. It strikes me that we came back to school in the Northeast, many schools, on September 8th. Where in the past, because it was the day after Labor Day. Right? And so that pushed things forward. I do think it's important to note that while our students at that age are not necessarily fully formed, they are very much shaped by the culture in which they live on a national basis. And I've always thought of college admissions from either side of the desk is a microcosm of what's happening in our country. I don't think our students are as fully aware of the impact that shapes how they approach this.
They live in a time of instantaneous response. They text, they get a text back. I can't tell you how many of my students submit an application and are very concerned that within 24 hours they have not heard any news from that institution. I remind them constantly the wheels turn a little bit more quickly on the high school side in terms of the processing of our applications than they do on the university side. I've got about 130 seniors. How many applications do major public institutions receive on an annual basis? Thousands upon thousands. And so the mechanisms that are necessary for making sure that every file is complete and all of that goes into it, this urge for immediacy. And I think that is a big factor in these early pushes. Right?
Within the last two years, we've seen an incredible growth within my community of students applying to schools in the south. And so a lot of those schools have an October 15th deadline. Three, four years ago, I had maybe one student that would have looked at those schools. But they're casting a very wide net, much more so now. And they're also applying to 20 plus different institutions. When you think of the workload that places on your average high school senior, when they're pretty much taking the most rigorous curriculum in their high school career, that's a big pressure cooker right in itself.
The other thing is I think their parents with all great intentions because they can't control the outcome are trying to stack the deck. And I think in some ways they're chasing prestige and using that prestige as a proxy for the educational quality that they hope their child will enjoy. And so when you have all of this coming together, it's a melange of reasons why these students are feeling so stressed. And it's heartbreaking. I wish they would wait. 100% of my students will have submitted an application by October... Or I'm sorry, by November 1. It's baked in.
Chris Reeves:
Chris at the Craft Academy. The element to maybe layer on top of all of this is just how complicated it is because if you want to send a transcript, you've got to figure out the 15 different ways the 15 different schools want the transcript. If you want to send test scores, you have to figure out if... Can you self-report it? Well, sure, you can self-report it but you have to put it in STARS or you can put it in the Common App or you can get in our portal and put it or you can send it from ACT or College Board. Every single institution, we have deadlines coming faster. It's crazy how different it all is.
Lee Coffin:
And just a quick thought, some of what you're feeling is 15 places have 15 processes. The colleges have less opportunity to cooperate. Andre talked about landscape, the landscape around higher ed is very litigious, lots of antitrust conversations. And when there's an antitrust shadow on your house, you stay in the house. It's what's generating all these individualized things is I don't know what my peer schools are doing until they've done it.
Steve Soud:
I was just going to say, Paul Simon could have another hit with 50 ways to send a transcript.
Matt Hyde:
This is Matt from Trinity. It doesn't have to be this way, to answer your question, Lee. I think we need to remind the students who are listening and their parents, you can decide how to engage in the space. You can control the energy that you have and the attitude that you bring to it. I share that having had a front row seat to my son's college experience, as enrollment manager, it drove me nuts. As a father, I'm so proud of him because he decided not to be stressed and anxious about this. He didn't apply really anywhere. He applied to five places. I'll be happy with all five of them. And he just decided I'm going to end up someplace great, and he did.
He decided, and with our support, just roll with it on your timeframe. It doesn't have to be stressful. But I think the students and parents need to remind themselves it's up to us. We can be all wound up and make this about outcomes or we can make this about becoming more aware of who you are as a student, who I am as a student, as a human, and have fun with this because you can have fun. It doesn't have to be anxiety provoking but a lot of families like to make it that way.
Lee Coffin:
I have a news you could use... Bulletin... Remember on TV how they would interrupt a show and there'd be a news bulletin? Here it is. Let's give students and parents a permission slip to not hit the button. Why would someone follow Matt's advice and say, "I'm going to wait. I was about to make an early application because I felt like I needed to, that group on Admission Beat gave me the confidence to wait for regular decision." Go. Convince them to wait.
