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The Four Seasons of Admissions

June 20, 2010

One of the reasons I always loved working as a college admissions officer is the cyclical nature of the business.  Its sequence of events is so dependable that I began to think of admissions as having four distinct seasons, very much like Nature’s own. These four seasons are called Recruitment, Selection, Yield and Assessment.   They each have different goals and timing, and they require different behaviors and skills from admissions officers.

It was a relief to know that as surely as night follows day, the rigors of recruitment travel would soon be replaced with the pleasures of reading applications of teenagers eager to be admitted.  When I was bleary eyed after reading the Nth application in lonely solitude, it was time to come together as a staff to make decisions about whom to admit.   Weeks of decision making in marathon sessions behind closed doors with good colleagues and way too much sugar and caffeine birthed a class as well as an esprit d’corps for having survived it.  The day the decisions were sent was always so bittersweet, filled with excited thoughts of kids we loved whose applications we championed, coupled with real sadness for passing by so many for whom there was no space.  That day would quickly morph into preparation for that final outreach to the admits in a campaign to win their hearts, minds and an acceptance of our offer.  Finally, after the big push was over, it was time to review our goals as an office, to learn what had worked and what had been ineffective and to begin planning for the next class.  After some desperately needed R & R, it was time to begin the cycle all over again.

Cycles are great for such intense jobs as admissions.   They relieve the pressure and help reset the mind.  The memory of spring makes the late winter bearable.  

In the coming weeks I’ll describe these four seasons of admissions in detail so that you can better understand the world of the college admissions officer.  I’ll offer advice about how and when to approach admissions staff and help you understand what to expect from those encounters based on the season.   As with all things in life, timing is everything.  For example, just as you wouldn’t think of calling a neighbor at midnight to chat about mundane neighborhood business, you shouldn’t contact an admissions officer during reading season to ask general questions about their school.  A question that might be interesting during Recruitment season can be viewed as an annoying waste of time during Selection when their energies are directed to a different task.  Having an awareness of this sensitivity will make you a more effective advocate for your child during the process.

Connecting the Dots:  Little Kids and the Great Recession

July, 10 2009

I think about culture.  In fact, I think about culture a lot.  I observe cultural signs and then wonder what it reveals about our values, fears and beliefs as a people, just as body language reveals our individual emotions.  I connect dots and try to extrapolate the future.  Mostly I’ve been pretty successful, or as successful as any futurist, I suppose.  This is what I’m thinking about this week…

It’s clear to me that the Great Recession, as New Yorkers refer to this period, is having an effect on the youngest generation and is molding their values and responses to challenge in a different way from the social markers of their predecessors.   How will said effects be expressed by these kids as they grow up?

A refresher of generational difference is in order here. There is much written about this already in print, but the topic is best captured in my opinion by the wonderful Bill Strauss and Neil Howe in “Millennials Rising” and “Millennials and Pop Culture”.

And a quick disclaimer: please pardon the simplistic descriptions done for the sake of brevity.   Strauss and Howe do a much better job than I. 

Here’s how it goes.  Although a generation is about 25 years in length, every five years or so there is a tack change due to rapidly changing social conditions, and the little kids growing up through those situations are molded by the behavior of the adults reacting around them.  This is actually a physical thing.  As children grow, their central nervous systems are acted upon by these cultural forces.  Responses to these energies are probably hard-wired in and lead to certain characteristic behaviors/responses expressed by that generation forever more.    For example, there are large differences between Baby Boomer values and those of the generations before and after them because of the social forces at work at the time.  The World War 2 generation that saved the Free World raised their Baby Boomers in the post-WW2 booming economy/pre-Watergate era of social justice.  These same Boomer kids went on to defy their parents with “hell no, we won’t go” and calls for integration.  The idealistic Boomers, who watched Neil Armstrong step onto the Moon live on TV (who doesn’t remember where they were at that moment?), infuriate Gen Xers who are far more practical, having been raised during financial recession and post-Vietnam defeat.  No Moon landings for them, since the Moon program had been cut by NASA for budget reasons.  Been there, done that.  L  The earliest wave of Millennials thereafter was born in relative peacetime in a growing economy (the GoGo 90s) raised by Boomers with Boomer values regarding social justice and physical comfort.   As a result, they are characterized by optimism about the future and a desire to “do good and also do well”.

