GCM Senior College Night · GCM Senior College Night September 6, 2017 includes copyrighted...

GCM Senior College NightSeptember 6, 2017

includes copyrighted material fromThe Three Andrews ©2013 and Think Like a College Admissions Committee ©2015 by Louis L. Hirsh

Louis L. HirshRetired Director of Admissions, University of Delaware

and2015-17 Chair, Admissions Practices Committee, National

Association for College Admission Counseling

Two topics for tonight:

1. How do you prepare yourself for college?

2. How do colleges decide if they want you?

Let’s begin with, “how do you prepare yourself for college?”

George C Marshall High School College Night 2

Prepare yourself for college by answering this question:“Who am I?”

Two compelling reasons for answering the question, “who am I?”

1. The answer will help you write a terrific college essay

2. The answer will help you get the most out of your college experience.

For example, let’s imagine a prospective college student, and let’s imagine that this is her college essay . . . .


A college essay:Page 1 Page 2

George C Marshall High School College Night

The freezing waters of the North Atlantic swirl around my ankles off the rocky New England coast. I have seen these tidepools countless times, but until today I have never thought about them.

I am on a field trip with my marine biology class, and although the wind is blowing hair into my eyes and I am shivering, I am more fascinated than cold. One hundred yards away are the normal things of life: trees, rocks, sand, and a school bus. But just inches from my feet are trillions of plants and creatures –a whole world of them, in fact, that I had never before noticed: seaweed, algae, eelgrass, fungi, tiny invertebrates of odd shapes and colors.

Until now, high school was place where I excelled at things. I know the atomic number of sodium; I can identify iambic pentameter verse; I can solve quadratic equations; I have memorized the Gettysburg Address. I can’t say that any of these things has been especially meaningful to me, however.

But suddenly on this bitterly cold day, I am spellbound. We share our planet with these amazing creatures, and yet their planet is so utterly different from our own. At that moment, they filled me with such wonder that I needed to know more about them. That’s when I knew that I wanted to be a marine biologist. I had found my passion.

4

Notice how convincingly she focuses on a pivotal moment in her life to answer the question, “who am I?”

So what would help you answer the question, “Who am I?”


Do a survey of your life

• What are you proudest of? What were the turning points? What events or discoveries shaped you and your values? Perhaps they were things you witnessed, read about, or heard about.

• Ask yourself this question: why do those particular incidents stand out in my memory? Why do they have such meaning for me?

• Often focusing on a concrete incident in your life and what it taught you is what works best.

• Many of the most effective essays focus on very commonplace teenage experiences: playing in the band, playing sports, volunteering, working at an after-school job, caring for a younger sibling, etc.


This, too, may help you answer the question, “who am I?”

1. Imagine that a time machine has taken you four years into the past and you are now looking at the person you were when you were an 8th grade middle schooler. How are you different from that person?

2. Now imagine that the time machine takes you four years into the future. You are facing yourself as a senior in college. How is that person different from you?

3. Since you’re a high school senior, you’ve lived long enough to have a sense of the world in which you will be an adult. As you think about that world, what makes you angry?


Ask yourself this question, too: why go to college?Here’s what people usually talk about:

• Jobs and job skills

• Job security

• Better salaries

• Social status

• Financial return on investment (what you earn during your working life vs. what you and your parents pay to send you to college)


Why go to college?Here’s are some things that people rarely talk about:

• Learning stuff is entertaining. Richly entertaining.

• But the things we enjoy require knowledge before we can enjoy them. (Think about the recent solar eclipse; sports you like to watch or play; the best book you ever read; the best movie you ever watched; what moves you when you listen to music; what you learn when you’re traveling)

• Self-confidence. It comes from having the experience of tackling challenges and succeeding at them.

• Healthy skepticism. Especially valuable in an internet age. You’re better equipped to judge when someone is trying to manipulate you. College teaches you how to get facts. It gets you used to asking questions.

College can’t guarantee happiness, but it can give you much of what you

need to make you a happier person.


Now that you know who you are, you are ready to start applying to colleges.

How does a college decide they want to admit you?


The majority of colleges in the US are not that difficult to get into!

Fortunately:

1Table source: National Association for College Admission Counseling, 2015 State of College

Admissions, published September 2016

In other words, nearly half the colleges in the US admit at least 70% of their

applicants.


How do colleges make admission decisions?

• Some colleges do look only at their applicants’ GPAs, course selections, and SAT or ACT scores.

• Others will also consider such nuances as: • How much of your coursework has been academic (English, math, lab

science, history, social studies, and world languages)?

• How many advanced (IB, AP, and Honors) courses have you taken?

• What’s the trend in your grades from 9th to 12th?