Ben Baum:
This is Ben Baum at St. John's College. And I think one of my great frustrations is that if the timeline is so compressed in the fall, you have students making decisions that are really based on superficial characteristics of these institutions. If you are rushing, how do you know that this place is the right fit for you? You're likely basing it on information out in the ether but not based on a substantive experience of the institution. I can't tell you the number of students who tell me things like, "Well, I need to apply early decisions somewhere, but I haven't even visited the place that I'm considering."
And so what I would tell students is that they need to really have substantive experiences with these colleges first. We build into our process at St. John's things like seminars, students can actually take themselves to experience what we're doing in our classroom. We do that in the summer before. We do it actually throughout the fall and into the new year of a student senior year. There are ways of visiting campus, there are ways of doing it remotely. But to actually uncover whether this institution is the right fit and warrants submitting an application at the moment that feels right for the student and not just because there's a rush right at the beginning of the fall.
Chris Reeves:
Chris at Craft Academy, I don't think I can.
Lee Coffin:
Oh.
Chris Reeves:
I don't think I can.
Lee Coffin:
Provocative.
Chris Reeves:
Because schools are admitting 50% to 60% of their class in the early round, what's my kid going to do? They have a three times greater chance of getting into a highly selective school by doing early decision. The early action is often tied to scholarship deadlines so you pretty much have to get in the early action to be in the scholarship pool. But the colleges are the ones, in my mind, putting the timelines and the benefits to the early button.
Lee Coffin:
That's really sad and provocative but probably true. And part of the conundrum, and this is the chicken and the egg situation, is as the pool keeps growing... I've been in the admission committee the last several years where we look around the room, we think this early pool is phenomenal and they've said this is first choice. Why wouldn't we say yes to someone who has identified us as their top choice and applied in a binding round? And to defer someone like that, I think has other unfortunate ripples on the way they see themselves in their college search. We get caught in this, we don't want to take more, but to not take them feels silly.
James Massey:
James from College Park. I think that it's a reality. It is a reality. When we're looking at our applicant pools, speaking for us, we grew from where I started at 17,000 to now almost 70,000 applications.
Lee Coffin:
70,000 for a class of how many?
James Massey:
70,000 for a class of about 5,500 freshmen. And those are very, very deep waters. And the truth of the matter is, the students that are there, they could all be successful. And the students that we may not say, "No, not yet." They would absolutely be great at Maryland. And so that's where it runs into that challenge when you're saying, if this is a school that you are interested in, you still have to put your best foot forward and you're going to have to get into the race. And it's a shame to have to say that but I do think the guardrails that we can responsibly offer are the fact that take your time on the front end to decide, can I see myself there? Is that something I could really see myself wanting to do? And then put your best foot forward to really show who you are in the process.
When you're in those deep waters, it's so important for the students not to try to get into our heads in terms of what we want but to still stay very focused on who they are. And the more that they can stay focused on who they are, the better they're going to show up in our processes.
Andre Phillips:
Very quickly, this is Andre. But I think about two things around the core question, how do we flip the table? Number one, the fear of the competition and losing. My good friend at Maryland, I do not want to lose a single student to Maryland. And even though we have this wonderful regular program when students can apply in February and they learn much later, if Maryland says, "But we'll take you in January." That student might be lost to me. It's better for students to be more informed but we can't lose.
Erica Rosales:
Erica Rosales from College Match. I am the mother of two children who are in college now, very different children. And the one who is a first year now, she did ED. And from that perspective, she wrote a love letter to the college that she really wanted to attend because she had done her research, she had visited, she envisioned herself there. And she told me and her college counselor, "If I don't get in ED, I'm going to go to community college and transfer to this college because that's how much I want to be there."
What I would say to a student or parents who are listening now, take control of the process. This is your process. You are going to spend four years of your life at a college so take control of the process. There are a lot of options and keep your options open. And don't put a college on the list because of prestige, you have to look under the hood.
