Always Look For the Flagpole
“Always look for the flagpole, Will.”
This was the advice that Darryl, my Director of Admissions, gave me when I was a brand new admissions officer going through training. At the time, I didn’t think much about this advice. I was busy memorizing facts about the college I was working for, booking flights for travel season, and adjusting to life in a new state.
My first trip was to Tennessee, a state I had never visited. On the morning of my first high school visit in Nashville, I parked my Ford rental car in the visitor lot, got out, and looked around. I saw a sea of students, teachers, and parents walking around outside the school, but no front door. Scanning the leafy campus, I spied the flagpole behind some bushes. I was immediately brought back to the advice Darryl gave in the basement conference room of the admissions building.
I confidently marched towards the flagpole and found the main school entrance. In my first admissions season, I visited so many different types of high schools: large and small, public and private, rural and urban, and everything in between. The one constant at nearly all of these schools? You guessed it: the flagpole.
The Problem
During my first year, in a single day, I might visit an urban charter school, a parochial school, a large suburban public school, and a small, rural boarding school. At some high schools, the guidance counselor was responsible for hundreds of students and had numerous other responsibilities including teaching, coaching, and advising. At others, the counselor was solely focused on college counseling and had a small caseload of only 30–40 students.
A small caseload allows the college counselor more time to get to know students and parents; it also enables them to stay on top of the rapidly shifting college admissions landscape. Counselors with smaller caseloads are able to write precise, vividly detailed letters of recommendation for each advisee, while counselors with hundreds of students are lucky if they find time to add a few custom sentences for each student. At some schools, the vast majority of students were on free and reduced lunch, while at others, the cost of attending was more than $50,000.
The most important lesson I learned during my first year in admissions was how profoundly secondary education and college guidance vary from school to school.
It became very clear to me that inequality plagues our high school to college pipeline. Throughout the admissions process, these disparities further disadvantage students who are already disadvantaged.
The data surrounding college counseling paints a bleak picture for many students and an impossible situation for many guidance counselors. Here are some of the most recent numbers:
- The average public school student receives an average of 38 minutes of college admissions advice from their guidance counselor. This means that they are receiving less than 10 minutes per year on college counseling.
- The average ratio of students to counselors is 484:1, while the recommended ratio by the American School Counselors Association is 250:1 (which is still ridiculously high).
- Only three states — New Hampshire, Vermont, and Wyoming — have a student to counselor ratio that is at or above the recommended ratio.
- In Arizona, the ratio of students to counselors is 924:1. In California, it’s 760:1.
All of this causes a post-secondary guidance gap that leaves most students and parents lost in a maze of confusing information. With such massive ratios of students to counselors and very little one-on-one time between counselor and students, even the savviest families struggle to navigate the college admissions process.
Certainly, some families may be able to hire a private college counselor and others may have the support of a community organization. These resources can certainly help make the process more manageable. However, the vast majority of students are not able to afford an outside consultant and may not qualify for support from a college access program.
This creates the guidance abyss, and many students and families slip through the cracks. The gap in information and advice is especially true for first-generation and low-income students. And even parents who did attend college probably went through a much different process than the one students are going through today. Admissions has never been more complex, competitive, and mysterious. A trusted admissions sherpa can make a big difference, but most students have no idea where to turn for advice they can trust.
This college guidance gap leads to a variety of other problems for students including:
- Undermatching. This occurs when a student fails to attend a college that is a good academic fit for them. This happens more often to low/middle-income and first-generation students, who are unlikely to apply to any selective colleges (even if they are qualified).
- Massive amounts of student debt. While many colleges offer strong financial aid packages, others do not meet a student’s full financial need knowing that students can fill in the “gap” with student loans. Many colleges are now using scholarships as a way to “discount” tuition for families who do not need financial aid (as they will still be paying tuition). This can divert money away from need-based financial aid, forcing some students to take out loans that they may not be able to afford. Students need to know about financial aid and scholarships before they apply to college so they can factor that into their college list.
- General confusion about college options. There are nearly 4,600 degree-granting institutions in the United States and students may not know what their best options are.
- Lower graduation rates. It is not a surprise that college success outcomes are less than stellar. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, only 39.8% of students graduate from college or university within four years. Even if we expand the time frame to a six-year graduation rate, the percentage is still below 60%. This means that students are missing out on multiple years of job opportunities and earning potential. Instead, they are having to pay for an additional two years of college (with the cost of college going up each year).
The high school to college transition is extremely important, yet many students are simply being set up for failure.
The Solution
At Story2, we saw a critical opportunity to create a bold, new online course that helps address this guidance gap and empowers students and families to succeed in the admissions process.
The goal of this new course, College Admissions: What to Do Right Now (Beta), is to democratize guidance counseling for all students and families. We have distilled the admissions process into monthly, simple, actionable lessons that focus on steps you must take to get into best-fit colleges. A “best-fit” college is one that you are academically qualified for, is financially feasible, and will provide you with meaningful opportunities.
This course is available for free so that all students, regardless of their high school or resources, can access expert admissions insights. The admissions process sometimes seems like a race where the runners are all starting at different points. We want to make sure that everyone is starting from the same spot.
To quote Hamilton, the team behind this course has been “in the room where it happens” and has extensive experience in highly selective admissions and college counseling. One of the realities of college admissions is that many admissions officers at the college level later work in high-powered public or private high schools as college counselors. Their deep institutional knowledge is then concentrated among a small number of high schools.
In our new beta course, College Admissions: What to Do Right Now, Story2 will be throwing back the curtain and revealing tactics and strategies that are often kept a secret.
As you know, or can guess, the admissions process generates much stress and anxiety in students and parents. A research study conducted by New York University shows that roughly half of students at top high schools are experiencing a “great deal of stress on a daily basis.” Parents also feel the brunt of this stress as they talk to other parents, worry about paying for college, and realize that their child may experience extreme disappointment in the process. A quick glance at the popular admissions website College Confidential will show you all you need to know about stress in the admissions process!
One way that many parents deal with this stress is by getting overly involved in the process from the get-go. This is not the best path forward. Instead, students should be taking ownership of the process from the very beginning. Our new course aims to create a stronger, enduring relationship between students and parents at a critical time.
Ultimately, with the right strategies and support, the admissions process does work out. Students do not need an army of college coaches, essay consultants, and other advisers to succeed. College Admissions: What to Do Right Now Beta is here to equip students and parents with the essential tools necessary for bridging the college guidance gap.
Will Geiger is the College & Career Manager at Story2 and a veteran of the college admissions process, who has read thousands of applications and successfully counseled hundreds of students through the admissions process. Previously, Will was the Associate Director of College Counseling at an independent school in Connecticut and a Senior Assistant Director of Admissions at Kenyon College. Will is a graduate of Wake Forest University and the University of Pennsylvania.
Learn more about Story2 at story2.com.
