Dual Enrollment (DE)
[Our bi-monthly meeting took place directly after a nationwide college counselor webinar discussion Dual Enrollment. In that discussion, this article and these statistics were presented and discussed.]
Tom: That was an interesting discussion.
Christine: Yeah, do you want to continue the talk for here just for a second?
We're talking about dual enrollment and the benefits, pros, and cons, of dual enrollment in high school kids, and boy, what I learned on there is that there are all kinds of problems that I didn't even think about with dual enrollment.
Tom: Yeah, the one takeaway I got is the last thing I wrote down on this scary looking sheet of paper. Student needs to explain why they did it and what they got from it in their narrative. Versus grades and rigor and all the taking of the courses. So yeah, if I could juggle, I would be juggling.
Yeah. So just to clarify that, like taking dual enrollment, just to take a college class is maybe not the way to go, like exploratory. Is that a question?
Christine: I don't know.
Tom: I think there's different variations, there's different flavors. It's like going in the grocery store and looking at the cereal aisle and looking at what I can pick. So yes, high schools are using dual enrollment to help students in the early college planning mindset to get experience of what a college course might be like to see if they can handle it.
They're doing it. Sometimes I don't know what they're doing.
Christine: I thought that the woman from rural Texas. She made a really good point. And that would have fit my situation perfectly when I was in high school. So, those kids are getting a service that they weren't getting before that it's opening up college and trade school to students who did not have that opportunity before.
Tom: So that's access.
Christine: Yeah.
Tom: Because maybe they can't get the AP class or the AP class isn't being offered or the rigor isn't there. So yeah, they can go to the community college or a regular public college and take a course.
Christine: And their school district is benefiting because they're getting teachers now applying who are qualified to teach these classes because she said that.
They're not outsourcing just to the community college they're teaching the classes in the high school.
Tom: They're getting them in, they're coming into the school and teaching it on their campus grounds versus kids leaving and going someplace else. Yeah, there's a whole variation and I think students, I have a homeschooling student right now who's a junior, and it's amazing, he's taking a class at a private college, he's taking classes at a community college, He's taking classes through a homeschooling operation.
He's growing immensely as a human being from his personal character and his independence and his responsibility. But I have him asking when he's visiting colleges now, how does this all fit into the application process, the evaluation process? How are you going to look at these courses? Because he's not taking them to bank credits to graduate early, which I think is, that's sometimes fool's gold and sometimes valuable. My youngest daughter, she took a whole regiment of AP courses, and yes, it helped her because she got fours and fives. So the college she went to, she was able to bank and get credit for those, but in her particular major, didn't matter.
So she could quote unquote, graduate early based on the cumulative number, but she didn't have enough credits in her own major, so she still had to stay, so I think sometimes this idea of taking college credits forces to graduate early. It's not always wise.
Christine: And here's the other variable.
If like in Virginia, your Northern Virginia Community College classes will, pathway you into a Virginia state college or university. But what if you want to go to Penn State, or what if you get into Colorado, Boulder and you want to go there? It's not always a one for one you.
Tom: Right.
Christine: Transfer.
Tom: That, and that's very true with transfer students in general. That's a whole other topic. And I'm very displeased with the way transfer students are treated from a articulation agreement and a credit transfer. It's not apples to apples. So you could throw this same into that.
It's up to the individual college. So if you are doing that as a practice in high school that I think you have to be very diligent to ask those questions and map out that part of your life. And don't just take it for those don't just take it as vanilla, you're going to be treated like so-called everybody else.
Christine: Yeah and actually there's, I guess they could be jeopardizing their status of applying as a first term freshman. And how does that work?
Tom: The research I've done is that providing you're still in high school and you do not have a GED or a high school diploma, you're still considered a high school student. So you're not being treated as an associate transfer student, you're still a freshman, you're still a first year student applying to whatever school you're going to.
Now, if it gets to the point where, you know, unfortunately, a school system isn't satisfying the needs of their population and everybody's going to college instead of 12th grade. That will change the whole dynamics. But
Christine: But that's what AP credits did too. Students were coming in with so many AP credits that the colleges were starting to get nervous because they were losing a semester's worth of payment, sometimes even more.
Tom: So they, they started saying nay, we're not going to take, threes anymore. We're only going to take fours and fives. So incidentally, it's nice to see you again.
Christine: Yeah, you too. You too. Yeah.
Tom: Yeah. Yeah, it's just another, it's just another amazing part of the college planning process.
