Weekly Update: November 18

BIGGEST COLLEGE-RELATED NEWS OF THE WEEK

ACADEMIC WORKERS AT UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA GO ON STRIKE

This week, workers at the University of California staged the largest academic strike in the history of US higher education. Representing over 48,000 researchers, graders, and post-doctoral fellows, the academic staff union has been trying to negotiate higher wages and increased benefits with university administrators for over a year. However, the union believes that administrators have not been bargaining in “good faith.” UC officials have denied this claim and hope to reach an agreement as soon as possible. In the meantime, professors at UC institutions are planning for class disruptions.

EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS OF UVA SHOOTING

Details of the deadly UVA shooting on Sunday night continue to emerge. Just as a group of students returned from a class trip to Washington, D.C., suspect Christopher Darnell Jones, Jr. opened fire on the bus, killing three fellow students and injuring others. The rest of the group fled into nearby campus buildings, and the university went into lockdown until Jones was apprehended. Eyewitnesses are now trying to piece together their last conversations with the victims and offering their observations of the suspect, who some claim was targeting specific students on the bus. We will continue tracking this story as the investigation proceeds.

MYSTERIOUS MURDERS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO

As Virginians reel from the devastating events at UVA this week, it’s important to remember that another tragedy occurred at the University of Idaho as well. Four students were found dead near campus on Sunday in an apparent homicide. The case is being investigated in what police describe as a “crime of passion,” but no further details have been released. 

VIRGINIA’S UPDATED HISTORY AND SOCIAL STUDIES STANDARDS COME UNDER FIRE

Every seven years, the Virginia Department of Education is required to redevelop standards of learning - otherwise known as SOLs - for each subject area and garner approval from the state board of education. Typically this process is routine, but not this year! In August, the board called for an extensive revision of the history and social studies standards proposal. The several hundred page document was streamlined into just 53 pages and submitted for another review this week. While the latest version may be easier to digest, many feel that the standards overlook important areas of history and “minimize diverse perspectives.” Yesterday, the Board of Education voted to push back their review, advising the Department of Education to revise the proposal once again.

SCHOOLS REJECT COLLEGE RANKINGS

In a shocking move, Yale Law School and Harvard Law School announced this week that they will no longer participate in the annual U.S. News and World Report’s College Rankings. Although these institutions typically take top spots on the list, officials at both schools are calling the ranking’s methodology into question. Deans at Harvard and Yale claim the rankings are driven by “misguided formulas” that undermine student choice. They are concerned with what they believe is an over-emphasis on LSAT scores and GPAs and skewed calculations of student debt loads. Many wonder how this move will affect the ranking’s reputation and if other institutions will follow in Yale and Harvard’s footsteps.

BEST ARTICLES OF THE WEEK

Did you know that international students contribute over thirty billion dollars to the US economy? Inside Higher Ed took a close look at the impact of international student enrollment losses in the United States over the past two years. Although international enrollment is rebounding, experts are still concerned. In fact, some policy makers are calling for a national strategy to promote international enrollment, which they note was declining even before the pandemic. Other factors include cost, concerns of gun violence in America, and increased xenophobia. 

Selecting a major is one of the most important decisions an undergraduate will make. So how do you choose a degree that you won’t regret later? According to CNBC, the answer lies in value. Recent surveys indicate that the least-regretted majors are those that yield direct career pathways and high salaries. While these findings aren’t necessarily surprising, the list of top ten most regretted majors may be to some. Take a look for yourself! 

Walk into a dorm room, and you just might find yourself face-to-face with a snake–well at least in the state of Indiana. Recent data has shown a surge in the number of emotional support animals (ESAs) across Indiana’s colleges and universities. Under the Fair Housing Act, students can house emotional support animals as part of their mental health accommodations. Although cats and dogs are the most popular ESAs, Indiana campuses are now housing support hamsters, guinea pigs, and even snakes. Officials have drawn the line, though, at exotic pets and farm animals. Personally, I am not sure how snakes aren’t considered to be exotic pets…?

