Getting into college is one thing; what about completing your degree, and making the most out of the experience? In this conversation, college counselors and administrators talk about the importance of having the right mindset on the first day you set foot on campus. The best advice: know who you are, how you find success, and be honest with yourself about it. Live that reality by tackling fears and seizing opportunities from day one.
Guests: Ralph Figueroa, the Dean of College Guidance at Albuquerque Academy; Dean Jacoby, Director of College Guidance at Albuquerque Academy; Aaron Stoller, Associate Vice President for Student Success at Colorado College. Moderated by Eddie Pickett, Senior Associate Dean of Admissions at Pomona College.
Eddie Pickett: Hello, and welcome to the college admissions decoded podcast, an occasional series in the National Association for College Admission Counseling, or NACAC. I'm your host, Eddie Pickett. I'm a long time NACAC member and a member of the NACAC board of directors. In my day job, I'm a senior associate dean of admissions and director of recruitment at Pomona College in Claremont, California. NACAC is an association of more than 25,000 professionals at high schools, colleges, universities, and non-profit organizations, as well as independent counselors who support and advise students and families through the college admissions process.
Pickett: Thank you for joining us for today's episode on student success. A lot of information that students receive as they embark on the college process revolves around how to apply and get accepted. This is, of course, important, but sometimes that takes our focus from the more important task, completing college. The US government estimates that a college degree will result in on average $500,000 more income over a person's career. According to the investment banking giant, Goldman Sachs, that number is 1 million. On the other hand, the difference between a high school diploma and just completing some college courses, but not getting a degree is $116,000. Getting into college is important. It could be argued that graduating from college is even more important, but graduating from college isn't a forgone conclusion. According to college planning partnerships, only 40% of students graduate from college within four years. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, only 60% of students graduate from their first institution within six years.
Pickett: Today, we will talk with a pair of college counselors and a college administrator about how students can put themselves in the best position to succeed at college when they arrive. I'm joined by Ralph Figueroa, the dean of college guidance at Albuquerque Academy.
Figueroa: Hello, everyone. Glad to be here.
Pickett: Aaron Stoller, assistant vice provost and director of academic programs at Colorado College.
Aaron Stoller: Thanks for having me.
Pickett: And welcome back to the podcast, Dean Jacoby, director of college guidance at Albuquerque Academy.
Dean Jacoby: Hi, Eddie. Thanks for having me.
Pickett: Yeah, welcome back. I'm ready to do this one more time with you Dean. So, as we jump in today on student success, I'll start with this question. If college is just more education and students have been in school most of their lives, why is it transition to college, a challenging one? We're going to pass that over to Aaron first.
Stoller: Sure, absolutely. One of the things that I think is extraordinarily difficult for students to understand when they come into college... I think about the college transition as a kind of cultural exchange. Students come into school, and they think there's a lot of things that are familiar to them here. They see teachers, they see books, they see tests, they see classes. And they don't think about the fact that in a lot of ways, even though the things that are right in front of them look familiar and look the same, the kind of cultural paradigm of school has really changed dramatically. And so a lot of the behaviors, a lot of the assumptions that they're making about the type of things that they need to do, their behaviors, the expectations of faculty has really changed dramatically, and they may not have resources or sort of networks to help them sort of understand how to navigate that new environment.
Stoller: And so a lot of the burden, I think, of first year programs is to help kind decode that environment for students, so that they realize that, yeah, there are a lot of things that they knew about in high school that maybe worked well for them that can still be applicable to a college environment, but a whole heck of a lot of the college culture is going to mean adapting in different ways. Just kind of a more concrete example of that, we talk a lot about reading strategies in college. When you're reading a textbook in a high school environment, that's going to feel a lot different than a lot of times, even in a first class that you have as a first year student, you're going to be reading academic text, research that are produced by researchers who may be your teachers. And the ways that you want to decode those texts are going to look and feel a lot different, even though of course, what you're doing is ultimately reading and trying to understand it.