Eileen Cunningham-Feikens:
In a pressure cooker community in which I reside and work, which I love, this is Eileen Feikens at the Dwight-Englewood School, we faced it head on. And I said, "You're all chasing this prestige. Instead, what gets your heart pumping about a school? Figure that out." And they're like, "What do you mean?" And I said, "Well, think of CPR. You use CPR to resuscitate. Use it to get your heart going, right? What's your college personal rubric? Don't tell me the name of the college. Don't tell me it's really prestigious. And don't tell them that in the application. They know. But instead focus on what do you want? What are the experiences you want to have in your college undergraduate experience? Is it internships? Is it research? Do you want to continue with a particular sport or performing or visual art passion that you have? And base your research on that CPR. I don't want to hear rankings. I don't want to..."
"No. Have a list of questions that reflect what you really want and that becomes the standard by which you're comparing the schools that you're exploring." And thankfully, it's going to be a process but it's starting to take hold because now students in our community are saying, "Well, according to my CPR." I'm like, "Oh yes, baby. I love it."
But I just went to a reception yesterday that was hosted by a number of universities in the UK. And while I don't necessarily enjoy all the aspects of the university admissions process in the UK, I do respect the fact that UCAS, which is the UK equivalent of the Common Application here in the US, limits students to five schools. And don't think that you can do Cambridge and Oxford. Oh no, my love. You pick one of those and then protect four others. You don't have to apply to five but five is your limit, there's a very clear deadline.
And this is where it gets most interesting to me. The essays that they ask the students to submit, the personal statements are not about how their mismatched socks reflect their creativity and unique character. What in your background has prepared you for this program, not this university, but the program to which you are applying. And so it's much more academically focused. What do you do extracurricularly? Blah, blah, blah, blah. It goes on and on. It's simple. It's very clearly marked in terms of what kind of academic preparation the student needs, et cetera. It quiets that craziness. Right? The only issue is they have a different secondary school system which queues up their students for this so a lot of students will take a post high school year to figure this out, a gap year, for example. But I do respect that limit of five.
Lee Coffin:
Are you proposing a reform? Would you say that the Common App, knock it from 20 apps down to 5?
Eileen Cunningham-Feikens:
Oh, I wish I could but students are very clever. They'll apply to all of the UCs because the UCs are not on the Common App. They'll find a way to get around to add more schools. And I always say to students, "Why are you applying to so many schools?" "Well, because I need to. Because the thought is if I don't get in early, then what am I left with because that's where the majority of applications are coming in and the competition is that much stiffer."
Lee Coffin:
And this is a recurring topic across many episodes is the monster of volume where not more students but maybe fewer students applying to more places and they're bloating Maryland's pool up to 70,000. And this is one of the conundrums is we're measured by our leadership or the media or some guidebooks, not Jay's, by how selective are we. Selectivity is arithmetic. Applicants, number of seats, how many did you take? And so when the N keeps going up, up, up, up, up, it makes us look so hard to get into. We may not be as hard to get into as some people imagine because if the volume is full of unqualified applicants, which the let's just see what happens kind of mantra that people throw in multiple apps to their reaches, they're not getting in but it's generating volume. I've often thought 20 is too much and it's allowing volume to run away and that's... I don't know if it's a byproduct of early and people don't get in and they hyperventilate and they reapply.
Steve Soud:
While we're on the subject of volume, this is Steve from Isidore Newman, and building a little bit off of that UCAS application, shout out to Stu Schmill and MIT that says you can list three extracurricular activities. And one of my beefs with the Common App, and I'm a former Common App board member, I would love to see that extracurricular list shrink down to maybe six, maybe five rather than 10 because kids do have this sense, "Well, but I didn't do enough." And that also builds on the stress. That's a different volume issue but a volume issue nonetheless.
James Massey:
There's a certain piece of this puzzle that I think we don't really talk about with our students. There's so much pressure on one end but on the other end, some students are operating with different levels of confidence in the admissions process. They're thinking I have to compete against everyone else and what I have is never going to be as competitive or looked upon as being as positive as someone else, where absolutely it could be.
I gave this advice and it was so simple and it was in a very small setting but families that were really attuned to what we were talking about the process. And I said to them, I said, "You know what? For our students, no one else can be you. There is only one you in this process." If the pool is 70,000 applications, guess what? There's only one James Massey that's going to apply here, and that James Massey is going to talk about James Massey. If you can really tune into that and not think about what everyone else is putting in there, you're going to have a stellar application because you're going to tell your story and your story is going to stand out.