Christine: It is. And so one thing that I wrote down in my notes for you and I is I'm going to make us a PDF. That we can give to parents that has all the acronyms and what they mean, because I know that there's a lot of acronyms. And I know that parents don't always know them all, but I forget that.
Tom: Yeah. I forget them too.
I'm still trying to learn the language of the new generation, of this next generation. I'm very, I love it. It keeps me young. I'm never going to get my jet black hair again, but it keeps me young.
Christine: So
Tom: what have you been keeping yourself busy with?
Christine: I'm moving my website, I think I told you that.
And that's been an interesting experience so far, so good. But there's some things that I'm used to just being able to pull or send a link, and it's just not there anymore 'cause I need to rebuild all of that. So I've been working on that. And what else am I working on
Mostly just CollegeAppHelpDesk.com. We're getting more and more subscribers. Now, I have yet to get a question from a subscriber on, here's what I want you guys to talk about because this is what I don't know about. I think that today, like the whole dual enrollment thing.
I think that's valuable for parents and maybe they're starting to question it. And I'll put, a link to I was looking through some of the data Of that one page that they shared. And so we'll put all this up there. We'll, And hopefully we'll start getting questions. But
Tom: That's why we're here to try to fill in the gap for the questions we know that someone should be asking, but, it's that everything you want to know about college for planning, but we're afraid to ask or didn't know. And I think that's going to get more and more interesting.
Christine: It just changes so often.
Tom: Yeah. As resources become more and more challenging as of what's going on in the beautiful city that you're very close to. Logistically.
Christine: Yeah.
Tom: It was a sad day when I read that the regional office of the U. S. Department of Education here in Boston was closing along with other regional offices, New York, Chicago, Atlanta. For me personally, my father spent probably almost three decades, maybe two strong decades working out of that building in Boston.
Christine: Oh, wow.
Tom: As the assistant, they call them commissioners in those days, but they're really secretaries now. He was the assistant regional commissioner for the U. S. Office of Student Financial Assistance under the post-secondary education group. I entered the business as a youngster working in what was called a guarantee agency. And we used, the agency used to secure the loans that banks made the kids use to go to college. Now they call them a direct student loan. I spent a lot of time over in that building. With his staff and his boss. So it's tough because those individuals were there to look regionally at the colleges and in those days the lenders to make sure they're doing the right thing to protect consumers. When I would go over and eat lunch with him. We would occasionally be walking down the street and he'd say to me, we got to cross over and there's only one person coming towards us. And I soon learned that we were crossing over because he didn't want to engage that individual that was coming up because he happened to be the president of a nonprofit college, which they were litigating against.
A lot of people think that, yes, we need to trim government down and save money, but we're going to lose valuable resources that are actually there to protect us as consumers.
Christine: My hope was that some of it would just transfer to different departments.
Tom: We'll see. But I don't want to talk about that today.
Christine: Okay, what should we talk about?
SAT Hiccups
Tom: I don't know. Did you experience any pitfalls for your seniors that took the SATs on March 8th?
Christine: Oh, I haven't heard from any of them that there was a problem. What problems are you hearing?
Tom: Technology. The system shut down three-quarters of the way through the test.
Christine: Speaking of technology troubles!
Tom: I know you're muted. I think we're having a problem here in the Northeast, but the test shut down three-quarters of the way for some students. They didn't get a chance to answer all the questions.
Christine: Oh, no. That's been affected. Wow. Yeah, that's the problem with moving it to a digital platform instead of pen and paper.
Tom: Just like we're experiencing right now. We have an interruption of the WiFi. Of the juice.
Christine: If the electricity goes down, then, everything's out,
Tom: that's when you go to the refrigerator and start drinking everything that's cold.
Christine: Yeah. So
Tom: yeah, that happened this past, and I guess they're giving students a free pass, a refund ticket, let them take it, but if they're not quickly signing up for the May. I don't think we have enough places that are trained on how to do the digital. So that's another issue. So students may have to be getting up at 5:30 in the morning to travel an hour or two to get to a test site. I would hope, I've seen a couple schools up here in Massachusetts where they're declared that they're going to have a student day and do it at the high school.
Christine: I don't understand why, like they do the PSATs, why don't they just do the SATs the same way? Everybody takes them on the same day. Has, as simple as that is, has nobody asked that question before?
Tom: There is that option. There is that option that high schools can administer the test if they like.
They don't want to give up a day of instruction maybe because they have to have so many days of instruction. Bring them in on a Saturday and everybody pay the high school 19 to take the test.
Christine: That's what my son's high school did. It was a private high school, but that's what they did.