Parents, you’ll be happy to know that your teenagers do, in fact, trust you! According to recent EAB surveys, nearly half of teenagers polled consider parents to be one of the most trusted sources of college information - an 11% increase from a similar survey conducted just two years ago. According to Robert Alexander, Dean of Admissions at the University of Rochester, parental involvement in the college admissions process is continuing to rise. And while the support may be a welcome relief to stressed-out college applicants, parental overinvolvement is a real danger. Alexander offers a list of dos and don’ts to help parents navigate the process in a way that empowers their children. We especially like his suggestion to schedule a weekly family meeting time. That way, parents don’t run the risk of turning every conversation into an application meeting.

Lastly, Forbes published an article that released some interesting Common Application statistics relating to the current application cycle. Applications are way up, and the highest increase in apps can be found in the group of most selective schools. Trends have also emerged relating to geography - applications to schools in South Carolina, Texas, and Alabama have increased more than they have any other states (this aligns with the viral article from Town & Country that we posted in October - check this out if you haven’t yet!).

OFFICE HAPPENINGS

The holiday season is here, and it’s the perfect time for teens to get involved in the community! There are a variety of unique volunteer opportunities in northern Virginia and DC, especially for expert gingerbread house makers and light-stringers. Visit our database to see an up-to-date list.

If you’re a junior staying in town during Thanksgiving week, consider checking out some local schools to gain an initial sense of your college preferences. Even if you have zero interest in attending any D.C. area schools, it’s easy to spend some time exploring the campuses of Georgetown, GW, American, Catholic and/or George Mason, and the experience can be a really valuable opportunity to learn which factors appeal to you. We can use your observations to help make recommendations for other schools - and also tell you which to skip.

And p.s. - does it even count as a visit to Georgetown if you don’t stop by Call Your Mother for bagels?

I was there this morning and grabbed a Sun City with Bacon, YUM!!! Highly recommend and it’s always packed full of Georgetown students. Make sure to pre-order if you are going on a weekend. I also picked up some treats for my kids while I was there :)

Have a fantastic weekend!

Weekly Update: December 18

We are really thrilled with the good news from so many of our seniors, and look forward to hearing the rest of the decisions as they come out! Our office will be closed for the next two weeks during the FCPS break, but please keep us updated - we can’t wait to celebrate for you!

BIGGEST COLLEGE-RELATED NEWS OF THE WEEK

EARLY ACTION/EARLY DECISION RESULTS

We have posted so many times about how much we love College Kickstart’s list of early decision and early action release dates, which is updated nearly every day and can be really helpful for students still anxiously awaiting decisions. But for data on those decisions that have already come out, the site also released this list of initial early admission rates. We can see the impact of increased applications at selective schools like Columbia, which saw a 49% increase in ED applications, and Dartmouth, which saw a 29% increase. Stats have not been released yet on MIT’s early action, but some sources are predicting a 60% increase in applications this cycle!

DEFERRALS MAY IMPACT RD ADMISSION AFTER ALL

As we have been saying for months, most colleges assured students that the increase in Class of 2020 deferrals would not impact Class of 2021 applicants. However, in the last week, we’ve begun to see some evidence of policy shifts on this topic - it sounds like some of the most selective schools are beginning to rethink that approach (and not in a good way!). This interview with Dartmouth Dean of Admissions Lee Coffin suggests that while the office did not take deferrals into account during the ED cycle, it will do so during the RD round. Yikes! Along the same lines, Harvard admitted an historically low number of students during the early action round to compensate for deferrals. And that’s despite a 57% increase in applicants year over year! This is really concerning news for RD applicants, and is yet another reason why students who were not admitted in this round should seriously consider applying ED II. 

RECORD NUMBER OF MED SCHOOL APPLICATIONS THIS CYCLE

The pandemic has changed everything about college and grad school admissions, but may have been particularly influential in medical school applications, which are up 18% over last year. Top schools like Stanford have seen a 50% increase in applications in what medical school admissions offices have started to term the “Fauci Effect.” The senior director of the American Association of Medical Colleges likens this wave to the large numbers of young men and women who entered into the military after 9/11.

