With October on the near horizon, Admissions Beat host Lee Coffin encourages seniors to get in gear and begin thinking about the nuts and bolts of their applications. His guests, Jennifer Simons, Director of Bright Horizons College Coach, and Darryl Tiggle, Director of College Counseling at the Friends School of Baltimore, offer guidance on tackling “the deliverables” of the admissions process—essay drafts, teacher recommendations, testing—with a strategy. Coffin and his guests also discuss the many “on ramps and off ramps” of the search as it progresses, from refining the list of schools to deciphering college rankings to prioritizing college visits to assessing a plan for an early application. As seniors rev their engines and hit the road on the college application process, they can count on the Admissions Beat crew to be there to offer roadside assistance for the length of that journey.
With October on the near horizon, Admissions Beat host Lee Coffin encourages seniors to get in gear and begin thinking about the nuts and bolts of their applications. His guests, Jennifer Simons, Director of Bright Horizons College Coach, and Darryl Tiggle, Director of College Counseling at the Friends School of Baltimore, offer guidance on tackling “the deliverables” of the admissions process—essay drafts, teacher recommendations, testing—with a strategy. Coffin and his guests also discuss the many “on ramps and off ramps” of the search as it progresses, from refining the list of schools to deciphering college rankings to prioritizing college visits to assessing a plan for an early application. As seniors rev their engines and hit the road on the college application process, they can count on the Admissions Beat crew to be there to offer roadside assistance for the length of that journey.
Lee Coffin:
From Hanover, New Hampshire, I'm Lee Coffin, Dartmouth's vice president for admissions and financial aid. This is the Admissions Beat.
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Here we go. We're off and running and September is slipping away, friends. Before we know it it's October. The damn pumpkin lattes are everywhere. But more importantly, for those of you who are thinking about college, this is the moment when we roll up our sleeves and get to work. I've told you since the middle of your junior year, if you've been listening, that the first part of your search is about discovery, about opening your eyes, wandering around, wondering what feels right to you. That discovery process never really stops.
You'll discover until you make an enrollment decision. But discovery starts to take a side seat now to more practical topic: you have to apply. So today we welcome back two friends of the pod for a primer for seniors on what tasks you should be doing today so that when the deadlines come around the corner, you are not scrambling to complete them. So we come back, we'll have a nuts and bolts conversation about what are the to-dos on that college admission to-do list. See you in a sec.
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Friends of the pod return for their third or fourth chat with us. We welcome back Jen Simonds, director of Bright Horizons College Coach, which is a program sponsored by lots of companies that helps families think through their college options with professionals like Jen. My friend Jen is formerly the director of admissions at Northeastern and the director of international admissions at Tufts. She's been a college counselor at Ramaz School in New York City and has been admission officer at a bunch of places. But Jen comes to this conversation with a long dazzling resume. Jen, always fun to see you.
Jennifer Simonds:
So good to see you. Thanks for having us back, Lee.
Lee Coffin:
Of course, and joining Jen is her sidekick, Darryl Tiggle. These two have great chemistry, so I keep pairing them. Darryl is the director of college counseling at the Friend School of Baltimore, Quaker School, where you've now been for quite a while there. How many years Darryl?
Darryl Tiggle:
I'm in my 15th year at Friends.
Lee Coffin:
Wow. I would not have guessed it was that long already. So Darryl and I were colleagues at Tufts way back when where he was the associate director who led our access and diversity work. He's been admission officer at Union College, his alma mater, and he and Jen, former colleagues as well, will bounce around this tennis ball as we think about advice to seniors. But before we get to advice, just so that we have some kinship, we were all in this moment once upon a time. So Jen, you grew up on Long Island. Take us back to that moment. I've seen pictures of you then when you were friends with Debbie Gibson, the pop singer from way back. Tell us about your journey from your public high school in Long Island to college.
Jennifer Simonds:
That's great. So Long Island then and Long Island now I think veers a little bit towards large state universities. My niece and nephew—my nephew just started at University of Florida. My niece went to Penn State. So I think there was a sentiment that if you didn't get into an Ivy League school, if you weren't so high-powered that you could get into an Ivy League school or MIT or Stanford or something like that (Actually, I don't even think people applied to Stanford in those days from the East coast or from certainly not Long Island), you were going to go to a big rah-rah football game place. My first choice initially was Cornell, and then we Northwestern, so still bigger places. Then my stepbrother, Jeff, was a student at MIT and I went to visit him before my senior year, the summer before my senior year.
