One of the things I love most about what I do with students is that we learn so many things together. Yes, we learn about building a smart college list, and how to put together an excellent resume, and what types of essays make a committee applaud. But we also learn so great life skills: how to address an envelope and where the stamp goes (this one kills me – technology has really changed communication!), how to understand debt in the context of projected future earnings, and how to write a professional email to an admissions officer, dean of an honors college, or professor.
 
There are quite a few reasons why you might find the need to email your admissions officer. These include:

1. Requesting a meeting when you are on campus visiting during a weekday
2. Asking a question about the college’s programs or application process
3. Checking on your application status after you’ve submitted your app
4. Letting them know you saw a bug on your morning walk (Just kidding. Don’t do this. AOs are busy people. Don’t annoy them with a pointless email or a question you could easily find for yourself).

 
There is a good chance you will find yourself needing to email several admissions officers or college faculty in the course of your college planning process, but many students are stumped with how to do this. We’ve put together a little guide to help (life skills are where it’s at!).
 
First, let’s get one thing out of the way: The email has to come from the student, sound like a student wrote it, and be responded to by the student. Mom and Dad, definitely help and guide, but students have to own their process and be in charge of their communication. Colleges expect this and might flag an applicant’s file if there is too much evidence the student is not college-ready or independent enough yet to handle the college environment.
 
Here’s an outline of how to do this:

1. The subject line: Keep it simple and to the point.
   1. Examples

                  i.On Campus Interview Request
                  ii.Meeting request during campus visit
                  iii.Checking on application status – CAID 975674
                  iv.Inquiry: Ability to double major in CS and Electrical Engineering

1. The addressee: Check the title you are using to address your recipient. For women, use Ms. instead of Mrs. or Miss unless you have met their spouse last week for a quick golf game and are certain she is still married. If you are emailing a dean of professor, there is a good chance they have a Ph.D. Use Dr. in this case. If the professor has a masters degree (you can find all this in their faculty bio and/or CV online on the faculty page for the department in question) use the title “Professor”. Bonus tip: spell their name right (this happens A LOT. Take your time and be thorough)
2. Writing the email: Start by introducing yourself. Include your full legal name  (you don’t have to include your middle name, especially if it’s Thelma and you are still salty for having to write that out on the forms for all your college apps), your high school and home city, your year in school (freshmen, sophomore, junior, senior), and your date of birth (this part is helpful for admissions to match to your file). You might also include your application ID if you have already applied and have one.
3. Ask your question: Jump straight in to your point. Keep it to one brief paragraph. If it requires more than that, you should be setting up a phone appointment/calling in the question.
4. End with gratitude: Say “Thank you” or “Thank your for your consideration” or “With gratitude” – something to show you appreciate their help with your process and are a lovely, polite, amicable human being (which you are!)
5. Wait for a response (give it three business days), and respond (if needed) when the email comes in: This means you need to check your email once a day! It’s a good habit to develop. Maybe do this right when you get home from school each day.

 
Here are a couple real example emails students have sent recently.
 
Dear Mr. Pederson,

My name is Firstname Lastname and I will be touring SMU this Friday. I'm emailing you to ask if there is a class I could sit in on, preferably an intro to journalism class or any class involved in the Fashion Media major. Going into SMU the Fashion Media major is what I would like to pursue and I would like to see a preview on how the classes interact and the involvement of the students. Thank you for your consideration! 

Firstname Lastname
 
                                                      _________________________
  
Hello Mr. Jackson,
 
My name is Firstname Lastname from Flower Mound High School here in North Texas. I wanted to give you my thanks for hand-writing that postcard in regards to my acceptance to KU! That alongside the notification of the KU Distinctions Scholarship really meant a lot to me.
 
I went to the NorTex College Fair in Denton that The University of North Texas hosted, and I had the opportunity of meeting Allyson Peters! She was extremely helpful and gave me a lot of useful information.
 