Tom: Why not make it convenient for the consumer, never mind going off to 15 different locations or try to find a location that's in the, the area. The only time I encourage students to take the test outside of their own geographical area is if there's a lot of mean girls and bullies that you don't want to sit next to, but I don't know why high schools just don't say, you know what, we'll charge every family 5, give everybody a snack bar and a bottle of water and you come to the high school and take it just like the PSATs. What's the downfall faculty giving up a Saturday? I don't know. I'll give a Saturday. I'll give a Sunday what's CSS one?
What's their real ultimate game is what's their game in this? They want the kids information so they can sell it to the colleges and create a communication campaign at 38 cents a pop Yeah, someone's making money somewhere wouldn't be happening. I'm not selling that workbook at the same pace So we've got SAT problems. We've got interesting things going on with dual enrollment and AP classes and students trying to keep up with rigor and challenges.
Continuation of parents this I was talking to my wife this morning, and she, looks at me and leaves because she knows I'm going to rant, but I'm just flabbergasted. I've been in this business too long I shouldn't be flabbergasted but I'm flabbergasted at the number of parents who now in March, getting ready for April have narrowed their list.
And I'm finally realizing that some costs, some schools cost $80,000 and the school is going to give them $10,000 in scholarship and they're not eligible for financial aid from the government or the state and they haven't been hunting for scholarships since ninth grade and they're going to have to come up with 60 grand. And then they get mad at the system. They get mad at colleges because they've been charging so much. They get mad at the government because they don't provide enough. I'm in a rare mood today, but I don't understand it. Come on.
Christine: We've been telling them we've been trying to tell them and, every school has the net price calculator on their website.
Every student can get an estimate from the FAFSA website on their SAI. It's sticker price minus SAI equals estimated cost, so you can go figure that out right now. We've been telling people how to do that.
Tom: There's a great website MyIntuition, M Y I N T U I T I O N. org
And that's the institution calculation formula.
That's like the CSS profile side of the game, where you're giving everything. And all of the CS, not all of them, but a very large percentage of the CSS profile schools have their logo on that page. Use that if you're looking at those types of schools to find out even the worst case scenario. But, and with the government considering changing the rules on the private, on the federal loan program, eliminating the PLUS loan program, which could be very detrimental for families who are struggling financially and can't credit base a loan, can't get a credit based private loan that could put a big wrinkle into people's plans.
Another message is, if you haven't figured out your credit, check on your credit. Because if you can't get a car loan, or you can't get a personal loan, you probably won't be able to co sign as a private loan. And there goes another resource that's available for families to pay for school.
Christine: I have mixed feelings about those Parent PLUS loans, though, because I feel like they prey on the most vulnerable families. And the money goes into the coffers of the institutions that have more money than God.
Tom: So let's get rid of the loans altogether for college.
CLEP
Christine: No, the Pell Grant should stay. The money needs to be there for the families who need it. That's what's there for, but there's lots of ways to get through college. One thing that nobody's talked about, nobody even mentioned a couple of people mentioned it, but there wasn't really any discussion on it in the dual enrollment thing was the CLEP tests. Here's what I like about CLEP tests, even though it's still College Board getting in on, collecting fees, but what I like about CLEP tests is, unlike the AP exams, if you don't, if you don't get a, if you don't like your score on your AP exam, I don't know if you can retake it. The exam itself.
Huh. I don't think so.
Christine: So you maybe just took that class, took the exam and can't use the class for credit anyway, but on the CLEP test, you can retake it. You can keep taking it until you pass it. And the CLEP classes. I don't remember how much they are, but compared to if you took 12 CLEP credits, if you took four CLEP tests for 12 credits, it would be considerably less than 12 credits at Virginia Tech or UVA or any state school.
By many thousands of dollars, it's way more affordable. So I think CLEP is a great option for students if they know that their schools are going to accept it.
We're back to that. And folks, we're not always painting our comments and responses negatively, we're sounding like we're negative Nancy's. Okay. But then we go back to the schools.
Tom: I'm prefacing my next statement. Then we go back to the schools and the fact that they're looking at revenue. So they're not looking to shorten the time
Christine: give you a degree for classes that you paid College Board for. Yeah. Yeah. Which is fair.
Tom: Yeah, that's true. That's true. I love schools that are introducing the new three year degree program to try to help students get done in three years.