MACKENZIE SCOTT DONATES MILLIONS TO COLLEGES 

MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has donated nearly two billion dollars to small colleges and universities that tend to serve low-income or minority students, including more than a dozen HBCUs as well as technical and community colleges. Recipients included Prairie View A&M University, which received $50 million, and Borough of Manhattan Community College, which received $30 million. For many schools, these were the largest single gifts they had ever received. Ms. Scott made the gifts after her team interviewed the presidents of the colleges about their mission and goals. 

BEST ARTICLES OF THE WEEK

As previously mentioned, we experienced an unprecedented early admissions cycle this year in terms of skyrocketing numbers of applicants, and the WSJ did a great job of covering the “dramatic growth” today. We knew it was going to be messy, but this past week was just insane.

Binding early decision applications rose by 22% at Brown University, 23% at the University of Pennsylvania, 29% at Dartmouth College and 49% at Columbia University. At Yale University and Harvard University, applications under the restrictive early-action option jumped by about 38% and 57%, respectively.

The massive jumps—and resultant declines in acceptance rates—illustrate just how chaotic this admissions cycle is shaping up to be.

We can’t say that all of our news was perfect- we had two decisions in particular that were very frustrating. That said, we’ve been totally. blown. away. by how well our students have done on the whole despite these crazy increases. Offhand I would say that about 80% of our students who applied ED were admitted to their top choice schools, and we’re talking about some extremely selective institutions, several of which are Ivy League schools that were mentioned in that article. Congratulations, guys!

This piece from the Chronicle of Higher Education makes a radical proposal - that instead of employing human beings to read applications and make admissions decisions, students should be matched with schools using an algorithm that takes into account the preferences of the applicant as well as those of the program. The article cites the racial and socioeconomic disparities in traditional admissions as the reason why the system needs such a drastic overhaul. The system would also help struggling colleges to meet enrollment goals, a goal that is even more salient as colleges go into debt during the COVID-19 crisis. We’re not sure that they will ever be able to fully replace admissions readers, but it is definitely an interesting proposition! 

There have been multiple articles this week about the difficulties that students and counselors face during the admissions process this cycle. The LA Times notes that school counselors have often been unable to reach their students through remote learning platforms, but the lack of technology isn’t the only issue. Students and families contending with unemployment, anxiety, and illness are not motivated and are sometimes unable to complete the time-intensive work of applying to colleges. NPR stresses how these effects are even more profound for first generation and low-income students, who are left with fewer resources than past cycles in what has become the most challenging and capricious cycle we have ever seen.

OFFICE HAPPENINGS

We have been trying hard to keep up with the ED/EA statistics from as many schools as we can, and sharing our information to help clients make good decisions about ED II and RD applications!

Shannon attended a Best of Boston session with Tufts, BU, and Northeastern this week and learned that Tufts is admitting fewer students early this year (only 18% of the entering class), and that interestingly, they have seen a HUGE increase in applications from Virginia. Figures, right?! We know that many of our students have become interested in Tufts, and are keeping our fingers crossed for them in a cycle with a lower admit rate and stiff competition! 

And of course, we have seen so many decisions come out this week! But keep in mind that whether you were accepted, deferred, or denied, your responsibilities do not end with your decision letter. Deferred or denied students should read our post from earlier this week for next steps. And for those who got good news, keep an eye out for next week’s blog post on important steps to take after your ED acceptance. 

We hope you all have a great holiday, and we’re keeping our fingers crossed for those still waiting on decisions!

Weekly Update: December 11

A big week as we start to see some decision come out for our students! And a busy week for us as we continue working hard on transfer and graduate school applications before the holidays.