I went to his fraternity house and there were all these female people there, and I say that for a reason, and they were like, “Oh, you're Jeff's little sister. So cute.” I said, “Oh, these people must be so smart because they go to MIT.” I said, “What's it like to go to MIT?” They said, “Oh no, we don't go to MIT, we go to Wellesley College.” I said, “Oh, Wellesley, isn't that an all-girls school?” They looked at me and this moment changed my life and they said, “Well, we think of ourselves as a women's college and we love it.” It was just this, “I want to be a woman. I want to go to a women's college.” I mean, it actually even sounds like the language sounds a little outdated now, but there was this moment that I had that was like, why didn't I think of this before?
This was like pre-Hillary Clinton and people didn't know Wellesley as much back in those days. So I think it was kind of like, what are you doing? But when I walked on the Wellesley campus, and this is how old I am, but I took, I'm not joking, Donald Trump had a shuttle of the Delta shuttle or a airline shuttle called the Trump shuttle, and you could fly from New York to Boston from LaGuardia for 25 dollars one way. My friend and I, we went and we visited Brandeis and we visited Northeastern and we visited BU and when I got onto Wellesley campus, I was like, this is it. This is the only place I want to go to. But I wasn't even sophisticated enough to apply early decision. It was such a different time. So I loved my Wellesley experience. I had a relatively easy application experience using my typewriter downstairs, but I have absolutely no regrets. I think— not to take away Dartmouth's steam, not that I ever could—but I think more young women and women-identified people should look at women's colleges because they are awesome.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, it sounds like you did that during regular decision.
Jennifer Simonds:
Oh yeah, a hundred percent. Early decision wasn't as popular. I just didn't even know that there was a thing. But yeah, that was regular decision.
Lee Coffin:
Okay, thank you. No, I don't know that I've ever heard you tell that story. You've told so many stories. I knew you were a Wellesley alumna, I didn't know how you got there. Darryl, you grew up in Chicopee, Mass.
Darryl Tiggle:
I did. I did. I have to say, continuing on Jen's story, I'm a woman's college husband, so I do know of the splendor of that experience. But yeah, I kind of grew up in Chicopee, Massachusetts, but I was a military brat, so I grew up moving everywhere throughout the country. I often say my college going experience was super different. I lived on my college campus longer than I'd lived any place prior to college. So in the military we moved around quite a bit. But I moved to Western Massachusetts when I started high school and it is the land of small liberal arts colleges. I think that's where they were invented. I went to school dangerously close to several of them, and I was a pretty good student, pretty good athlete. I say this before some of my presentations, by the end you will know I've become far more sophisticated than this sounds, but I didn't know liberal arts from martial arts.
Had you asked me to give you a ride to Amherst College, which I could have reasonably taken a bike ride and given you a ride to Amherst College, I would've brought you directly to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst because I didn't know Amherst College was a college. So I ended up being super fortunate in the process. Any of you are from the greater Western Mass area, you remember me being the best running back for a hundred miles in any direction. So my college process was totally taken care of.
I was going to Boston College or someplace you've seen on TV. Then I did this thing really bad to myself or someone did it to me. I tore up my knee as a senior in high school as a running back at a humble high school with no college counseling. So I was in a pretty desperate situation, but in so much as I grew up in the land of small liberal arts colleges, I also grew up in the land of, and I love these places, Longmeadow and Northampton and Amherst and the coaches from those high schools said, go see this guy over at little Chicopee Comprehensive High School in Chicopee Massachusetts. I know its college going process has just changed a lot. It just changed a lot.
Lee Coffin:
Wait, so the coaches at your neighboring high schools pointed the return to you at Chicopee High?
Darryl Tiggle:
They knew no one was coming to Chicopee Comprehensive High School. They might've been coming to Chicopee High School, but not the little high school that was the half vocational, half academic high school, where I went. So I was super fortunate to go to Union College and then I worked in admissions at Union for a long time before I linked up with Lee and Jennifer and learned so much about college admissions and the world and how much people need things like the Admissions Beat so we can shine light on how to navigate this process.
Lee Coffin:
We all went through this process sometimes in a more intense environment, or in the more contemporary moment. Sometimes, as Jen said, things were different back then, but we still had to figure it out. I like framing these episodes with that reminder to parents and to seniors that this process, this journey is a common one and we figure it out. What often also comes out, and I think this happened for both of you, there's this surprising degree of serendipity. I mean, Jen happens to go visit her stepbrother at MIT and then a frat party meets women from Wellesley. That changed the arc of her college search and I would even say your life, because you very much are a champion and an ambassador for women's colleges and Darryl, same thing. Had you not injured your knee, you might've gone off to a D1 football program and we would know you as Darryl Tiggle from the New York Giants or something.