But times have shifted again.  With so many adults frightened about last fall’s sudden loss of financial security and maybe even loss of employment, with so many having lost their homes or living in fear of losing them yet, with so many having seen their retirement funds decrease by half, with so much belt tightening, I’m wondering what this means for the littlest Millennials, those between, say, 5 and 10.  My guess is that they will grow to be more worried about basic needs – food, water, the environment  – and less about how many electronic gadgets they can collect and in how many colors.  My guess is that despite social unrest they will manage to be more tolerant of difference and be less likely to blame disaster on ‘others’, for they are Millennials afterall, connected in a vast web of social networking with peers all over the globe.  (Their concept of ‘friend’ morphs its original meaning from a noun to a verb.) This is a good thing, for I believe that this generation will be called upon to save not just the Free World, the First World or the Third World but Planet Earth herself.

I wonder how they will challenge their Xer parents (the youngest Millennials have Xer parents) who are often so intensely focused on that classic Xer well-strategized plan of success.  My guess is that these kids will be more likely to shake off the anxiety of college admissions, since to them it will be less important than the anxiety of living in a world with changing weather patterns and a dwindling fresh water supply.  But they’ll carry anxiety nonetheless.  I imagine that many are serving as lightening rods for their parents’ anxieties right now, and I wonder what this means for growing bodies.

Parents – be on the alert here.  Lightening rods are made to conduct high voltage electricity away from buildings and people and into the ground where it belongs, where it can safely be absorbed by Mother Nature.   Children are not designed to conduct high voltage energy (anxieties) and tend to absorb it instead.  They are soft tissue, pliable and receptive.  Therefore, it is very important during this period of extreme uncertainty that parents learn to contain and metabolize their own anxieties in the presence of their children.  Kids have enough pressure in their young lives than to take on the additional burden of adult-sized financial worry.

The thing to teach this generation is how to self-soothe.  They have much to do in the years ahead and they will need this skill much more than we did.

I’d love to hear from parents of kids aged 5 – 10.  What kinds of things are on your children’s minds these days?  Do you agree or disagree with what I’m postulating here?  Please send me a note at marilee@marileejones.com.

A Big Shout Out to NYC Public Schools

June 28, 2009

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend a breakfast here in NYC honoring the newest awardees of a prestigious scholarship program sponsored by a very well-known NY family.   Since 2000, this family’s foundation has grown to annually identify, select and support to college 15 students per year from NYC public schools across all boroughs.   Well over one hundred students now make up that distinguished clan.  Many have already finished college and are either working in the world or are advancing into the professions.   Those still in school are actively and lovingly supported by the foundation’s director, my good friend.

To say that this family is generous is an understatement.  And the only string attached to their hefty scholarship is the expectation that their Scholars ‘pay it forward’ wherever they can.  The students selected over these past 9 years have been extraordinary people and a real testament to how good NYC public schools really are.   These kids don’t necessarily have the top GPAs in their respective classes, but each has that something special, that spark of ambition, that admissions officers long to see in their applicants.

All students have their stories, of course, but these Scholars seem to have especially compelling ones, stories of immigration and culture shock, language difference and shattered families, resilience and support.  Many coming from countries few of us could find on a map, these young Americans stood when asked what they hoped to be one day and with starry eyes spoke clearly of their dreams.  And many referred to teachers at their high schools who inspired them, and whom they wished to emulate.  There was big high school pride in the room that morning, every bit as passionate as the private school pride of their compatriots.

I thought of how many people in this city would not invest in public school students like these because they are among the disenfranchised, an attitude stemming more from class than from race.   And yet, under the care of this family’s foundation, 99% of their Scholars have gone on to graduate from college, an unprecedented percentage not seen in my long experience as a college admissions dean.  Young adults, raised in challenging circumstances with few future prospects around them, are now in law school, medical school, business school, rocketing straight toward the dreams that propelled them through high school and caught the attention of sharp-eyed high school teachers who brought them to the attention of this family foundation and their scholarship.

So here is a big shout out to the NYC public school personnel who are charged with educating every child living in every conceivable situation in this great city, and who somehow manage to find the ‘inner diamond’ in so many.   And here’s another shout out to generous adults who invest in children of the most modest of means.  This iconic family’s foundation proves each year that young adults have a tendency to rise to the level of expectation placed upon them and that investing in such beautiful kids is its own reward.