BIGGEST COLLEGE-RELATED NEWS OF THE WEEK

UVA CLASS OF 2025 EARLY DECISION STATISTICS RELEASED

Dean J provided a very helpful update yesterday about UVA’s early decision statistics from this past application cycle. My initial thoughts: while applications increased substantially (by 36% if my math is correct!), the actual number of students accepted through ED increased as well - by about 29%. This resulted in an ED acceptance rate that only decreased by a couple of percentage points from last year, despite the huge increase in applications. This is great news for ED applicants. However, unless UVA plans to increase the size of their freshman class, which I do not believe is the case, EA and RD applicants will likely feel an impact. The additional slots allocated to ED applicants will have to come from somewhere, and I anticipate that EA and RD will be a little more competitive as a result.

OTHER SCHOOLS RELEASE STATISTICS FOR THIS CYCLE

UVA is not the only school that we’ve been watching for early statistics. Emory published that their Early Decision I applications were up 8% from last year, UNC up 10%, and Duke saw an even larger increase of nearly 18%, and as a result is expecting an early admit rate of only 16 to 17% when decisions are released later this month. While we don’t know the stats yet for Virginia Tech, they have received more applications so far this cycle than in all of last cycle - and a 35% increase in EA applications! This record increase is not particularly promising for applicants. We should have more to share about ED and EA statistics next week.

CONFLICTING REPORTS ON WHAT WILL HAPPEN THIS SPRING

While we are excited at the new COVID-19 vaccine developments, cases are still rising and leaving colleges with a difficult decision to make about what will happen during the spring semester. Some schools, like Georgetown and Princeton, plan to invite students back to campus after a nearly entirely virtual first semester, while other schools view reopening in person as a financial necessity. But college-age students are not likely to receive a vaccine anytime soon, so the revenue losses in higher education are likely to continue throughout the spring.

BEST ARTICLES OF THE WEEK

The Wall Street Journal published an article this week about students who chose to take a gap year rather than commit to remote learning during the pandemic. As we’ve noted before, while there are more students deferring this year than in the past, the numbers have not shifted drastically - the vast majority of students chose to continue with their education virtually. This is in part because many traditional gap year pursuits, like working and traveling, are not available to students right now. Many students who chose to interrupt their studies were doing either remote work or pursuing a passion project. The article stresses the need for students who are considering a gap year to focus on improving their skills and maturity, and making sure to have a structure to their days in the absence of classes.

The Washington Post also published an interesting look back on the first semester of pandemic college, reporting that it was not during classes that coronavirus spread on campus, but rather in dorms and at social events off campus. We’ll echo the article and say that if colleges want to provide in-person instruction for students, they also need to provide safe ways to socialize - it is just not realistic to expect every student to hunker down in their dorm room when not in class. We hope that increases in testing and a vaccine on the horizon will make the spring semester safer for students, as colleges learn from looking back on the fall.

This NPR segment on applying to college during the pandemic provides some great insight on how it feels to be a high school senior right now, and reminds all of us to cut the students in our lives some slack at this very stressful time! This has been a difficult year for students and school counselors to connect and receive necessary resources, and made an already challenging process even more difficult on kids and their families.

OFFICE HAPPENINGS

Oh my gosh - what an exciting but nerve-wracking week with all of the ED/EA decision releases! We’ve been refreshing College Kickstart’s Class of 2025 Early Decision and Early Action Notification Dates post nonstop, and this evening is going to be extra crazy with decisions from UVA and Virginia Tech coming in! Not to mention Amherst, Williams, Stanford, Richmond and others.

While the college admissions process is uncertain by nature, this year has been absolutely brutal from the unpredictability standpoint. We have a whole crop of kids who are expecting decisions in the next four days and I know everyone is on edge. With that in mind, here are some quick thoughts that seniors (and their parents) can keep in mind over the next few days:

• Like the late, great Tom Petty said, the waiting is the hardest part. Emotions are running high right now and the build-up to decision day can make even the most rational among us feel not-so-rational after all. Know that this is temporary, though - everyone will snap back to their normal selves when acceptances or denials come around. Obviously, we always hope for good news, but bad news can also provide a welcome sense of closure.

• Unfortunately, there are many kids out there who will not learn their final decision for a few months yet, because they will be deferred into the regular decision pool. Instead of dwelling on the situation, move forward and become familiar with the many actionable steps that can be taken right now to turn things around. Check out our post from last year: How to Turn a Deferral into an Acceptance: Everything You Need to Know!