Jacoby: Aaron, I think those are really good points. One of the things we also say, Ralph and I in the office with students, is most students take 12 to 15 credit hours a week when they're studying in college. And that means that the other six and a half days in college is undirected, right? While I think most of our experience in K through 12 education is being told where we need to be, how we're supposed to be acting, what we're supposed to be doing almost to the minute the entire time. And students have to realize that they need a whole new sort of set of skills or to think very differently about how they're going to make use of the opportunities. They're not going to be required so much as just there on offer, and students need to figure out how to make the most of them.
Figueroa: Yes, Dean, I want to really emphasize that point, because they are in charge more completely than they've ever been in their lives, and that requires a different set of decision making skills, a different set of analytical skills to decide what to do with all that time. And that can be critical to making that transition to success and not just getting in.
Pickett: What do you mean that they don't have their parents rounds to tell them what to do all the time in college? I mean, what parent doesn't want to be in somebody's hip pocket right now.
Figueroa: Well, as much as we think that parents are doing absolutely everything with their children these days, there does come a point where they have to get back in that car and go home when the student stays there, and that's when it becomes more important for the student to have an idea, to have thought about what they're going to do with this time, what they're going to do being in charge of this process.
Stoller: And Ralph and Dean, I would tag on to. I agree completely. And one of the big challenges we see, I mean, think about coming into this as a new culture, I mean, one of the big changes is that if you don't show up for class, your teacher might not even notice. If you don't turn in an assignment, they're not going to follow up and say, "Hey, why didn't you turn that in?" They're just going to mark you down or give you a zero, right? And so much of the burden shifts on the student to, as you're suggesting, to be aware of their time, to be planning, and also being willing and able to go ask for doing basic help seeking when they need it. So, there's this entire shift that occurs where a lot of the burden of education... It's not that they weren't required to do things prior or they weren't putting in effort, absolutely, but so much of the burden of learning really shifts even more so onto the student in this environment.
Pickett: Absolutely. And I think the skillset that you need in high school academically is actually very similar to college, but it's not the same. And so the next question I want to ask is, what factors are going to contribute to student success at college? Is there any data that tracks what students can do?
Jacoby: Yeah. Eddie, there have been a number of organizations that tried to put some data numbers to the successful college experience. And the one we end up talking about the most is the National Survey of Student Engagement, which goes by the nickname of NSSE. And they have many points that they bring up, but we've boiled them down, in our work, to four that we think are most critical.
Pickett: And Dean, can you give us the first two, and then Ralph the second two. And can you break down these factors a little bit for us too?
Jacoby: A lot of them, I think once we go over them, will sound pretty common sense and straightforward, but I think it's always important to go from what we think is sort of obvious to really demonstrating the power of them and the truth of them. So, the first one is rigor, where you would think sometimes maybe a student should come in and take a easy course load and not overwhelm themselves. And of course, they need to be doing what's appropriate, but what NSSE has found is that students who engage with their coursework by taking rigorous courses and really challenging themselves academically actually brings out their intellectual curiosity, gets them more involved with the work, also makes them feel like, "Hey, I have to step up. I have to respond." If it's so easy that I don't have to pay any attention, that's clearly a bad habit.
Jacoby: So, the first one is actually taking challenging coursework, and we encourage our students to think very carefully about the courses they select for the fall of their first year in college. The second is the importance of peers. One of the exciting things, once you step out of high school into college, is that you're in a more diverse environment. People generally are coming from a broader array of places, whether that's within the state or certainly the country or even the world, and being able to learn from this diverse set of peers is really something that helps students see the world, and therefore themselves, differently, and again, allows them to feel more engaged, more excited, more rewarded by spending time within that college environment.