Lee Coffin:
James Massey just gave all of you out there the headline from this conversation, no one else can be you. Just write that in a Sharpie above your computer. And don't try and be me. Be you. Thank you, James.
Jack?
Jack Steinberg:
I want to pivot just a bit in the spirit of Eileen's CPR, which I think is also a sub-headline from this conversation, the college personal rubric. I want to talk about two A's that are elephants in the room, artificial intelligence so AI, and as I look at my colleague Dino from Dartmouth, affordability. Let's first start with AI. And Lee, I'm trying to remember when we had this conversation a year ago at the NACAC conference, I'm not sure AI came up. And how a year later can we possibly ignore it? It's amazing the advances that have happened. And just two ways that this is close to home for Dartmouth. The term artificial intelligence I believe was first coined at Dartmouth in a conference 70 years ago, which is a conference that Dartmouth will be commemorating at the end of October.
But Lee, as we think about this technology, first and foremost, from the perspective of a student filling out an application and a parent supporting them, what question would you have for our guests about do's and don'ts and where the guardrails are?
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. I feel like I'm witnessing the second or third wave of the digital age just since I graduated from college. The first wave was the late '90s when the internet appeared. I remember when I got my first email and then AOL and we'd listen to it squeak and beep and maybe connect to the phone line. And I was a baby dean in those years and I remember thinking something is changing and I don't know if it's good or not but it's here. And quickly, we all had websites and we all started doing things we never did before. And rest in peace, the view book and all the other things that we saw as hallmarks of our work yielded to this digital platform. And then wave two right behind it was Facebook, this place where all of our students were gathering. They're no longer there, their parents were there, but the kids fled to TikTok. But in the early '0s, that was the new thing.
And I remember working at Tufts and having the VP of communication forbidding me from using Facebook as a platform. He saw it as something awful. And I remember going to conferences and our former colleague, the late David Boris at Vassar would raise his hand every time and say, "Anyone? Anyone? Anyone using the Facebook? Is it clean? Is it valid?" And we didn't know and now look where we are. And here we are again. And I feel like AI is this new iteration of those two things where I don't think it's going away. I don't know the degree to which I trust it yet but it's in our work.
I think with that little historical preamble, I would say both to the school people first, what do you see? What are people showing up in your doorways or in your inboxes asking? And then to the college people, what do we think? Are we using it? Some of us have chatbots on our sites and that's a version of AI, I think. But let's start in the schools. Is this a question? Eileen, your eyes are bugging.
Eileen Cunningham-Feikens:
Is it a question? It's like, yeah, it's a question. And kids, again, getting back to what James said about no one else can be you, I think I probably say it 20 times a day, you are enough.
Lee Coffin:
You are enough?
Eileen Cunningham-Feikens:
You are enough. And the competition I think stems from their comparing themselves to their peers, whether it's the kids sitting next to them in a science class or somebody that they've never met across the country applying to the same school. I can sniff out an AI generated essay. I'm sure all of us could because we read a lot of essays. But we have asked our students to show us different drafts, to show the iteration. And I said, in my 25 years on this side of the desk in college admissions, I have never seen an essay ready to go in a first draft because it's iterative and they need to write something and go for a run or eat something and then come back and look at it and say, "That's not what I meant." But the pressure, because they see that, "Ooh, maybe I can make it better."
I tell them, "You need to be really, really careful because if I can smell it, then anybody who reads your application can smell it. And even if you've used it from the tiniest bit, you've undermined the integrity of all the work that you've put into that application."
Jack Steinberg:
Would your advice be to a student who says, "Can I use it? And if so, how?" Is your council steer clear?
