Parents are undoubtedly an instrumental part of the college admissions process for incoming students—but how much influence should parents actually have in this process? In this enlightening conversation, we talk to experts about what role parents have in the “marathon” that is the college admissions process, and the lessons the whole family can learn during these stressful, but rewarding times.
Guests: Emily Roper-Doten, Vice President for Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Assistance at Clark University in Massachusetts, and Rodney Morrison, Vice President of Enrollment Management at the University of Delaware.
Moderated by NACAC member Eddie Pickett, a college counselor and dean at Polytechnic School in Pasadena, California.
Eddie Pickett: Welcome new and old friends to the College Admissions Decoded Podcast, an occasional series in the National Association for College Admissions Counseling or NACAC. NACAC is an association of more than 27,000 professionals at high schools, colleges, universities, and nonprofit organizations, as well as independent counselors who support students and families through the college admission process. I'm your host, Eddie Pickett. My pronouns are he/him, and I'm a NACAC board member. And my day job, I'm the Senior Associate Dean of Admissions and Director of Recruitment at Pomona College in Claremont, California. Today, I'm here with two experts on college admissions and enrollment who will share the valuable information with parents and help dispel some common myths and misconceptions. My guests are Emily Roper-Doten, Vice President for Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Assistance at Clark University in Massachusetts. Welcome Emily.
Emily Roper-Dot...: Thanks Eddie. It's nice to be here.
Eddie Pickett: I also used to work with Emily, so I'm excited for this conversation, so I got some fun little nuggets of wisdom from her already. And our second guest is Rodney Morrison, Vice President of Enrollment Management at the University of Delaware. Welcome Rodney.
Rodney Morrison: Glad to be here. Thanks for the invite.
Eddie Pickett: Thank you both. I've known both of them for over 10 years, so we're going to have some fun in the studio today. This conversation is really a timely one because I was recently presenting to a board of directors at a school in my hometown of Oakland, and the last question they asked was, "So what do parents need to know about this process? Or in other words, what should we be telling parents?" So we're going to start that today. What is the role that parents should play in their students' college admissions process?
Rodney Morrison: So I have three kids. My oldest just graduated from Syracuse. My middle is a sophomore in college and my youngest is a freshman at University of Delaware. So I've been through this three times now and the first thing I like to say is it's different for every kid going through this process. What I talk about to parents is you have to have some patience. You have to just remember at the end of the day it's going to work out. No matter where your son or daughter goes, it's going to work out and trust the process, if there is a process. If you're lucky enough to have good guidance support, then trust that support.
For the students or parents that don't think they have great high school support, then I pull them aside and we talk about where to find some different resources at. NACAC and College Board Big Futures, some terrific free online support resources for students and families where they have roadmaps for success for students and will help guide you through high school and to keep you on track. So each year you'll have a sense of where you should be at in terms of the process because this is a really daunting process with lots of deadlines and this can help keep you on track.
Emily Roper-Dot...: I love a good metaphor. So I think having the parents think of their role as being kind of a guide on the side, if you're in a car, your child is driving, you are in the passenger seat, maybe even in the back, maybe even in the back, you can provide some guidance. You can be a sounding board. You can help them know which road to take, but you can't actually take that turn for them. And so really kind of thinking about how your role is auxiliary to the process. You are not in the driver's seat.
Eddie Pickett: I used that metaphor right there when I was in college counseling. It's like, "Hey, you've driven for so long, no more of your time. This is now their time to shine." And thinking about that, the other question that comes often is, who can I trust? What type of information should I be going to? So we're going to add some of those resources in this podcast, but we'll start with this one. Could you two share two of the most common assumptions or misconceptions that parents have about the college admissions process?
Emily Roper-Dot...: Okay. I think one is that parents often assume that they can predict or guess someone's chances of getting into a college based on what they know. And I think part of it is this process is really confusing and you want to try to make sense of it. And so you think, "Okay, I know so-and-so and so-and-so's profile looked like this and they got into this place," and so I draw conclusions about my kid who has this type of profile, and so they're going to have the same result or a different result. But the truth is you don't actually know everything about the profile of that student who's going through the application process. You know some pieces of data, but not the whole picture. And so thinking a bit about misconception that you can predict or you can guess what someone's outcome will be is one. The other, I would say the EFC doesn't equal what's in your bank account.
Eddie Pickett: What is EFC for people listening?
