College Guidance, Preparation, and Success

Phi Delta Kappa International, a 100 year old professional association for educators, has awarded Harvard University ThroughCollege Fellow Helen Janc Malone with an Innovation in Education Grant Award. The grant will assist in the ThroughCollege grounded theory research focusing on how low-income juniors and senior in urban public schools make meaning of their college information gathering experience? The study intends to shed light to the common themes and experiences youth might experience in their college application process that could open a dialogue about ways guidance counselors can modify their college guidance techniques to better assist students in the ever-changing and dynamic world of higher education. Results from this study will be made available on the ThroughCollege website resources section.

ThroughCollege created a Facebook Application for use with students called “What’s My Calling?” The description is this: “What should you do with your life? Have your friends help you figure it out! What’s My Calling helps you find a career that matches your personality by asking the people who know you best…your friends! Or….if you don’t feel like thinking about your career right now you can suggest to your friends what careers they should pursue!”

Here is our philosophy behind this application. When you know who you are from your experiences–your strengths, skills, values, and passionate interest–and you know what others know of you, you can combine these to start the journey to find your calling. For this facebook application you identify your career areas, and then most importantly type in specifically your ideas for what your calling is based on what you’ve identified. The powerful part is when you ask friends you know you to do the same for you…and then the app will bring it all together, show you the top career calling areas for you, and show you the ideas and insights your friends typed for you. This is our philosophy that drives this app. How do you think you find your calling? Email us at darin@throughcollege.com and we will blog about the findings we get from people. We will also be sharing more about using Facebook in class, with students, and within a standardized curriculum. We will also share more about the development of this activity as well as provide some accompanying curriculum materials on this site in a week or so.

A recent Phi Delta Kappa Kappan magazine published an article entitled “From the Mouths of Middle-Schoolers: Important Changes for High School and College,” in which the author William J. Bushaw addresses an optimistic outlook that middleschoolers have when entering high school in terms of their college aspirations. According to the study findings, conducted by Harris Poll Online database, 92% of middleschoolers expect to go on to college but 68% of them feel that they do not have adequate information on what courses to take in high school to get ready for college. Additionally, majority of students polled feel that the cost of higher education might prevent them from accessing college even if they meet academic requirements.

Although 1.4 million students are taking AP exams according to the 2001 U.S. Department of Education data, majority of these students come from middle and upper socio-economic classes. This data closely relates to another DOE finding, which shows that only 28% of our poorest students attend four-year institutions versus 66% of our richest students. Further, according to the College Board 2005 report Trends in College Pricing, the net price for public four-year institutions is now around $10,000 and the net price tag for private four-year institutions is now hovering at $19,400. Yet, as College Board data show, Pell Grants and other financial aid sources have been on a steady decline since the late 1970s.

With these troubling findings, it is no wonder that low-income students find academic readiness, financial resources, and access to information as the core barriers to their college attainment. As school counselors, staff, and teachers, we have a responsibility to focus our attention on these core barriers by ensuring that all our incoming high school freshmen get access to college prep courses and information on how to look for colleges, aid with college application process, and hold informational sessions with both parents and students on financing higher education. Further, as higher education professionals, we have a responsibility to work with our high schools to ensure that our standards and expectations are aligned, thus, potentially reducing the ever so growing need for remedial education. Finally, we all need to press our policymakers to reform the higher education financial structure, because it has been proven to be inefficient and inadequate for the majority of students who need financial aid. As we look forward into the future of college access, we should be able to tell our 92% of middleschoolers with college aspirations that they can indeed reach their goal.

Author: Helen Janc Malone

When writing your essay, there are several tips to keep in mind that will make your essay stand out in terms of professional-level quality. Here are just a few:

•    Always avoid clichés. Some common examples include: “in order to,”  “the best things in life are free,” “jump at the chance,” “when it rains, it pours,” etc.
•    Always remember that outstanding writing is often “great ideas, simply expressed.” In other words, use larger, less common words sparingly, in favor of simply and elegantly detailing a brilliant concept, idea, or experience. Remember, you want the admissions committee to relate to you on a very personal level.
•    In general, avoid repeating information that is already on your application, especially test scores. The exception to this is when you focus on a specific activity or experience and elucidate, specifically illustrating how it has cultivated your character/commitment to excellence/etc.
•    In any admissions essay, always spell out all numbers between one and one hundred.
•    Avoid the “life is a journey” theme as it’s been done to death (notice any other clichés here?). This is not the same as using the term “journey” at some point in your essay, which may very well be used appropriately.
•    When in doubt, maintain a more formal tone over a lesser one. At the same time, write from your heart. Excellent writing reconciles the balance between the two.
•    Concision, concision, concision. Read your essay several, if not many, times over, constantly paring down. Although succinct writing is not always the overriding quality in a formal essay, it is one of your top priorities. Sometimes, however, a general sense of flow can override concision.
•    Avoid being melodramatic. Use exclamation points sparingly, if at all. At the same time, a little drama in your essay can be quite effective, if used appropriately.
•    Effective transitions are some of the most overlooked aspects of a solid essay. When revising your essay, notice how the sentences flow together, then the paragraphs, then the ideas, and then the overall theme. This can go a long way toward making your essay much more interesting and readable.

Author: David Hammon

ThroughCollege and BrainReactions conducted a study with the purpose to identify ways to innovate college guidance for high school students. Currently the ratio of over 400 high school students for every one school counselor leaves much opportunity for innovation of college guidance. This includes both incremental improvements to the way it is currently done and more innovative solutions which represent significant changes to how one experiences college guidance in schools. With advancements in technology and knowledge, there are new opportunities to improve college guidance for students, and this exploratory study sought those ideas.

Based on preliminary research, this study focused on the following topic areas:
1. Problems with college guidance for high school students.
2. What a remarkable college guidance system could feature.
3. How school counselors can increase the quantity and quality of college guidance.
4. What college guidance that doesn’t require a counselor could be like.
5. What non-profits or non-school organizations can do to help students with college guidance.
6. How the internet can be utilized for college guidance.

Study Methodology

In late 2007 a focus group and brainstorm were conducted on the topic of innovating college guidance counseling for high school students. This brainstorm included 7 different idea generators who shared their experiences, their ideas, and their own individual analysis with a survey after the session. The lead researcher made meaning of the ideas and individual analysis to identify best ideas for future practice and themes that were important based on the perspectives of the idea generator participants. Four of the participants are undergraduate students, two graduate students, and one recent alumnus. This session was conducted through BrainReactions, an organization that conducts professional brainstorm and innovation sessions with trained idea generators. The session generated approximately 500 ideas. There were six significant topic areas for the session. Results were synthesized with a summary of the themes and most important idea cluster areas for each topic and question.

With additional research it is hoped that the results of this study can provide ideas to enhance college guidance for high school students. You can find the complete report on the ThroughCollege Educator Resources page.

Author: Darin Eich, Ph.D.

An extremely important but often overlooked aspect of applying to college is the admissions essay. In myriad ways, the essay allows the admission committee to understand a side of you that your application simply cannot reveal, which is also a crucial opportunity to sell your candidacy. Keep in mind that most admissions committees spend one-third of the total portion of time of any application on the essay.

To put things in perspective, every year in the United States, over half a million applicants will submit essays to their choices of schools. At least half will be rejected by their top choice while approximately eleven percent will be admitted to the country’s top schools. Furthermore, acceptance rates are at an all-time low. Thus, distinguishing yourself necessitates more than a strong GPA or SAT score – it requires a lucid, dynamic, compelling, and outstanding application essay.

The essay allows the admissions committee to evaluate applicants on the basis of many factors beyond test scores and grade point averages. Those factors may include, but are not limited to: extracurricular activities, exceptional skills or talents, unique work or service experience, trends or improvement in academic performance, measurable leadership potential, a history of overcoming hardship or disadvantage, maturity, compassion, or demonstrated success in a challenging work environment. Feel free to describe any factors you wish the committee to evaluate when considering your application. As long as it has ultimately shaped your character toward excellence or helped you determine your path, it can be worth using.

As a crucial pivot point, a well-written essay can subtly, yet substantially, affect your entire application. For example, if your grade point average is slightly below where it needs to be, a solid explanation based on demonstrated examples can overcome such a dilemma. Still, in such a case, this is only effective when backed by an unusual and realistic explanation, such as a parent’s illness or divorce, a series of challenging events, a move to a new country, etc.