Eileen Cunningham-Feikens:
My council is steer clear in terms of anything that they're producing or creating. I think it's great for research. If we want to put a prompt in to whatever your AI mechanism is, "I'm looking for certain qualities or characteristics of a school." And if it's really specific to a student's CPR, it can save them a ton of time. Because the one thing that this generation has that... I don't want to make any observations necessarily but my generation, not necessarily everyone in the room here, but I didn't have that access to the research. I had the view book, the course catalog as we called it back then, and I had to write... I'm old. I had to write to my colleges and ask them to send me an application, and each application was unique and they were all different colors. And I had this whole collection-
Lee Coffin:
And they were paper.
Eileen Cunningham-Feikens:
...of whiteout that I had that would match each application because you had to type it or hand write it. And so while technology has been great in affording us quicker access to information, you have to use it wisely. Right? Whether you're using AI to collect that information is one thing but using it to create your narrative, kiddo, you are enough with who you are.
Jack Steinberg:
Use it for research. Your council is, steer clear of it in terms of the essays.
Steve Soud?
Steve Soud:
I live in New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz. And central to jazz is the concept of voice. And we hammer home with our kids over and over and over, they want to hear your voice. And there's a wonderful clip that I stumbled upon, it's the cast or most of the cast of the Apple TV show Shrinking. And they're at the Screen Actors Guild Awards and they're asking Brett Goldstein, who's the producer and a character in the program, "How did you pick this group?" And he quotes another actor, Bryan Cranston. And he says, "Your job is not to get the job. When you're auditioning, your job is not to get the job. Your job is to play the character the way you think the character should be played." Which is a different kind of way of saying use your voice. Or going back to what James said earlier, there's only one you. AI can do a lot of things but it cannot give you a voice. In fact, it may even erase your voice.
I'll conclude on one little etymological point because, Lee, you know I love my etymology.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, you do.
Steve Soud:
The word computer dates all the way back to the late 17th century. Jonathan Swift coined the word and he used it as a pejorative, a negative term, meaning someone who can count but who can't think. And I would remind us of all of that, underneath all of this and maybe there will be a point where the AI thinks for itself, there's some scary stuff we read in the press. But at the end of the day, for most of us, a computer can count but it can't really think. And we want all of us, our children, everyone else to be able to think.
Lee Coffin:
Steve, I don't know how you know what you know. That's crazy.
Steve Soud:
I did a PhD in 18th century English literature. My dissertation was on Swift, that's why I know.
Lee Coffin:
Oh, there you go. I'm curious from Chris and Erica how this plays in low income first gen access spaces.
Chris Reeves:
Chris Reeves, once again, from the Craft Academy. But first I wanted to say to Eileen, you used the word better. And it made me think something that I keep telling my students when they're trying to make their essays better is that when you're sending it to a college to be reviewed, better isn't always better. I say it to parents too when they want to over edit, better isn't always better. And then that leads to the voice and there was some AI... A research on AI from Carnegie Mellon and Cornell, I believe. AI writes in a voice that mimics wealthy, suburban, white kids. It favors private school kids more than public school kids. I can't remember the details of the research so please feel free to look this up.
My kids in Appalachia, the voice is what they've got. That's their number one strength is bringing the voice. And if they're using AI, they're losing it. They're going to sound like somebody from one of those high pressure cooker schools up in the East Coast. And why AI writes like that is a whole another story just because you're pulling from all of historical and everything that's ever been written and published. The way AI thinks is built around all other written works, that sort of thing. The voice isn't there and it does harm.
Erica Rosales:
I'm just going to agree with you. Erica Rosales from College Match Los Angeles. And the voice is so important and that's what you want to craft. And for most of our students, this is their first time really going through the writing process. What College Match does is we match up each student with a college advisor, they're all volunteers. It's the first time that somebody is going to sit, read your work, give you feedback, and then have you write it all over again because you're trying to hone in on what your voice is. We don't have official policy at College Match about AI but we know when a student has used it.
And I will say one thing for many of our students, because there isn't enough rigor in writing at a lot of their public high schools, sometimes AI can help with some of the brainstorming, sometimes maybe with a little bit of organization, but that's not your voice. And if you can use it responsibly with the guide of a mentor, that's what I would say.
Lee Coffin:
Jay, what's going on in your school?
