For our Season 5 premiere, Admissions Beat turns its attention to high school juniors. Host Lee Coffin, dean of admissions at Dartmouth, previews what prospective applicants can expect in the months ahead. He encourages them to start with an “existential selfie” to understand what they’re seeking in a college experience. He and his guests also provide tips on building a college list and assessing a campus’s community and culture. Joining Dean Coffin are Thyra Briggs, vice president for admissions and financial aid at Harvey Mudd College, and Jacques Steinberg, co-author of “The College Conversation: A Practical Companion for Parents to Guide Their Children Along the Path to Higher Education.”
For our Season 5 premiere, Admissions Beat turns its attention to high school juniors. Host Lee Coffin, dean of admissions at Dartmouth, previews what prospective applicants can expect in the months ahead. He encourages them to start with an “existential selfie” to understand what they’re seeking in a college experience. He and his guests also provide tips on building a college list and assessing a campus’s community and culture. Joining Dean Coffin are Thyra Briggs, vice president for admissions and financial aid at Harvey Mudd College, and Jacques Steinberg, co-author of “The College Conversation: A Practical Companion for Parents to Guide Their Children Along the Path to Higher Education.”
Lee Coffin:
From Hanover, New Hampshire, I'm Lee Coffin, Dartmouth's dean of admissions and financial aid, and this is the season premiere of the Admissions Beat.
(music)
We are back for our fifth season of conversation and advice about all things college admission. As we start our new season, it's time to turn back the clock and refocus our audience from the seniors who just applied to the juniors and their parents and the counselors who are guiding them at the beginning of the college admission process that will for you be the story for the next 18 months.
For the seniors who are joining us again after Season 4, welcome back. We will give you a refresher on the things that count as your college search gets organized, and as we get a little deeper into the season, we'll turn our attention back to you to help you make decisions about where you wind up on May 1st. But today, we kick off the season as we usually do with a conversation with our friend Jacques Steinberg, former New York Times reporter and editor, author of The Gatekeepers and The College Conversation with Eric Furda, formerly dean of Penn. Jacques, welcome back.
Jacques Steinberg:
Great to be here, Lee, and excited for another season.
Lee Coffin:
Joining us for the season kickoff is my old friend and colleague, Thyra Briggs, vice president for admissions and financial aid at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. Hi, Thyra.
Thyra Briggs:
Hi, Lee. How are you?
Lee Coffin:
I'm really well. So nice to see you, and welcome to your first appearance on Admissions Beat.
Thyra Briggs:
Yes, thank you.
Lee Coffin:
For our listeners meeting Thyra for the first time, she's been the chief admission officer at Harvey Mudd for 17 years and came to that role having been the dean of admission at Sarah Lawrence for 15 years. I was joking with her before we started that she has great staying power when she takes one of these seats. But Thyra, I've started to invite each of my guests to go back to high school and share a quick college admission story from your point of view. So I know you went to Concord-Carlisle High School in Massachusetts
Thyra Briggs:
I did, indeed.
Lee Coffin:
And you ended up at Connecticut College where we met. How did you get from Concord-Carlisle to Conn College?
Thyra Briggs:
I will say it is not a hugely dramatic story; for anyone who knows Concord-Carlisle High School or Concord, Massachusetts, it is a place where probably 90% of the graduating seniors go on to college, so it was just an expectation. I was fortunate enough to have parents who had gone through the process and so it was, in some ways, a lockstep process. I think the most distinctive thing about my process was that never—sorry Conn College—did I step on a campus and think, "This is where I want to be." That's one thing I guess I would love the listeners to take away, is that not everyone has that "aha" moment. Not everyone exactly says, "This is exactly where I'm going to be." In some ways it's best when that doesn't happen because it leaves your options open.
So I had narrowed things down to three colleges: Connecticut College, Kenyon College and Colby College. I still firmly believe from day one that I could have gone to any of the three of them and been blissfully happy, and that's what you want to have on your list of colleges. You have to want to attend all of them. The two most distinctive things about Conn was that the two days that I had seen it before, one day it was a blizzard and the second day it was torrential floods. So the fact that I still chose it in spite of that and that it honestly was a fantastic place for me, I would not be doing what I'm doing without the leadership opportunities I had there, I think. But the fact that I chose it in spite of the weather-related issues says a lot about the community and the college itself.
Lee Coffin:
Good piece of advice to listeners. We always talk about news you can use as you listen to each episode. So the news you could use on Thyra's story is don't let one visit or one blizzard or a thunderstorm or a heat wave or a swarm of locusts-
Thyra Briggs:
Or a bad tour guide.
Lee Coffin:
... or a bad tour guide, like, these things happen and give yourself the grace to say, "Okay, maybe this was an off day on this campus." But there will also be moments when you get to a campus, you're like, "I just don't feel it."
Thyra Briggs:
Yes.
Lee Coffin:
That fundamental reaction is legit and you need to own it. But I think Thyra's advice that she had three, she would've been happy with all three, that's a really lovely college search to have for yourself where you get to the end, you're like, "They're all wonderful. I can see myself here. I can only go to one." So thanks for sharing that Thyra.