Figueroa: A third factor that came out of the NSSE data that we have looked at is to have a mentor while you are in college. And our students, we have seen, interpret this very broadly. Sometimes they'll think immediately, "Oh, it must be a faculty advisor or maybe a fellow in our dorm or in our residence hall." But other students who we've worked with in the past have said, "I found my mentor in my on campus job. It was my boss who I worked for in a campus job, or it was someone in a church that I attended while in college, maybe not even on the campus itself," but to find an adult who cares about you and cares about your success, and someone you can talk to someone you can relate to. And that's one that's not as obvious to students, the fact that we tell them, "Look, you need to search out those adults who are going to be on your side, someone who you can rely on to give you that support, to give you that encouragement when you need it."
Figueroa: And the fourth factor is a supportive environment of some kind, a support group, if you will, some place where you are known, where you are supported. And this is one that oftentimes takes our students a lot longer defined than they might think. And it can be anything from an academic organization to, again, a church organization, a service group. And when we started using this as an example for our students, my immediate story was my own experience. When I walked onto college, literally my first day at college, I went down across campus and auditioned for the marching band. So from the very first day I was set foot on that campus, I was part of this group that was my family, my support structure. Until literally my last day on that campus of graduation, I was with the band and with that group, and that formed a core support for me throughout my four years there and made a real difference for me.
Pickett: What instrument did you play?
Figueroa: I played tenor sax, and I actually still play sax. Right before this session, I was sitting in with the Albuquerque Academy Jazz Band. Every now and then when they don't have enough saxophones, they let me sit in with them.
Pickett: Nice.
Figueroa: 30 years later, I'm still playing saxophone.
Pickett: Let's go through those factors and each of us give just one piece of advice to students. Since the first one was academics, I'll start with the academic piece. As students go to larger schools, I usually tell them to make sure they don't just take large lectures their first semester. And so take a first year seminar, a writing course, a language course where you guaranteed to be in a smaller class. That way, you don't always feel like a number, particularly when you're coming from a smaller school. I'll hand it over to Ralph for the peers factor two.
Figueroa: With peers, it's really important to realize that your most important exchanges are not going to happen in the classroom or lecture hall, or even in a small seminar. Your most important exchanges during your college year are going to happen sitting in the hallway of your dormitory ar two o'clock in the morning, talking with somebody whose background and experiences are different from you. Be open and be aware of those opportunities to learn from your classmates, because that is going to be precious and the most valuable part of your whole education.
Pickett: And over to Aaron for factor three, that mentor support.
Stoller: Absolutely. I think this can be a challenging one for incoming students. If we're defining mentoring as NSSE does, as an adult in your system who cares about you, who cares about your success, I think the challenge there is that can be kind of intimidating for students. You're going to automatically get to meet some faculty in your network, but also I think we need to take a really wide view of the kinds of mentors that are available on college campuses to help students. Of course, the faculty are there to support student success, folks in your residence hall, folks in academic support areas like the writing center or the quantitative reasoning center, all across campus really are there to be invested in your success. And so the trick there is really just to try to get involved as early as you can, so that you get connected with some of these folks. Take the opportunity to go to programs, get to know the RA in your hall.
Stoller: A lot of times the students in your mentoring network can connect you with offices and resources, or even in the context of a college job. Once you really make one or two of those connections, they can really help decipher so much of the environment of a college campus that could help you connect to it.
Pickett: It. Thank you. And then over to Dean for the last factor four, supportive environment.
Jacoby: Yeah, Eddie, I think this one is really important in ever evolving with the advent and the power of social media and our cell phones. Students can see their support system as their ability to call home or the Snapchats with their friends who are in different colleges or different places and not part of the college environment. And while those are all worthy. And I think important, the data from NSSE is talking about your support system on campus. And obviously this can vary a lot, where there are students who are working almost full time and attending college and living maybe in their hometown, and so they might think they don't need this support system either. But again, the data shows that the more that people engage with the community within the campus, so joining clubs or sports or the band or whatever it might be, and then also seeing where they feel safest, where they're reflected.
Jacoby: So, for some students, it is on that team or club, but for other students, it might be finding an affinity group or a diversity center. So, they can be everything from very highly organized ones that are built by the administration within the college environment, or it could be as informal as the group of students you first met your fall of your freshman year, but being able to identify them and knowing to go to them and expressing how you're feeling, having a safe corner, where you can be you is a really important part of this process. None of us are at our best if we never feel comfortable, at least at some point in our day, letting our guard down and just being ourselves.