So you never know how things would play out, so listeners, you never know. You plan as well as you can, and I think you just have to own the idea that things are going to present themselves, maybe fate with a capital F, but maybe things just bounce into your path and you think, huh, hadn't thought of that and off you go.
So speaking of path, so let's center ourselves mid-September, late September, senior year. A student shows up in your doorway or Jen maybe in your Zoom and says, okay, I had my list, I did some exploring. Now what do I do? For people that don't have one of you in their Zoom or their room, what does kiddo out there need to start doing today to get to a deadline?
Jennifer Simonds:
I'll just go first and say that hopefully students have visited either virtually or preferably in person anywhere from sort of the spring of their junior year or maybe even before that through the summer. I'm a big fan of visiting colleges during the summer and then revisiting during the fall when school is in session. But what I'm saying to my students right now is just let's go back to basics.
If you have not visited in one way or another, all the schools that you are looking at, what I like to make sure for your list is that you have a really not only a balanced list, so colleges that are considered reaches and targets and likely schools, but also that you really like the schools on your list. So it doesn't make sense in my mind for you to apply to a college that you think that, okay, well I can get in here, so it's my safety school, but you wouldn't even go, you wouldn't consider it. There's still enough time in September, in October to find places that will accept you that you also really love or like a lot. So that's my immediate advice to seniors right now.
Lee Coffin:
Focus on the list and reflect on things you hopefully have already discovered or should continue to discover.
Jennifer Simonds:
That's a great way to summarize it. Yeah.
Lee Coffin:
To Darryl. So you've got a queue of seniors lining up outside your doorway and they're jittery because it's time to do it. Where do you start with them?
Darryl Tiggle:
So I think the aforementioned things: exactly, get on campus, try the places on for size, and then I tell my students to start to think about the deliverables. We're pretty sure we're going to have to deliver a common application, a personal statement. Then depending on how many schools we apply to, we need to start figuring out how much work are we going to have to deliver. That's mostly essay writing. So I think having a good sort of landscape of what lays ahead of you in terms of additional writing and other things you have to deliver to colleges. Then you can add and subtract from your list as you'd like to. Then I think it's also important, make sure you have a plan A, a plan B, a plan C, have a strategy, but make sure that they're not fallback plans.
It can be plan blue, red, and green. So you say, look, I've got a place that's my most favorite. I think I might reach for that, right? I've got some places that I'd really like to be able to consider as options. Then I've got a couple schools where I would be just the most desirable applicant they've ever seen and that would feel great to me. So I'm going to grab a couple of those. So have those plans in place because I tell my students, let's not apply somewhere, not get in, feel badly and then apply somewhere else. Let's think about our campaign from the beginning and then march on with it.
Jennifer Simonds:
One of the things though that I tell students, and I think this is important, is even if a school is not a reach, I think sometimes students feel that reach schools are better, they're more desirable because I can't get into them or they're more desirable because they're so selective and that's what people know. But if you also fall in love with a college that is well within your target, that doesn't mean you're not aiming high enough. I think that that's really important. It's about fit, it's about match, and maybe the best match for you is a place that takes some students, they admit students. I always say this about state universities, their job is to admit students. If you're one of those students and that's a good fit for you, that's great. So you're not letting yourself down or letting your family down if the best place for you is not uber- selective, quote-unquote “reach.”
Darryl Tiggle:
I love that. At my school and I made it a law, we've changed the language. They're not allowed to say “safety.” Their most viable school is called their foundation. From our previous scholars of the admissions peak, the foundation is where they're building their process from. If they're a good student and they're good people, their foundation schools are good.
Lee Coffin:
Yep. Love that. Well, and what you both landed on is this step one of 12th grade is, circle back to the places you've been considering and sort them a little bit and put them into the Goldilocks beds and see which ones feel just right. I noticed the other day—I was just opened up Instagram— and there was a post from Darryl, it was the Friends School of Baltimore post, and a bunch of colleges were visiting that week and he said, hey gang, college X, Y, Z are going to be here on Tuesday. Then the other thing, it says, essay drop-in is going to happen. But the first part of that, we'll come back to essay, but the first part of that is the same idea.
Colleges are visiting schools now, not every school, we can't be everywhere in every town, but we visit schools. So if you get an email or a postcard, if that still happens, saying College X is visiting your school at 10 o'clock on Thursday, there's another opportunity. You may not be able to go to Michigan to see the campus in person, but if the rep from the place in Michigan is in your hometown in your school, sometimes at a night program at a school auditorium or maybe a hotel go, because that's an in-person local way of doing the same thing. Darryl, describe high school visits.