• Whatever the decision, know that it will all work out in the long term. I swear. It ALWAYS does! I completely understand that this process can feel devastating in the moment. It’s been 18 years since my own college rejection experience and I can vividly remember how crushing it was - but I am so grateful that things ultimately worked out the way they did.

• If you are a client and learn a decision, please email us! We try to give everyone space in case the news isn’t positive, so we won’t bug you unless it’s been a few days… but rest assured everyone in our office is holding their breath and waiting for your update :) If the news is not positive and you’d like to schedule a session to discuss a possible change in strategy or anything else, go ahead and book one here to take place next week.

• If you are not a client but recognize that you need help, we have a few emergency strategy sessions available over the break while our office is closed, and can offer emergency essay help over the holidays as well for an additional fee. It is NOT too late, and this kind of help can be such a game-changer. See the review below from one of our emergency help families from last year! You can email Donna if you have any questions or need more information.

Good luck - we are rooting so hard for each and every one of you!

Coming Full Circle in South Bend

Gosh, it has been such a busy fall and I have clearly been a failure as a blogger lately! I will start posting regularly again once things calm down a little. Today, though, I felt inspired.

As many of you know, I visit about 30-40 colleges per year. Often times it’s easiest to do them in spurts, on pre-conference tours with other counselors. These marathon visits are absolutely exhausting because it’s school after school after school, but we get great face time with the admissions officers, and the visits are much more in-depth than they’d be if we just signed up and toured a school as a member of the general public (although I do those too). During the past few days I have been to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Northwestern University, University of Chicago, Loyola University Chicago, DePaul University, University of Notre Dame, Holy Cross College, St. Mary’s College, and Goshen College. Tomorrow is Purdue University, Valparaiso University, and Bethel University. Then I am headed to Louisville for a conference and finally to check out the University of Kentucky in Lexington before heading back to DC. My feet are about to fall off :)

The reason I’m blogging today is not to share information about those schools, although I do want to post more about my visits because I have learned a TON. I’m writing a post because staying in South Bend has really made me think about the crushing disappointment of college admissions decisions and how they can be so utterly devastating for a teenager.

When I was 17, there was nothing more in the world that I wanted than to go to the University of Notre Dame.

I don’t think my desire to go to ND was based on anything concrete besides a really fun weekend visit on campus when I was a junior, but I had made up my mind and ND it was. My college counselor told me that despite my high SAT scores, it was a stretch. Obviously, though, she did not know what she was talking about. Of course I was going to get into Notre Dame! I had worked so hard!

When I think back to myself as a teenager, I was pretty savvy, or at least I thought I was! I went to boarding school, was very independent, thought I knew more than everyone about everything, and I was highly skilled at convincing people to give me what I wanted. I zipped up and down the Northeast Corridor on Amtrak most weekends alone or with friends, and even had elite status on my favorite airline because I was so used to jet-setting all over the place! The thought that Notre Dame would not accept me was a concern, sure, but I really did believe that I would get in. I deserved it. Just like tens of thousands of my peers did :)

Most teenagers believe that they are invincible. The rules do not apply to them. Common sense does not apply to them. Graphs and scattergrams on Naviance and Scoir do not apply to them. Girls, by the way, are much worse than boys when it comes to this.

When I got outright rejected (not even deferred!) from Notre Dame, I was SHOCKED. Devastated. Hysterical.

Of course, it wasn’t about Notre Dame at all. It was about the fact that I really wanted something that I couldn’t have. Man, that is a really hard lesson to learn. That no matter how badly you want something, how badly your parents want it for you, or how many people you can sweet-talk, it’s not going to happen. That is absolutely crushing, but it’s also part of becoming an adult and slowly realizing how the world works.

I see this same scenario play out year after year, and what I certainly didn’t realize at seventeen is that it’s even more devastating for the adults involved than the teenagers. To watch your child be rejected - it’s like a dagger to the heart. It’s just horrible. Especially when there are lots of tears involved.