Yeah. So they can get into the workforce. As consumers, it's important to look at what's the best plan, what's the best options for you and your family and your child, and be vigilant in trying to get those answers when you're meeting with college counselors. And that's why I always say and fall back on the notion of getting to know your college counselors, and look at this process as a consumer, you know, from the get-go. 9th grade on, if your kids are going to go to college, start then,
Christine: and the person from Colorado Boulder had a, I don't, was she an admissions officer? I don't remember what her title was, but she had a good point that some of these students have a plan where, they go the two-year route through community college, they transfer to their state university, they get a nursing degree. And then as a 20-year-old, they have a hard time entering the workforce and getting a job because colleges is it's academic, but it's also some social and emotional growth. And, if they were living at home during those first two years of community college, then they weren't out learning how laundry gets done and I'm still doing mine.
No.
Christine: It's a lot different when you have to do laundry in a dorm and you have to plan around it because it's just not right outside your bedroom door,
Tom: Four years of growing up is very important. That's very important. That's why some students do have a hard time leaving high school and going into the workforce because they're putting themselves into an adult arena that they're not emotionally, personally prepared for. So yeah, I've said before, individuals who want to join the military, I think they should take a two-year gap before they go in. My son served 10 years in the Marine Corps and when he became an instructor, he started to listen.
It's the same thing as he said, now, Dad, I remember what you told me.
Now I'm starting to get it. Yeah. Your husband too. You can't just jump into it and accept that you're going to be able to survive emotionally in some of these adult environments. When I have a transfer student who's leaving an associate's degree and going to a four year school, one of the things I ask them is, where are you going to live?
You're 20, 21 by the time you're going to transfer. Do you want to live in a dorm with an 18 and 19 year old student? You're a different caliber, so you've got to build into your budget. External housing off campus housing or see if you can live in the grad house. The school has grad housing. So, folks, it comes down to having a plan and you can't just do this the night before applications to do
Christine: right.
And you do have to get a plan and, we joke that the answer to everything in college admissions is it depends, but it's true. It almost, it just depends because one student may have a problem with that, but other students may not. And some schools have resources for that, but other schools don't.
My son was a transfer student. He transferred his sophomore year of college and transferring is hard. I transferred too when I was in college. Transferring is hard for a lot of reasons. And you also lose a lot of credits. But one of the things my son stumbled on was an apartment complex that was working with transfer students to pair them up.
And so he filled out a questionnaire and they matched him up with roommates and they put him with another transfer student who was a sophomore from the same area. And then they put those two with two grad students. So there were four of them in a quad.
Tom: That's that's magic.
Christine: It was the perfect situation because the two undergrads were high achieving undergrads that, like academics were really important to them. So putting them with the graduate students. was helpful.
Tom: That's magic, man. That person should get the, they should get an award.
Christine: It just worked out. It worked out and it was, they put a lot of thought into how they were going to do this and it seemed to be working,
Tom: yeah, we need that flexibility in different cases.
In the big scheme of things, it's important to have a plan. Because everything is subject to change. Everything has that word "depends," financial aid is the same, scholarship hunting is the same, dorm life is the same, it all depends on what your individual needs are, and we can't, we no longer have a higher ed system that is, from a consumer standpoint, we don't want, we no longer have a higher ed system that is One box everybody sits in.
Colleges want it that way, but we as consumers can't survive in that type of environment. So we have to be the ones that help the colleges realize what they need to be changing to adapt to the next group that's coming along. Mental health issues, huge. We still have, we're still dealing, if I'm correct, with kids who are coming out of the COVID period, when they were learning at home, on their iPads or their computers, how they're transitioning.
That whole generation that's graduating doesn't know how to network. They hope that their phone's going to save their life wherever they come in contact with things and that's going to get them a job. It's not. So it makes the day very enjoyable to be able to share some crazy insights, because there's a lot of stuff still going on. It's crazy.
Christine: Yeah.
I did get somebody filled out the contact form on my website and asked for, the five biggest mistakes that students make in their college application essay.
Tom: Yeah, juniors should have their Common App up and running now, if not by the end of June, with as much information as they can in there. And use the summer as to do their essay, and then watch and see how some of those additional questions come out when the schools pivot their information in August.
Tom: But I don't, I, Even if they change, to me, it's still important for students to write their own story. I don't know about you, but I think that, yeah, those prompters are good. AI can probably eliminate the prompters. But the idea of a student writing their own story that at the end of reading it makes the admissions person cry or say, I want to meet that student.
That to me. Is the greatest accomplishment.
Yeah, that's the goal. Start now. Think about it. Don't rush. Don't use AI.
So what were your top, what were your five? Tell us.
The Five Most Common Mistakes Students Make When Writing A College Application Essay
Christine: The number one is always,
Tom: I gotta write, I gotta write these down.
