MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Please keep to the thread’s title.
Of course it is a redistribution scheme. That doesn’t automatically mean it is wrong, but when the topic comes up, let’s at least be honest about it.
“Isn’t there somewhere a national registry of HS guidance counselors? If so, it would seem trivial for a university admissions office to electronically seek out students with the qualifications that are desired.”
One has nothing to do with the other. Even if such a registry existed and even if there were such specificity that College A was now looking for oboe players and College B for hockey players, I think you’re dreaming to think that most HS guidance counselors either a) “know” that Susie is an oboe player and Bobby is a hockey player, or b) have any input whatsoever on where Susie and Bobby apply. They are like bank tellers or dispensers for transcripts and nothing more. It’s rather like saying there’s a national registry of bank tellers that will identify where I’m spending my money.
Most HS GC’s don’t know any more about a student than the piece of paper the student hands them. And they dutifully copy it down. “Susie is a (oh, what does it say) oboe player.”
^ Perhaps what your wrote, Pizzagirl, is true of some overwhelmed, or lackadaisical, public high school GCs, but even then I doubt your general claim.
At large public high schools, don’t the GCs know through the grapevine (public announcements, student paper, newsletters, yearbooks, etc.) which students are the outstanding musicians, athletes, etc.? Are they SO busy or SO complaisant that they have zero idea which kids at the HS are uber talented?
PRIVATE high school GCs certainly know which students are proficient in music, athletics, etc. If these GCs were to receive an email from (say) Yale stating that (say) a great oboe player was sought – and the HS actually had one – I’d bet that the GC would make a beeline to that student and encourage him/her to consider applying to Yale.
All high schools, public or private, love to brag about admissions to elite universities. It’s a win-win for the student and the high school. A good match for everyone.
My point, though, was that the “oboe vs tuba” trope often put forth by elite university admission committees is a canard. I sincerely doubt that the AOs have a master list of desired talents and that they then try to select applicants with those desired talents. I can’t imagine that they dig that deep.
As an aside: I don’t think that it’s hard for savvy financial IT folks to figure out where you are spending your money. University IT folks could also be that savvy, if they really wanted to. It’s called data mining. There is no real privacy anymore.
^ The distinction is that the GCs should know which kids in the HS have singular, extraordinary talent – regional and/or national recognition, copious awards, etc. Not simply that Susie likes to play oboe or that Bobby has fun playing hockey. Highly-selective universities are most interested in the very “pointy” kids, not well-rounded kids that dabble. I thought that everyone knew that.
“At large public high schools, don’t the GCs know through the grapevine (public announcements, student paper, newsletters, yearbooks, etc.) which students are the outstanding musicians, athletes, etc.? Are they SO busy or SO complaisant that they have zero idea which kids at the HS are uber talented?”
In large public high schools, unless they are particularly affluent, the GC’s are also dealing with the students who are truant, who are in trouble with the law, have had a parent die and need an adjustment period to get back to school, etc. – college counseling is just one thing on their list. In most public high schools, again unless they are particularly affluent, the GC’s themselves did not go to “elite” schools and unless they’ve worked really hard at it, tend to be most familiar with how to get kids into the state schools and/or how to get money, and not in the finer points of what Dartmouth or Middlebury are looking for this year. My kids’ high school is in the top 6% of our state, is in an affluent middle to upper middle class area, and - as is typical - the kids had 1 counselor for maybe 200 - 300 seniors. Not enough to know that Susie is great at the oboe. We’ve discussed this a million times before on CC and the consensus has always been that you really only get good counseling from private high schools and a handful of the most affluent public ones.
The AO folks know what areas the school is looking for. Absolutely. In several schools (prob not all) they will take the group of apps that have X characteristic and will also run those apps past the expert in question at the school. The expert might be the fencing coach, or the chemistry prof who just got a grant from the military and is looking to fill a newly funded lab, or a Magyar professor that has grants to fund a Hungarian-studies major in full. The AO people retain their expertise and authority, usually, in finding matches in general for the school. The expertise areas are checked by the person on campus in charge of that area.