Emily Roper-Dot...: Yeah, so estimated family contribution, which part of the reason why the name is changing is to try to help it be a little bit more clear to folks. But the estimated family contribution is a number that comes from the FAFSA, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, to try to help colleges understand how much aid a family might need, how much need-based aid or financial assistance someone might need to enroll. And EFC, often you see that it looks like a number, it looks like a dollar amount, and often people think, "But I don't have that dollar amount in my bank account. I can't write that check," but that's actually never what that number was intended for. It's an index. It's a measure of the financial health or the ability of the family to potentially invest in education. So they're actually changing it from the estimated family contribution to the student aid index to try to give families a better understanding that this is a metric, it's not actually dollars.
Rodney Morrison: Yeah. I try to break it down even a little bit further when I'm talking to particularly families who first generation who haven't had a lot of experience with the process. And so when I talk about college prices and I talk about things like, "Well, here's the sticker price," and then I say, "How many of you have that," and if we're at a session where there's a lot of families that don't have a lot of money, and I'll say, "Okay, average price of a school right now could be anywhere between 60 and $80,000 a year. Who has that?" And I have everybody raise their hand and usually there's no one that raises their hand. And so then I say, "All right, if a school that costs $80,000 a year gives you $80,000 a year, how much do you have to pay," and every student will say, "Oh, I don't have to pay. Zero."
I say, "Well, if a school that costs $20,000 a year doesn't give you a dime in aid, how much you have to pay?" $20,000. So I say, "Well, what school is it for you cheaper to go to then, the school that costs $20,000 or the school that costs $80,000." And they say, "Oh, so it could cost cheaper to go to school that's more expensive?" Yes, that's what's called financial aid. And then the light bulb goes on, then they get more interested about, "Okay, now what do I need to do to get financial aid," and then we talk about the FASTA and then we talk about how important it's to fill things out on time. Timeliness is key and understanding. And I didn't know. I was a first generation student. I didn't know you need to fill that out every year. My parents couldn't fill it out.
So that's when I had to learn what my parents were making and it was less than what the college I went to costs. So it's really trying to educate families to help them understand this process, which can be very overwhelming if they've never gone through this. And so that's kind of how I approach it, how it was for me as a first generation low-income kid. I don't think that as colleges and universities, we're always as transparent as we think we are and we're always communicating as effectively as we think we are. And I'll give you a quick example.
So when the pandemic hit and most universities and colleges went test optional, it was clear that our language that all of us used to say, whether it was test optional, whether it was test-free or whatever language we were using, that it was hard for families to discern what that meant. Should I submit the test, should I not? And it's also clear that depending on the kind of language we use, if we said test optional, that at some institutions they were seeing anywhere from 20% of the students submit a test to 70% based on how they communicated what test optional meant to them. So that's very confusing and that's on us as universities. And so I don't want to let us off the hook as well.
Emily Roper-Dot...: I appreciate you keeping us honest and accurate, and I think we all... there's this feeling at the college level of we're all distinct and unique, but we don't actually need to be distinct or unique when we talk about these pieces of the process. There are commonalities and we can be clear together. So I appreciate that accountability check there Rodney.
Rodney Morrison: Absolutely.
Eddie Pickett: One of those terms we never define is fit. You always hear you're supposed to fit this place. So what is fit? So it's one academic, social and personal. It's also financial. And we heard Rodney and Emily both talk about the financial piece a little bit, but in thinking about helping parents help their students assess fit, with so many factors to consider, how can parents help their students assess this fit for their child?
Emily Roper-Dot...: I would think about how your child learns best, what kind of environments they're happiest in. Ask them those questions, get them to reflect a little bit on do they like being in a discussion-based class? Do they like hands-on work? Are they someone who... I'll pick on myself. I was a theater major, I can't be invisible. I needed to be in a place where people were going to know my name. And so for me, it became small colleges, small classroom sizes were things that I was looking at because I knew that I would feel my best and have the potential to be my happiest and thus my best student. And so encouraging your kids to think about what environment allows them to engage, to be happy and to grow. And then looking for colleges that help provide that opportunity for them. The happier they are, the more they're going to engage in class, the more they're going to learn.
And being able to really think about it from lots of different dynamics, not just the classroom experience, but thinking about would someone be distracted by the busyness of a college in the middle of a city or would they be so drained at a college in a rural environment that they would miss the cultural pop of the city? That's going to be a distraction to do the thing they are there to do, which is to learn and to get a degree and to grow. So really thinking about how will they starting with where the student will be their best selves.
