Earlier in the week I wrote a blog post on the inevitable Chicken Little moment.
Need a humorous refresher?
Not long ago I was visiting with a potential candidate for our Associate Director position.
This candidate asked me about how I deal with student and parent disappointment over not getting into a top choice school.
I explained to this person that when you put yourself in the shoes of the students and parents during this process, you begin to understand why some of them go Chicken Little.
Here is my working thesis.
The degree of our response to any goal is determined by the depth of our investment in the process.
Let me explain.
When we go see a Razzie nominated movie like The Last Song (that's code for very bad), we walk out and shrug our shoulders at how bad Miley Cyrus's performance is, but that is about as far as our response goes.
Oh well, we're out 2 hours and $10 bucks.
Who is up for Orange Leaf?
But take a different medium.
Like a novel.
Right now, for example, the juniors are reading Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.
That sucker is 619 pages.
It's epic.
Now when our juniors finish that novel, are they simply going to shrug their shoulders.
Okay, some might.
But those are going to be the students who only read The Sparknotes version.
But for those who really read the novel,
there reaction will be much more visceral.
Some will absolutely love the last tableau that Steinbeck leaves us with.
Others will loathe it so much that they will start a Twitter thread with the hashtag #grapesofwrathbites.
Why is this?
Because these students read 619 pages!
They divested themselves of mental, emotional, and imaginative energies.
They coughed and spitted and crawled across Route 66 with the Joads.
They nurtured the dream of a cozy house with the white picket fence in the San Fernando Valley.
They came to care about the fates of Ma and Tom and RoseofSharon.
It's human nature, in other words, to react to the degree to which we have invested.
The same is true in so many other ways.
We study 3 hours for a Honors Chemistry exam, and we get an A - how do we feel?
Elated.
We put in 10 minutes during A block before the vocabulary test, and bomb it - how do we feel?
Indifferent.
I think back to moments where I've shown spontaneous bursts of emotion.
I think of the eurphoria of winning the state championship in basketball my junior year.
I cried tears of joy as I held the gold ball.
I think of the agony of losing the state championship my senior year.
I can still taste the salty tears I cried as the final buzzer sounded.
Why the tears?
Because distilled within those tears were my adolescent hopes, dreams, time investments, etc.
The same is true with college admissions results.
If we apply to a school that we have only investigated on Naviance,
or read about in Newsweek,
and then get denied - oh well, I am out a $60 dollar application fee ( my parent's are, not me) and a couple hours filling out the application.
But if I visit the school, and work my essays over ten times, and interview, and follow-up with email threads, and wear the college's sweatshirt to bed every night, and then get denied - it's a completely different reaction.
Therein lies the rub.
If we plunge our metabollic energies into the college research, selection, and admission process, we may discover in the end, that our efforts were seemingly in vain.
We took a great risk, and instead of a great reward, we suffered a great penalty.
On the flip side, we may experience the euphoria of gambling and hitting the jackpot.
But I guess that's just the deal.
In college admissions.
And in life,
Love anything with great intensity, and there is always the possibility of that love not being reciprocated.
Perhaps this is one of the taproot reasons why more students are looking for the easiest application, and the easiest route to a college destination, is because they fear the hard, the pressure, and the possibility of failure. They don't want to let their parents down. They don't want to see that illusion shatter into a thousand pieces.
So how do we avoid this?
It comes back, I believe to keeping first things first.
If we keep the student at the center of this process, then I submit that the fear will quickly give away to excitement.
Because when a student and family follows the "compass of right fit",
more times than not, the journey is a fulfilling one,
where initial anxiety is supplanted with sustained enthusiasm.
Therefore, it's important then to keep the end goal in mind.
We want our students to plunge themselves into the college process.
Because students who do this are always the most satisfied with the end results.
Where they will leave high school feeling validated for who they are,
and what they can bring to serve and enhance a college community.
Not long ago I got an email from a distressed colleague.
"What do you do," my friend asked, cutting to the chase, "when a senior comes in after she's been rejected from her top choice and believes her life is over?"
College counselors all dread these moments.
Because what you are dealing with is a minor apocalypse.
A lacerating revelation.
With a cataclysmic end.
Rejection.
No doubt, in those moments, there is nothing to say up front to mitigate the disappointment.
This student's world has orbited for the last year, heck four years, around that one particular school, like the earth revolving around the sun.
And now that sun has imploded,
sending her entire solar system into a state of chaos.
In this line of work, there will always be "chicken little" moments.
Moments where students and families will feel like the sky has fallen.
In late spring, we are showing our juniors and their parents the award-winning documentary film 500 words or less.
Here is the trailer for it.
This is a documentary about 4 seniors who go through the college admission process.
It's a must see for any student, parent, teacher, or coach that works with students in their senior year.
One of the most important questions the film poses involves how are we to responsibly handle the student who gets denied from their dream school.
What do we say?
And not say?
What do we do?
And not do?
Thinking through a positive response to a negative outcome is not something we really want to think seriously about.
All of us on some level would like to believe that we are beyond the vagaries of college admissions.
That our student doesn't have a chink in their armor.
Or a "kryptonite-like weakness".
That somehow all our time, money, and sweat will pay off.
That that A- in Honors Chemistry (the "road less travelled") will make all the difference.
That that project building a Habitat for Humanity home will earn an extra gold star.
That that expensive test prep course will reap benefits.
That our "contributions" or "connections" will come thru.
But in this admission climate,
of record application volume,
and historic low acceptance rates,
there are simply no guarantees at the top of the food chain.
And therefore there will be inevitable heartbreak.
One of the things I've learned is that you have to be proactive and candid earlier and earlier with students about reach school.
When a student comes in with a list of dream schools, for example,
I try not to crush their spirits.
Nobody wants to hear, "You can't get into any of these schools!"
Instead I try to calibrate their expectations.
I encourage them to pick two of their dream schools.
Just not five.
And then I work to help each student shore up the middle.
The more "target" schools,
the better chance that student has not only of getting accepted,
but procuring significant scholarship monies.
It's always a delicate tight rope to walk with students and families,
balancing objectivity and subjectivity,
cautious optimism with veiled skepticism,
always trying to keep the focus squarely on the student
and the schools that are the best fit for them.
I had a mentor once tell me,"Part of your job is for students/parents to leave frowning in the fall (of the senior year) so that they are smiling in the spring."
This is not easy for me.
I'm a "golden retriever" type,
which means I hate those awkward conversations.
I want students and parents to like me.
I want my kids to have the courage to go for it.
But I also don't want my kids to get so mangled by this process that they go limping into college.
I do my students and families a great disservice if I don't speak the truth with grace and love.
The truth may sting early, but it could prevent a gaping wound later.
I can't help but think of this scene when I think of Ivy League admissions.
Why is it that the Ivy League schools grow their business every year through customer dissatisfaction?
It's totally counter intuitive.
Last fall we had Maria Laskaris, Dean of Admission at Dartmouth College, on campus for an event. She was absolutely delightful. She talked about her daughter, a senior in high school. And going through the process as a mom. And how much she loved reading essays from students about their mothers. Ahhhh! But that was in September. In March Laskaris's alter ego takes over. She becomes the "Admission Nazi". "No Ivy for you!"
All joking aside.
What always amazes me is the glaring irony.
Every year more and more students (and parents and college counselors and board members) fall in love with these schools.
And every year these schools do not reciprocate that love.
They spurn. We woo. They spurn. We woo.
And the more these schools spurn, the larger the line is the next year with wooers.