Christine: I'll send you the PDF.
Tom: Okay, thank you.
Christine: Number one is always Answer. The. Question. And you would think that would go without saying. But there's so many students who don't answer the question that the prompt is asking. I had one student who spent 477 words writing an introduction in an essay that can only be 650 words max.
So 73 percent of her essay was not even focused on answering the question and she didn't answer the question. And
Tom: this is the primary college essay that everybody's going to get.
Christine: It's the Common App essay, yes.
Tom: Yeah, the college essay. Okay. Yeah.
Christine: Yeah.
Tom: So, that'll go into the shredder.
Christine: Yeah we got it fixed,
Tom: right?
I'm only being facetious. Yeah. And then the other thing is what's number two, writing the right answer to the supplemental questions.
Christine: No, number two is the students spend all of this time agonizing over mechanics, grammar, spelling and punctuation. They sit down to write a a rough draft, and they can't move on to the next sentence before the sentence before it was perfected. And [00:26:00] so they're spending all of their time trying to write a rough draft that sounds good, but when you're finished reading it, you really don't know what it said. It sounds nice. Have you seen those essays, right? It sounds really nice, but you don't know what it's saying. Yeah.
Tom: Yeah, where's the message?
Christine: So they're spending all their time focused on mechanics when they need to flip that on its head.
Mechanics is dead last. You can pay someone 25 bucks.
Tom: You can use Grammarly to help you.
Christine: Yeah. Don't focus on mechanics. Don't focus on how it sounds. Focus on getting the information out. The brain dumb. Just write. Just get it out. Dictate it into your phone if that's easier for you. It's easier for a lot of students.
Tom: It's easier for a lot of adults too. Adults who are trying to write a book. That's, I've found that works a lot better for them. Because when they sit down and they try to write. And they're just paralyzed by the perfectionism of the mechanics. So you have to stop focusing on mechanics. You have to. Yeah. I do that when I have an article I do tomorrow and I'm just typing things that come to my mind. When we're done I'm going back to it and I'm going to read it and then I'll find the those and the thems and the these that need to be corrected.
Christine: It's the very last thing you do because otherwise I liken it to taking a bite of cheesecake and then putting toothpaste on your toothbrush and putting that in your mouth and swishing both of them around at the same time.
It's so counterproductive. Neither is going to be good.
Tom: You've done that?
Christine: I don't have to do it. I just painted a visual picture of it. Nobody wants to do that. So why are you doing it with your writing? It's so counterproductive. You might cut that whole paragraph out after you spent all that time perfecting those words and it's just not necessary.
Tom: They're getting that instruction from someone.
Christine: Yeah. So that's number two. Number three is writing a testimonial. So I know that coach Lou is one of the most extraordinary swim instructors you will ever have in your life. And if you find that your essay makes admissions officers want coach Lou more than they want you, then it's probably veering on testimonials.
So what you do with the testimonial instead is you take all of that you wrote. You don't just water it up and throw it in the trash. You take it and you save it as a different document. And on the day of your high school graduation, when coach Lou shows up to celebrate, you hand him that thank you letter.
Tom: That's very good. I like that.
Christine: Yeah. And you make sure that person understands how much they meant to you and how much they did for you helped you, but then you turn around and do something else in your common app essay because the testimonials are not appropriate.
Tom: Because you made the important point and because it's about someone else.
It's not about you.
Christine: When I say beginning and ending with rough draft, this is what I mean. And we talked about this a little bit with the mechanics, but when you come to me and you say you edit this for me, that means that you have what you're considering a rough draft and I sit down and look at it and it's nowhere near what it's just nowhere near what I'm considering my standards are.
It doesn't pass muster for what I want it to be for showcasing you. And what really happens is students will do what us journalists call, "bury the lede." And you'll be all the way down in the last paragraph before you get to the sentence that's what I really want to know more about. So your rough draft should be your initial brain dump.
It shouldn't be the draft that you spend all this time on mechanics with, or, everything else. It should be the first time that you get Your content down and then you don't end with that rough draft because there's going to be a lot of revisions, either organization like maybe paragraphs are going to move there's revising and editing that's got to go on there's, you have to work your way through the process. So when they begin and end at rough draft. It's just not that great of an essay. they can get away with that in high school in the five point hamburger writing that they do for the essays that they have to write for school. And it works. Sometimes it works well in that environment and students can slide by so that's the muscle memory that they develop, but it does not work in this kind of writing.