Rodney Morrison: Yeah, that's good. I completely agree. With my kids, it was funny because my youngest hates cold weather. So when we were in Boston looking at schools and some other upstate New York and some other not so warm weather places, I had to pull her aside and I said, "Yes, these are good schools, but what did we talk about?" So I think as parents, we have to continually press and continually help our kids understand, "Here's what you said was important to you. Now is it?"
And it's okay if they change because we know 16, 17, 18 year olds, they're going to keep changing, but we have to push them to say, "Okay, if you want to be part of this decision process, here are the things you said matter, and here's the implications. If this is what you choose, you're going to need two winter coats or you're going to need this or that." Again, the more the student knows themselves and you're able to bring that out, it's going to be very helpful so that at the end of the process that you as a parent and your child feels really good about that decision together.
Eddie Pickett: I'm going to do not necessarily a lightning round, but there's three topics I want to get into a little of the process. The three topics are going to be testing, extracurricular activities, and then essays because we've kind of mentioned them so far. We're going to start with testing. So it's testing, with increased popularity of testing optional policies, what advice would you give parents regarding testing?
Rodney Morrison: The first thing I would say to parents is, have your son or daughter take a test. I don't care if it's the ACT, SAT, take the test. And I'm not saying submit it, but I'm saying take the test to see where you're at. And then it's important to understand based on once you start to have a preliminary list of schools, how does that test, whether it's a practice test or it's a official test, how does that compare to the middle 50 percentile of the schools that are on your preliminary list or whatever list of schools you have?
Because as we said earlier, schools have different test policies, but it also is going to depend on the major or majors that you may or may not be interested in. So students that are looking at more STEM areas, things like engineering, math and science areas, schools may say that they're test optional, text flexible, but they may actually encourage more students to take a standardized test. So it's important to ask that question. If a school says they're test optional, you can ask an admissions officer, "Well, how test optional are you if you're interested in this major or that major," and press them on that so that you get information that will help you make an informed decision if you want to submit that test or not.
Emily Roper-Dot...: I would agree with a little carve out in that if testing is extremely stressful, anxiety-producing painful for your child, there are so many test optional schools right now, and many of them when you ask that question really are, "It's test optional. We're barely using them or we only use them in these small places." If it's going to derail this process for a child who otherwise could find a great opportunity for them, that's when I'd say it's okay to skip it. So that's the exception I would carve, that particularly for some folks, it could be the thing that takes them off the path and we want to keep them on the path. That's part of the test optional, the point of test optional is more people on the path to college and into college and through college.
Eddie Pickett: And also with that piece, like parents just remember, "Are we going to trust three years of history, i.e. their high school transcript or three hours of history more?" It's always going to be three years. What you've done in the classroom gives us the best idea of what's going to happen. That's the highest correlation to first year success on a college campus is their high school transcript. So now that we've covered testing, let's get into extracurricular activities. And many parents believe that a long list of extracurricular activities is a key to their child getting into the school of choice. How should parents view extracurricular involvement versus other factors like academic performance?
Emily Roper-Dot...: So I think for many schools, it all starts actually with can the student do the work in the classroom? As chief enrollment officers, one of our biggest responsibilities, if not the chief responsibility is to deliver a class of students to our faculty who can be successful in our classrooms. We also, particularly for folks who are in the selective admissions environment, you probably have more students applying to your school that can do the work than you can actually invite to be a part of your communities. And that's where holistic admission comes in. That's where we look at these other factors that put together the person who's actually going to walk onto our campus and be part of our communities. And so extracurricular certainly is part of that. The extracurricular list might tell us what you're interested in, it might align with a potential major or potential career.
It might tell us what you're passionate about. It tells us how you spend your time, whether that's through responsibilities in your family, through a job. It gives us a full picture of who you are as the person in addition to the student. So I think a focus on the length of the extracurricular list is misplaced. It's more about what's the type of involvement, the quality of the involvement, what does it say about them, how does it bring them joy? So thinking more about how does this list tell us about the person rather than it being about a volume or a length or a specific set of activities that are going to have a stronger signal in the process, but more how does it help us get to know the person?
Rodney Morrison: Yeah, I worked at five other institutions and you could tell students who were just checking a box because they thought, "Well, that's going to make me look better," box checkers. So we're really trying to gauge students' passions. What are their real interests? What are the depths of those interests? Is this something they might want to pursue in college? Were they just a participant in high school? Were they a leader? Not saying what's right or wrong, but really trying to understand the total picture of the student. One of the former institutions I worked at, there was a student who had three or four activities freshman year, same thing sophomore year, and then junior year there were no activities, senior year, no activities. And so the admissions committee was going to reject the student, but they happened to interview and one of the interview questions said, "Oh, I noticed you didn't have any extracurricular activities your junior and senior year."