I wanted to point out something I discussed with her: The KU Excellence Scholarship. I had mentioned that I have taken the ACT exam three separate times, and that my highest score was a 26, which qualifies me for the Distinction scholarship. Would it be wise to take the ACT exam a fourth time to try and score a 28? The lady at the college fair mentioned that I could email you if I scored a 27, and while my tests superscore up to a 27, I'm aware that you guys don't superscore. Getting the Distinction scholarship is such an honor, but knowing that I'm still on the college search, should I take it one final time to see if I can raise it up higher than my past three exams?
  
Thanks so much!
-Firstname Lastname
 
These both sound very much like high school students because they were written by high school students. We as adults might look at a phrasing here or there and want to correct it, but resist that urge. These are great – they are authentic, they reflect the student’s actual questions, and they communicate very professionally in the way that a 17 year old would communicate professionally.
 
Guide your students to learn to write great emails and communicate well on behalf of themselves. Empower them by giving them examples and offering to review their work and give them feedback. And encourage them to reach out to build rapport to do the best job they can in their college planning process.
 
Questions? Email me at erika@guruacademicadvising.com

It’s likely not a surprise that (most) students will have to write essays as part of their college application process. Yet, many are stumped when they see prompts like these:
 
“Tell us about the most significant challenge you’ve faced or something important that didn’t go according to plan. How did you manage the situation?” -- MIT
 
“The lessons we take from failure can be fundamental to later success. Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?” – The Common App
 
“If you feel you are in a black hole, don’t give up. There’s a way out,” Stephen Hawking said. Describe a time you faced a problem that seemed impossible to solve. What did you do to find a solution?” – Oklahoma State University
 
These students wrack their brains, look at their resumes of successes, and freeze. The F-word! They cringe. Their whole lives they’ve successfully avoided any sort of failure (yes, that f-word) only to find it’s everywhere in their college essays! Is it a trick question? If they divulge a weakness are they dooming themselves to the “no” pile?
 
I’ve learned a few (well, actually a ton) of things having worked with students in the college application process for many years now. One of those things is that they don’t know how to fail, so when it does finally happen (and it will because life is full of failures), it’s debilitating—even crippling in many cases. Their self-image, self-worth, and self-confidence is blasted by what should be a normal engagement in appropriate exploration or risk-taking.
 
I’m saddened, deeply, when I hear of a student who diligently worked on an application for a summer research fellowship, gathered her materials and letters of recommendations, wrote and rewrote her essay with insight and depth of thinking, only to open her email to see, “On behalf of the admissions committee we wish to thank you for your application…” But I’m alarmed when the student devolves to tears and isolates herself for the following week, neglecting her studies and other activities.
 
Or when a student is not selected for a scholarship when one of their “less talented” peers is, and refuses to apply to anymore believing it’s a waste of effort and time.
 
Many students haven’t been taught they are not entitled to opportunity. In the great big world of adult-life, hearing “no” is normal. Think about what we know to be true (and important) in our lives as capable adults. When you are job hunting, do you send out one resume and wait expecting a yes answer? Do you expect even a response to each resume you send out? No. 
 
Do we only begin only those things which offer us a guarantee of success—do we want that for ourselves and our children? I’m decently confident the answer is no, and I think we as adults all understand and accept failure on a regular basis. But the question is this: how do we expect our children to do the same?
 
If we do not encourage and normalize failure in high school (or earlier), we are leaving them to figure it out on their own later in life – in situations that are less safe and more high stakes. Colleges know this, and they also know that failure is nothing to be ashamed of. Failure is the result of risk-taking, and exploration, and often curiosity. Failure is going to happen in college, in small, or maybe big, ways. And colleges want kids who are prepared to not only "deal" with that in a healthy way, but leverage the failure to improve themselves, their ideas, and their communities. Hence, there are lots of essays asking students to reflect on their failures. 
 
