Digital Etiquette: Professionalism, College Admissions, and the Internet

There's a good blog post today on The Choice Blog at the New York Times website here. It's all about the etiquette of adding college admissions representatives as your friends on Facebook. The short answer is, DON'T DO IT, but this question bears a longer answer--namely, what is the best way to present yourself in the context of college admissions?


As many of you know, I'm an avid Facebook user. It's a great way to keep in touch with friends from high school and college and past jobs, and it's a nice way to be able to wish my friends a happy birthday or keep up with the latest milestones in their lives. What I like best, though, is how highly customizable Facebook's privacy features are. You can control who can search for you, how people interact with you online, and even the way that different friends can see your profile.

These highly customizable privacy settings help me control the information that I share with my Facebook friends, and they help protect my privacy from people who I don't want to interact with online, for whatever reason. If you were to search me right now on Facebook, you won't find me; I have my privacy settings set to make me unsearchable by people who are not currently my Facebook friends. This makes me feel protected from unsavory strangers, and it's also a nice policy to have professionally. No offense, but I won't be your Facebook friend while you're in high school: I'm your college counselor and I like all of you, but I'm not comfortable mixing my personal Facebook page with my professional life.

This last point is the one that most admissions officers are speaking to when they institute a "no friending" policy. Keep in mind that your college application process is like applying for a job: you're trying to make a good impression and represent yourself well so that you can move on to the next step in your academic life. If you visit a college campus and have a great conversation with an admissions representative or professor, the right choice is to send a thoughtful thank-you note via snail mail or email. Such communication preserves the tone that you're trying to project when you apply to college: you want to look thoughtful, diligent, and thorough. At best, this nice note might end up in your admission file to attest to the high quality of your character and your sincere interest in attending the school.

It's also okay to use email as a way to ask a question of an admissions representative, as long as you keep the email as professional as a written letter. For example, your email shouldn't look like this:

Subject: [no subject]
Hey,
I really liked visiting your school last weekend but i have another question can u let me know what kind of SAT scores i need to get in because i really want to go to your school
Sarah

I'm exaggerating a bit, of course, but make sure you have a coherent subject line, a proper salutation (like "Dear" or "Hi" rather than "Hey"), complete sentences, correct orthography, and a pleasant sign-off (like "Sincerely", "Regards", "Gratefully", "Thanks", or--my personal favorite--"Cheers"). So the preceding email should look more like this:

Subject: Visit to Campus on 9/18/09
Dear Mr. Smith,
It was a pleasure meeting you on your campus last week! I learned a lot and had a great time. I did have one more question when I got home that I was hoping you could answer. What kind of SAT scores do successful applicants to your school usually have? Thank you for your help and for a great visit!
Sincerely,
Sarah

Again, this kind of communication is professional, and it's always the right way to correspond with and communicate with admissions reps. If you're not comfortable writing such emails, never fear--just come to my office and I'll help you draft one of these. If you need to call an admissions office for any reason, come on by, too: I'm glad to help you make a script for your phone call.

The right choice isn't to friend an admissions representative on Facebook because, frankly, they're not your new friend: they're a person you met in a professional environment. Friending them on Facebook will not help your admission decision; at worst, it might negatively impact your admission decision, since you might come off as less than savvy, unserious, and a little childish. Plus, if the admission officer views your profile and there's anything less than sterling on it, that too could damage the impression you're trying to project.

This isn't to say that you shouldn't friend a student you meet on an overnight visit or students you meet when visiting a college. Rather, these students could be a great asset to you as you try to get a sense of the place you plan to attend. However, tread lightly here, too: you don't want to seem like the over-eager high school student who just friends everyone she's ever met.

In general, then, I think it's a really good policy to keep your Facebook life and your college application life as separate as possible. It's smart from a privacy perspective, and it's a safer way to protect the professional, put-together image you're trying to convey as an applicant.Continue Reading...

Favorite Things: Test Preparation

As you know, Saint Thomas has an on-campus SAT review course called the Saint Thomas Review. Many students like this course a lot; others haven't. If the timing of the Saint Thomas Review works for you, and you'd like to prepare for the SAT (rather than the ACT), go for it. However, if you'd like to take a different course, I also highly recommend the Princeton Review (http://www.princetonreview.com) and TestMasters (http://www.testmasters.com). These organizations offer SAT review courses throughout the year at a variety of times during the day.

Kaplan is another test prep organization out there, but I have been unimpressed with their customer service for our students: we have had two students be promised courses at a site near their homes only to find out that the courses have been reschedule at a site more then 20 miles away. They offer a high-quality course like that of Princeton Review, but I can't recommend the local providers after they've wasted other STES families' time.

In general, I suggest that students take a review course or generally start preparing for the SAT and ACT in the summer before the junior year, especially in July or August. They'll then take the PSAT in October of the junior year, then plan to take the ACT and/or SAT starting that fall or spring.

Also, please note that not every student needs a review course; some students will simply benefit from getting an SAT or ACTreview book and reading its introduction and doing practice questions. I prefer the prep books by Barron's and Princeton Review. Also, Princeton Review occasionally offers free one-night test prep talks and free practice SATs. I highly recommend taking part in those, if only because every little bit of information and experience can be helpful.Continue Reading...