Thyra Briggs:
Sure.
Jacques Steinberg:
Yeah. I also like, Thyra, that to take the pressure off oneself, to expect those rays of light to appear that the heavens will open and that you will know that you have found your place, some young people feel that, many people never do. To give yourself license to not have to have that vision and to instead make the best decision you can with the choices in front of you and the information you have at hand, including about yourself.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah.
Thyra Briggs:
Absolutely.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. My version of that to new listeners who haven't heard me talk about it, I didn't have that vision until the very end of the process. I had seen a lot of places. I liked them. I was in the Thyra space, and I remember going with my family to visit Trinity College. It was Easter Sunday. I had been admitted. My dad said, "Hey, let's drive up to Hartford and see it. Off we went, and we drove through the gate into the main part of the campus and I went, "Oh!" My mother said, "What's the matter?" I said, "This is exactly what I thought college was going to look like." We got out of the car and we walked around and I had that tingly moment, but it was really late.
Thyra Briggs:
So you hadn't visited before at that point?
Lee Coffin:
No. The irony of my career is as a first-gen public school high school kiddo, I had the most uneventful college admission. I had a bad guidance counselor. I relied on the mail that came to my mailbox to learn about colleges. Of course, FYI, it was pre-internet, so that was the way it happened. But I didn't do any tours until I was admitted, and I don't advise that, juniors. But my own search was unconventional, I guess, maybe not so much then in the 1980s. But yeah, it's funny that I am who I am because I did not partake of a search in the way people do these days. But I did have the "aha" moment, but it was a buzzer beater "aha" moment that pivoted me from where I thought I was going. Syracuse was where I thought I was going to study journalism. I had made my mind up that I was going to go to journalism school, but I wasn't sure that I should. Then I got to Trinity, I was like, "Oh no, no, this is it." Maybe I'm a journalist now, but I did-
Thyra Briggs:
What did you end up majoring in, Lee?
Lee Coffin:
I majored in history, so I wonder if the podcasting makes me a type of journalist all these years later. We'll talk about this in other episodes, but my thinking kept shifting. I started the search as the editor of the high school newspaper and I thought, "I'm going to go, I want to do this." So I looked at all the journalism schools, and I had one teacher who said, "Look at a couple of these liberal arts colleges. I think you would be well-suited to that type of undergraduate experience." I had no idea what it meant. I remember saying to my dad, "Liberal arts? What's the conservative arts?" I just didn't really know what this concept was; neither did dad. The world has evolved a lot since those days when we were all in high school, but to kids, if you're listening to this in January of your junior year, you got a lot of time to absorb and digest and feel it.
So Jacques, you have the microphone for our premiere, so I'm going to join Thyra on the proverbial couch-
Jacques Steinberg:
Thank you.
Lee Coffin:
... and go where you want to take us.
Jacques Steinberg:
I am very, very grateful to have the mic swing my way and to be in conversation with you and Thyra. So let's start, Thyra and Lee, on a note of empathy, imagining many of our listeners, parents of high school juniors, as Lee said, perhaps juniors themselves or their counselors, imagine those parents or juniors, particularly those who've never been through this process before, what must they be feeling and what would you say to them in response to those feelings at this moment of kickoff?
Thyra Briggs:
For me, the very first piece of advice I give every family, every group of college juniors, every parent might, whatever you want to call it, is that literally as the students are at this very moment, there are hundreds of colleges who want them and who will want them in a year, not changing anything about themselves, not starting any new clubs or any of those things. I think if you think of the next year or so of this process trying to find a group of schools that are you're excited about and that are excited about you, you're going to be fine. If you look at it as looking for one place only, that's what causes stress. So keeping an open mind, but knowing that you're wanted already hopefully, will be reassuring.
Lee Coffin:
I'm nodding as I listen to that, and I think the peril at the beginning of the search is you answer the question before it's been asked, and the question is, "Where do I see myself? Where do I feel it?" You need to have really early embryonic ideas and be willing to have those things shift as you go through discovery. It's something I say every year to juniors is January, February, March of your junior year: You should just be all eyes and ears absorbing information and also listening to your gut because you're going to start to meet campuses. The name you know, sweatshirt, sticker on the car, you read it in the paper, may not be a place that clicks when you encounter it and that's okay.
This is to parents as well as students, being willing to be surprised, as this conversation unfolds. If you keep visiting small rural campuses and saying, "I am not digging all these cows," then maybe you need to look in the mirror and say, "Maybe this type of place is not where I should be looking," or the reverse, you're visiting a lot of urban schools and you're saying, "It's a little too much, too much energy, too much traffic, too much whatever." Follow your Goldilocks. Where is it seeming to be a good fit? A word you'll hear over and over and over on every episode. But that's the opening advice I have is to not predetermine the finish as you start.
Jacques Steinberg:
So in terms of another feeling that listeners may be experiencing, feeling overwhelmed, feeling frozen, whether parent or student, what's your advice on how to get over that initial hump when feeling so daunted?