Here’s my suggestion: normalize failure. Let your kids get used to hearing no. And let it sting. I have little kids, and already I know how difficult it is to see my child upset because I’ve denied her something that would make her genuinely happy. I imagine that gets even harder as they get even older and work for things they may not end up getting (leadership positions, summer opportunities, spots in an admitted freshman class at an Ivy League school). Don't swoop in to justify their shortcoming by blaming other factors to preserve their egos (and sometimes our own). Let it simmer and shake, then let them move on.

They will fail, and you will be there to teach them and help them understand the failure in context instead of be there to fix it for them, as much as you may want to (or be able to – that’s where this gets really tricky. When parents have the power to fix their student’s failures, sometimes that’s not in the long run the best thing for the student).
 
Teach them instead to see the “no” as an acronym (I’m about to get cheesy on you, watch out). N.O. stands for New Opportunity. If you can’t do the thing you wanted to do (you failed--I said it! And it's okay!), try something else out. There are many ways to reach success, and no one guarantees that the first thing you try is the thing that will work. Teach resilience by helping them learn how to use a growth mindset in which they learn to view failure as a New Opportunity (a N.O. moment--cheesy right? But kinda spot on).
 
The added bonus is that they will end up with a killer essay topic for their MIT application.

There’s a Facebook group out there for parents of students who are in college or transitioning to college. Parents use it as a space to vent, find common ground, and ask advice. Frequently, parents post with questions about college, and other parents write in with their recommendations, eager to help others navigate a process that’s so complex as to feel insurmountable.
 
Here are some examples of advice given by various posters in the past week:
 
“AP tests and classes are tougher because school is trying to get them ready for the AP test in April. Freshman is pretty young to be taking AP. It doesn't matter how many APs she takes. Her un-weighted GPA matters more for college admission. She needs to keep her grades up.”
-----
“Ivy's [sic] have the advantage of connections, as do some elite schools. Also to factor is if your child wants to attend medical school (very competitive) then a name and the connections are worth it!”
-----
“Take both the SAT and ACT early and often. Scholarships and admissions are based on just the highest score on either test, and every point increase means an increase in scholarship money.”
 
What do all these well-intentioned pieces of advice have in common? They are wrong. Following this advice could/would leave to worse outcomes for the student (and family paying the tuition bill).
 
I want to use this post to give a strong caution in the crowd-sourcing of college admissions advice.  For whatever reason, there is a lot of misinformation out there, but no lack of people who are happy (albeit well-intentioned) in giving it. Following that misinformation could be to the detriment of the student. So what is a family to do? And where exactly can you get smart answers? Here are some ideas:

1. Talk to your high school counselor – Your counselor is your first point of reference for college counseling advice. If your school has a dedicated college counselor, then that’s your first stop. If you have a “regular” counselor (who does college plus everything else), first thank them – they are busy people who do good work. Second, ask their advice, too! I understand, however, that your counselor may be very busy with many students and may not have time to walk you through every step or give you one-on-one advice about your college list/testing/class choices. And sometimes your counselor may not be able to because she hasn’t been trained in college admissions counseling. But your counselor is still your first stop, and if you need more support or advice or knowledge than she can provide, she will let you know that, likely pointing you in a direction where you can seek out more information on your own.
2. The admissions officers at your colleges of interest – don’t be afraid to reach out. These are wonderful people passionate about providing good information and access (I know, I was one!). I think many students have a fear of asking a question because they think not knowing the answer is a sign of weakness that will tarnish their application once submitted. This is not true. Students, use the admissions officers at your colleges as resources to get  answers to questions about the process and the school/major/program you are interested in. One note of caution here: you’ll notice the advice is for students to reach out. Parents often want to do this for the student. Colleges may see this as a warning sign the student is not ready for the independence of college life. It’s hard, but the student has to be the one sending the emails/making the phone calls. And parents, we know when it’s you emailing from your student’s account – this is not our first rodeo (yes, that happens a lot!). :) 
3. Get advice from an independent college counselor -- An independent college can support families beyond what can be provided through school or other sources. Statistically, about 26% of students attending selective colleges use an independent consultant. However, as I remind families inquiring about services, this means most families do not. The process of applying to college and getting in is not an insurmountable task (even though I know it might feel that way), but you have to be smart about where you get your advice and be proactive about doing things right and doing them early. If you are considering a counselor, make sure he or she is a member of either the IECA or HECA. These are professional organizations that maintain high standards of membership (remember all that bad information being passed around out there? You won’t get that from a college counselor who belongs to HECA or the IECA).