• The more selective colleges, however, will consider all of the above and will pore over your list of activities and awards, your essay(s), and your letters of recommendation to see what they can infer about your special talents, life experiences, and intellectual curiosity.

With that in mind, let’s look at a college applicant, and let’s suppose that we are on a college’s admissions committee . . . . .


Let’s imagine a student.

His name is George C. Student.

George’s weighted high school GPA through the junior year is:

3.35 (i.e., a B+ student)

Here are George’s test score results:

SAT-v: 620

SAT-m: 580

Intended major:

Psychology

In short, a solid student, but not a “superstar.”


Here is George’s transcript:

Upward trend in grades. Some rigor in his curriculum. Great senior year! To repeat: a “solid” student, but not an academic superstar.


High School Transcript: George C. Student

Course: Lvl: Grade: Units: Course: Lvl: Grade: Units:

9th Grade: 10th Grade:

English 9 B- 1.00 English 10 A 1.00

Algebra 2 B 1.00 Geometry and Trig B 1.00

Integrated Science I C+ 1.00 Integrated Science II B- 1.00

World History B+ 1.00 U.S. History I hon A- 1.00

French 2 B- 1.00 French 3 B+ 1.00

P.E. and Health 9 P 1.00 P.E. and Health 10 P 1.00

Art Appreciation B+ 0.50 Music Appreciation B+ 0.50

Woodworking A- 0.50 Journalism A 0.50

Career Explorations I P 0.25 Career Explorations 2 P 0.25

11th Grade: 12th Grade: 1st sem:

English 11 hon A 1.00 English 12 AP A 1.00

Pre-Calculus B+ 1.00 Statistics B 1.00

Chemistry 1 B 1.00 Chemistry 2 A- 1.00

U.S. History II A 1.00 Psychology AP A 1.00

Sociology hon A 1.00 Economics A 1.00

Drivers Ed P 0.25 Yearbook P 0.50

P.E. and Health 11 P 1.00 P.E. and Health 12 P 1.00

Career Explorations 3 P 0.25 Career Explorations 4 P 0.25

Weighted GPA through the junior year: 3.35

• George is a respectable candidate for the vast majority (90%) of colleges.

• But at a lot of places there will be many candidates with records that are similar to his.

• What would be some tie-breakers that would work in his favor (apart from the usual “hooks” – alumni offspring, recruited athlete, famous parents, etc.)?

For example, would these out-of-class activities help him?


George’s activities/awards:

Work Experience:

Caddy at The Greens Country Club (full-time, summers; part-time fall and spring)

Athletics:

JV Soccer (9-10)

Varsity Soccer (11-12)

Most improved player (11)

Student Government Association:

Class Rep (9)


Hmmm. George’s activities are not impressive, are they?

Would his college essay make a difference?

George’s Common Application essay was a response to this essay prompt:“Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.”

Let’s see what he wrote:


I’m the baby of our family, and one of my earliest childhood memories was moving into our big new house on Long Island with my parents and my older brother and sister. Each of us had our own bedroom suite. I was still young enough to be spellbound by the digital displays on the washer, dryer, double oven, and microwaves and by the colored lights that shined on the waterfall and reflecting pond in the backyard. Our property was over an acre, and landscapers always seemed to be at work doing something outside.

But the Great Recession hit us hard. First my dad lost his job. Then my mom lost hers. I was still too young, however, to realize what all this would mean for us. For a while, there was no reason to. My life was more or less unchanged: I still went to school. I still fought with my brother (who is 2 years older than I am) and I was still in awe of my sister (5 years older, a two-sport athlete, lead in the spring musical at her school, and a straight-A Honors student). Mom took me and my brother to boys’ soccer camp and piano lessons. My friends still came over to my house, and I still spent time at theirs.

Three years ago, not long after I had started my freshman year of high school, our lives changed. My parents told us that we were moving. Within a week we had moved to a two-bedroom apartment. I shared one of the bedrooms with my brother; my sister Gail slept in the living room when she was home from college.

It was Gail who told me and my brother, Nelson, that our parents had declared bankruptcy. I felt frightened. And guilty, too, because my first thoughts were pretty selfish ones: What would I have to give up? Would I still be able to go to college?

(Gail had a big academic scholarship, but what if I couldn’t get a scholarship like hers?) What would my friends think when they saw the apartment? My parents kept reassuring us that everything would eventually be OK, and for a while, we believed them.

One day, as my father was driving me home from a late soccer practice at school, our car’s electrical system went haywire. It had happened before, but this time we stalled in the middle of rush hour traffic. To make matters worse, the car behind us slammed into ours. My memory of it is mostly of sounds and sensations: brakes screeching; a loud thud in back; a tremor running through our car; our heads hitting the headrests; radiator fumes coming from the car behind us; the other driver cursing as he got out of his car; police sirens; people shouting obscenities as they eased their cars past us.