Thyra Briggs:
I mentioned before about students being wanted. Juniors are going to start feeling that quickly as they start being inundated by emails and brochures and who knows what text messages saying from colleges that we want you, I think that can be overwhelming 'cause again, you haven't heard of a lot of these places, you're not used to getting this kind of email. My piece of advice there is, so after a few weeks of this or a month of this, take a handful of them, take literally 10 minutes and go look at the mission statements of these institutions. Someone somewhere when those colleges and universities were founded spent time to distill the values of the college into one sentence.
So reading one sentence about each school isn't overwhelming, it doesn't take very long. People are used to reading things online, see if it resonates with you. The Harvey Mudd mission is so clear and tells you so much about us in two seconds, and I think if you can just take time to do that, it's going to weeded out some colleges. It's probably going to excite you about some colleges you hadn't anticipated. But it's short, short bites, small bites of this along the way rather than thinking of it as one enormous overwhelming process will help.
Jacques Steinberg:
Thyra, I love your recommendation on bite-size pieces. If you can slice and dice this process a little bit into steps that are more manageable, focusing on one at a time, it can feel less daunting. Also, a lesson here, I think, for parents and students, how do colleges and universities differentiate themselves from each other? What do they say when they talk about what makes them special or different? Maybe there are ways to start keeping track of that and comparing and contrasting.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, because when you like what you're seeing, hearing and feeling, look for more of that.
Jacques Steinberg:
Back to the subject of time. Thyra, in previous season openers at this time of year we've likened the stage of the process, one analogy we've used is to the overture of a Broadway show where you're getting the highlights of the music and the story that are going to come in the next few months, and we're giving you that at the top as the curtain is raised. So let's imagine, again, a high school junior and their family new to this process. Let's give them the milestones that they can expect to happen and when between the winter of 2024 and the spring of 2025.
Thyra Briggs:
When you're thinking about how you're going to divide this up and it absolutely, again, digestible bites, not anything overwhelming, you're thinking of different sections and it's going to be definitely college visits. It's going to be college fairs, it's going to be college interviews if that's going to be something on your horizon. It's going to be testing, some things that you have to do. Other pieces of this, I think, are more about ways you're going to think about it. So I think there's nitty-gritty pieces and there's philosophical approaches also.
Jacques Steinberg:
Lee, for those who wonder what roughly is going to happen when over that next year plus, what would you want to flag?
Lee Coffin:
There's three-ish acts. So act one is discovery. You're exploring. It's now through the end of the summer, and it continues beyond that. But really primetime discovery is now and next six months to think about what matters as you imagine where you'd like to go to college, what you'd like to study and where you want to live, those are three really big questions. Simple, but important. The task is to wonder and wander and see what resonates, see what doesn't. I was talking to the son of a friend who was like, "I am absolutely going to leave New England and go to the South." I'm like, "Okay." That was his opening thing, was like, he just envisioned himself in the South. So those are the early questions you have.
Then you get to act two, which is usually the fall of the senior year where you have to really refine a list, not of places to explore, but where you will apply. The places you will apply will have requirements, and you have to get yourself organized and think about what is each of these places asking me to submit as part of my application. Connected to that, the other big question in act two is, has one place emerged as a favorite or as the clear choice? Then that's pointing you towards an early application perhaps. Also, in act two is the question of affordability. For those of you who have hopes of financial aid as part of your college experience, it starts in the fall. In the normal year, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid comes online on October 1st. The calculators are there to help you assess need, and that runs concurrently with this pre-applying and then the act of applying.
Then act three, you've applied, the decisions are underway and the finale of that is you get accepted to I hope, 1, 2, 5 places like Thyra did, and you have a choice of, "Where do I see myself enrolling?" You don't need to start act three now. This is what I was saying before. You have to do this in order where you explore and discover, then you plan the application and make sure you're telling your story through its component parts and then it's reviewed. That's out of your hands. You have told a story, we read it, we respond to it, and then you decide. So it's really a repeat for the next class. Some of the pieces that swirl around it change from year to year, but the fundamentals are the same. I'm guessing Jacques is going to talk a little bit about some of the headlines that we're all reading, but I preview and do those questions or the fundamentals don't change.
Jacques Steinberg:
For our listeners who are new to the podcast, in the coming weeks and months, we're going to go deep on a lot of the issues that Thyra and Lee have just outlined and others; this is the toe-touch at the beginning. But let's go back to act one, Lee, and discovery. We've made the point in the past that it's really hard to start looking at colleges before you look within-
Lee Coffin:
Right.
Jacques Steinberg:
... and you ask yourself who are you? Which is a really, really hard question that many young people may be asking themselves for the first time. Many of us as adults continue to struggle with that question. In the past, Lee, you've used an analogy which I suspect will come up elsewhere in this season of an "existential selfie," encouraging them to take an existential selfie. Let's introduce them and Thyra to this concept.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, Thyra laughed when she heard you say that. Existential selfie, to me, is riffing on that thing we take with our phones. As you point it, look at yourself and ask, "What matters? What are the things I care about?" Claire Matthews, who was the dean at Connecticut College when Thyra and I were both there in the early mid-90s used to say, "This is college. It's about studying. It's about earning a degree." So that's a really important first kernel to grab. Yeah, you want to have fun and you want to be somewhere where you're happy, but you also are going to study something. These early questions that swirl around this selfie would be, "How do I do my best learning? What kind of classrooms make me feel empowered to do my best work? Lecture discussion, bigger, smaller, and in those spaces, what role do I play in that room? Do I raise my hand? Am I the kid that doesn't shut up?"