Pickett: I'm going to give my shout out to my mentor and my support system from college, and that would be Jasmine Taylor, who's now at Francis Parker School in San Diego as a college counselor, and to Constance Perez, who's at Phoenix Country Day as a college counselor as well. They were my mentors in undergrad and my support system, and have been great friends to me in my college experience, college admissions, college counseling, and now back into admissions. So, shout out to those two amazing, phenomenal women for helping me get through undergrad, because we know that I wouldn't have got through without those two. So, this is my time to thank them publicly. Aaron you've directed the first year program at Colorado college. What have you found are some of the challenges students face when they come to college for the first time?
Stoller: We've talked a little bit about some of the things through this NSSE data that I think line up with the challenges that we see at Colorado college, is that the way that we think about it a little bit in my office, one big bucket of things are student behaviors themselves. So, do they have the core skills to succeed in the classroom? Are they managing their time well? So, there's a whole set of challenges they face in sort of recalibrating their behaviors to sort a college environment and realizing some of that context has changed. Not to be too redundant, but to sort of parallel the NSEE. I mean, another big part does have to do with the networks of support that they have. So, both the students that they know and the peers, as well as the adults in the room that they could get connected to, both faculty staff across campus, that could be intimidating for a lot of folks or they don't quite know how to do it.
Stoller: So, that's a big part. I think the ways in which I might broaden a little bit of the NSSE data, in my office, we think a little bit about student success in terms of the kind of capitals that students have when they come in. And what I mean by capitals is the kind of resources that they have in order to be successful. So, you might be familiar with this concept of social capital in sociological research, which basically just means the kind of social networks that people have in their local community and their ability to get things done. For us, we think a lot about navigational capital. So, do students really understand the networks that are available to them on campus? So, do they know where the writing center is? Do they know where the diversity center is? Do they know where some of these core offices are?
Stoller: So, one of them is just really a navigational understanding of the resources, not only where they are, but what they do. So, that's a huge piece that they need to have to be successful. We think a lot about student success in terms of relational capital. So, another big challenge we've already mentioned is their ability to know people and to be known. So, how do we support them in doing that? Another thing that... This is going to sound a little bit strange and maybe off script of kind the way that NSSE thinks about data. We think a lot about what I would call maybe resistance capital or critical capital. There's an educational researcher named Tara Yosso who's at UC Riverside. I'm just a huge fan of her work. I mean, she just does amazing stuff, but she talks about resistance capital, meaning the ability of students to self advocate, the ability of them to identify where they have needs and to ask or to challenge the college environment is a huge piece.
Stoller: So, that's a huge issue for students when they come here. And it has to do with diversity and inclusion. So, where the campus needs to make adjustments or where students might need something, they need to develop the ability to do that. And then I guess lastly, I would say there's also... And Yosso also talks about this with this idea of linguistic capital. And that's kind of a complicated term, but what it really means is, are students really conceptualizing big questions, why they're here. Do they understand what they want to get out of this environment? So much of student success in my opinion has to do with their ability to identify goals and sort of develop a sense of purpose. A lot of students come to college, and they do it because parents told them to, culture tells them to. This is just the next step.
Stoller: That's absolutely fine. That's a great reason to be here, because for a lot of folks, it is the next step. But when you're here, the students need to do a lot of thinking about what they want to get out of it. I think we all know students who have gotten knee deep into a major and sort of had this existential crisis where they realize that this, is the right fit for me, or I want to do something else in my life. And the more that we can get students, especially transitioning students, to start asking themselves those critical questions early, the better off that they're going to be later on. And of course, some of their ability to identify those goals is going to be dependent upon their experiences, but a lot of folks just don't have the opportunity to really reflect on why they're here and what they want to get out of it.