Darryl Tiggle:
It's a really simple personal interaction where a college admissions person will schedule a time, they may be coming to your school tomorrow at 10, they'll either be set up in a classroom or in your college counselor's office. Then when they get there, they're essentially going to give—and Jen, and Lee and I used to do this all the time— kind of a mini information session, maybe a five or 10 minute clip of the things you need to know about academic life, social life, the admissions process, financial aid, and then they'll take questions from the group. If you are so fortunate to be the only student attending that high school visit, you'll have a one-on-one conversation with someone from that college admissions office who might serendipitously be the person who will read your application one day from that school.
Lee Coffin:
What if the student doesn't want to skip calculus?
Darryl Tiggle:
No problem, come and do a quick drive-by, “Hey Mr. Tiggle wanted to see Mr. Kaufman. Let him know how interested I'm in Dartmouth, I've got an English test, got to go. Love you.”
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Just for the, I'm going to say the JV part of our audience, the juniors, you're on deck, you're not in the game just yet. These school visits are for you too. This is a really early moment of discovery for the 11th graders. You may just be absorbing information, but you can go too. So the high school class of ‘29, which Jen and Darryl is the college class of 2030. So here we go with all new decade but your juniors, this is the part of the fall that is totally in your wheelhouse.
Jennifer Simonds:
I always say I loved it when students came with questions and not questions you can find out about on the website, not what is your average SAT score or whatever. Although I guess now it's more relevant with test optional/ not test optional, but really you have a human being, as Darryl said, who might and probably will be touching your file when it comes to the admissions office, and what subjective things do you really want to know about the school that you couldn't otherwise find out. Luckily you have someone who's traveled possibly a long way to come and sit with you and answer questions about the culture on campus and even the application process.
Lee Coffin:
So you've got list development and maybe development is not the right word.
Jennifer Simonds:
Refinement.
Lee Coffin:
Refinement is a better word. I like that better. I was just thinking, now you developed your list in the spring, you're refining your list and I would say let go of some places. If you're holding onto some options that just aren't singing to you, decide and be open to the Jen moment. You're visiting one college and you meet another because you unexpectedly bump into a crowd of people who are also visiting and you're like, Wellesley.
So things like that will continue to happen. You have on-ramps and off-ramps on this thing called the college process. Don't be afraid of setting some aside. Don't set it aside because you had one tour guide who maybe gave you a little shade during your visit and you're like, I don't like that school anymore. It's like, hold on. Places that three months later you're not even thinking about anymore probably aren't in your mix. A couple that you're saying, I'm following along, I am looking at social media all the time for colleges X and Y. Pay attention to that. It sounds like Darryl is also advising people with his essay drop-ins to start sketching out story. Let's talk about that a little bit. Common app went live-
Jennifer Simonds:
August 1st.
Lee Coffin:
So the questions are there. Common app questions, Coalition app questions, QuestBridge questions, supplements, any question you're going to get asked is now public.
Jennifer Simonds:
That's a good reason. When you talk about refining the list, a reason that students often let go of colleges is because they look at all the supplements that they have to write and rightfully so. They say this is a lot. I think that both of you will agree that even though this is a really important transformational process, you still should have a lot to do in school. This should be the busiest year of your high school experience. Extracurriculars aren't going to stop. Academics aren't going to stop. This is just layered onto that. So if refining your list means eliminating a school that you're not that interested in that also has extensive supplement questions, that's okay. You don't have to feel bad. On the other hand, it does, I mean my students get spreadsheets and you just, you look, okay, here are all the questions I have to answer.
There's going to be some duplication of questions. Not that you would ever reuse an answer or cut and paste from one college to another, but I think that after you get beyond the why are you interested in our college question? That's very specific. A lot of supplemental questions have similar themes. Colleges want to know about things that, they all want to know because they're important to you. So how can I be smart about this supplemental essay process and not recycle, but tweak and really nurture supplemental questions so that you don't have to write 50 different short responses.
Lee Coffin:
But even if you did have to write 50 different ones, I think you just touched something really important. Each person has the same building blocks of story, but you don't have 50 different versions of your story.
Jennifer Simonds:
Good point.
Lee Coffin:
So the questions may invite a different approach, but I think one of the things you can be doing now in this storytelling arc is, “Who am I hoping to introduce? Which question lets me talk about my interest in the presidential election? Which question helps me bring into this? I was a running back, blew out my knee.” These are things I hope someone knows and that's going to be true in every application you file.