That was me. "Am I someone who sits quietly and listens? Do I ask provocative questions that make debate go in different directions? Am I the contrarian who sits in the back of the room and they're like, 'Yeah, but...'" and then it goes... How do you want to engage with the teacher? Who in college becomes your professor? What's the relationship between student and teacher? Those are big questions. What kind of learner are you? Do you gravitate toward words or numbers? Are you conceptual or more abstract? Are you concrete? Are you a coder? Are you a painter? How do you express yourself? All of those early questions are going to point you towards different kinds of options. Thyra, as I'm saying that, you're representing an engineering school, is there a set of questions somebody thinking that way might be asking at this early moment?
Thyra Briggs:
Well, first, I have to take the issue with the engineering school piece.
Lee Coffin:
Oh, okay.
Thyra Briggs:
We do offer engineering, but we also offer a whole bunch of other STEM majors.
Lee Coffin:
Okay. I stand corrected.
Thyra Briggs:
But I will say in all honesty, that's part of what we're looking for. So if we do get a sense, one of the questions we want our students to ask is, "Do I only want to study something, engineering, computer science, math, physics, whatever it's going to be?" Or, "ow much do I want the humanities, social sciences and the arts to play a role in what might be a very technically-based degree?" What we love to say about Harvey Mudd, as students come here 'cause they don't want to give up all of the other stuff they're excited about. So I think asking those questions absolutely is crucial. Our students are obviously very, very focused on research opportunities, and we want our students to think about... start to understand what different kinds of research mean. As I mentioned earlier, it's not you in a lab by yourself never talking to anyone.
Research these days is collaborative, and you're going to be working with diverse teams. So I think asking students to think about, "Where have I done my best work in that area?" So much of this process is about potential. You don't have to have done all of this. You have the potential to do it. You want to do it. Group work is a big thing for us here and many students have had a horrible experience with group work in high school. So we challenge them to think about, "What could group work look like if I'm surrounded by other people who are as excited about this topic as I am?" So I think re-imagining how you're defining some key concepts in the admission process can really help you broaden your horizons also.
Jacques Steinberg:
So, all fair and appropriate questions: "Who am I? What matters to me? What kind of learner am I? What kind of learning and other environment am I seeking on a college campus?" For the young person who asks themselves these questions, and the initial answer is, "I don't know. I don't have a clue." What advice do you have to get over that hump?
Thyra Briggs:
I think part of that's the joy of the liberal arts. I was sure, 100% sure I was going to be a double major in Spanish and Russian. I took those languages in high school. That was my excitement. I never took a language in college. I was a double religious studies and child development major. So I think part of it is in some ways much more exciting not knowing what you want to do going in and allowing the college to be a place where you find something that really excites you. My first religious studies class just turned everything I knew on its head, and I knew that's what I wanted to pursue.
I wasn't thinking, "What am I going to do with this?" this is probably giving me way too much credit, but I was thinking about, "This makes me excited about learning and it's going to impact other things." So I think it's absolutely fine to not know what you want to do and looking at places, "Do they have a core curriculum? Is there going to be a chance that's going to help me focus in certain areas, or am I comfortable? I'm coming from Sarah Lawrence to Harvey Mudd, the epitome of opposites in that way, am I excited by the freedom of not having a core curriculum, or do I think I'm going to benefit from that kind of guidance?" So I think there's ways you can find that too.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, and I think on the more self-reflective part of that, as a junior in high school, talk to your teachers. Talk to your guidance counselor, your college counselor, your parents, God forbid, your grandma. Just have a conversation with the people around you, your best friend and say, "Ask me questions and see how I answer them," and listen to what people are telling you, and listen to what feels true. Part of the thing you will learn to do is there's not a correct answer to the test and you don't need to ask the college admission person, "How do you want me to answer that?" It's like, "What do you want me to know? What do you want me to say?"
I can't crawl inside your head and say, "Oh, you're a spatial learner." It's like, think about the courses that when it's period five and it's time for whatever, does that excite you? It's like Thyra talked about Spanish and Russian as a high school student being the things she loved, well, if foreign languages are your favorite periods of the day, start there. What is it? Is it the teachers? Is it the subject? Is it the way you learn? If you love going to the studio art class and you're thinking, "I am a creative person, I love art. I love making art I like studying art," there's a clue.
If it's the lab and you finally got some advanced coursework and you're doing some really interesting research maybe for the first time, that's a clue. So these are the little things that just your day-to-day life as a junior in high school or same with the extracurricular space. I mentioned earlier that I was the editor of my high school newspaper and that was along with the drama club, the two places where I spent all of my time when I wasn't in the class. Those were things that informed my high school identity and helped shape the adult I became. I didn't know that then, but I see the architecture of the person Lee became in those things I did in high school.