Favorite Things: Scholarships

One past STES student's family insisted upon hiring a private consultant to search for scholarships. While this sounds like a good idea, the way this student used that resource actually may have hindered the search for scholarships. This student chose to ignore all other scholarship opportunities and notices save those the consultant provided, so the student ended up missing out on the scholarships I emailed about in my weekly emails. For example, there are a few scholarships out there that are by nomination only or allow only one applicant per school, so I will email all senior students and families and solicit nominations on a first-come, first-served basis. It was striking that every time that student came to me to request a transcript for a scholarship the consultant had suggested, the scholarship in hand was one that I had emailed about two weeks before, and for which I had already nominated another student. It turned out that the consultant and I were on all the same mailing lists--I just happened to get the information out sooner than she did.

As many of you know, I send out a weekly counseling newsletter to all seniors and their parents. This newsletter contains notes on upcoming college visits, upcoming workshops on campus, looming deadlines, and, most notably, information on new scholarships. I get a lot of scholarship fliers in the mail, and I always digitize them and email them to families in the weekly counseling newsletter. I also keep the hard copies in my office for students to peruse, if they are so inclined. I've found that this is a helpful way to get out information, and I'm always open to new suggestions if there's a better way to disseminate such information.

In general, I think it's a little sketchy to pay to receive a scholarship--the point is that you should be the one receiving money, right? The three best scholarship search sites that I know of are reputable and free: they are scholarships.com, fastweb.com, and zinch.com. Simply visit these sites, fill out a profile about yourself, and you'll get a list of scholarships for which you are eligible. Apply to those that interest you and can be done in reasonably short order; avoid the ones that will take an eon to fill out.Continue Reading...

Independent College Counselors: A Discussion

There was an interesting article in last week's New York Times (find it here, and find the blog post plus comments here) that has piqued a lot of interest online. It's about the independent college counseling industry and its impact on the college admissions process. The article seems to skew a little toward the extreme: it describes independent counselors who charge upwards of $20,000 and "guarantee" a student admission to his or her first-choice college. If this sounds too good to be true, you're right, and if it sounds over the top, you're right again.

In general, this high price--and the high demand for the service that price buys--speaks to the fact that college admissions is an extremely challenging and stressful process. However, it doesn't have to be that way. This process really can be about a fit-centered search that's all about you and your particular academic needs and career goals. It doesn't have to be a hyper-competitive, panic-inducing process.

Perhaps my favorite reply to that article came in the "Letters" section on NYTimes.com the following week. It came from a current undergraduate at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Re “Before College, Costly Advice Just on Getting In” (front page, July 19):

Reading this article made me extremely angry. I cannot believe that people have no shame in charging so much for college counseling. It’s too bad that we live in a society whose culture dictates such crazed behavior to get kids into certain schools.

The only necessary ingredients to get into a good school are passion, dedication and good old hard work. There is nothing magical about these counselors other than the spell they cast on bank accounts.

Students should find something, or several things, that they love and care about and work hard to become the best they can be. Kids have gotten into top colleges writing about buying milk, Barbies and, for me, my perseverance with piano. Study hard, maintain a healthy lifestyle and stay positive. That’s it.

S. Susan Zhu

Paris, July 19, 2009

The writer is a student at Harvard.

I don't want to diminish how difficult applying to college is; however, I do want to offer some advice about how to be a savvy consumer as you and your family journey toward college. And I want to do that in a way that doesn't break the bank.

As you know, I'm a big fan of free services and getting the most out of the things you're already paying for, so here's Mrs Kievlan's Guide to Savvy College Admissions Consumerism. Over the next few days, I'll be offering some posts on my "favorite things" out there in college admission advising and preparation. Please feel free to comment and discuss these options and add your own contributions. I'm glad to moderate and answer questions.

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"Test Optional": A Good Thing, or a Bad Thing?

As you've heard me say before, the SAT and ACT are important, but they are never the only factor in a student's admission to college. Back in May, I did a little social experiment to prove this point. I posted a flier I'd gotten from the Princeton Review outside my door. It listed a middle 50% of SAT scores for admitted students from the past year at about 150 colleges around the country, most of them in the northeast. As students from the class of 2010 gathered around the door, it was great to hear their conversation evolve:

"Are you kidding--the average scores at MIT are all above 700?!"

"These scores are so high! We're never going to get into any of these schools!"

"These must be the best schools in the country if they're on this list!"

[Pause.]

"Wait...where's UT? And where's A&M? They're not on the list?"

"Why aren't those schools on here? Why is some crummy place in Pennsylvania with an average scores of 540 on this list?"

"I know TCU is better than like half of the schools on here. It should totallly be on this list!"

"If TCU isn't on here, what other schools are missing? This list doesn't tell us anything."

"Wait, this is just some random list! It doesn't mean anything at all."