And as it turns out the student's best friend got in a car accident and this student decided upon themselves to tutor them, to not do their activities and just focus on tutoring and helping their very good friend get on the mend and keep up with work. And the student didn't feel that was important enough to put in his college application. And when we found that out, it was like, "Wow, wow." And that made the difference because they thought that little about what they were doing, but more importantly, "No, that's an activity, that's what they're passionate about, helping their friend out. That's important. That's not a standard activity at the school, but that made all the difference in the world." And once we found that out, that student was admitted.
Eddie Pickett: I work at Pomona College and our evaluation criteria is public. We published it later the day after Labor Day in 2022, and we have five valued qualities. The first one that everybody has to have is ICAC, Intellectually Capable Academically Committed i.e., can you do the work? Everybody has to have that. Then the next four... won't go into all of them, but one of them is CNB. We call it Investment in Community and Network Builder i.e., what are you doing in your area, your school, and your family to build bridges and to get involved? You notice there isn't a number with that. It's not a list, it's just what are you doing? So we're trying to see how you are contributing to your area, to the people in your lives. And so that can illustrate that very well. And that's online on our apply page. You can all find it. Promised we get to essays as well. So essays, what role should parents play with essays?
Rodney Morrison: So this is a hot topic with us and on the higher education side because we know how passionate some of you parents are and how you really want to help your child out. And so this is an area where we implore you to understand that this is the place where we want to hear from the student. We want to hear their original thoughts, we want to hear how they think, what they think, and that we don't expect perfect essays. We don't expect Pulitzer Prize award-winning work, but we do expect it to be their work, not the work of the parents.
And so I always get a chuckle when I'm reading an essay and then there's maybe a sentence or paragraph that it just totally doesn't fit. It might be bigger words or sophisticated writing style, or you can just see it and it's like, "Hmm, that's interesting." And nine out of 10 times it was probably some influence of the parents. And so I want to let all the parents listening out there know that we don't always catch it, but a lot of times we do. And so you don't want to jeopardize all the hard work that the students put in. Again, we're not looking for perfection. We're looking for what's important to them in their own words.
Emily Roper-Dot...: I'm going to go back to you are not the driver. You can be a good sounding board for what someone might want to write about in an essay. You shouldn't be directing the topic. Essays that students write that are topics that they choose and are excited to write about, it comes through, that authenticity comes through. You get that sense of who they are. I had a neighbor who knows what I do for a job, and one of her children was applying and said, "I think my daughter should write about this. She wants to write about this," totally well-intentioned. All she wants to do is give her the most opportunities out there to be able to get as many opportunities as possible.
And I just kept saying, "Well, if she wants to write about this, maybe your job could be helping her tease that story out." "But shouldn't she really write about this other thing," and I said, "I would really let her pick," because I think it's really important for the student to feel that ownership and everything that Rodney said, 100% plus one. But I just think there's a piece there too that's even in the pre-writing process of a little too much suggestion on topic can send an essay down the wrong path.
Eddie Pickett: So I'm noticing themes of stress, a little bit of anxiety, a little bit of overwhelming nature for both students and for their parents. And so I want to address that. But we're also at the conclusion of the episode, so we're going to pull all those into one question, and I'd like to give you both the opportunity to share some words and hope and encouragement to the parents of prospective students who are listening to this episode. I'm going to toss this question over to Rodney first because you've talked about your three students who've gone through this process. Emily over here has a fourth grader, so what advice are you going to give?
Rodney Morrison: So yes, it can be a very stressful process. I have witnessed it at home and maybe had to pull my wife and kids apart once or twice. No, I'm joking, but-
Eddie Pickett: Sure, they didn't have to pull you apart?
Rodney Morrison: Yeah, well, a little bit of that too. But I have seen families really get into arguments right in the admissions office, and it can be stressful. And there was a recent poll of high school students, high school seniors who went through the process. And the result was that 70% of them said this was the most stressful process or thing they've had to deal with in their lives thus far. And so understanding that, parents, if you've gone to college or if you haven't gone to college, it's going to really require some hugging, some love and understanding that it will work out. And that one of the most helpful things you can do is to try to be there to understand, to listen, and to help keep them on track with deadlines if nothing else, deadlines.