Jay McCann:
Well, the one thing I challenge our students to do when we're brainstorming essay ideas back in May is I ask them, "What makes you super quirky?" They're uncomfortable with the idea that there's quirks about them that should shine through, and I think AI really does a good job of taking that out really quickly. As much as I can, my feedback to students typically is going to be one of those things along the lines of how do I get them to pull forward their perspective of being their own quirky selves? And there's always this developmental element of being a teenager where you're trying to fit in. And right now I'm encouraging them to be like, "No, we want you to sound as quirky and you as we can." And it's not even just about the parents or the AI tool, it's about them allowing themselves to do that is sometimes the challenge.
Jack Steinberg:
I want to pivot to our college colleagues. One of the things students and parents are surely wondering, counselors too, is to what degree are you as admissions officers... I want to turn the conversation to our college colleagues and specifically I think one question I suspect some parents and students and counselors too are wondering is to what degree are you employing AI in the admissions process, including in evaluating candidates? Can you talk a little bit about whether it's become part of the process? And if so, what are the guardrails there?
James Massey:
It's really funny. I have to definitely give thanks to our president, Darryll Pines at Maryland, because we were on the cusp of a lot of our faculty members when the AI piece was evolving, what is this going to mean? But he embraced it. He really did go forth and embrace it in a way where the use of responsibly using AI and just learning and digging into it was pushed forward as the institution. But for us in admissions, we outside of the chatbot, which was mentioned earlier in terms of helping to navigate to answers and even that is knock on wood, sometimes you get it, sometimes you don't. We're not. We're not at that place. We are still authentically going through and reviewing the applications piece by piece by piece by piece.
Now, are there going to be things that are going to evolve, that are going to help us in terms of time? Yes. And I think we're all going to have to embrace it and walk right up to that line and have that same conversation that we're having here of what is that line? But in the same way that we want our students, their voice to be there, we have to be able to hear that voice. And if we're not touching that application, you will never hear that voice. You'll get through a stack quickly but you will never ever hear that voice of the student. And so what was mentioned earlier when you were talking about that, Chris, that is so important that we just do not forget about that.
And in addition to not being able to have a voice, AI can't feel. There are things that have been written, we would get them and you see them and you're like, "Oh my goodness, this is awful." And for the first year or so you'll say, "Well, maybe they just don't know better." But now we're talking about it. When we're recruiting, we're answering those tough questions from families. We're telling them, "No, we do not want to see that. No, it's not going to necessarily make it better." You still have to have the student voice there and that's really the only way we can hear from the student is through an authentic piece that they're writing.
Lee Coffin:
James, two headlines, one episode. AI can't feel.
Jack Steinberg:
Andre?
Andre Phillips:
We do not use AI in any way, shape, or form in our review process. It is still read every page, make your decisions. Team members, however, use AI for research purposes. That's part one of the story. The bigger part of the story, last spring, our campus started its ninth school. The last time we had a school was more than 40 years ago. This school is called computing and artificial intelligence in this incredible facility. Invariably, as a campus embracing AI and believing that it is the future, and we've already had at least one conversation with a member of this school, we are thinking around what does responsibility look like? Because responsibility and being responsible can be defined very broadly.
How will this impact our ability to make decisions responsibly about building our classes to come? And so it's an interesting time for us. We still have more questions than answers. But trying to follow where this is going and what it's going to mean for the manner in which we build classes, we don't have a complete answer.
Lee Coffin:
And Jack, I love that Maryland and Wisconsin, the two biggest places at this table answered the way they did because I think many people would guess that if AI was going to live somewhere, it might be in a larger high volume process. And what you just heard, listeners, is these large flagship universities are still doing it the old-fashioned one by one way. And I'm looking at Ben, who represents the smallest place here with great books and a lot of writing, I'm guessing your head would pop off if you use AI in your process. But what's your sense of this?
Ben Baum:
Our faculty's heads would all pop off as well. Like my colleagues, we don't use AI in any systemic way in our admissions process at all, although there are individuals who are likely using it for research purposes. I've used it before to organize some data for me for some analysis. When I reflect on AI, and especially at a place like St. John's, I think of it as a tool. It's clearly a powerful tool that's an important tool but it's not a lifestyle, or at least it shouldn't be a lifestyle. The point of college is to learn, is to think, to do so much that it comes through writing itself. You learn by writing, you learn through conversation. And if you're using AI as a mechanism to skip that process, I don't know why you've chosen to go to college at all. And so I think that's a really important dimension to this.
