Our family went to college night at Sacred Heart school in Atherton
yesterday. Parents and soon-to-be-college-applicants from local
high schools met with about 100 college admissions representatives
from schools all over the USA (and a few from outside). Our
daughter Jessica is a Junior in High School at
Harker in Saratoga and is
deep into considerations of where she
will apply next year.
During the first hour, the hundreds of parents and students were batched into groups to work with college admissions staff on
a sorting exercise.
Each group had to decide about three applicants (Mike, Emily, Lucy)
as to whether to accept, waitlist, or deny their application to a
fictional college. We reviewed their transcripts, test scores, letters
of recommendation, and personal backgrounds. It was an interesting way
to teach everyone the vocabulary and point of view of college admissions.
Our group voted to admit Lucy, waitlist Mike, and deny Emily but it was
a close race between Lucy and Mike. At the end, one of our two
college admissions staff said she was there for Mills in Oakland (a
women’s college) so for her Mike just wasn’t qualified!
Since I run SEED mentoring program admissions on much the same lines
as college admissions, it was fascinating to see how their systems
worked. I might do some informal benchmarking with the schools my
daughter applies to next year.
When we were done with the exercise, everyone went to the gym to talk
with the admissions staff. Jessica is currently interested in about
ten schools, not all of which sent reps to this event. For the schools in our sights, key questions were about their music
program, their international studies program, and whether they had
a women’s wrestling team. Sadly, no one admitted to having a
women’s wrestling team. Some had music programs in theory only, not
performance (University of Chicago dropped of the list with that
answer), some offered international studies but not as a major
(for example, Wesleyan University offers only a certificate). George
Washington University offers a “Presidential Arts Program in
Theatre, Dance, Music, and Fine Arts” which looked very interesting.
We filled in lots of “send me more info” postcards and collected
heaps of brochures and catalogues for further study. We have our
summer’s work cut out for us!
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