And thinking about talking to your child about other alternatives, like visiting different types of institutions. And that remembering at the end of the day that this is a marathon and that it's not a sprint. And what I mean by that is you're going to have peaks and valleys, ups and downs, and that to keep letting them know it's going to work out and to trust the process.
Eddie Pickett: Rodney's cell phone number is...
Emily Roper-Dot...: So as the parent of a fourth grader, this is in my future, and we joke in my house that I will need to go on sabbatical when my fourth grader applies to college because sometimes you know too much. But I think the way I've talked to some folks that I know that are in this process is I actually encourage them to read a book that I know Eddie you and I have talked about called How to Raise an Adult.
Eddie Pickett: It's so good. I love that book.
Emily Roper-Dot...: And it was written by a former first-year dean of students really talking about the skills that those first-year students were lacking and going through a history of the evolution of parenting in the United States and comparing it to other places and thinking about how different generations of children are being parented in different ways. And I think about that a lot over the course of my daughter's life. She's nine now. And thinking about my husband says a lot to her, especially when we're having a hard conversation, and he'll say to her, "My job is to help you become a good adult." And so this might be a hard conversation and it might be stressful right now, and you might want to run away and you might want to not listen, but this is why. And so I think there's some lessons in this process for a child and a parent is part of that evolution of them becoming an adult.
So what can you model for them about managing stress or how can you model for them saying, "No," just because six of their friends are applying to a school that they don't have an interest in, doesn't mean they should just throw their hat in. How can you be with them in the process, enable them, support them to be really involved in the process because the more ownership they have, the more skills that they'll build and it won't feel like it's happening to them?
So whenever you can resist from doing something for your student in this process and they can do it, have them plan that road trip, have them make the appointments to go visit those schools, those are skills that are going to serve them. And because they have that ownership in the process, it may feel less like it's happening to them that they're really kind of a participant in this. And so thinking about that journey, that marathon is also about the adult they're becoming and the adult relationship you are developing with them. And so lean into that trust. And then humor. Yeah, humor. Lots of humor, being able to laugh at things, letting them see you laugh when something goes a little sideways. And helping them see that we can actually exhale, take a deep breath, and pick ourselves back up if it doesn't go the way we want. But I would read that book. It's really good.
Eddie Pickett: Yeah, I got three pieces of advice. So first, since Rodney is on here, there's this singer, Rodney Atkins, who has a song, Watching You. And parents, while you might think your high school student is independent and they do their own thing, oh, they're watching you. And so they're going to take their cues from you. So if you're getting stressed, they can get stressed easily as well. So keep that in mind. They're watching you. Number two is you should start talking about finances earlier than April of their senior year.
Emily Roper-Dot...: Yes.
Eddie Pickett: You want to get a sense of, "Hmm, I'd like to be in this range. I don't know the exact dollar amount, but in this range." And so you don't want to pull the rug in April saying, "We're going to be fine, we're going to be fine. Actually, we can't do this." I'm not saying don't apply to those schools, but your kids should know, "We would like to be in this space".
And the third, and I think most important piece of advice I would tell you is that you can talk about college once, maybe twice a week. Pick a family meeting, day over dinner or whatever else once a week and say, "This is when I can ask you about deadlines. This is when I can ask you about your process. I can ask about your essays," but you don't want their entire senior year to be about college. I've seen unfortunately, too many negative student and parent relationships happen because their parents kept pestering them about college. Now, you might think it's trying to keep them on track, but to them it's pestering. And so pick one day, maybe two days during the really busy time that you can talk about college the rest of the time. This is the last time your kid's probably going to live with you.
Enjoy your time with them while you have it because you want to leave on a positive note. Unfortunately, that's all the time we have for today's podcast. I really want to thank Emily and Rodney who have both been instrumental in my life and my career, and the professional and in the personal. So thank you both for being here, sharing your wisdom. They've shared a lot of wisdom with me and poured a lot into my life, and so I'm glad they're getting to pour into your life as well. And with that, I want to thank you all in the audience for joining this episode as well. College Admissions Decoded is a podcast from NACAC, the National Association for College Admission Counseling. It is produced by Phantom Center Media and Entertainment. Kojin Tashiro produced this episode. If you'd like to learn more about NACAC's mission and the college admission process, visit our website at www.nacacnet.org. That's N-A-C-A-C-N-E-T dot O-R-G. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review and rate us on your favorite podcast app. See you next time on College Admissions Decoded.
CITATION: National Association for College Admission Counseling. “Avoiding Mistakes and Assumptions” NACAC College Admissions Decoded, National Association for College Admissions Counseling, December 18, 2023.