In terms of choosing which activities and experiences to include, you will want to select the ones that most closely reflect your vocational goals, or those that most closely intimate your determination to pursue those goals. In other words, if you are trying to decide between your experience riding horses or being on the debate team for three years, consider which of these most closely resonate with your specific goals. If you are leaning toward pre-veterinary classes, for example, you would most likely mention the latter; whereas if you are leaning toward law, mentioning the former would be more effective. Obviously, if you can mention both in a way that maintains a coherent narrative while demonstrating how these experiences have positively shaped you, certainly do so.

Ultimately, as much as possible, you want to create a dynamic, powerful statement that illustrates your driven intellectual capacity (through academics, awards, lessons, scholarships, independent research, etc.) as well as a genuine emotional depth, while ultimately displaying the most driven, intelligent, passionate, dynamic, interesting, etc. aspects of who you are.

Author: David Hammond

I interviewed an old friend and a great education thinker, Helen Janc Malone who is a Doctoral Candidate in Education Policy, Leadership, and Instructional Practice at Harvard University Graduate School of Education. Helen and I were colleagues at the University of Maryland a handful of years ago. I knew she was knowledgeable and passionate about the issue of student pathways to college and asked her a few questions pertaining to college guidance counseling, our specific interest.

Darin: Do you think there is a need for better or more college guidance counseling for high school students?

Helen: The main problem is that the ratio is extremely large in most high schools, which means that counselors can’t effectively track individual student progress and really learn about their personal interests for college/career. Although some guidance counselors create school-wide college days, workshops, and small group counseling, it is often not enough. This posses a particularly big problem in large urban schools, where potentially future college kids might be overlooked. The “solution” really involves a culture change on the part of districts and principals. If they want to see more kids graduate and go on to college, they need to support their guidance counselor staff (hiring more staff, providing professional development opportunities, and integrating their programs into the curriculum). Parents also need to be involved through parent workshops on college access, which really ought to start in middle school, as it happens in affluent neighborhoods. Finally, students need to be given a better roadmap of what their responsibilities are to reaching college and more importantly, staying in college.

Darin: Do you feel there is a need for high school students to have a better personal development experience as a result of that application process, meaning they have a special opportunity for personal discovery, learning, and skill and identity development because of having to go through that significant college application process?

Helen: I think an application process is a great way for teens to gain fundamental writing and communications skills, learn how to market themselves, do some self reflection on who they are, where they are going, overarching goals, personal strengths/weaknesses. In that respect, you could benefit from developing a series of pre-application worksheets or  workshops to get students to think about those holistic issues, write them down, share in small group discussions, and talk to their families about. All this would open the door to richer discussion, reflection, feedback, that would lead to good application.  This is particularly an important exercise for kids who weren’t considering college but were doing well in school or had overall potential.

Darin: Do you feel that individuals other than guidance counselors (like teachers, mentors, parents, etc.) can provide a sort of pro-am guidance counseling if they had a system of activities to work with on students.

Helen: Yes. I think teachers have a role in encouraging students to seek counselors for advice, read materials about colleges, work with parents and staff to develop workshops on getting into college. Teachers can also use their writing assignment to reflect application or college essays to prep students better. There is a lot of room for innovation, but to get there you need to address the pressures teachers have to “show performance” (NCLB stuff). Perhaps, creating an after-school program (e.g., GEAR UP) could help educate both parents and teens about the college access issue. This could be valuable for community members as well (perhaps, there are unutilized resources or some of them might want to reenter higher ed).

Darin: Finally, who do you think would want a system of activities for college application prep and self discovery? The school? Counselors? School district? Certain non profit orgs? Parents? Parent groups?

Helen: All of these groups could benefit from a comprehensive college access program that encourages collaboration across these stakeholders, provides input and opportunities for each group, and utilizes existing community and school resources to motivate students and provide them support as they think about college.

Authors: Helen Jance Malone & Darin Eich, Ph.D.

