Credo
I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to get any posts out last week. My husband was out of town, and my kids got nasty colds (not COVID!). So, I focused on my existing clients, rather than you, my future client (I hope).
I also didn’t manage to drag my sniffling brood to church on Sunday. When we do go, we recite the Nicene Creed to remind ourselves what we believe.
It’s often a useful exercise to pin down what we believe, though I might not say the same thing in the middle of a long brainstorming session on mission and vision statements.
College admission is much less important than religion (she wrote, emphatically). But I thought it would be handy to formulate something about what I believe about admission. Without a moral center, it’s easy for empirical thinking to slide off into cynicism.
Here goes.
Every family can decide how hard to try. You know your family’s circumstances and constraints better than anyone else. You know and love your kid more than anyone else. You get to choose your priorities. I offer the full buffet of admission-optimized choices, and your family can choose the tradeoffs that make sense for you.
Families deserve the best information, so they can make the best decisions. Choosing and paying for a college are choices that alter lives, so I want to give families the best information I can. There are three corollaries to this point.
Wishful thinking is comfortable, but it often doesn’t survive contact with reality. I think it’s my duty to be candid about choices that are infeasible or risky, just as much as it is my duty to convey that advice gently and kindly.
I also try to be candid about uncertainty. Sometimes reality denies us total certainty. We assemble and weigh evidence, make the best estimate we can, and soldier on, rather than throwing our hands up and admitting defeat.
I really do mean the best information. I work hard to make sure the map of the world in my brain reflects the actual terrain. That means performing extensive research, identifying and checking hidden assumptions, updating views incrementally as new information comes in, and pushing my mind to dig into ambiguity rather than slide off of it. My clients benefit from this doggedness.
Numbers often describe reality better than words do. Even when admissions officers don’t intend to make decisions quantitatively, they do. Statistics describe human endeavor even when the humans in questions were English majors. If you hire me, you’re getting someone who can interpret regression results. Not many people in this business can.
Colleges don’t reliably tell the truth. Sometimes they probably don’t mean to, and sometimes they are coy or misleading on purpose. Why else would Harvard try to keep some internal documents under seal? That’s why we have to look beyond what they say about themselves, preferably into firsthand information revealed under oath.
Family harmony, rest, and fun matter. I equip families to understand what matters most and what won’t help their kids get in—or maybe will only have a small effect—so they can maintain time for sleep, prom, track meets, first dates, and family dinner. You probably cherish memories like this from your high-school years. The cost of wasted effort is too high.
Colleges’ self-interest drives admission. Once we understand this bedrock principle, everything clicks into focus. Colleges are optimizing for certain goals. For most of them, revenue and prestige are high on the list. If your kid can show traits that align with colleges’ goals, he or she will face better odds.
Admissions officers’ preferences matter too. The suits impose the major boundaries of institutional self-interest, but admissions officers have a little wiggle room within those. Their decisions reflect their beliefs and habits of mind. So we want to align your kid’s application with what admissions officers like and how they think.
Admission isn’t mysterious, but some parts of it aren’t intuitive. I’ve worked out the exact steps to align your kid’s application with colleges’ preferences. Some of those are obvious; did you know it’s a good idea to take hard classes? Some of them are less so.
Lead time matters, because high school success is path-dependent. The most important choices for college admission happen best in eighth or ninth grade. A strong application depends on a workback plan. Fortunately, making a few careful decisions in eighth or ninth grade isn’t hard; you just have to know what they are.
Every kid can give him or herself the best shot possible. An ambitious student can climb up toward the top of the band of schools where admission is feasible for him or her, even if Harvard isn’t in the cards.
Immigrants are the engines of our meritocracy. I think it is a patriotic duty to help their kids achieve. There is a lot of unnecessary confusion about college admission, and I am truly delighted to guide immigrant families through it.
Does that sound appealing to you? Would you like to work together? I’d love to help your family one-on-one or in a live, online seminar. You can book either service on my website.