Stoller: We always tell our first years, "It's going to be busy. You're going to be overwhelmed, but you got to take time to reflect. Talk with your friends. Chat with parents. Write in a journal, think about why you're here and what you want to get out of it." That's a big challenge. If students haven't identified what they want, they're going to start just choosing things based on what other people have suggested for them.
Figueroa: Aaron, I want to emphasize a couple of things you said, especially talking about encouraging students to ask questions, to ask for help, to speak up when they need resources, and immediately brought to mind a story from my own experience. When I was a new freshman in college, was walking across campus, ran into my RA, my resident assistant, who was a grad student. He was Mr. Experience. And we just walked back to the dorm together. We're chatting and we're walking by these laboratories, and he looked in one of the laboratories from outside and he stuck his head in the window and he said, "Hey, what's that?" And he started talking to the grad student who was in there working with this piece of equipment. Next thing I know the grad student has invited us in to show us this equipment to tell us what he was working on. And my RA told me, "You just got to ask people what's going on, because they'd love to tell you and they're going to share with you. So, never be afraid to just stick your head in and ask."
Figueroa: And that was a lesson that was really important to me, to speak up and ask. And it wasn't in my nature necessarily, and yet I realized, oh, that's going to really help me out.
Pickett: Aaron, I noticed you talked about challenges. Are there any other or further challenges you'd like to add to this conversation?
Stoller: I think the one thing that I would really add is, and it is actually quite related to this advocacy, the self-advocacy piece, is that students don't really understand how much value they bring to campus and the kind of assets that they have. A lot of times what I see with first year students... And it's completely understandable. This is a very intimidating environment. They're learning from faculty with all sorts of fancy degrees. They're meeting people who have all sorts of different experiences. And there's this tendency, I think, among a lot of students to have kind imposter syndrome where they think that they don't really belong there or there might not be reasons that they actually belong there. And they're afraid to ask questions, because in a lot of contexts, questions that they might ask are seen as deficits, but the truth is that students bring so much to the table.
Stoller: Your unique perspective, who you are as a person and your ability to ask a question is going to open up possibilities for us, but it's a really hard lesson for them to learn, because so much of a schooling context, and here I'm not just talking about college, really K through college, think about grades and tests, I mean, so much of it is driven by wanting to avoid failure, being afraid to make mistakes. Achievement is really based on being competitive and not wanting to seem "weak." But the truth of the matter is, in a college context, of course there's still tests and they're still grades, but the reality is students bring so much value even just in the things that they're curious about, even if they don't have an answer. As researchers in a college context. One of the things I think that can be really confusing for students is the fact that academic research depends on being confused constantly. It depends on not knowing things and of searching in the dark for answers to questions. But yet in a classroom context, students kind of get the impression that there is the right answer.
Stoller: But truthfully, in most college classes, unknowing is a virtue. And I think that's related to advocacy. Students are afraid to self advocate because they don't see what they bring to the table and how important it is.
Pickett: I love everything of what you just said, every single point. I want to break down a couple of those. One of them is just, at some point, you're going to meet your match in the classroom. And so I'm going to toss this one over to Ralph. When students meet their match, whether that’s, you know, if I've been a straight A student, I get a B or a C, or, "Ooh, this is my first D or F," what's your advice to them?
Figueroa: They have to realize that they need to meet their match, so to speak. They need to be at a place that is going to challenge them enough to stump them or maybe even make them fail. And that's a good thing, because it's going to show you that maybe what you're focusing on is not what you should be focusing on, or maybe your methods, your strategies that you're using are not the right strategies, and you need to ask for help. You need to say, "What am I doing? What can I do better? How can I reevaluate? How can I do this better the next time? How can I learn?" Look at it as what it's supposed to be, a learning experience and a learning opportunity. And it's gold to be able to reach those points. If you never get to a point where you fail at something you've missed out on a lot of growth.
Figueroa: Failing at some small task or some small part of it is not failure on the grand scale. It's merely a bump in the road that you need to get over or go around or change direction with. And think of it as a great opportunity.