Bostonindicators.org reports “In 2003—the most recent available data—Boston had 94 guidance counselors, a ratio of 1 counselor to every 664 students.” In education the student to teacher ratio is an important one. 40 to 1 gets most people upset. What about 664 to 1? This is the ratio of students to guidance counselor in Boston and the data is similarly alarming elsewhere. College guidance counseling is important work. Good guidance counseling can help students identify and realize life goals, choices, and careers that fit with who they are as people and their own potential. But many students never get a chance to meet with a guidance counselor to start this process? This is significant problem. Because there are on average hundreds and hundreds of students for every one school counselor and counselors have many more responsibilities than meeting with students one on one to advise them on the college application and selection process, one cannot expect the school counselor to devote more time to this since they are extremely busy. The obvious solution would be for the school to add more school counselors and bring the ratio down with doubling their counselors. This is still a high ratio and it is widely known that schools don’t have a lot of money to bring new staff on. So ultimately there is a need for innovation of how college guidance counseling is happening in schools. We have been researching, thinking about, and generating ideas for solutions to this problem. Here are some innovations we are proposing based on insight, research, and experience.
1) Utilize a system that allows people that are interested in guiding, advising, or mentoring high school students to do guidance counseling. Consider them pro-am college guidance counselors. These could be teachers, coaches, and other staff at a school or mentors in the community or other organizations. They may have interest or expertise in working with students but not necessarily counseling or college application and selection strategies.
2) Provide a way for school counselors to counsel more students on the college application process through a group format rather than individual one on one sessions. For instance instead of meeting with one student they can meet with three to five during that hour. Over the course of the year many more students will get the chance to have at least one meeting with a school counselor. Having other students present will also allow for a different kind of learning and allowing the students to help each other as well. The challenge here is that this is a different kind of counseling requiring different kinds of activities.
3) Institute a formal program or course in the school that all students should participate in and they can receive college guidance counseling through this course or program. Many pre-college programs provide guidance counseling through this strategy. Again, it is a new departure for schools requiring a curriculum, teacher knowledgeable in this, and formal time in the school day.
4) Provide a series of activities for students and parents to do the guidance counseling themselves. It is a do-it-yourself strategy. It is like going to a cafeteria where you do everything yourself including selecting the food, filling your own drink, bussing your own table vs. being waited on at a restaurant. This will require a series of activities that is effective in simplifying the process and engaging the students.

We have created the ThroughCollege system to help solve the problem of too many students, too few school counselors, and too important a process for one’s life. The system is designed to be used in these alternative ways to innovate the experience students’ have in preparing for college applications.

Author: Darin Eich, Ph.D.

By eliminating early admission programs in 2006, Harvard and Princeton took an important step in making college admissions more equitable, but much more needs to be done in order to ensure low-income students are able to make an effective transition from high school to college. Before moving to Madison, I worked for three years as a college counselor at Eastside College Preparatory School, a school in East Palo Alto, Calif. Eastside serves low-income students aiming to become the first in their families to attend college. Like many high-schoolers across the country, these indefatigable students took challenging academic courses, participated in extracurricular activities, and completed three to four hours of homework each night. Unlike many of their peers, however, these students had no idea how to apply to college. No one in their families had gone to college. The students and their parents did not know the gauntlet of college admissions consisted of essay writing, teacher recommendations, and financial aid forms. During my first day on the job, one of the parents off-handedly asked me, “What’s a college counselor?”

Every student should have access to guidance throughout the college application process, but that ideal lies far from the current reality. In most public high schools one counselor serves 490 students. And this counselor’s main role is organizing a student’s schedule, not providing college application advice. Expensive private college counselors have filled this void for those students whose families can afford to pay for them, but low-income students working to become the first in their families to attend college get left behind.

I’ll never forget the first College Night I held at Eastside — the intent gazes of the students and their parents and the nervous energy in the room. As they sat there listening to me, soaking up the information on college selection, I realized I would need to guide them through each and every step of the process. Fortunately, the class size of 13 students was extremely small, so I was able to provide each student with individualized attention.

This level of attention is what it took in order to help these students navigate the process and break their family’s cycle of not earning a college degree.

While Harvard and Princeton have done an admirable thing by eliminating early admission, they and other institutions of higher learning could use their political clout and financial resources to motivate public high schools to ensure each and every student receives ample college guidance. In addition, colleges and universities should expand and enhance outreach programs like the PEOPLE program run here at the UW-Madison. PEOPLE exposes low-income, minority students to college and instills in them the belief they can start a new family tradition of earning a college degree.

Low-income students deserve the same quality of college admissions guidance as received by their more affluent peers. As for those students who sat in that College Night? Last spring they graduated from colleges like Columbia, Stanford, and Harvard.

Author: Matt Messinger