DF, you say “absolutely.” Can you tell us how you know this? I’m not doubting you, I’d just like to have supporting evidence because I’ve always heard that AOs were overwhelmed with the flood of applicants and by the time crunch.
I’ve speculated upthread that AOs don’t really go the extra mile and contact coaches, music directors, etc. AFTER the application was received. Sure, if the coach, etc. submitted a letter in support of the application, and this letter is in the applicant’s file when it’s reviewed, then knowing that the fencing coach really needs, say, great foil (vs epee and sabre) fencers will matter. (Same with the music director and the purported oboe-vs-tuba specificity.)
Does it really make sense that the AOs take the time to contact the experts during the hectic application review cycles? Isn’t it instead incumbent on the applicant to make contact with coaches, music directors, etc. directly and secure letters of support?
If I were an AO, and I reviewed an application from a renowned oboe player but a letter of support was absent in the file, I’d wonder why the applicant didn’t bother to reach out to the music director, which would plant a seed of doubt whether the applicant is really that passionate about playing music at my university.
Definitely be more clear and distinguishable. Scholarships would be a good start
@Sally_Rubenstone I agree, a real list of specific aid opportunities and aspects of the college that set it apart, rather than pictures of students smiling in the middle of a course or quotes with a bolded “[YOU]”
OU wasn’t even on D’s radar until she got a very detailed folder containing info about their national merit scholarship. We assume she received this because of her decent PSAT and ACT scores, though we don’t know how schools get this info if we don’t specifically release it. It was very informative and included a personal note from a current student. The school definitely on her prospective list now.
Going back to the original question, why does a particular college want a particular student’s attention? Are they looking for any and all students or is there something they are specifically looking for? If so, state why you are contacting the student and why you want their attention in your e-mail, snail mail, You Tube videos, website, etc.
The vast majority of mail (e or snail) we receive seems as if they are just fishing for random applicants to raise their stats or to increase their revenue. A friend’s son has a D in math and a C- in PE and after he took his low scoring PSAT, he received an e-mail stating “We’ve noticed you!”
As far as public school counselors (or any counselor for that matter)…
While I agree that counselors in public schools are over worked, I think the student bears a lot of the responsibility. Students know (or should know) that the counselors are going to have to write a letter of rec so those that care, make the effort to get to know the counselor over the four years in high school. They should look at it as a four year long job interview.
Communication doesn’t always need to be by appointment but can often be done by e-mail. Students who care go to the college and career nights and they make sure their counselor sees them there. They send follow up e-mails thanking the counselor after he/she helped them change their class schedule. They listen attentively and ask questions when the counselors give talks about scheduling the next year’s classes. They look up and say “hello” when they pass the counselor in the hallway.
The kids who care make sure that their counselor knows who they are. The counselor might need to read the brag sheet about whether the kid plays soccer or plays the flute but the letter the counselor writes is more about who the kid is and not a list of what the kid does.
The kids who make an effort make sure that their counselor knows that they are engaged in school, want to go to college and are polite, responsible human beings. They make sure the counselor knows them well enough to describe their personality and how they will fit in when at a college or university.
@whatisyourquest – not to get too far afield from the intent of this thread, which is how can a school get your attention, I want to quickly address your questions.
Soliciting a letter of support I’m sure is a wonderful help to adcoms in alerting them to a given talent. Applications vary, though. An adcom doesn’t want to miss something vital that’s “hidden” deep in an application, good or bad. A first-gen applicant may not be savvy enough to get a letter of support or have that confidence level or social capital to solicit one. Adcom departments vary too, and I’m sure vary widely, but trust me when I say that the grouping of apps for others to review does happen. Or even flagging one application for another person’s opinion.
It also happens that an applicant maybe doesn’t realize that there’s a need for a given talent. As often happens, there is an X fellowship available for X activity on the application. The school is overjoyed to find three applications that year with X activity. Maybe this year they will be able to award that fellowship and make the donor happy! Those apps could be grouped for review by the administrator in charge of that fellowship.