Darryl Tiggle:
You led me into the way I kind of described that the difference between the Common app essay and the supplements. You're saying, what do I want? What do I want these people to know about me? So the common application, personal statement, that's kind of a why me? Why would you choose me? I tell my students, think about it this way. You're writing your common application personal statement for your college application, but think about something important you would want your eventual spouse to know about you. They would want to know something about your background or something you've overcome or something that makes you thankful or something about your belief system. Someone who would be spending a lot of time with you in the future. Tell them what they need to know about your background. So you're writing an essay about a statement about why me, and then the college supplemental essays are kind of why them. So they're going to be a sort of a different prompt. But the common application essay gives you the opportunity to tell you exactly what Lee's asking, what do they need to know about me?
Jennifer Simonds:
I love that. I think you should also along the same lines look at the questions themselves. The Common app or the Coalition app questions are very broad. They're intentionally broad. They're not creative questions. Whereas the supplement questions at many schools are sort of creative questions within themselves that are meant to generate, not creative, you don't have to be creative responses, but they're meant to generate more specificity. They're meant to take you on a deeper dive.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, I've come to think of the common app or the Coalition app as the universal story. Every college is going to see the exact same thing because we share that platform. Then the supplement when there is one, is the local part of it. You've got this single place wants to have answers from these couple of questions to get to know you in a way that's specific to them. So universal, local, and each local element reflects the personality of that local place. They were not all the same. So anyway, refining the list, that's to-do number one. Starting to sketch out some storytelling, that's to-do number two. Just for listeners, that's next week's episode, so come back and hear us talk about storytelling for a whole episode. What are the other deliverables that need to be in production right now?
Darryl Tiggle:
Essays, maybe a resume, your activities list if you're an artist or performing other ways, a portfolio or an audition, maybe an interview on campus or an alumni interview. What else we got?
Jennifer Simonds:
Well, Darryl, I'm so glad you said interview because those tend to sneak up on people because most colleges don't have them, but the ones that do, let's do that. Then the unique things about each school— like Dartmouth, I think, is still doing its peer recommendation, which I love. What are the nuances that each school wants? So make sure, I know this sounds crazy, read what the Common app or the Coalition or the school websites telling you that you need that might be different from the norm.
But I think you summed it up. I think it's really, when I talk to kids about the actual application, most of what they fill out for the Common or the Coalition app is what I call administrative stuff. You're going to sit with your parents. I'm shocked at how many kids don't know their social security numbers. I always say, okay, you're going to have to memorize this. This is something you need for the rest of your life. You might need to sit down with your parents and say, I don't know when you graduated from college, but the actual application itself is what's your name and address? It's not complicated.
Lee Coffin:
So teacher recommendations are the other deliverable. Now that's not something you do, but you do have to choose one or two teachers usually from 11th grade who can write on your behalf. My guess is the teachers don't want that to show up on their desk the week before the deadline.
Darryl Tiggle:
Okay, so there's a few ways of thinking about it. I think the belt and suspenders, right? You want someone from math and science and from the humanities who taught you in 11th grade. But if you know you are an engineer or if you know you are a dancer or if you know you are a particular type of student, you can be maybe a little more independent in your choices. But what you want to choose is a teacher that knows you well, who can tell a story about you and not just a story about you but your academic medal. So it may not be the course that you succeeded best in terms of grade. It might be the class you worked hardest in, the grade where you showed the most progress. I say the perfect combination is someone that taught you as a freshman or a sophomore who taught you again later in your academic career because they can speak well of your growth and then you want to make sure that you're visible to them.
However your school asks you to engage the teacher, make sure to do that in a really formal way and in an expeditious way. Then provide them with information that will help them tell the story you would like them to write about you. So you might share some of your interests. You might share a resume. You might have a five-minute conversation saying these are some of my aspirations and some of my accomplishments. You want someone who's going to know you well because your teachers, and I'm one of these recommendation writers as well. We want to do them super well, so help them do that.
Jennifer Simonds:
It's funny Darryl, because I give not the opposite advice, but I'm sorry. So no, this is helpful for me to hear too. But I say the teacher recommendations are to put you in the context of a classroom setting. So that's important. Yes. I mean I agree with you that they should also know if you're on the football team or you're in a club, but really the job of that teacher is to put you in the context of the rest of that individual classroom. So I think what's really helpful is for you, if you ask them in person, then follow up with an email or if you ask them over an email, then give them information about what you liked about the class, what you learned about the class, what your accomplishments in that class were.