Pickett: Yeah. Think about it as a speed bump, a hurdle, or brick wall. And even sometimes those brick walls can be pushed down too.
Figueroa: That's right.
Pickett: And so Aaron, what does your office do to teach students to help them succeed?
Stoller: So much of what we do is built around really the first year curriculum. Our first year curriculum at CC is built around two ideas. One is really helping students to understand of core academic skills that they need in order to be successful, like core reading and writing skills, understanding how to manage time, things that we might have already talked about. Another big skill that we teach them, which may sound a little bit, I think strange, is that we focus a lot on helping students understand the nature of disciplines and disciplinarity. One of the things that we haven't really touched on that much is that so much of what happens at a college is actually based on this big idea of the academic disciplines. What a college major is in a lot of ways is preparing students to think a biologist or think like a sociologist. But most students coming in, they don't know what the heck that means. They're used to, in a high school context, most of the time, not always, thinking about what they're learning as a subject.
Stoller: It's an academic content it's information that I need to learn. But so much of what happens in a college major is really teaching them actually way of practicing, a habit of thinking. So, yeah, of course that's going to involve certain sets of content, but the way that you think, the habits of mind you... I'm a philosopher by training, and the way that you develop... How you think philosophically is very different than maybe the way that you would think as a biologist. I have this story about my old boss at my former institution was a plant biologist, and we were good friends and we used to get along and do all sorts of things. And we had this moment in the office where the printer broke in our office. We were trying to print something out quickly for a event that we had.
Stoller: And I, of course, as a philosopher, went immediately to the manual and read the logic chain of the thing and punched in the code of how to fixed it. We had to run 400 copies and I hit enter. And Larry, who was my boss, leaned over. He said, "You could have tried one first." And he burst out laughing, right? Because it was this instance in which me as the philosopher is using logic to apply to this practical problem, and Larry, as the experimental biologist, wanted to try something out. And so much of what we teach in our first year program is really helping students reorient to the fact that they're in a research environment. Even in liberal arts context, your teachers are active researchers, and that active research agenda and those habits of mind that you're going to develop have a lot to do with the ways that readings are structured in class, the expectations that you have, the kinds of questions that faculty want you to ask.
Stoller: And so in addition to sort what I would call generalized academic skills that students need to be successful across all classes, we're also trying to teach students to think about the disciplinary context in which skills may be deployed a little bit differently.
Pickett: And if you're going to a liberal arts school, I mean, I work at Pomona College currently, and eight and 10 students are going to switch their majors at some point. So, you can't just stick to one discipline. We have about 60% of our students doing research as well at a small liberal arts school. It's about the creation of knowledge, to Ralph first, do you have any specific examples of how your students have used some of these strategies that Aaron just spoke about?
Figueroa: Yeah, absolutely. And it also relates back to something Aaron said earlier about having their goals and to knowing what their goals are and what their plans are. We try to work with our students here at the high school level, asking them why they're going to college and to think about what they want to get out of the experience before they get there. But it's a question that they have to keep asking while they are there, and that's the important thing. You mentioned changing majors, Eddie, which is very common. It's realizing that the process of inquiry, the learning that you're going to be experiencing, and learning from watching your professors and how they interact and everybody around you is an ongoing process that goes constantly through your experience, and that you have to keep questioning whether or not this is the track you want to be on, whether or not the goals that you have right now are the goals that you want to stick with.
Figueroa: And for the students we've spoken to who have been successful have not always found right away those different factors that they need to find, especially with the peer group or the supporting environment or the supporting activity. Some of our students have taken a while to find something. And once they do, it's something they don't expect. One of the examples that we have is a student who ended up joining a sport that she had never played before formally and joined it just for fun. And now as a junior, she's winning tournaments in this sport, and it's probably going to be team captain next year as a senior, and it's a huge core group for her supporting her in her endeavor and making her more successful at school. So, it's keeping yourself open to learning and being flexible and trying out those different paths and those different goals. And that learning environment all around you, keeping aware of it
Pickett: As we come towards a close, I just want to ask one final question. And that's, what recommendation do you have for a first year student as they enter college?
