Parents and students often say to me, “Well, ‘So-and-So’ got in and…” and that sentence just has to stop there because it is just not possible for parents and students to have all of the information on So-and-So that the admissions officers had.
Admissions officers will never tell you what their algorithm is, or why they made the decision that they made.
So-and-So’s grandmother may be a benefactor.
So-and-So may have an SAT score different from the score s/he divulged to peers.
You’ll never know.
Facebook wasn't a thing when I was applying for college, so I didn't know about this. When Sheryl Sandberg was CEO of Facebook, she told the world, “The most important career decision you'll make is who you marry.”
I'd like for parents to talk to students about that.
Who are the five people you're spending the most time with? According to Jim Rohn, we are all the average of the five people we spend the most time with.
There's a lot of stereotypes, assumptions, and outdated information in the college application process. Parents sometimes bring some of this outdated information. I've had parents say, “Well, Penn State wasn't hard to get into when my brother got in.”
When did your brother apply? 1989?
There are a lot of stereotypes about schools. “Oh, that’s a party school.” Well, maybe, but maybe not. There are a lot of schools out there that have honors programs that are feeders to graduate programs.
Where you go to college is not who you will be.
In fact, I've had many employers tell me that your first job out of college is important, but once you get that first job, nobody's going to ask you where you went to college — and if you keep telling people where you went to college, that's actually going to work against you. So where you go is not who you'll be.
A lot of parents and students get hung up on prestige.
This is a great article from the Atlantic, I encourage all of you to read it.
The numbers are screaming at us. Parents and students, you just have to hear what those numbers are saying.
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