First of all, I think that teachers don't get enough positive feedback and so you're asking them for a recommendation, so you're going to give them positive feedback. But really, what were the highlights of the classroom experience for you and then for your counselor, when you go to Mr. Tiggle, and I'm sure that you have forms for students to fill out maybe for parents to fill out, that's where they get the big contextual information about what is the entire story of you. So if we're going to use the story metaphor, we have the story of you in the classroom walking into eighth period, Mr. Goldman’s social studies, and then we have the, okay, who am I in my grade, in my graduating class? That's the counselor recommendation.
Lee Coffin:
So Jen just framed, the teacher is giving proof to someone's experience in a classroom. So the other proof point from that classroom is called a grade, which most schools still provide. Not all, but many still put a letter or a number on a transcript that says, Mr. Goldman gave me a B plus. This pod is focused on the selective part of the college admissions spectrum. Many applicants have lots of A's. So for somebody who's got an A or maybe the B plus or a B, how does the teacher rec illuminate the transcript or does it?
Darryl Tiggle:
Well, I think it can come from both sides. So it's about providing context. They might talk about again, the strength of that class and how that student shined within that group. But yeah, there's a context I think the teachers have to provide to help the students grade have substance.
Lee Coffin:
As someone who represents a small university—our class size is 15 on average—if you're working in that kind of space, one of my tasks is to animate the classroom. So how do I see you as an applicant in my small classroom next year? What voice do you bring to whatever discussion takes place? Do you bring a new perspective to the topic at hand? What work might you have done in that class that will showcase that to an admission officer? So rec, I would say that teacher rec is the unsung hero of the application. My sister is a English teacher in a public high school, and I say to her every year when she's wondering, do these really count? I say they count, they count a lot. Teachers out there, thank you. They're valuable. They illuminate achievement in really personal ways. So don't overlook them, kiddos, and think thoughtfully about who's going to be the one that puts your story in the right context.
So speaking of context, let's talk a little bit about testing. So we're mid-fall. There's still a couple more test dates in the future. Broadly, most of higher ed remains test optional for this cycle. Some very selective places, Dartmouth included, have reinstated a requirement around testing. So the question here is, if it's required, there's no question you have to send them in, but if they're optional, you still have that choice. What does this score mean? Should I include it or not? Does the number it produced make sense to include or not? So what's your guidance to include or not to include? That is the question.
Jennifer Simonds:
Well, I think that you can't look at testing, and I know that Dartmouth doesn't, and that's one of the reasons that it reintroduced it or re-required it, without the context of the transcript first and foremost. Then also the student’s sort of story, their life, and specifically the transcript. If your testing is relatively low compared to let's say the median scores of the college to which you're applying, but your transcript needs a little help, or if it's high compared to your transcript or the other way around…you know what I mean? I think you need to look at your scores first and foremost before you even look at the median or average scores for the school that you're applying to the college. I think you need to evaluate your transcript and your circumstances and the way the colleges hopefully are going to do it, put your scores in the context and that will be a good initial indicator of whether you might want to send them or not.
Lee Coffin:
I think don't get distracted by the college's medians. I would say start in your high school.
Jennifer Simonds:
Yeah. Yeah, that's good one.
Lee Coffin:
You wander into your teacher's office and say, I have an 1190. What's the average in this class? If nobody in your senior class is getting a score in that range, that score is really strong. A 1600 always looks kind of nice, but on the more human part of the distribution, in the elevens and 12 hundreds in a competitive space, what's happening at the high school?
Jennifer Simonds:
I think you can also lose perspective if you go to a high school that's really high pressure, that's really high testing and your scores are even 20 points lower for the SAT or one point lower for the SAT, well, oh, it's not good enough.
Darryl Tiggle:
Let me chime in on that. So I'm at a high testing, but not a terribly high pressure place on that front. So when I'm giving advice about the middle or in a test optional space to submit or not to submit, I've been kind of using the easy ruler of saying, look, if you're in the middle 50%, then send it. If you're below, don't do so. But at some schools, the middle 50% is so high that even if you're near it, that outstanding hundred score that you got, you kind of might want the world to see.
Lee Coffin:
You don't need to take it a third time and a fourth time just to go up 10 points because it's one factor, it's not THE factor. So testing to sign up for the October, November, do it again, and for those of you kiddos in some of the places where the test centers are having enrollment problems, you can submit the scores after you apply. We will not say, oh no, you can't submit that because the deadline says, we'll take them. Be reassured that you've got some flexibility.
Two other big topics I just want to touch. So to parents who are listening, I have very good friends who have a high school senior who doesn't tell them anything about his college search and they call it the silent treatment. You both smiled as I said that. To the parent of a senior who's not sharing any info, advise them about how to proceed Darryl?
