Collegewise

Don't Fall For These Admissions Myths

When it comes to college admissions, knowledge is power. So make sure you don’t fall for these five popular myths.

1. Connections get you in
That letter of recommendation from the alumnus who is also your father’s business partner isn’t likely to get you in. And neither is the fact that your neighbor knows someone on the admissions staff.

Admissions officers are looking for motivated students who can add to their campus communities, not the ones who know the “right people.” So, unless the brand new research center at your dream school has your family’s name on it (which would help), don’t count on your connections to get you in.

College of Santa Fe

Santa Fe, New Mexico

The college process can be a daunting, exhausting journey.  After taking the SAT three times, visiting campuses on both coasts, and participating in four extracurricular clubs, traveling around the world seems easier. 

If you can identify with this feeling, you come from a pretty impressive lineage—in 1859 the founders of the College of Santa Fe in Santa Fe, New Mexico employed boats, trains, horses, and wagons to trek for two months from France to the Western United States to found this small college on Native American lands.  Since those early days in the Old West, the College of Santa Fe has grown to become a bastion of creativity for 1,900 students from across the United States.  With such a history and an influx of eager students, the College of Santa Fe must be worth the trek.

Antioch College

Yellow Springs, OH

Looks aren’t everything.

Maybe you don’t fit the mold in high school. You don’t look like the other kids. You don’t dress like they dress. You don’t think like they think. You don’t know where the cool party is and you don’t care. You might even be more intelligent than your grades makes you look. You’re a thinker, a dreamer, an idealist. You can’t wait to escape high school and surround yourself with a bunch of other bright, interesting, wonderfully weird students who didn’t fit the mold in high school either and who think you look just fine.

Have we got the college for you...

St. Olaf College

Northfield, Minnesota

Pull up next to me at a stop light and you’re likely to see me belting out a classic rock ballad at the top of my lungs. In the confines of my car or when surrounded by my fellow karaoke amateurs, I think of myself as a pretty decent chanteuse. But I’m quite sure that my vocal stylings would elicit horrified reactions from the 3,000 students at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, a school where music is taken very seriously. I’m quite sure that joining the world renowned choir requires more talent than jamming out with my air guitar to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” does.

Boise State University

Boise, Idaho

I’m a new convert to the cult of college football fanaticism, but I have thrown myself head-first into the obsession. I hold no allegiances—any game will do. I’m crazy about the special traditions and nuances that are as vital to each team as football helmets, cheerleaders, and a coaching staff. But it will be difficult to top what was arguably the greatest finish in college football history when Boise State stunned heavily-favored Oklahoma 43-42 in last week’s Fiesta Bowl.  The Broncos sent the game into overtime with a hook-and-lateral play that went for a 50-yard touchdown on fourth-and 8 with 7 seconds remaining in regulation.  When they boldly decided to go for victory in overtime and ran a game-winning statue-of-liberty play that sent the fans into Bowl victory pandemonium, I had to know more about the Broncos and Boise State.

Earlham College

Richmond, Indiana

I am obsessed with writing. If I've written an especially good email, I'll save it, just to relish in my writing chops whenever I feel like it. I receive daily vocabulary words in my inbox from dictionary.com—if you hear me mumbling alone in my office, I'm probably trying to memorize a word like "carapace" or "odium." So I am sure that I would have loved attending Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. Before any class discussion can occur, students must respond in writing to what they've just read. And they do so with reckless abandon, unfettered by the prospect that a classmate may disagree with their opinion.

Blogworthy

We spend our days at NACAC assessing whether each experience is blogworthy and abiding by the guiding principle that not everything we do here makes for interesting reading.  Rather, we'll try to share the conversations, sessions and experiences that are making our stay at NACAC so memorable.  With that guiding principle, here was NACAC, day two.

This book has been getting a lot of press lately, so you can imagine how much it's being talked about in the company of NACAC.  Fortunately (or sadly, depending upon how college-geeky this really makes us), Kevin and Arun each read the book during their respective flights to attend NACAC, so they've been able to weigh in with their own thoughts.  At one point yesterday, Ted O'Neil from the University of Chicago asked Kevin, "So, you read The Price of Admission?  What did you think of it?"  Kevin was an English major in college and thus enjoyed years of training in criticial analysis and discussion of classic literature.  But for Kevin, this was much, much cooler than being asked his thoughts about Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (a book Kevin read in college, but never managed, even for one second, to understand).   

Kevin's take on The Price of Admission, by the way, is that the book is somewhat predicated on the assumption that a kid who is "left out" of a spot in the nation's most selective colleges is somehow at a life disadvantage.  You don't have to spend much time around Collegewise to pick up that we don't believe you have to go to a school on the US News list to be happy and successful.  Still, it's not a simple issue, and we've enjoyed being a part of the discussions here with fellow counselors and admissions officers.   

Everybody Loves Arun

Day one at NACAC reminded us of two things--We come here as much for the people as we do for the workshops, and the vast majority of the people working in admissions are smart, honest, and interested in doing what's right for kids.

We have to start this entry by acknowledging that it seems as if everyone attending NACAC has worked with or heard of Arun.  And all of them seem to like and respect him.  Alex and Kevin have had absolutely no qualms riding Arun's coattails throughout our stay here.  And what colorful coattails they are.  Yesterday, Arun was sporting a look that involved a pink dress shirt, red track jacket, and blue pinstriped blazer--yes, all at the same time.  Alex and Kevin admitted that while we would look absolutely ridiculous in that outfit, Arun somehow managed to pull it off.  We're kicking ourselves for not photographing him.  One counselor and at an elite New York private high school admired Arun's look with the comment, "Wow, look at you!  You look so LA glossy."  Thus far, nobody has referred to Kevin or Alex as "glossy." 

Back On Tour...

Day one of our full-fledged college tours got off to a rocky start when it took us nearly 30-minutes just to find the freeway near our hotel.  We were distracted by all the pedestrians who mistook us for a cab and  tried to hail us.  Who can blame them?  We're driving this.

No, this is not a random car that we saw in a parking lot and thought, "Hey, it would be funny if we took a picture of that monstrosity and put in the blog!"  This is actually our rental car...for one more day.  Until then, we're going to fashion a large "Off Duty" sign to attach to its roof just to get people to stop trying to flag us down for rides around town.