College Planning Blog

Over the last week, I have had the good fortune of being able to talk about my new book, “Winning the College Admission Game,” with nearly twenty radio talk show hosts around the country. While no two conversations are the same, it seems that everyone wants to talk about college rankings, mistakes people make in the application process and the timing of the college planning process.

If you have read my postings last week, you know I am concerned with growing obsession on families seem to have with labels—and having the best. Not much has changed there except that I would urge you once again to look past the numbers to find the place that is best for you or your student. Rankings in and of themselves are not the issue. Taken to extremes, however, they become an intoxicant that affects the way you see the college picture and your place in it. I will refrain from saying more as this will be the topic of our first “Straight Talk About College Admission” teleseminar series on September 19 (9PM EST).

Talking about the biggest mistakes people make in college planning could take a while as there are plenty out there. For parents, though, it is often the inability or reluctance to turn the process over to the student. Quite often parents are consumed with the dreaming and scheming about college from the time their kids are born. And in some cases, they think they have figured out where the child will go to college and what they’re going to need to do to get him “in” before the he has begun grammar school! This becomes a problem for the student who at age 16 or 17 wants to become forming his own thoughts about college—and he has trouble finding his own voice in the matter. I talk about this in the first chapter of “Winning the College Admission Game” entitled “Adjusting to Life in the Passenger Seat.” In short, parents need to back off and students need to step up if college planning is to be productive in the long run.

Finally, talk show hosts are always curious to know when students should start thinking about and preparing for college. “When should this process start,” they ask. The answer is that students become candidates for college as soon as they set foot on their high school campuses in the freshman year. From that point forward, everything you do has a bearing on how you will eventually compete for admission. And I mention this not to create a panicked obsession with “doing all the right things” and packaging yourself for college. Bad idea! Don’t deny yourself a life well lived through your teenage years. Just understand that waiting until you are a junior or senior to find any focus in the classroom, or in life, can have a limiting effect on the college options you might eventually consider.

I suspect it shouldn’t surprise anyone that college rankings remain on the radar screen. Over the last week, I spoke with nearly 20 journalists about some element of the ranking process and its impact on families. The truth is that the more air time we give rankings, the more they seem to be validated.

Frankly, it’s not surprising that college rankings should be such hot sellers given the way so many families clamor for the “best” colleges. A growing number of folks, myself included, are concerned that this clamor is leading to behaviors that are counter-productive and unhealthy among colleges and consumers alike. Some are even lobbying for the unlikely commitment of educational leaders to withdraw from their involvement in the ranking process. I say unlikely because educational leaders and their institutions simply have too much at stake to pull out–a perspective I will explore further in the September 19 “Straight Talk About College Admission.”

In the meantime, the following is a letter to the editor that I submitted to a number of dailies last week. I would be interested in your reactions.

College Rankings Perpetuate Risky Notions
By Peter Van Buskirk

Another round of college rankings has hit the newsstands amidst growing concerns that they lie at the core of the frenzy that swirls around the college-going process. Has anything changed? Is this issue a better “mousetrap” than those that preceded it? Has the frenzy lessened? The answer is a resounding “no” to all of the above.

While much of the consternation and posturing about the rankings comes from campus leaders, it turns out that few are reticent when it comes to heralding the rankings as validation of their respective places among higher education’s best–whatever that means! Perhaps just as troubling is the media’s penchant for celebrating the results of “top-ranked” institutions at the expense of more thorough journalistic assessments of the ranking process and its troubling impact on students, families and our society.

It’s time to call this scam on the college-going public for what it is. In doing so, it is difficult to fault US News & World Report. Frankly, attempting to quantify the mythical pecking order of colleges for a consumer society begging for labels is a smart business move. “It’s the “sex that sells.” The problem is that colleges can’t seem to help themselves from feeding the results into their public relations machines and, curiously enough, the media find the phenomena newsworthy! It makes you wonder who is being served!

If there is an injustice perpetrated by rankings of any sort, it is perpetuation of the very risky notion that one place is quantifiably better than another. I say risky because many families believe, or want to believe, in the pecking order and they’ll do whatever it takes to get their young prodigies into the “best” colleges possible. As a result, we are seeing the emergence of a generation of young people programmed for college at the expense of lives well lived.

The irony is that success in any college search must begin with and remain centered on the student. And this is where the ranking phenomenon fails young people as they try to make substantive distinctions between colleges. Rather than creating a dynamic that supports a student-centered process, it reinforces an obsession with the destination. While purporting to reveal the “best colleges,” rankings fail to recognize what is best for the individual student.

With the next round of college ranking guides about to be released, including the annual U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges issue, it is important that families of college-bound students be well oriented to the rankings and how to get the most out of them. As a staunch advocate of a student-centered college planning process, Peter Van Buskirk, author of the new book, Winning the College Admission Game, offer the following tips for interpreting the college ranking guides.