Darryl Tiggle:
I don't know if this is bad as advice, but this is something I've learned about the landscape. For some reason until it's very close to done, your children just will not share their Common App personal statement with you under any circumstance. I do not know the science behind it. They share with me all day, every day. But there's something about the Common App personal statement that they feel more personal about.
They might ask you to help them with the supplements, but I think what you want to do is continue to encourage them to move forward with the process. Keep them positive, keep them fed, get them to campuses, right? If your school is lucky enough to have a college counselor reach out to them and say, hey, any chance you can just, let me know where my child is? Do I need to give them a little more nudge at home? But parents, for the most part, your students who are applying to college, they want to go not because they want to leave you. So they're doing it in an earnest and if they're not doing it, I think it shows. So if it looks like they're fumbling some balls, go in and rescue them.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, I mean Jen, you're very verbal. So how would you contain yourself if Mirabelle, the senior--so Mirabelle's her daughter— if Mirabelle weren't telling you what to do? You want to be helpful, but you have to respect the duct tape that your child has put over her mouth in this example.
Jennifer Simonds:
Yeah, I think that the duct tape is what my daughter would be putting over my mouth in this example. I don't think that she would be wrong, because parents often ruin essays. I read, and I'm sure Mr. Tiggle is like this too, you read an essay that's so good and it has such an authentic voice and then you read another draft and all of a sudden it sounds like business-speak or it just doesn't sound like a teenager wrote it. So I think that that instinct is wise. I like to get a little email, a casual email from parents, and I'm sure Darryl does too. Again, this is all predicated on whether your school has a counselor, but I just want to check in because Mirabelle hasn't said anything to me, but are they on target? I do love the fact that most high schools now you have to tell the school counselor or the guidance office, here's where I'm applying. Relatively early, in October usually, especially for some of those early deadlines, which I know we're going to be talking about. So I think that tapping in with them— I always hold my credit card even over Mirabelle's 12-year-old head and say, look, I'm going to be paying for these applications. So you've just got to at least tell me what do you still need to do? What do you have to do? You can play that card if you need to. But I am always, I mean, we have the privilege of speaking to hundreds of families a week. I'm always shocked by how the parents think most of the time that their students don't know as much as the students do. So just have a little faith.
Lee Coffin:
Yes. So parents, two people saying the same thing: your kids are doing more than you understand them to be doing, don't worry about it.
So US News & World Report just published its annual college rankings, top universities, top colleges always makes a headline at this point in the fall. But if you're a parent doing this for the first time, there's a temptation I think to pick up that magazine and to check out the different rankings. Should they?
Darryl Tiggle:
We talk about it a lot. We talk about rankings a lot because when we're trying to help our students and families ascertain goodness, what makes a school good, we're trying to help them separate it from ranking. So we ask our families, if rank is super guiding you, look to see what rank is asking about and see if those are the qualifications that also are how you ascertain goodness. Then the rankings are important and they are out there, and I say this with sort of a grain of salt. I do because I'm an excellent driver. Look at Car and Driver, Road and Track every year. What is the top sedan and sports car? I can drive them, I may or may not be able to get them, but I know that that's just one of many or two of many rankings that give me information that help me ascertain goodness.
Lee Coffin:
I love that, “ascertain goodness.”
Jennifer Simonds:
So a Porsche might be the best quote-unquote “car,” but if you have a family of five, you're not going to buy even a Porsche SUV potentially because it's not going to give you what you want. It doesn't. The rankings don't really tell me, the same way like buying a car. You are buying a car that is very specific to your needs, your budget. Having worked for places like Connecticut College where I thought, this is such a special, wonderful place, it should be ranked higher. They're not going away. But at the same time, I think they absolutely have to be taken with a grain of salt because there are schools that are better and better for you than their rankings would suggest. I don't want a student to feel bad about a place because they didn't go to a school in the top 10 or the top 30 or whatever.
Lee Coffin:
So I think something you just said, Jen, brings me to my final question. So I think the rankings are conceptually analytical, but what you're also both talking about refining lists is finding fit, finding affinity, finding your people. That's more of a vibe. So let's say you're a late September senior and the vibe is starting to gel. One or two places are of sprinting ahead of the rest of the list. When is it appropriate for a student to start thinking about early? We can talk about a binding early or early action, but just early in general versus “no one has really grabbed me just yet.” I say to them, that's called regular decision like Jen did. You have more time to think about options in the spring, but for now fall, how does someone know early should be part of the conversation versus I've heard families over the years say, we're applying early summer, we just don't know where. So trying to force the early into this process without it being organic.