 
I meet with many families during workshops, seminars, or in private consultation that report back information they heard elsewhere that is just flat out wrong. I don’t believe there should be a pay wall to getting smart information for college, which is why I find this so frustrating. If you ever have a question about college, whether you are a student on my “roster” or not, please send me an email. I am happy to answer questions. I started this business out of a passion for the power of higher education, and I believe all students deserve their best chance to get it. There are many sources of good information (high school counselors, admissions officers, college counselors), and what’s important is you find one. Resist the urge to crowd source, and empower your student to be a careful consumer and dedicated discoverer of his or her own information that will lead to the actualization of his or her own goals. 

Question: Who “wins” this game?
 
Player 1 was accepted into Harvard, his dream school.
 
Player 2 was denied from every highly selective school to which she applied. She also applied to and was accepted by High Point University, her safety school in a sea of “lottery schools” from which she was denied.
 
If we stop the game here, Player 1 is the clear winner. He has the acceptance to the prestigious university and the application plan that went according to plan. Player 2 is settling. She had an application plan that was not smartly put together, and she is dealing with the result.
 
But guess what? The “game” doesn’t stop there. And that’s because life doesn’t stop there. There is more to it than just getting in. Once a student gets in, he or she has to attend, work hard, interact skillfully with professors and peers, apply for and win research opportunities, pass classes, get internships…
 
What if we zoom forward three years from the scenario with which we started? What if we find out Player 2 is thriving? She is a “big fish in a smaller pond” about to do a semester in Florence with an internship for global marketing. She already has a job offer from her last internship in the summer, and she’s weighing that against the decision to continue on to graduate school. Possibilities abound. The failure she felt senior year being rejected from so many more prestigious colleges is just a blip in the past she doesn’t have time to dwell on.
 
Meanwhile, Player 1 has, amid the incredible pressure of his immensely talented peers and the increased expectations of college life, dropped out. He’s taking time off while his mother encourages him to transfer into the local state university so he doesn’t fall further behind. He wasn’t a good fit for the pressure, and he had no idea it was going to be that way. He had applied and decided to attend his first college because of the name recognition. “If you get in to Harvard, you go”, his dad had told him. So he went, and he failed. It was never a good fit.
 
Who is “winning” the game now?
 
There’s a bigger idea here that’s so important for students and parents to remember. They must remember the end goal. What is this all for? What’s most important in this process? Is it bragging rights about how selective a school you could get into? It shouldn’t be. Your likelihood of success is not correlated with the lower the admissions percentage of the school you attend.
 
Seniors, as you get your acceptances, think long term. Think realistically about your priorities. At Guru, we celebrate every success, not just the ones that come with single digit selectivity percentages, because we know we work hard to help families put together college lists that are based on substance—places our students will thrive academically, socially, and financially.  And when Harvard says yes to the right kid, we celebrate that, too! The same way we do for Ole Miss, Syracuse, Stanford and everywhere in between. 

​I fall asleep most every night reading articles about admissions trends, cognitive psychology, goal-setting… I eat this stuff up.
 
But I also read things that make my stomach turn. Some of these nausea-inducing pieces come from others in the business of college admission counseling, and some of it comes from well-meaning parents who have heard bad information from other parents—things like their child needs to be “branding” themselves in order to look good to colleges, or test-prep ought to start in ninth grade, or the higher “ranked” a college is the better it must be. It makes me want to scream, “Stop the madness!”
 