A Guide To College Rankings
By Peter Van Buskirk
Author, Winning the College Admission Game

1. Don’t obsess on a number! Nothing in the ranking process is absolute. There is no such thing as the best college unless the term is used to describe the best college fit for a young person. For every student, there is a “best college.” It is important that students focus on finding and getting into the colleges that best suit their needs and interests rather than obsessing on a college because of its ranking.2. Use the rankings as a guide, not the gospel. College rankings are derived from a systematic, but unscientific collection of data from and about colleges and universities. While the data may prove useful, it can’t really be used comparatively due to vast differences between the culture, mission and politics of the institutions being assessed. For example, how can you compare testing profiles across colleges that vary greatly in terms of how they use (or don’t use tests) in the admission process?

3. The rankings provide a reference point for families as they triangulate on colleges in the search process. Readers should get what they can from the data and help their students fold that information into impressions they are gleaning about colleges from acquaintances (teachers, counselors, current students, recent graduates, professionals in the community) whose interests mirror their own.

4. Don’t change who you are to get into college. Too often families become fixed on particular college destinations, especially those with impressive rankings, and proceed to re-make the student into the image of what they think those colleges want. Rather than squeezing every hour out of every day in the pursuit of the perfect credential for the dream college, students should follow their passions in living the teenage years to the fullest.

5. Focus on the three W’s. College rankings frequently distract students from thinking about the things that are most important to them as they contemplate their educational futures. Students need to remain focused on the three W’s: who they are, why they want to go to college and what they hope to get out of the college experience.

6. Find the college that fits you best. Regardless of where it ranks, the best college fit for you will be one that:

• Offers a program of study to match your interests and needs.
• Provides a style of instruction to match the way you like to learn.
• Provides a level of academic rigor to match your aptitude and preparation.
• Offers a community that feels like home to you.
• Values you for what you do well.

7. Buy the magazine for the articles-they’re great! While it is best to approach the actual rankings with a jaundiced eye, the editors really have compiled an outstanding resource in the articles that wrap around the numbers. (The main reason the rankings change every year is that the editors keep changing the formula!) Check them out!

Peter Van Buskirk spent 25 years in college admission including 12 as the Director and then Dean of Admission at Franklin & Marshall College. The author of the recently released, Winning the College Admission Game, published by Peterson’s, speaks to high school groups around the country where is an active advocate of the student-centered college selection process. He lives in Lancaster, PA.

To contact Peter for inclusion in a story about college rankings or the college admission process in general, call 717-808-5462 or email him at Peter@TheAdmissionGame.com. Visit theadmissiongame.com.

Welcome to the first entry in The Admission Game blog!� In reconstructing my website, it was important that I include a vehicle that would enable me to talk with students, parents and educators about the college planning process on a regular basis.� If you are in the midst of this process, you know just how confusing (and frustrating) it can be.� College may be on the horizon, but getting there can prove to be trickier than you might imagine!� I say that as one who has been engaged in college admission for more than 25 years professionally and, more recently, as a parent of three.

Along the way, I have gained valuable insight that has informed my thinking.� For one, the process has changed considerably as rankings, test prep, private counseling and institutional marketing have changed the dynamic that defines college access.� While this type of change is not all bad, it adds to the confusion.� If you graduated 25, 15, 10 or even 5 years ago and you are attempting to guide a young person based on your own experience, the odds are you are giving advice that is dated—badly in some cases.� As a result, much of the information that reaches young people adds to the confusion rather than providing clarity. Clearly, there is a room for a lot of discussion here as I want to put students in the best position possible to make well-informed decisions.

A second insight is that colleges have changed—and I’m not referring to new buildings and programs.� Whereas colleges were once happy to educate the young people who entered their hallways, they are now operated as businesses compelled to compete with each other for positioning on the mythical pecking order. Unfortunately, the messaging from colleges is not as clean as it used to be and this is something I will be talking about at greater length in future blogs.

Finally, and in my view this is a big problem, the focus in the college-going process has shifted from kids to colleges.� Too often the conversation begins with the question, “Where do you want to go?” rather than “What do you want to do?”� Families are scheming to get kids into schools whose only appeal is their ranking or prestige instead of looking for places that represent great fits for the needs/interests of the young person.

In my opinion, these are matters that need to be addressed head on if families are to regain control of the college planning process. I look forward to using this space to examine related issues in the coming months.� If you like what you read here, you should check out my book, “Winning the College Admission Game” for the full story on the college admission process.

In addition, I invite you to subscribe to The College Planning Newsletter, a free electronic newsletter circulated monthly.� And be sure to check out “Straight Talk About College Admission,” a monthly teleseminar that goes behind the scenes of the college admission process.� The first two segments of the series, September 19 (“College Rankings: What They Mean and How to Use Them”) and October 17(“The Biggest Mistakes Made in Applying to College”), are FREE.