I also think this is a generation where yes, they're using these tools but they are seeking a kind of authenticity that is the antithesis of AI at the same time. And so they want meaning in what they get from their college experience, they want authenticity. They want to know that our own marketing, the things that we put out to the world about our colleges actually represent substantively who we are as institutions. And so if they look at our materials and it looks to them like this has been artificially created in some way, they're going to have a negative reaction actually to what we've put out in the world. And so I think it's a really fine balance between using a tool effectively versus letting that tool consume you and become part of your identity, which I don't think has a real place in what higher ed is supposed to be about.
Jack Steinberg:
One of the takeaways, students and parents listening, I think is that there is still a human being at that computer waiting to receive your application and consider it and you should consider them as such. I want to close this conversation with the other A I mentioned that is top of mind for families this fall. And the Admissions Beat will be dealing with the issue of affordability, listeners, in future episodes. But just while I have this group gathered, while Lee and I have this group gathered, I do want to get a little bit of advice. What are a few pieces of advice, a few tips for families that are concerned about affordability, specifically as they see more and more colleges each year at and exceed the $100,000 full cost of attendance sticker price?
Dino Koff from Dartmouth, what's a go-to piece of advice for families that are concerned about affordability?
Dino Koff:
I think there are resources out there for families that are underused or maybe not known about. And to do the research that all these great people were talking about earlier and the fit of a school, and Erica mentioned earlier, financial fit is making sure when you're applying to these schools, if you don't know if all of them are going to be a financial fit, that's okay but making sure there are some. And to the parents out here, families having the conversation, if you're a junior, this is a perfect runway. But if you're end of October and you're applying left and right, having the realistic conversation now, can we afford this? This is going to be a stretch.
And for families to do research, research on the affordability but also the outcomes. Schools will... We are more than willing to pair people up with young alums who may have the same demographic you're coming from financially and be able to say, "This is what I did at Dartmouth and here is my path now that I'm two or three years out to hear, is this something? Should I take on $20,000 worth of debt or more? How did this work?" And making sure, not just saying, "Oh, a friend said I did X, Y, or Z." But really getting it from people who have just gone through it and fully understanding is, "Can I afford this with what I want to do?" And so using the resources that are there, using a calculator that are on websites, of course, kicking the tires and having the conversation.
Jack Steinberg:
Other go-to pieces of affordability advice at this stage of the process?
Matt Hyde:
This is Matt from Trinity. Financial aid is our lifeblood at this price point and we're acknowledging right now that there's this increasing divide between the ability and willingness to afford these experiences. They're still worth every penny, the research is there. This is a huge investment to be made but it's a worthy one. My piece of advice is just to make a friend in financial aid very early in this space because we have a lot of dollars to invest. And at Trinity, we don't spend financial aid, we invest it. And I love that our investment is massive. We're investing almost $90 million a year in a population of about 2,100 and that's going to about 1,700 students. We make it very affordable for families.
And not to be scared away by a price point that looks massive. But guess what? Very few are paying that full price. That financial fit is mission-critical, know that upfront and early. And have that challenging conversation if it's going to be challenging but let it be known that we are affordable.
Lee Coffin:
I want to piggyback on Jack's question and connect this affordability topic to NACAC. We're here at the national conference and there are two topics bubbling. There's a panel on Saturday morning that I am a panelist, it's called Hidden Tuition: Transparency and the Real Cost of College. And it's sponsored by Phil Levine, who's an economics professor at Wellesley who designed my intuition net price calculator, which is now part of the college board. His new book is called Hidden Tuition: An Insider's Guide to College Pricing and Financial Aid. And as I read the book and as I'm preparing for this panel, to me, the topic hiding in this topic is the language of financial aid.
