THE EDUCATION CONSERVANCY
WE
ADMIT…GUIDANCE FROM THOSE WHO DO
Applying to college does not have to be overwhelming!
The following principles and guidelines can help make the college admission
process more manageable, more productive, and more educationally appropriate.
This guidance is offered by the Education Conservancy, a group of admission
professionals committed to calming the commercial frenzy by affirming
educational values in college admission.
Principles
These guiding principles are relevant for parents,
students, counselors and admission deans:
• Education is a process, not a product. Students are
learners, not customers.
• The benefits and predictors of good education are
knowable yet virtually impossible to measure.
• Rankings oversimplify and mislead.
• A student’s intellectual skills and attitude about
learning are more important than what college a
student attends.
• Educational values are best served by admission
practices that are consistent with these values.
• College admission should be part of an educational
process directed toward student autonomy and
intellectual maturity.
• Colleges can be assessed, but not ranked. Students
can be evaluated, but not measured.
• Students’ thoughts, ideas and passions are worthy to
be engaged and handled with utmost care.
Student Guidelines
An admission decision, test score, or GPA is not a
measure of your self-worth. And, most students are
admitted to colleges they want to attend. Knowing this, we
encourage you to:
• Be confident! Take responsibility for your college
admission process. The more you do for yourself,the better the results will be.
• Be deliberate! Applying to college involves
thoughtful research to determine distinctions among
colleges, as well as careful self-examination to identify your
interests, learning style and other criteria.
Plan to make well-considered applications to the most
suitable colleges. This is often referred to as “making good matches.”
• Be realistic and trust your instincts! Choosing a
college is an important process, but not a life or death decision. Since there
are limits to what you can know about colleges and about yourself, you should allow
yourself to do educated guesswork.
• Be open-minded! Resist the notion that there is one
perfect college. Great education happens in
many places.
• Use a variety of resources for gathering
information. Seek advice from those people who know you, care about you, and
are willing to help.
• Be honest; be yourself! Do not try to game the
system.
• Resist taking any standardized test numerous times
(twice is usually sufficient).
• Limit your applications to a well-researched and
reasonable number. No more than six should be sufficient, except in special
cases.
• Know that what you do in college is a better
predictor of future success and happiness than where you go to college.
Parent Guidelines
An admission decision, test score, or GPA is not a
measure of a student’s worth. And, parents should always be mindful of the
behavior they are modeling for their children. Knowing this, we encourage you
to:
• Recognize that gaining admission to college is
merely one step in a process of education that will include your student
attending a college where she or he can maximize talents and growth. Emphasize the
education.
• Resist doing for your students what they are capable
of doing for themselves.
• Allow your child to take responsibility for his or
her own part of the college application process. Be involved in the process,
but do not try to control it.
• Resist relying on rankings and college selectivity
to determine the most suitable colleges for your child.
• Realize that researching, selecting, and applying to
colleges does not have to be an expensive process.
• Resist attempts to turn the process into a status
competition. Develop a healthy, educationally based, and family-appropriate
approach to college admissions.
• Consider that gaming the
system may not only diminish your child’s self-confidence, it may also jeopardize
desired admission outcomes.
• Listen to, encourage and believe in your child. Do
not use the term “we” as in “we are applying to….”
• Discuss the idea of education as an ongoing process,
and how selecting a college might be different from buying a product.
• Love them enough to let them demonstrate the
independence you have instilled in them.
• Keep this process in perspective. Remember that
student skills, self-confidence, curiosity, and desire to learn are some of the
most important ingredients in quality education and successful college
admissions.
Do not sacrifice these by overemphasizing getting into
the “best” college.
THIS GUIDANCE IS OFFERED BY THE FOLLOWING VETERAN
ADMISSION
PROFESSIONALS:
805 SW Broadway,
Phillip
Ballinger,
Michael Beseda, St. Mary’s
Jennifer Britz,
J. Antonio Cabasco,
Sean Callaway,
Pace University
John Carroll,
Sidonia Dalby,
Doris Davis,
Will Dix,
Bill Fitzsimmons,
Karl Furstenberg,
Marilee Jones,
MIT
Daniel Lundquist,
Brad MacGowan,
Bonnie Marcus,
Paul Marthers,
Robert Massa,
David McDonald,
Tom McWhertor,
Mark Moody, The
Marty O’Connell,
Colleges That Change Lives
Ted O’Neill,
Bruce Poch,
Jon Reider,
Jeff Rickey,
Mike Sexton,
Lewis and
Bill Shain,
Jim Sumner,
Steven Syverson,
Harold Wingood,