As I listened from my desk, I was proud to hear our students sort out two important points. First, SAT scores aren't the only important aspect of a college application. Second, random college lists generated by test-prep organizations based in the northeast are just that: random lists.

In any case, there are schools out there that are trying to move away from the SAT and ACT by becoming "test optional." That is, these schools do not require applicants to submit their SAT and ACT scores when applying. The argument goes that these tests aren't all that they're cracked up to be in terms of indicating college success, and so some colleges don't require them in the name of equity and fairness. While more and more schools join this movement each year, there are a lot of politics involved in that decision. You can read more about it here in the New York Times.

In general, the point is this: not requiring the SAT or ACT does not necessarily mean a college is being all warm and fuzzy toward its applicants. In the most cynical scenario, it raises the profile of a school based on incomplete and misleading information. For example, let's say that Example University has an average SAT math score of 550, and they then decide to go test-optional. The applicants who do well on the SAT and ACT are still going to submit their scores: they're proud of them, and they want to get credit for how well they did on these tests. The applicants who didn't do so well aren't going to submit their scores. This means that the only test scores Example U got are pretty high SAT scores--and in the worst cases, these are the only scores they'll report to ranking organizations like US News and World Report.

This means that a school that goes from test-required to test-optional might have its average SAT Math score shoot up from a 550 to a 650 in a single year, thus making it look like the school got a lot more selective or a lot more impressive. Once the SAT scores go up, their US News and World Report ranking goes up, which gets the school more visibility and which makes more people apply to the now-inexplicably-prestigious Example U. Then, Example U gets more applications, and since they still have only 2500 freshman spots they reject more students, making themselves look even more selective. Becoming more selective makes their ranking in the US News and World Report go up, thus whipping up additional frenzy and making things get more and more out of control.

This is the most cynical version of what can happen; schools like Muhlenberg College, Providence College, and Wake Forest University are test-optional but go to the trouble to report every freshman's SAT score. In any case, please use this information as one more indicator that there is no magic bullet in college admissions. There's a lot of information out there, and no one piece can paint the whole picture of what a college is all about.

Continue Reading...

On the Ivy League

When it comes to describing different colleges, there are a lot of less-than-helpful distinctions and categories out there that don't tell the whole story. For me, the best example of this is the Ivy League distinction. What is it, exactly, that makes an education from one of these eight schools (Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale) so much better or greater or more special than an education anywhere else? I don't want to make the case that these schools are not exceptional places to get an education; I'm a proud graduate of one of them, and I know they're extraordinary educational communities.

My point is that no one label or ranking gives you the whole story about what your life as a student would be like at any college. Instead, it's important to look closely at the schools you research to get a strong sense of what's really out there. For example, the undergraduate experience at Harvard is very different from the experience at Brown--the former school has a required core curriculum while the other does not, for example. Cornell is very large and has exceptional programs in engineering and architecture; Dartmouth has an emerging program in cognitive and linguistic sciences that's gaining a strong international reputation. These schools are all outstanding, but there's much more to the story than that.

One thing that distinguishes the Ivies from one another is their size. You might be surprised to know just how much they differ in this point. Sometimes, a university's size can be a much bigger factor in your college decision: it affects how "homey" or intimate the campus feels; it affects the amount of personal attention you'll receive from professors and support staff. It affects just how at home you'll feel after you leave the small school where you finished high school.

School	# Undergraduates	# Total Students
Brown University	5,874	8,020
Columbia University	6,923	24,820
Cornell University	13,510	19,800
Dartmouth College	4,147	5,848
Harvard University	6,714	19,140
Princeton University	4,918	7,334
University of Pennsylvania	10,153	19,816
Yale University	5,316	11,398

If you've got your sights set on an Ivy, admissions officers I've talked to at Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Brown have all insisted that it's important to make a very specific case for why you want to attend their school, not just any prestigious school. So it's vital that you dig deeper at the places you already know to be exceptional so you can find out which exceptional schools would really fit you best. And you might dig even deeper to find that there are other exceptional places out there--maybe a little newer, maybe a little less in the news--that would fit you well too. No group of schools has a monopoly on excellence.

I challenge you to look beyond this one label to more nuanced information on colleges. There are other great lists out there that might be worth perusing too; they're helpful ways to reform the question of what makes an exceptional undergraduate education in the United States.

Colleges That Change Lives: A great book with an accompanying website: http://www.ctcl.org
The "Hidden Ivies": An earlier book that listed some of the "other" best universities and colleges in the US. Note how many are currently attended by STES grads: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_IviesContinue Reading...

Interesting Article: College Cost Cuts

As I was traveling over the last two weeks, one question I asked of each admissions rep and student I met was the following: How has student life changed on campus as a result of the economic downturn? I got a wide variety of answers. Some schools were putting construction projects on hold; others were keeping only one cafeteria open on the weekends rather than two. In almost every case, though, the message was clear: colleges across the country are looking to become leaner and more efficient without sacrificing any part of the student experience. In most cases, changes have come that the students won't notice at all.

There's an article in today's New York Times that speaks to this point. Read it here: For Colleges, Small Cuts Add Up to Big SavingsContinue Reading...