A lot of places meet full need, offer lots of money for scholarships, but the families around the country here when we talk about financial aid, they don't really understand what we're saying. And I wonder what advice we have to families who are on the financial aid path but get lost because they don't... When I just said meet full need, they said, "What is that?" What thoughts do we have as counselors, as admission officers about translating financial aid and affordability to families of all backgrounds? It could be first gen low income families who see $100,000 and they just think that door is bolted shut. And it's not but they don't understand that it isn't. To middle and upper middle income families that think there's no way the return on investment is ever going to equal what we're laying out.
What about transparency, James?
James Massey:
The transparency piece I think is really critically important. I think it's important for our families and our students to go into this process with their eyes wide open. It does cost. There is a cost involved with higher education. But I think it's important for them to note that any of the financial aid offices and those officers are there to serve them first, they're not just there necessarily to talk through the package for Maryland, for example. They're there to serve you. Call that financial aid office, not just for that school, but just because I have questions about financial aid because that's a service that they provide to them.
The second thing I would say is that I think it's really important for families to, again, eyes wide open, not expect for every institution that you're applying to, to have that one scholarship that's going to pay for everything and it's just all going to work out and we're going to be happy. That is not necessarily the way it's going to happen. It's typically going to be... And when I'm talking about financial aid, financing your education, thinking about the different pockets of different buckets, a little from here, a little from there and how it's stacked. And really understanding the fact that it's just not going to be that one scholarship from that one place that's going to solve all the problems.
And the last thing I'll say is that we can't... Even in admissions, years ago it was almost church and state where admissions was on one side and financial aid was on the other. We can't afford to have those separations on our end. We have to be able to have those courageous conversations about what it looks like, what you're up against, and how we can help you. But we also are having an interesting conversation about, at the same time, the value of higher education and having to really almost in admissions world defend the fact that yes, this is valuable. Yes, this is something that you should be pursuing. It is going to help you to get to that next level. I think it's just a very nuanced and intricate conversation that we're having now.
Erica Rosales:
I'm just going to be practical. Erica Rosales from College Match. And the financial aid process is an application process too. I really do believe that sometimes parents don't know that part, don't understand that part. Many people think that my child is going to apply and they're going to get a scholarship somewhere. A scholarship is going to cover this and they're hoping that in April of their senior year, some scholarship is going to come through. If you really want to go to college, it is affordable but you need to be prepared. You need to be prepared to fill out the CSS profile for many of our private institutions. And then you have to be prepared to fill out the FAFSA because you need to get those income tax returns, you need to start talking early to your children about your finances because our students are translating for their parents.
Sometimes I find that my job is a little bit easier because I'm guiding the students through this and then they're guiding their parents and we're answering those questions. And it starts now. Next weekend, we're having our financial aid workshop and they will be done with their CSS profile and their FAFSAs so that they can afford college.
Jack Steinberg:
Lee, I have the unenviable task of bringing this rich discussion to a close. And I want to thank our guests. I've learned a tremendous amount from all of you and been taking notes. But Lee, why don't you bring us to a close?
Lee Coffin:
I love doing this round table every fall because as is always true, Jack and I mapped out a run-of-show and we got halfway through it. Because as we started to have this conversation, topics that weren't on the run-of-show joined the flow and we went with it. And I love that because as I think about the conversation we just had and how a parent or a counselor or maybe even a senior listens to this, I think we've opened a lot of doors. And as always, when I do these episodes, my hope is that we are turning down the heat, not turning up the heat, and that we are reassuring listeners that this process is complicated. It is multidimensional. It is evolving.
This is my 32nd year as a dean and if I were to do a timeline on each of those years, I don't know that any two were the same as I moved from one year to the next. It's not like AI is the new topic, which is swirling around me. I'm like, "What is it?" I come to NACAC every year and find peers thinking about the same topics and bringing great thoughtfulness to it. And I hope that came through this episode. We have such a range of voices in this room from two flagship universities to a tiny Great Books college in Annapolis, Maryland, to an access organization in LA, to independent school. It's like the range here has been really rich but I think we're all on the same page.
From Minneapolis, this is Lee Coffin signing off for Admission Beat. We'll be back next week with another episode. Thanks for listening.