So if find yourself in this position in December (which some of you will, given the absurdly low acceptance rates that we are sure to see yet again), here are my words of wisdom: getting rejected from Notre Dame was the best thing that could have happened to me. I really mean that.

It’s like that movie Sliding Doors: if I had gotten into Notre Dame, I would not have ended up at Wash U, which had an incredibly flexible curriculum that allowed me to graduate a year early without too much trouble. If I hadn’t graduated early, I wouldn’t have decided to “take a year or two off before law school”. I’d probably be an attorney somewhere with piles of paperwork on my desk instead of having a blast on my entrepreneurship journey. I would definitely not have met my husband the week after I graduated when I was 21, wouldn’t have my kids, and so forth.

Much more importantly, though, I wouldn’t have gotten the wake-up call I needed to understand that life wasn’t fair and that things were not always going to go my way - whether I “deserved” them or not. This rejection, as painful as it was, represented a turning point that helped me become the person I am today and had a very positive ripple effect on many other areas of my life. 18 years after I first stepped foot on this campus, I can truly say that I am so very grateful that things worked out the way they did.

So while there’s not going to be any bigger advocate for a student than me, know that if the dream school admissions decision doesn’t come back favorably, all is not lost. Things will work out. I promise!

Sleep Training and the College Admissions Process: Different Ages, Same Lesson

Did anyone else have kids that were awful sleepers as babies? I was always so envious of parents whose babies slept all night or woke up just once or twice.

That is NOT how things went in my house! When I had my daughter, I thought there must be something wrong with her because she just wouldn’t sleep. It was like she was nocturnal or something. Then I had my son and realized that maybe my daughter wasn’t quite so bad after all.

Election Night 2016. A terrible night in every respect! We found out later that he had acid reflux.

He routinely screamed all night long. Every night. For months. It was extremely unpleasant and ultimately got to a point where I just couldn’t take it anymore.

As soon as he was old enough to sleep train, we sought the guidance of a sleep trainer who we also used with my daughter five years earlier. (If anyone knows a parent with an infant, her name is Suzy Giordano and an hour with her is probably the best gift you could ever give someone).

I can honestly say that this woman saved my sanity and my marriage. Probably more than that. My business. Everything. I could not function because I was not getting any sleep and had to work all day.

So now that I have finished singing her praises, I will tell you that Suzy is not cheap. At all. I gave her information to a friend in an equally awful situation, and she was appalled that I would pay so much for sleep training. She clearly thought the sleep deprivation had gotten to my head.

Don’t get me wrong - I know she’s expensive, obscenely expensive. I am not the kind of person who routinely pays people $500/hr to do things for me, let’s put it that way. But the one thing I learned from paying Suzy Giordano was the difference between cost and value.

Let’s think of the value that woman brought to my life. I am not exaggerating when I say that I would have taken out a second mortgage on my home at that point to get some sleep. I was in a seriously desperate situation. Paying Suzy $500/hr actually represented an incredible value when you consider how working with her turned my life around. She was worth sooooo much more than we paid.

Recently I had a mother ask me to tell her point blank why my team is worth the cost of the prices we charge. In almost a decade, no one has ever actually asked me that.

After thinking about it more, I decided we probably weren’t worth it for every family. I’m being honest. There are definitely cheaper options out there - much cheaper - particularly if you’re willing to work with someone that doesn’t have college admissions experience but has helped their own child, or maybe knows absolutely nothing about college admissions but is a good writer who can help with essays.

If your situation meets all of these criteria, you are reading correctly - we are not worth the cost. Find someone cheaper!

• Your student already knows exactly how and where he wants to apply and the schools aren’t all crazy reaches (I say this because someone who only wants to apply to crazy reaches has a very high likelihood of ending up at NOVA when they don’t get in anywhere at all. Then they call me in May and the whole family is in tears and can’t figure out what went wrong. Every year this happens.) I’m talking about the straight-A kid with a 35 ACT who is involved in every activity under the sun and applying ED to UVA/ED II to William & Mary, as well as a number of other safer options. No out-of-the-box strategy or tough conversations about being realistic needed. Just write strong essays and make sure that the recommendations and applications are also done well.