Jacques Steinberg:
Lee, one of the folks you encouraged young people to talk to about this is their parents. For parents who are listening to this, having had two people in my household go through this process and emerge on the other end of it, it can be a moment of high drama. Some of us as parents sometimes feel like that lion tamer gingerly approaching the cage and opening the door and engaging at a moment of high emotion. Let's say for a parent who does want to have this conversation but is intimidated by it, what advice do you both have about starting a conversation about who you are and what matters to you and how that might map to this process? How do you break the ice?
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Well, you have to recognize when your child is ready to have the conversation. I think that's a tricky space where I have a lot of friends and relatives who've gone through this, and I see them forcing the conversation before the student is ready to do it. Parents, the thing that I hear so much from students that I always find so poignant is when I ask them, "Why are you worried? Where's the stress of this coming from?" What they tell me almost every time is, "I don't want to disappoint my parents." They may not ever say that to you, but they're perceiving through this process, particularly those who are in the more selective part of this rainbow, and they know the odds are long and that generates some jitters on their part.
But really, if they're watching you taking their clues about what's a win, what's a point of pride, when will you be disappointed? I was in an independent school once and young man said, "My parents spent a lot of money to send me here. I don't want to screw this up," and they're thinking about those things. So sometimes you're eager to get started, and they're not ready to start or to talk about it. Sometimes they're really antsy to get going, and you just need to run along with them and let them go. But my advice is take your clues from the person who's in the house with you. There is a moment when you do need to push, it's usually not now, and be a listener at this point and help them understand what they're feeling and seeing even before maybe they have the words to articulate it.
Thyra Briggs:
Yeah, I think I would add, even though it's something new for a lot of families that they're going through, the student's not going to become a different person as they go through it. If they were contemplative and quiet and took time to really process throughout their high school years, the same thing is probably going to be true about how they handle college. They're not going to be ready in the car ride on the way home from a college to say, "This is what I want. This is exactly... now that I think about it," you're going to have to give them some time. The more, I don't know, headstrong, rash, outspoken students will probably still be the same way and have a gut reaction saying, "Nope, not for me, no way," and be ready to talk about it.
The two age-old parent-role-in-the-process pieces of advice in this field, one is for families who think it could create a weird dynamic to set aside a day or time a meal, a commute each week to be prepared to have these conversations but agree not to talk about it. Other times, other families, they can figure it out other ways. The other is that the parent is there to facilitate too, but the student has to steer. So if you're a parent of a athlete, you would no more run on the field to play for them or play an instrument in the orchestra, but you make sure they get there to the orchestra and to the field. You make sure they have the equipment they need. It's the same thought process about the role a parent should play in the college admission process.
Lee Coffin:
I think for students listening, you know your parents or your guardians. You've spent a lot of time with this person, what's their best skill? Give them homework. If your parent is a research-oriented kind of person, say, "Hey, dad. Your job is to take this list I got from the guidance counselor and poke around the websites and give me stuff you think I should read." Or, "Mom, you are great with maps," plot out, "here are the places I want to visit. What's our itinerary to get from A to B to C to D and back home?" You can make the appointments if you want to give them permission to be the scheduler, but that's helpful, because kids, parents want to help you, so give them permission to help in whatever way feels good for you.
Jacques Steinberg:
Yeah, it's almost applicant as CEO and you're assigning tasks, you're relegating roles and responsibilities. Also, Thyra, your notion of guardrails of what are the... maybe co-creating a list of how we are going to engage and when and how we're not going to engage and when. Maybe six nights of dinner this subject is off limits, but on the seventh, it's fair game.
Lee Coffin:
I would also add a pronoun observation to this conversation. I hear lots of parents say things like, "We are applying to college." No, you're not.
Thyra Briggs:
Exactly.
Lee Coffin:
There's that royal "we," but it's the student's search. So keep reminding yourself of that. Yeah, you have a role and there's a financial component to it. The response is almost always, "Well, we're paying for it." It's like okay, but the act of applying to college is the student's act and the rest of us who are part of this are supporting actors in that. I'm back to the play as my metaphor, but the student is the lead. I think a lot of the friction and drama that erupts can be avoided with some recognition that, let's start with the student and see how we help her go where she's going.
Jacques Steinberg:
An admissions colleague that the three of us know, Jennifer Delahunty, a few years back wrote a book that had the title in the student's voice, I'm Going to College---Not You! With the exclamation point, and my mind certainly goes there as I listen to the two of you. Ultimately, we hope that this process will yield a list of colleges to which a student is going to apply. One of the ways we hope that list will be described is that it's balanced, Thyra, how would we define a balanced list?
Thyra Briggs:
I think the key thing is first of all, first and foremost, you have to want to attend, or at least imagine you would like to attend every single one of the colleges on your list. The terms have changed over the years in terms of whether there are reach schools for which a student's profile might be on the lower end of their admitted students. There are likely schools where it seems like a fairly likely piece. Then there are schools that you probably have a fairly good shot of getting into even more likely than likely, for example. They may have higher admit rates or something like that. You'd need to have that range. I would also say, which I don't think is said often enough, if you have created a list of colleges you'd like to apply to that you're excited about that doesn't have a single reach school on it, great, fantastic. I think there is a different way to balance things where you're going to be sure that you have options at the end.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, reach and safety are not good and bad.