Do all adcoms group apps for review? Every single time? Probably not. Some schools really do make the effort to read every single application more than once, even the patently non-qualified ones. Really and truly. Some schools are more stats oriented while others really care about that “why this college” essay, while still others are accepting widely in order to overfill their entering class because they fell short the year before. And year to year, I’d venture that the needs of the schools change.
As far as the crunch time and “do they have time” – again, the mileage of each adcom will vary, but adcoms do hire during crunch time precisely so that multiple sets of eyes actually do read each and every application (for some schools) while others might review a more narrow stack of apps. With electronic apps this crunch time has reduced somewhat because apps don’t need to be physically opened, scanned and transferred to electronic files any more or hole-punched and placed in paper folders. The info pulls directly into databases at some schools . . . new software. Again, each school prob has its own style. There’s an article by a reader for Berkeley and what instructions she was given to ensure “holistic” read of the thousands of applications there. As I said, each adcom is different, but it stands to reason that a school will submit apps for a general read and will group them also for further review by the on-campus expert in a given area. I mean, wouldn’t you do this type of thing to be sure of your best work? It just stands to reason.
Now back to–How a College Gets Your Attention!
Why colleges need “exposure”? Why can’t they build healthy relationships with local high schools, admit local kids, provide them good education, help them to find jobs … and grow up their fan base?
^ If all kids and all colleges were alike, that might work.
I definitely agree with @Pizzagirl .
My high school viewed us as “CC or Rutgers kids”. The top students went to Rutgers, the rest of us went to CC. I was one of three students going out-of-state, in a class of 275. Our guidance counselors were more concerned who was failing or arrested than our college decisions.
My counselor wanted an “explanation” of why CC wasn’t right for me, before pressuring me to attend his local alma mater. He then gave me a list of overpriced privates, I discovered my university on my own. He was VERY inexperienced with out-of-state schools; I had to explain what the CSS profile was!
Ugh, what a terrible experience. Low-income schools can make bright students very unmotivated.
I also agree with @Pizzagirl about large public high schools. Adding to her list is that public high schools that have an affluent or active PTA can raise funds to help the college office, but still, there’s a lot to be desired. GCs are overworked, underpaid, and often shuffled from one group of kids to the next. They may have freshmen and sophomore Last-name A-H students one year, several hundred of them, but then a GC quits and they get switched to the new class of incoming freshman, and the other group gets a brand new GC–who doesn’t know any of them at all. It’s a logistical nightmare to realize they also have to generate the LOCs for these kids and transcripts. Actually have time to advise students about where to go to college with their specific talent? That’s the job of the parents.
Every person who works in admissions should be required to be a fake parent (or hs senior) at least once a year.
They should be required to log into the website to register for a tour, drive to campus and park with all the other parents and kids, sit through the presentation (if there is one), and tour the campus with other parents and teens. After three kids and umpteen campus visits, I am positive that most people in admissions have no idea how their university sells (or doesn’t) itself on those tours.
Take my own state flagship, toured with all three of mine on four different occasions, as an example. My oldest attended and graduated from there, and worked in the “visitors” center, where, on a fairly frequent basis, a random family would stop by on a whim after a tour of other area universities, or on their way up or down I-95. The family would park in the visitor center lot, run into the visitor’s center to ask about a tour and to get a parking pass, walk back out to the (metered) parking lot to put the free parking pass from the visitor’s center on their dashboard, only to find that they had already gotten a parking ticket in the 15 minutes it took to get a pass. The ticket could be forgiven, but only at a completely different building, elsewhere on campus. Not a terrific marketing ploy for the university. Guess which kid will not be applying? Guess which parents hate the place before ever even touring it?
The tours of some campuses are terrible to the point that I can’t believe that anyone from admissions has ever actually taken a tour. Again, at our state flagship, the tour seems to be doing its best to show the least attractive, least interesting parts of the campus. It really seems as though the place couldn’t care less whether or not anyone applies or attends.
I have never seen a piece of unsolicited snail mail or email that made a bit of difference one way or another.
To capture my son’s attention, a college might have considered delivery of a package to him personally at school by a drone!
University of Montana sent me a set of posters showcasing all the natural beauty around the school. I really liked that.