• Your student is 100% (or at least 95%) motivated and does not need constant reminders to stay on task. You tell him that he needs 20 essays by August 1, he is able to self-regulate his time while meeting with a tutor once per week for extra help, and has 20 perfect essays ready to go on July 30. This kid does not need Rebeccah reminding him multiple times per week about every individual task he needs to finish in order to meet his ultimate goal and then checking up to make sure he completed each of them.

• Your student appreciates constructive criticism from his parents and takes it at face value without giving pushback or needing an intermediary to deliver tough messages. No fighting. “Thanks for your input, Mom! I’ll make that edit right away!”

• Your student is good at developing original ideas (he doesn’t have to be amazing in terms of style- you can hire a writing tutor on the side to help with that - but somebody familiar with the school, without the voice of a 50-year-old mom, has got to be able to help with content creation for that 600-word “Why College X” essay!).

• Your student has taken detailed notes from every college visit, is a regular on “College Confidential” and generally understands the specific unwritten requirements that many individual schools have. Yes, that means that the “Why Columbia” supplement needs to reference the core curriculum and the “Why Penn” supplement needs to reference the city of Philadelphia.

Okay, so I was kidding a little bit about having a teenager that appreciates constructive parental criticism, but other than that, there really are families out there whose kids meet the other criteria. They typically do not work with me on an ongoing basis but I see them for strategy sessions.

For the other 90% of families, it’s important to consider the difference between cost and value. College is likely the most important investment you will make as a parent - ever. I’ve written about this before in our FAQ: while we are not the cheapest option in town, there is absolutely zero question that we provide the best value.

P.S. My friend’s kid did not sleep through the night until 18 months. Mine did by 5 months. She will be hiring Suzy the next time around.

Coming Home to Stay

I recently came across The New York Times article When a College Student Comes Home to Stay and felt it necessary to add my two cents, given my experience working with so many families and students over the years.

In previous generations, everyone looked forward to college. Arrival on campus for freshman orientation represented freedom, new friends, and a major step towards adulthood. Today, the lead-up to college has spiraled out of control, and arrival on campus represents so much more: a sought-after prize that justifies a decade (or more!) of sacrifice.

As students work tirelessly to perfect their college essays and try desperately to increase their ACT scores following years and years of pressure, they often can’t help but develop very unrealistic expectations about the end goals that they are trying to achieve with so much hard work. This idealized version of college certainly doesn’t leave room for imagining days caught in the rain without an umbrella, courses with terrible professors, evenings missing family and friends from home, or poor scores earned during the first round of exams.

When the bad days come - and there will be bad days, even at Harvard - students are stunned and surprised. They often start thinking something is wrong with them or that they cannot handle college altogether.  95% of the time, nothing is wrong at all; they are simply experiencing the ups and downs of daily life. Because this happens so often, I find it increasingly important to guide families during the college application process to maintain a realistic viewpoint, and I encourage parents to have discussions with their children about the realities of college and the “real world.”  

The better perspective these students bring with them to their freshman year of college, the less likely they will feel as if the world is crashing down around them when they are no longer in the top 10% of their class, get their first C in a course, or aren’t getting along with their roommate. 

Of course, there are also situations when something more serious is at play. Should a student come home from a break or their first year and not want to return, or transfer to another school, all is not lost.  Here at DC College Counseling, we not only serve high school students and their families that are embarking on the college application process for the first time, we also enjoy working with students who would like to transfer to a better-fit school.  Every year we assist students from a variety of backgrounds who were unhappy with their first college selection.  

Many of our clients are interested to learn that countless schools, such as UVA, have much higher acceptance rates for transfer students than incoming freshmen.  In fact, we find that students who do transfer schools often have better and more options available to them than when they applied to college during high school.  No matter what your family seeks or needs, always know that many options exist and we are here to help.