Thyra Briggs:
Exactly.
Jacques Steinberg:
A student or parent may be wondering at this stage, "How long is my list going to be?" Of course, that's incredibly personal and tailored, and a lot of that discussion with the counselor will yield that number. But do you both have, for lack of a better word, a little bit of a sweet spot in terms of what they might expect in terms of a list that isn't too big or too small?
Lee Coffin:
I would you should be aiming towards eight to 10 applications-
Thyra Briggs:
100%.
Lee Coffin:
... 100%, eight to 10 feels like a thoughtful balanced list, which includes a couple places that have admit rates that suggest the odds are complicated; a couple that have acceptance rates in your profile that suggest an offer will be forthcoming; and then a few in the middle where it's what's the place? What's your fit? What's the story did you tell?, You don't need to apply to 15, 20. I had a student, or accepted student at open house last year talk about getting into 30. I thought, "Oh, my God," but that's a waste of your resources and energy. You don't need to apply to 30 places.
Thyra Briggs:
At some point, with 30 admits, you're no further along in the process than you were back in act one-
Lee Coffin:
No.
Thyra Briggs:
... because you're back to doing a lot of investigation.
Lee Coffin:
Right. Right. Right.
Jacques Steinberg:
For those for whom the eight to 10 is appropriate, it forces decision-making early in the process and ensures that there'll be fewer decisions to be made on the other end. A few more questions before we bring down the curtain on our overture. Let's give a little bit of a primer for standardized testing. Again, for those going through this for the first time, parents may be very, very out of date thinking about their own college experience. In a world in which standardized testing at some places is optional, at other places is recommended and at other places is required, but as they think about act one and thinking about standardized testing, what is some of your basic advice regardless of whether you're applying to a school that's optional, recommended or required?
Thyra Briggs:
I think a key piece here, this is where spreadsheets can come in very handy, and I don't just say this 'cause my brother works for Excel. Keeping a spreadsheet of the colleges and their requirements can make things much easier for you. But I think the key during this first act is to ensure that you have all of the options open to you regardless of where you end up applying. In all honesty, in order to do that, you need to take standardized tests because if at the last minute you decide to take a test, then it's going... to take it to apply, certainly, try that again.
If you decide to ultimately apply to schools that do require testing, then you're going to want to have that option. Now that said, you also need to think about the fact that for some students, standardized testing is not at all a reflection of their ability. For some students, they may not have the option to take it, so that's going to give you a different list of colleges. But anything you can do at this point to keep your options open, I think, is what you want to do, knowing that it's not the be-all, end-all of who you are or of your decision-making in the end.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, I agree. I think a pragmatic planning component of a search is to sit for the SAT, ACT of your choice, they're interchangeable, in the spring of your junior year. Get a score, see how you've done. It does something that you're not seeing. It also is a form of talent identification. So the mail that shows up in your mailbox on your inbox is not accidental. It is often a byproduct of what we call a search, our search where we go to College Board and we say, "We'd love to purchase," we buy, "names of students who fall within certain parameters." It could be scores, could be your GPA. It could be where you live, could be what you want to study. I might say, "I'd love to see a group of students who have an interest in the humanities who are from the West Coast," 'cause on the East Coast, and they give me names and we send you information. So you bypass that if you're not taking the test, but today is not the moment to decide, "I'm test optional or test required."
Take it, prepare for it. You don't need to take expensive courses. Khan Academy, online, is free so you can do practice tests and get yourself familiar with the way the questions are asked. There's a digital version of the SAT coming out this year, that's a new wrinkle. The thing I would also just say by way of preview to the high school class of 25, I think we've emerged from the pandemic set of admission priorities and guidelines that shifted the work for a bit. I think your class will start to see some colleges make adjustments to their testing policy. Columbia and MIT in my space have already done that. MIT reenacted testing. Columbia said, "We're going to be permanently optional." I think those decisions will start to pop with a bit more frequency this spring, summer, my guess. So having testing keeps your options open. If a set of places that are optional today become required again tomorrow, you have not closed the door.
Jacques Steinberg:
I love the idea of the Excel spreadsheet as a way to keep score, no pun intended, as some of these colleges make these decisions and you need a place to keep track of them. Testing is in the news, as you say, Lee, the pandemic receding. But one question that I wouldn't have asked you, Lee, a year ago, and Thyra, for you as well, paying attention, so many college campuses in the last few months have become roiled, have become inflamed by discussion, by dialogue, by disagreement, and sometimes much stronger dynamics than that.
One of the subjects of that discussion, dialogue, debate, disagreement is the conflict in the Middle East, which has upended several presidencies in colleges as we know. Lee, as a student of history, I was also a history major. I think you may have to go back to the Vietnam War for this sort of tenor on campus at least to the debate over South Africa and apartheid in our day. But imagine a student and a parent looking at colleges taking note of this. It seems to me that it underscores that the climate and the community on campuses really is an area of differentiation, that not all campuses approach all this the same. As a student and parent, how do you take the measure of that and factor it into your search?