Because in this rhetorical mode, and this is for some students, it's the first time they've ever written in the narrative, and for other students, it might be the only time in their life until they're ready to write a an autobiography that they use it. But it's not going to work. It's just not going to work.
Tom: So why don't you, why isn't, another rhetorical question, but why do we not spend a little bit of extra time with that type of an assignment for students in high school, especially a high school where a large percentage are going to go off to college?
I don't want to step on any toes. I like to believe that what you and I do, we're a bridge.
Christine: We're taking everything that your high school English lit teachers are teaching you and we're just bridging it over into undergraduate academic writing. And I am fully in support of my high school English lit teachers who are out there working. I think you do a great job. I think either I think they think that they're doing it, but I don't think that they understand the depth of the mission from the direction that we do because they just haven't read as many of them, they haven't seen as many of them, they're not really trained on what these essays should look like.
They're not like an admissions officer would identify, one of those essays easier than the high school teacher might. I don't know. I can't speak for all of them.
Tom: But I think the same can be said on how admissions people are reading them too.
Christine: So I, what I want to do is the woman I sent these five the five mistakes too. I'm like, Hey, I would love to come to a workshop for your students. let me do something for them. Let me talk to them about it.
Have you heard back?
Christine: No, not yet, but that was just a couple hours ago.
I think it's just awareness and knowledge and also, not all college students and college graduates are English majors, but all college students and all every college graduate will write.
Tom: They will have to write. They're going to have to write something. It might be an email. It might be a letter of recommendation. It might be a, an estimate. It might be, there's all kinds of things that it could be, but you're going to have to communicate with other people as that professional, a business plan, you might want to enter a contest.
You might want to enter a contest to explain why you do what you do for money. You got to be able to articulate. verbally and in writing.
Christine: Yeah. So it's really important for students to understand these rhetorical modes. And I just, my, in my experience, they don't they're like why has no one ever told me about this?
If it's so important and the catch 22 is that they're not really going to learn about it until they get into, COMM 101 or, until they get into college, but first they have to get in. If they take a rhetoric class, they'll learn about it. But they've got to get in. So that's the beginning and ending with rough draft that I don't like.
and then the last one is, Oh, wait, what'd you say?
Tom: This is the money one.
Christine: This is the money one. It's actually, I'm going to disappoint you, I think. It's all around academic integrity. You can't submit inauthentic work that's not yours. You can't let somebody else write this for you.
There's nobody out there who can tell a student's story as well as the student can. And I know the parent thinks that they can write it better, and maybe you could write it better for the autobiography, but for this particular exercise, it's always better when it comes out how the student would flavor it always.
And the parents who go in and try to change that are (a), they're sending a message to their student that is not the message they want to send, which is, I don't believe in you. You can't do this. You need my help. And they're also violating academic integrity. I just don't like it. I don't like it when it happens.
Tom: This needs to be the student's work. Yeah, because from everything thereafter, I think the third. is, I don't know, necessarily a phrase. It's shortchanging the individual for everything thereafter.
That maybe a college faculty member might ask after receiving the first written document for an individual, What was the college essay like?
Yes, it's very easy. For others to help, but integrity, confidence and work ethic, it's got to be put in, yeah.
Christine: And that, that confidence works both ways. So not only are you sending a negative message to your student when you get that level of involvement with other people in the essay, but on the flip side of that, when the student agonizes over the essay, and then the student gets an acceptance letter from something that they worked really hard on, they feel so good about the work that they did.
And you can't buy that kind of confidence.
Tom: They're walking on water.
Christine: Yeah.
Tom: And as painstaking it is to try to help students through this process. I refuse. I will not write. I will edit. I will assist. I will make it make sense. So if you're starting off strong and the rest of it's crappy, I'll say, you know what, I don't understand, you got to connect everything together, but as painstaking it is, I'm pushing it back.
And you're absolutely right. When the student does the work, and maybe it's not, Pulitzer prize winning, but for the institutions that they're applying to, or the sector that they're applying to it's, it simulates with their grades and the rigor that represents them. And they get in because it's one part of the overall formula.
They're walking on water because they're so happy.
Christine: Yeah.
Tom: So don't, parents, don't write the essay. Help them write it, read it, say it doesn't make sense, do it again. It's painstaking, it's hard. Pay someone to help you get through it.
Christine: So one thing that I won't do with students is I won't even edit their essays for them.