Stoller: I think for me, it boils down to three things. One, it's be willing to take risks, so putting yourself into situations where you're really out of your comfort zone. And I think that friction point is such an important part of learning in college. I think two is reflect. So, think about why you're here, what you want to get out of it. And then third is honestly believe that you are here for a reason, believe in yourself, that you have the ability to be successful, and don't for a second doubt that.
Figueroa: Yeah, those are great points, Aaron. Thank you for bringing them up. You're reemphasizing the value yourself. Your contributions are going to be important and your contributions matter. Even if it comes to a situation where you're just going to say, "Yes, I agree with Dean or I agree with Eddie," that participation is important, but I would tell students to really be willing to be aware of their surroundings and finding those helpers. Whether they're adult mentors, or whether they're groups or opportunities or those exchanges with peers, be aware of what's happening around you that can become part of your support structure, because you're going to find it in surprising ways and at surprising times, and you're going to find connections with people that you didn't think you were going to find.
Figueroa: And be aware of that and realize, "Hey, this is an important part for me and my happiness and my success," and then build on that. And pretty soon you're going to find that you are the one who is providing that connection to others, and that you're providing that support to others by being aware of your ability to see those connections when others aren't looking for them, and that's really critically important.
Jacoby: Ralph, I love the note you ended on. I think that one way that some people find themselves is by serving others, right? And listening to others and being available to support others is one of the ways that some people find their most important communities. If I had a last piece of advice, I would say that despite the importance of the NSSE research, and I hope that people will look at those four elements, I think they really are very useful and predictive of college success, there's other research that shows that the number one most important element is the energy and enthusiasm and optimism that the student brings. And truly, the student is the most important factor in their success, and being excited and optimistic is a big part of that. And so if there's one last piece of advice, it's that students have to be true to themselves.
Jacoby: We are all different types of people, and we can handle situations in different ways. We have some students who financial success and stability is the number one most important thing coming out of college, and they're willing to do a major they're not interested in and enter a career that maybe isn't particularly interesting to them, but it will yield the kind of success, the number one most important success that they're willing to do. And there are other people, and I put myself in this category, that unless I see myself and realize my own passion by what I'm doing, I'm not going to be successful. And we see a lot of students who go to college saying, "I need to do this major. I need to do this future career. I need to work towards these things." And what they find during college is that it's very hard to maintain that over four years and all of the rigor that the college throws at them, if it isn't their passion.
Jacoby: And so I encourage students to know who they are, how they find success, and to be honest with themselves about it and live that reality rather than try to create an illusion of success that isn't based in who they are and how they handle situations.
Pickett: My last piece of advice is that you should be 80% comfortable and 20% uncomfortable. You learn more from being uncomfortable than being comfortable. And so pick the campus that's going to push you outside of your comfort zone while still supporting you most of the time. That's how you learn. I want to bring us back to one last point. It's just, again, what the NSSE is, so the National Survey of Student Engagement. And it basically breaks down to four factors, academic challenge or rigor, peers, and getting engaged, especially discussing with diverse peers, mentorship, having at least one adult who cares for your success, and a supportive environment and just thinking what is your support system? So, those are the factors of the NSSE that you should all know. And unfortunately, that's all the time that we have for today. I want to thank Dean, Ralph, and Aaron for joining us, and I want to thank you, my friends in the audience, for listening as well.
Pickett: College Admissions Decoded is a podcast from NACAC, the National Association for College Admission Counseling. It is produced by LWC Studios. Kojin Tashiro produced this episode. If you would like to learn more about NACAC's guests, our organization, and the college admissions process, visit our website, nacacnet.org, that's N-A-C-A-C-N-E-T.org. Please leave a review and rate us on Apple podcasts. See you next time on College Admissions Decoded.
CITATION: National Association for College Admission Counseling. “Setting Your College-bound Student Up for Success on Day One.” NACAC College Admissions Decoded, National Association for College Admissions Counseling, August 30, 2022.