Lee Coffin:
Great question, and you're right, one we wouldn't have talked about a year ago in quite the same way. The word I was about to say, and then you said it, is "climate." What is the campus climate? We're not talking about meteorological in this one, but what are you reading, seeing, experiencing through that campus's representation of itself to you as an applicant? Does that environment seems suited to you? If you're somebody with a particular point of view, do you feel like that view is represented on that campus? Would you be an outlier? Would you welcome that? Yes, you may have an underrepresented point of view, but you welcome the chance to be the spokesperson for that part of a debate or you want to be in the majority and find kindred spirits who are lining up with your point of view.
I also think college is that space where you attest your assumptions. So is there a place that helps you do that, or do you want your assumptions reinforced? Again, this is a version of the selfie showing up in this current events version of campus life. Community was the other word you used. I think that's the other one like, how does a community respond to crises, events, moments, movements? Everybody doesn't do it the same way or as well, doesn't mean those are flawed places. It's just the higher ed has a lot of different versions of community, and the process of assessing it is very, very, very individualized on this one.
Thyra Briggs:
I would agree. I think that the one piece here I would add is we've been encouraging families and students as they start this process to be willing to redefine terms that they thought they understood, and one of them I would offer would be activism. What does activism look like to you? The other thing that we often say in the college search process, which I think translates also into this subject, Jacques, is the idea of don't choose a college for its extremes. Meaning, if there is one thing you love about the school and one thing you hate about the school, don't choose or not choose based on that, because your daily existence is probably going to be somewhere in the middle.
I think what we're seeing right now is a lot of extremes because of the extreme emotion and feelings that come along with these topics. But finding out whether a college gives students the space, not just physically, but within their day to engage in a political community or something like social justice, I think, is an important question to ask. But yeah, I think redefining this idea of this happens or it doesn't and figuring out where that fits in for the students' hopes and wishes is an important part.
Jacques Steinberg:
I'm a former journalist as you both know, and this is a part where students and parents can be a little journalistic in their approach of formulating questions. That's setting about trying to answer them, talking to people, asking those questions, Thyra, about, "Is what I'm seeing on the news about this campus on the margins, or is that part of daily life here? How respected really are lots of different points of view and identities?" But I'm fascinated by the fact that this becomes much more of a point in the process, a priority in the process for many students and parents than it might have a year ago.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, and I think campus newspapers, they're all online. As the list starts to gel, bookmark them and just see what's happening on that campus. What's the dialogue? Is there any? Some places are really quiet and they don't lean into these issues as much as other places where, to use Thyra's word, the activism is much more front and center, and it all comes back to you. How do you respond to that? Do you feel excited, intimidated? Do you welcome that kind of conversation and difference in protest when it happens, or does it make you so uncomfortable you think, "This can't be my space," that you have to answer that? Then do you see yourself represented in these communities however you define representativeness? Again, if that's important to you, follow that. If it's not, then it doesn't need to be part of your search criteria, but you will know when it's important to have community as defined by you.
Jacques Steinberg:
So two final questions before I give the mic back. Lee, you mentioned the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, the FAFSA will be filled out later this year in a later act of this process. But I'm curious what you both think in terms of early conversations about cost before lists get built, conversations about what we as a family have saved for college, what we expect to pay for college, different roles and responsibilities, what our tolerance for debt is and how that will inform the list and the various approaches to financial aid at different schools. What's your advice for talking about cost before things get too far down the road?
Thyra Briggs:
I think you hit the nail on the head. The first time this conversation happens cannot be when a student has four offers of admission and financial aid packages are not in front of them, and that's when they find out that cost is going to matter. It is a fact that the majority of families in this country are going to need and students are going to need financial assistance to go to what are some very expensive schools. But I think, again, you don't have to get into a lot of the nitty-gritty at this very early stage. They should know whether or not you're going to need to apply for financial aid. Your students should know if it will be a make or break deal in terms of choosing a place. We say talk about fit a lot, finding a college that fits financially is equally important.
I do think that students and families should have conversations about debt at some point. It is not necessarily the cut and dry have debt or not, what is manageable amounts of debt. I think that's a key part. Later on, that's when you can start looking at amounts. Lee mentioned that the net price calculator that every single college or university in the country has to have on their website, it is a good way to just plug in some data early on to see what used to be called the estimated family contribution might be to get a ballpark and you can have that conversation early on. But at this point, just a matter of no, this is something we're thinking about, we want to stay up on those requirements just as we do on an application requirements and deadlines.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, I think the early calculators help a family ask and answer a big question, "What's our projected expense on this? Does that shift the list? Does the cost of attendance seem beyond us and we need to add colleges that offer merit so non-need-based financial aid needs to be part of it?" Dartmouth doesn't offer merit aid. So if merit is a non-negotiable part of your search, you shouldn't be looking at Dartmouth because if you're in that space, I can't honor it, not because I might not want to; it's not our policy. Or where does the state university come back into your plans as a more affordable high-quality option that you want to be considering? That information sooner is great.
Thyra Briggs:
I will just say, if I could just add one quick thing, Jacques, that this is a self-serving statement. I will freely admit that, having worked at two of the most expensive colleges in the country, please do not rule out colleges at this moment because of their sticker price.