College admission planning is stressful for students and parents. This is the most scrutiny (whether real or perceived) many students will have undergone thus far in their lives. There’s adolescent (and sometimes parental) ego at stake, hinged on the idea of getting in or being denied. It’s also an incredibly expensive proposition, one where understanding actual costs is nearly impossible up front. There are acronyms to decipher (SAT, ACT, AP, FAFSA, CLEP, IB), classes to choose, leadership skills to cultivate, tests to prep for, colleges to research… If all that worry is left unbridled, it can lead to poor decisions that adversely affect the student. Decisions like turning your child into a “brand” or spending thousands prepping for a PSAT test in tenth grade that doesn’t even count for national merit (and national merit doesn’t necessarily live up to it’s reputation for being a golden goose, anyway!).
 
Stop the madness! There is such thing as too much test prep (or starting test prep too early), your high-schooler does not need a “brand”, and the Ivies are not the only colleges worthy of effusive fanfare.
 
I believe in purposeful planning, using accurate information. This has the effect of bringing the stress inherent in this process down a level. My students have plans for when they will start test prep and they understand why they are taking the tests at the times allocated. These are things any student can create for himself or herself. I also believe we best serve students when we help them find authenticity as opposed to a synthetic identity manufactured to get them in to college, as if getting in were the end goal (it’s not). Teenagers are in the midst of discovering themselves. Let’s not stifle that process by inserting an idea of what “looks good” to an admissions committee into the mix.
 
Instead, let’s help them understand the pursuit of knowledge is more valuable than a weighted GPA or class rank. Let’s protect them from unnecessary and premature stress by allowing test prep to start when it’s an appropriate time. Let’s do the best by our kids by teaching them to be themselves, giving them tools to discover what that means, and challenging them to do so with intrinsic motivation.
 
For my students and me that means engaging in goal-setting and aligning select activities with those goals. It means looking at a broad range of colleges, including some you might not have heard about before (You’re interested in research and you want a scholarship? Skip Cornell and try Rhodes).  It means fostering authentic interests and pursuing them relentlessly. (If you are a student of mine, you have probably heard me tell you to pursue two or three activities 100 miles per hour with your hair on fire).
 
I am passionate about what I do because I believe so strongly in the power of higher education. It’s the opportunity to unlock not only doors to a future career, but doors to a more liberated mind and better life. But students have to be taught to value it as such, and when we teach them to brand themselves, pursue a grade instead of an understanding of a subject, or place their self worth in the prestige of their admissions decisions, we are teaching the wrong values. 

​All day yesterday I felt like I was playing the role of the rain cloud. I received excited text messages and emails from students and parents as they checked their SAT scores online.
 
“Mrs. Dietz! I got a 1290 on my March SAT!”
 
“Great news!” I’d reply, then continue by asking if they had converted their scores using the College Board’s concordance charts yet in order to interpret them.
 
“Concordance what?” And it was clear my students did not have the tools to adequately interpret their scores, leading them to believe they had performed better than they actually did. Cue the rain cloud rolling in as I crunched the numbers to let them know their score on the old test would have been 50 – 60 points lower in each category, a difference of 100 points sometimes in their total score.
 
Here’s the BIG problem with this new test: It’s a completely new test, testing brand new and DIFFERENT content in different ways than the old SAT. College Board itself has said you cannot equate new SAT scores to old SAT scores.
 
Unfortunately, the comparison is natural. Though completely overhauling the test, College Board kept the same 200 – 800 point scale. It’s difficult for me even to not see the 690 in Math and want to extend hearty congratulations to my student for a job well done. But when I convert that 690 to the reciprocal score on the old SAT, it drops to a 660 (still very good! But a sizeable and significant difference).
 
College Board has done a terrible job explaining to students the need to use the concordance charts (or even where to find this set of cumbersome 16 tables). My worry is that, without guidance, students and parents will mistakenly think they are within range for a school, according to test scores, that is actually out of reach. Might this increase disappointment come application season next fall? Maybe…
 
But, alas, I am not a decision maker at College Board, so the best I can do is try to make sure you are as informed and educated as possible. If you took the new SAT this year, you need to convert the scores in order to interpret them for admissions chances and your own understanding. You can do that with the concordance tables here, or by downloading the College Board conversion app (I find the app far more user-friendly).
 