Throughout the ordeal of the past few years my parents had been upbeat, especially in front of me, their youngest. But this time something snapped. As we waited by the side of the road for a tow-truck we couldn’t afford, my father grew strangely silent. I waited for him to say something. Nothing. He scared me. I had never seen him look so downcast and defeated.

I teetered on the edge of a momentous action. Until that moment in my life, my parents had always hugged me, but I had never hugged them first. I put both arms around him and hugged him tight. “I love you, Dad” is what came out of my mouth. As I saw his face brighten and the light come back into his eyes, I sensed, in the words of this Common ApplicationEssay topic, that I was making my “transition from childhood to adulthood.”


Page 1 Page 2

Does that essay change your view of George?

Would it also help to see what his high school says about him?


George’s Letters of Recommendation

From George’s English Teacher:I first met George three years ago in my 9th grade English class. Many 9th graders are bewildered by literature, and George was no exception. But he plodded through the course and managed to scrape by with a B-. His research paper was a choppy and forgettable analysis of which countries were likely to make it to the 2014 World Cup Soccer Finals in Brazil, which he patched together and documented from interviews and press reports that he found on the web.

That’s why I wasn’t terribly excited to see George enrolled in my 11th grade English class last year. But what a difference two years can make! This was an Honors class, no less, and while I can’t say that he was the top student in the class, he certainly held his own. His term paper tracing Huckleberry Finn’s growing moral awareness showed a more sophisticated tolerance for ambiguity and moral uncertainty than I usually see in teenagers. Nor was I prepared to see how good a writer George had become. To my surprise, I found myself looking forward to reading his essays. It was chastening to realize how badly I had underestimated him!

From George’s School Counselor:While most of his classmates spend their summers touring Europe, climbing mountains, or enrolling in special summer programs, George is one of the few seniors at our school who works full time during his summers and 12 hours per week during the fall and spring. He is a caddy at an upscale golf course, and many of the golfers are the parents of his classmates. Although he says little about it, I know that his family has experienced a financial downturn and that most of what he earns will be going towards his college education.

Despite his heavy work schedule and the demands of his schoolwork, George is one of the most cheerful kids I know. He is excited by the prospect of college. He was especially turned on by his AP Psychology class this year and thinks that he may decide to pursue a career in developmental psychology.


An admissions committee discusses George’s application.

1. “George’s essay shows lots of maturity and self-

awareness.”

2. “Sure, but the kid works every weekend during

much of the school year.”

3. “But his English teacher’s letter speaks to his

intellectual growth over the past two years.”

4. “Agreed, he is weaker in math. But his essay and

letters suggest that he has grit and resilience and

enthusiasm. Those things count for a lot, too.”

5. “The trade-off is that most of our students have

never known what it’s like to earn money and

forgo luxuries. Frankly, we need more ‘Georges’ in

our student body.”

1. “Other applicants have taken more rigorous curricula (he dropped foreign language after the sophomore year; just a few honors and AP classes.)”

2. “George’s test scores are slightly below our median.”

3. “He wants to study psychology. Our department is quantitatively focused, and his math SAT and math grades are lower.”

4. “He will probably need lots of financial aid. Can we afford him?”

5. “Well, let’s take a vote . . . .”


Pluses: Minuses:

Some final thoughts:Be aware of your rights as a student or parent

Ethical colleges abide by a code of ethics (NACAC’s Statement of Principles of Good Practice) that has been developed by the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC). For example:

1. Colleges may not require students to submit applications for fall admission prior to October 15

2. College may not require an enrollment deposit before the May 1 National Candidates Reply Date. (Early Decision admission and the recruitment of scholarship athletes, which follow NCAA guidelines, are the only recognized exceptions.).

3. These deadlines are designed so that students can make informed choices and review all of their admission and financial aid offers before they have to make a commitment

NACAC’s code of ethics and its Confidential Complaint Form are available at: www.nacacnet.org/spgp


Some final thoughts: this, too

1. Bring intellectual curiosity to the college you attend.

2. Expect to be surprised. Half the people who graduate from college graduate in a major other than the one they started in. Many get involved in new out-of-class activities.

3. Choose great teachers. (The student grapevine will tell you who they are.) Great teachers can make any subject fascinating.

4. Take a l-o-n-g view: getting a job after graduation that will pay the bills is only part of the answer. It must also be a job that you’ll love doing and a job where what you do matters to you.


Questions?

Presenter:Louis L. Hirsh

Retired Director of Admissions, University of Delaware2015-17 Chair, Admissions Practices Committee, National

Association for College Admission Counseling

[email protected] [email protected]


mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

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