Lee Coffin:
Yes.
Thyra Briggs:
This is where it matters enormously to know how generous aid policies are. In some cases, we will be less expensive than the University of California for families based on their resources and our generous aid. So keep those options open as well, but having that basis in reality coming along behind.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, that's right. I just wrote down in my notebook, "sticker price should not be an early exit ramp."
Jacques Steinberg:
So you've both provided so much food for thought for the months ahead for this process. So many of these topics, Lee, you'll be exploring in depth in the coming weeks and months, including with additional guests. But as we bring this conversation to a close, for each of you, is there one closing thought, whether it's a new thought or something that was said that you just want to emphasize coming back to this notion of what it feels like to be a parent and student embarking on this process?
Thyra Briggs:
I'll let Lee have the last word, so I'll tackle this one first. It's somewhat of a reiteration of how we started. For me, in addition to hundreds of colleges wanting students as they are now, your job as you're applying to college over the next year or so is not to twist yourself into a pretzel to try to become something you think colleges want. The more authentic you can be and how you present yourself, the better decisions we're going to make about whether we think you're going to be a good fit for our institution. So simply thinking carefully about how you present yourself in your application, and I know this will be tackled later on, thinking about those pieces, I think, are crucial, but be authentic and you're going to be fine.
Lee Coffin:
Thyra, I'm actually going to take the last word and give it back. So my closing thought is actually a question back to Thyra and Jacques. So I'm going to take the mic from Jacques and say "your turn." So our podcast is called the Admissions Beat, and I named it that as a nod to the way the news swirls around college admissions and wanted to have a place where I can help shape the way people understand the news as it relates to college admissions, offer some counsel. So my question is about the admissions beat. I subscribed to The Daily from The New York Times, and in the last week there were two podcasts episodes about college admissions, one called "A Confusing New World for College Applicants," and that was January 5th.
It talked about the end of affirmative action and how students might discuss race as part of their applications. Then days later, the pod was "The Messy Fight Over the SAT." So I don't really want to talk about either of those episodes specifically, but parents, especially are going to be reading and listening to stories about this process. Jacques, as a former journalist, what's your thought on how parents and then students as well should be absorbing the headlines as the search gets going? They could be distracting, they can be informative, but what's your best counsel about how to navigate the information flow that is everywhere?
Jacques Steinberg:
It almost comes back to a version of the guardrail conversation we had before. Just as I would offer as counsel that there are many nights of the week where this subject might be off limits at dinner and you talk about other things, I think you have to be careful to tune out the noise at key moments. You certainly don't want to put your hands over your ears and eyes and not pay attention to these trends. You want to know, to Thyra's point, if a college has shifted its policy on financial aid or testing or other things, or if there's been a big discussion about a particular issue, but ultimately that pause and that breadth is really, really important. So just to know that it may seem sometimes from reading the headlines that this process of applying to college is on fire, and it's actually, I would argue it remains much more constant and reliable and navigable than the headlines might suggest.
Thyra Briggs:
I would just add, question your sources. As we were going through the pandemic, as you're going to buy a car, as you're going through anything, there are going to be certain trusted sources that you have, and not everyone is coming at it from the same perspective. So trust your sources, find people that you trust and sources that you trust and know that not everything that's coming out is going to be your experience, and it's going to work out in the end.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, I agree. My one little comment on my own would be the two episodes I shared. The key word in the first is a "confusing" new world and then the second, the "messy" fight. So if you're reading it as a parent, you're like, "confusing new world, messy fight?" It's like "confusing, messy?" That's not reassuring. My counsel is, college admissions in the most selective part of this space is competitive. It always has been. It's probably more so now than it ever was. "Complicated" doesn't mean "messy," and change doesn't mean everything's upside down and confusing. There are some wild cards that have entered the mix of late, and we'll talk about those in future episodes. Thyra just said a minute ago to find certain trusted sources, and I'm going to do a self-promotional pitch. I hope Episode 1 prompts you to hit Subscribe and bring Admissions Beat as your certain trusted source into your newsfeed every Tuesday morning from today through mid to late May.
I promise you that Season 5, episode by episode, guest by guest, will always be framed with the word "reassurance" as the heart of our storytelling. It's my goal to help you think about what you're hearing, what you're learning and what you're supposed to be doing as the weeks turn into months so that you feel empowered to tell your story, find your home, be a good consumer of this thing called higher ed. So that's my promise. As Season 5 starts, Admissions Beat is a production of Dartmouth College, but it is not about admission to Dartmouth College. It is an act of admission citizenship on our part to all of you. It is produced and edited by Charlotte Albright with editorial direction and casting by Jacques Steinberg and me, production assistance from Sara Morin, Peg Chase and Kevin Ramos-Glew. So Jacques and Thyra, thanks again for lending your wisdom and wit to this episode.
Thyra Briggs:
Thanks, Lee. It's been great to reconnect.
Jacques Steinberg:
Thanks so much.
Lee Coffin:
I'm sure we'll see Jacques in a future episode as the season gets going. For now, I'm Lee Coffin from Dartmouth College. Thanks for listening. See you next week.