I sometimes will add in a comma if there's a rule especially if it's an Oxford comma. But even if I do that, I'm going to highlight it and I'm going to put it in the notes. This is why I'm a big believer in the Oxford comma. But what I do with my students is when they make a mistake in the essay, if they use the wrong, [00:37:00] if they use lay instead of lie that's my worst one. I hate that one because I have to look it up every time. That's the one I never can get right. But whom or who versus that if they get those wrong in an essay, I will point it out. But what I tell them is, here's the rule, and if you keep getting this wrong, I'm not going to keep correcting it. Because as an undergraduate, you should know the difference between when to use who and when to use that.
Tom: Yeah, my editing is usually, this doesn't make sense. That's my editing. I don't know where you're going with this. I don't know what it's got to do with it.
Christine: That's fine. And that's good too. That's content editing.
Tom: Yeah.
Christine: And that's where you should be spending 60%. The students should be spending 60 percent of their effort on these essays in the content.
And 30 percent should be spent on, do I have my words arranged in the right order? Am I walking my reader through the story in the right order so that it's best, like bang for your buck am I making the best impression with this? And 10 percent is where you should agonize over your grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
At the very end, that last temper, but if we're getting who versus that a lot in the beginning, 60%, I do point it out because, look, I want you to learn the rule because if you're making that mistake here in front of me, you're making it everywhere. You're making it when you speak, you're making it in an email, you're making it in the text messages you send.
I want you to sound like an educated person who is an undergraduate.
Yeah. How are they getting away with it in their English class? I don't know. I don't know. But I have a list of of the most common comments that I make. I don't, I should do a word count on it and see how long that list is now.
Tom: Because I finally got to the point where I just had to make a document so I could copy and There's so many of them that they're just making so consistently. You should put that on a YouTube program.
Christine: Yeah.
Tom: The who's. The who's of college.
Christine: I will put in the notes on this video who versus that. And the quick and dirty way to know whether to use who or whom. I have a good explanation for that.
Or them or those. Yeah, and it's, look, it's the mind-bending stuff that a lot of people don't want to learn.
Tom: So I try to give it to them instead of a grammar lesson I try to give them ways to just memorize this. I'm giving you a couple sentences. Just memorize them and you'll be able to do it. And write something that's authentic. That is personal.
Christine: Don't write about why you want to major in X.
Tom: Nope. Make the reader cry or make the reader say, I got to meet this individual.
Yeah. So what I say is you got to reach the limbic system of your reader's brain. So it's like with kind of like the example with the cheesecake and the toothpaste, they have to taste it, they have to smell it, they have to see it, they have to hear it, they have to feel it. Good. Good.
So yeah, so those are the five most common mistakes. There's actually 12. Every year I add one or two. I think I'm up to 12 now.
Tom: Good. That's excellent. That's excellent. And now's the time to start thinking about it, students and parents, because now you're getting into it. Before you know it, Daylight Savings Time will not change.
For another year, but the calendar is going to move that much quicker as you move forward.
Christine: But we don't even have a year. We have until November 1.
Tom: Actually, October 1st, maybe October 15th, if you got to have some wiggle room before November 1.
Christine: The actual deadline
Tom: is November 1.
Christine: Like Virginia, there's some schools that are, have an October 15th deadline.
Yeah,
Tom: Clemson is one. So
Christine: October one is probably better. Yeah. There's a lot of November one deadlines, but I'm with you. I don't wait until November one, because if your internet goes down or you're there was one year where my students had a problem, there was some sort of setting in the common app and it happened to a number of my students that their school had checked a box that wasn't allowing them to submit.
And they had to go back to the school counselor to get that unchecked and If they had done that the night before, they wouldn't have been able to get a hold of that counselor.
Tom: So double check your Naviance and SCORE and all these other systems to make sure that they're fluently linking between Common App if that's your process.
That can be a real, that can be a real drudgery when it comes to recommendations. Some schools want all the recommendations to flow through. Some schools will let the recommender send it right to the Common App, and students don't know that they've got to indict that individual ahead of time for that to happen.
Yeah, you can't be dealing with those things at the 11th hour.
Because everybody in the house is yelling at each other and no one's happy. There's a lot of tears.
Christine: Tricky times.
Tom: Freaky times, that's right. For those students who are seniors, get out there and visit colleges. It's acceptance students days now are coming.
If they're not already happening in your local area, go visit the schools. As I said to a group of seniors when I was talking to them, you got to go kick the tires. And they looked at me like, what does that mean? Kick, kick tires means you go in and check it out. That's the time to really talk to faculty, it's time to talk to the bursar about payment plans.
Christine: Why isn't my financial aid the way it should be? And it's tough because a lot of them are on the same day. Yeah.