Darryl Tiggle:
So I think it's sort of knowing thyself, right? So I say in terms of the early action journey, if that is otherwise your lifestyle, if you're the student who's a week ahead of your work, if you're the student who's already chopped away at your common app essay and you're looking at supplements already and you're expeditious about your work, some of those early action deadlines will work well for your schedule because you're going to have the work done in a timely way that enables you to produce quality applications. If you are just hearing the chatter that everyone else is going early and you haven't written anything, I do not want you to speed out and start doing early action applications. If you're someone who's more like me, who takes a slower, takes a slower road. So I think if you're a student who has a really good understanding of places that they're already matched and you are able to produce that work at a slightly quicker pace, then I think thinking about the early game is a good match.
Lee Coffin:
Jen?
Jennifer Simonds:
I do lean towards if a student is ready, like Darryl said, I think there's no reason if a college has early action to not apply early action because it's nice to have an acceptance, hopefully. It's nice to have a decision early and not wait necessarily. If you can have one decision that makes you feel good about yourself, and usually some of the colleges, for example, that have rolling admission are less selective. So it feels so good to get into University of Arizona or whatever. But I think that early decision is a love story.
Lee Coffin:
For listeners. So for new friends in this college space, early decision is a binding round. It's usually a November 1st or 15th deadline. You get a decision early to mid-December, it's a contract, you sign a pledge. If admitted, I will enroll.
Jennifer Simonds:
I think that one thing I want to convey to families is that early decision is not a way into a college or university that would otherwise be a reach. The pressure to apply early because you think it will give you a strategic advantage at a very, very selective school. That's not a reason to apply early. It's not true.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Well, and for parents remembering the nineties when “early” first came into the headlines as in “it's easier to get in if you apply early,” I think that was truer then than it is today. I think when there was more of an economic question mark in a lot of campuses, the early rounds were a way of building the foundation of the class, and the admit rates reflected a preference towards that cohort. That's long gone.
For students and parents, remember this, pay attention to the things you can control. What you can control is the answer to this question: if it's a binding early decision, has one place emerged as the place? If the answer to that question is yes, proceed, the odds are not strong that the reach is going to happen because it's early. In the more selective pools, that's not going to happen. What happens is a no. I've heard Jen say, “I can tell you right now what's going to happen and you don't listen.” Then disappointment arrives in December and that's a later episode as well. But you want to be thinking today about the key question I just posed, has a place emerged? When the answer's yes, keep that conversation going. If the answer's no, don't get caught in the maw of everybody else around me is doing something, I must do it too. Any last advice to our seniors?
Jennifer Simonds:
Well, just to bring it full circle to talk about when folks come to visit, when colleges come to visit friends, school, ask them if early decision is going to put them in the class. Maybe some places will say yes; I guarantee the most selective places won't. But that's a really good question to ask a human being when you're face to face with them in the school's counseling office.
Lee Coffin:
To summarize this conversation, everybody, I think what you're hearing at this early fall moment is the importance of planning. Whether you do that on an iPad or a notebook or whatever mechanism works for you, you need to start organizing yourself. Don't wait. The students who procrastinate don't have a happy finale. It gets stressful. One way of avoiding stress is do your homework before it's due and refining the list and being clear about it. Starting to sketch out your story, organizing the deliverables and giving your partners, the guidance counselor, the teacher, a peer, if there's a recommendation there, a chance to do their work for you with you, important, tackle it piece by piece. This doesn't all have to happen at the same time. Here's the other little tip from behind the curtain, from The Wizard of Oz: you can start sending stuff in now.
You can send teacher X before the Common App. Once we start receiving material, it creates a file and then the file starts to populate with the different parts of your work. So when something's ready, send it in. By the deadline, we need your part of the application. Other things keep coming. So you’ve got time. I think my other advice to the seniors is, your senior year of high school is this really wonderful year. You're only going to be 17 once. This is a big thing that runs concurrently with that senior year. But don't lose the joy of being a senior in high school because you're worried about what comes next.
Jennifer Simonds:
I love that.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. So Jen, Darryl, thanks as always for being friends of the pod and swinging into my space with your wisdom and charm.
Darryl Tiggle:
Thank you.
Jennifer Simonds:
Thank you.
Lee Coffin:
You're welcome. Friends, we'll be back next week. We'll have a conversation about essays and storytelling and we'll give you some tips on how to put your fingers on the keyboard and start writing your story. That's next week. Till then, I'm Lee Coffin from Dartmouth College. Thanks for listening.