The smart money this year is on the ACT. It’s the tried and true of the two tests, even though they are having their own issues with the essay scoring. But no matter which test you have taken, breathe easy knowing colleges accept both.
 
Now, go do something awesomely productive with your summer. For inspiration, read here. Or here.

A few weeks ago, Harvard’s Graduate School of Education released a report called “Turning the Tide: Inspiring Concern For Others And The Common Good Through College Admissions.” It has received praise for its call to action for colleges, especially elite colleges, to de-emphasize test scores and the number of AP classes students rack up, and instead focus on more intangible qualities like students’ awareness beyond themselves, demonstrations of kindness, and ability to contribute to efforts to improve what’s good for the community.
 
While it’s wonderful to see the report make explicit such factors, in reality, these things are what good college counselors have been stressing to students for years. These things are also what have made students (well, those without a hook) stand out from the pack in the competitive college admissions game all along. It’s nothing new, but now we have a report to bring awareness to the masses.
 
Will you still need excellent test scores to get into Princeton? Absolutely. Has it always helped you to be able to complement those excellent test scores by demonstrating your capacity to affect change in your community? Yes. Duh.
 
Good test scores, grades, and a bazillion AP classes have never and will never be enough to get a student into the most selective colleges in the nation. The students who get in are those who, in addition to having evidenced their smarts in their academic records, show they are capable of being change-makers. Harvard wants to admit students whom they believe have the capacity to do great things, and that capacity cannot be measured through a standardized test.
 
So what’s our advice? Really, it’s the same as it’s always been: if you are serious about getting into an elite college, focus on showcasing your personal qualities through your extracurricular pursuits. But here’s the trick: don’t do any of those things for the purpose of getting into college. Instead, you need to be motivated by a sincere desire to affect change around a cause for which you feel passion. So change your headspace; start by asking yourself what problems in the world you want to solve, then go about working to find solutions or ways to contribute to solutions. The rest will fall into place on it’s own. And keep your grades up: those will always matter. This is education, after all.

A new data analysis from the Department of Education has found that 68% of students opted last year to have the FAFSA sent to just one school. The conclusion we draw from this? Students are either deciding too early in the process where they will attend college or not applying to enough schools in the first place.
 
National Decision Day, the day when students must notify their chosen college of their intent to enroll and pay their deposit, is May 1st of the senior year. However, this report as well as my own work with students suggests that many are making up their minds much earlier, even before financial aid packages are awarded, which usually happens in March or April.
 
This number is troubling, and likely an indicator of the want to be over and done with a process that can be riddled with anxiety and uncertainty. For most families the cost of college is a big factor in their decision where the student will attend. Yet, many of these same students and families start the enrollment process before having their financial aid award. You don’t truly know how much your education will cost until you have filed all financial aid forms (FAFSA, CSS Profile) and received the results of those filings from colleges.
 
My suggestion to parents and students is this: the fall application season is about creating smart options from which to choose in March or April, after you have all the pieces of the puzzle in front of you (admissions decisions, honors college decisions, scholarship offers, financial aid awards). When financial aid and costs truly are a driving factor, deciding in November, right after you get an admissions offer, where you will attend is premature. Why not wait and use these interim months (between the offer of admission and the time you get your financial aid award) to really compare on a deeper level the differences between your prospective schools?
 
I hear and understand the concern about housing, and it’s my opinion that colleges often use housing as leverage to entice students to deposit before they really need to do so. Here’s what I recommend: call the housing office. Ask about when housing actually fills up. Most colleges prioritize housing for freshman, and many guarantee it. Call and get the facts straight from the housing office itself before feeling the pressure to deposit from admissions.
 
Students, families, and college counselors work collaboratively for many months helping to create a smart list of colleges that will provide a good set of options for the student in the senior year. Let all those options play out before rushing into a decision, especially when cost is an important or decisive factor.