Tom: What I try to say to folks is if you have some really final horses in the race. And Accepted Students Days are on the same day. Students talk to your counselor at school and the principal of the school and say, I need a day off. I'm going to visit a college.
It's Accepted Students Day and I didn't make it. But you contact the college, your admissions person. Chances are they'll set up your own Accepted Students Day. You may not be able to get all of the flair. The, you know, the atmosphere might be just a little bit different but you can get your answers taken care of.
Christine: That's really good advice. Yeah. Accepted Students Day is, it's just a no brainer. It's there's no reason to not go and so yeah, if you have a conflict with two. It's really important to make that connection with that school because that's You'll miss out on meeting other people who might become, your classmates, but
Tom: Same thing I said for, and try to go as a family. And if you have siblings, bring the youngest siblings. They may not want to hang around, just keep an eye on them while they go and, fool on some gym equipment or something, but don't get hurt. It's their introduction. One of the things, and sometime we'll talk about it, but one of the things I struggle the most with is trying to help.
Young individuals realize three of the sort of common preferences for looking for schools, setting, distance, and size. The sooner that they learn about how far is too far, that they're a homebody, and everybody says you should go to California, and that's the other side of the country.
Christine: That's a long flight.
It's five hours from here. I don't think students recognize that.
Tom: I send them the movie, the video clip, the planes, trains, and automobiles from John Candy and Steve Martin, my generation, still funny. How are you going to get home and what happens if you can't come home? Distance is important.
Everybody wants, not everybody, but a lot of people want to leave their family for a short period of time. Get away. I understand. But 30 minutes away, as long as your parents aren't coming every weekend, is 30 minutes away. Five hours is five hours. Distance is important. Setting, the classic. Do you want to be in a city?
A suburb? Just looking at stars all the time and how big is too big for you? How many students have you heard that they want to go to a school for school spirit? 60, 000 in a football stadium is school spirit. Yeah that's 60, 000 students that are going to be around you all the time.
Christine: That's 500 in your 101 classes.
Tom: Yeah, and you're strange enough to sit in the back. If that's the case, you got to sit in the front row. I don't care what size school you go to. I want all students to sit in the front row.
Christine: I know.
Tom: Yeah. So the faculty member zeroes in on your head and your face.
And when you need something, they know you for Adam. They know you,
Christine: and I have a success story right now. A student who I worked with applying to colleges. He's now at the University of Arizona. And he applied for a job with the DoD. It was a summer internship, and he needed two letters of recommendation.
And when he went to his college professors to ask for letters of recommendation, and the U of A is a big school, but he sits in the front row, and he goes to office hours. And his professors know who he is, and he got his letters of recommendation. He got the internship, and now the internship is turning into a full-time job after college.
And they've put him into the pile of applicants for we'll pay for your grad school, but you have to get in. And so now he's applying to graduate schools, and he's gonna end up. Graduating college with a job, making a nice salary and benefits, and they're going to pay for grad school. And he sat in the front row.
Tom: So no matter how much ribbing you get, we also call it networking. I call that networking, because you're networking with the people you need to potentially get help from as you move forward, or fall into the category of the six degrees of Kevin Bacon. They may be useful to you to help you get where you need to be.
So no matter how much ribbing you get from friends, classmates, or others about sitting in the front row, let them sit in the heavens and vaporize, unfortunately, while you're getting what you're paying for, and that's being a known college student. And then the other part is When you get that notoriety and you need some financial assistance, you take advantage of that relationship with your faculty member who needs you to keep his job or her job, and the both of you go to financial aid and say, you know what, I think Tommy's ready to leave.
He's thinking about leaving because he can't afford it anymore, but he is my star student. And we give them another $2,000. Boom. As a junior, you get another $2,000. You try that technique when you're juniors, and I guarantee you, it's one.
Christine: Interesting.
Tom: It's important. It's important to do that.
Christine: Yeah. Okay. This was fun.
Yeah,
Tom: people are listening.
And have needs, have ideas, Christine can cover everything.
Put that
information in so that we can talk about things that you need to know about, not just what we think you need to know about.
Christine: Let us know.
And that's why I like this because we're coming at this from two completely different sides.
Tom: Yeah. Most definitely. Most definitely. Yeah. Yeah. On most days I'm sane. I just need to talk a few more extra minutes. I got a less rant. So excellent. Okay. So I'll see you in a couple weeks. Yeah.
Christine: Goes by fast. Okay. Have a good couple of weeks and I'll see you soon.
Tom: Keep up the good work, Christine.
Christine: You too. Thanks for sitting with me.
Tom: Likewise.
Christine: Bye.
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