Getting into College with Rick Clark

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Reena Ninan:

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Reena. I think a lot of people feel like they just don’t know how to connect to their kid anymore.

Reena Ninan:

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Dr. Lisa Damour:

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Dr. Lisa Damour:

We’re here to help you untangle family

Reena Ninan:

Life. Episode 180 7, getting into college with special guest Rick Clark. My opinion of college has changed since we started this podcast over I feel like every year it’s just my imagination. It’s like every year the standards have changed somehow.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

We have been doing this podcast in a time when there’s been as much transition as I have ever been aware of in the college landscape. The pandemic really disrupted things and it’s different than I’ve ever seen before and I’ve been in this business for almost 30 years, so you’re not making that up. Rena,

Reena Ninan:

Thank you for validating my feelings of how I feel this way. I can’t wait to get right to this guest. We’ve got a fabulous guest today. Rick Clark is Georgia Tech’s executive director for Strategic Student Access where he advances relationships with educational leaders and community organizations to grow enrollment, expand access, and ensure affordability. For 15 years he’s led Georgia Tech’s undergrad admissions team. He also travels annually to US embassies throughout the state department to discuss the admissions process and landscape of higher education. And by the way, over the last eight years, he’s also written a regular blog on the college admissions process. We’re going to have that in our show notes. And he’s co-author of a book and workbook called The Truth About College Admissions, A Family Guide to Getting In and Staying Together, and he co-hosts a podcast under the exact same name. Rick, welcome.

Rick Clark:

Thanks so much for having me. Really looking forward to the conversation.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

We are thrilled to have you join us. I know what good work you do in this area and we are just going to get right down to business here.

Rick Clark:

Perfect.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

When should parents start the college process? Walk us through the grade levels. Who should be doing what when?

Rick Clark:

Sure. Well, it’s a great question and it’s a very understandable question. Let me just say, I currently have a rising eighth grader and also a daughter and then a rising sophomore son. So I’m very much in this mode outside of my professional work really personally and with neighbors, et cetera. I think to an extent it does depend, but the truth is that in that middle school getting high school range, there are some things to be aware of. Mainly surrounding course choices and progression. There are impacts that what you do in that eighth grade year does impact sort of the path and the trajectory that you’re going to have in high school. Now that is not to say start thinking about certain school names or get overly obsessed with this whole thing, but to be cognizant of planning that courses in high school are impacted by course choices in middle school.

That’s the one thing I think that you could be doing prior to high school is just be mindful of that and acknowledging and understanding what that might look like for ninth and 10th graders. Though the biggest thing I would say to students and parents is just be a good high school student at the end of the day to go to class to take things that are interesting to you, to actually learn the information that is foundational to where you’re headed in high school and beyond. And to be a good community member and really right now as you said at the top, much is changing, but what hasn’t changed is what colleges are looking for. Colleges have always and continue to look for good students and good future community members in their campuses. So involving yourself outside of just being a good student, whether that be in the school or in the community, and certainly in your family. And that’s what I say to a lot of my friends and neighbors right now who have kids in our same peer group is just be a good student, just be a good community member and you’re doing all you need to be doing to be a good college applicant ultimately.

Reena Ninan:

Okay Rick, so spill it, spill the secrets. What do parents need to know that college admissions won’t tell you to get your application to really stand out? Is it the SAT score? Is it the grades? Is it the extracurriculars? What really matters to get that boost?

Rick Clark:

Yeah, I mean here again, people want that recipe, right? They want the formula and I think we are partly to blame. I’m pointing at myself here and my colleagues even the media on some level because when you hear the college admission blank, everybody fills in the word process and that is just the vernacular surrounding this. And really my experience in 20 plus years now of being in this space is it’s not a process. A process suggests X plus Y equals Z and there’s some sort of guaranteed best path. And if the girl down the street did it that way and ended up at the school you want to go to just follow her pattern and then that’s going to be the same for you. And it’s just so far from the truth because when you look at what colleges are looking for and what quote stands out at Georgia Tech as an example, our first year class will be almost 4,000 students. That’s a wide variety of what stood out and sometimes in a holistic review that is just a highly uber focused student in one particular area and in other times what stood out was how in the heck did this kid possibly do all of these different things and that’s so amazing. Or the fact that they are from North Dakota and want to study public policy really stood out and so

Reena Ninan:

We need to move to North Dakota. Is that what you’re telling me? That’s the

Rick Clark:

Advantage. That’s the trick. That’s what people need to know. I’m spilling it now North Dakota.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Okay, we’re done. We’re done. No, we do have more questions. We do have more questions, so if you’re not prepared to move to North Dakota, which is a wonderful place to live. As someone who grew up in the west, I will say

Reena Ninan:

Not as a Florida girl, though I can do it couldn’t

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Be in North Dakota, so it’s not going to work for everybody. Rick, talk us through how things have changed. I mean really the landscape has shifted so quickly. We can say the last decade, we can say the last five years. Give us just a take on

Rick Clark:

This. No, it’s true and it’s been really interesting. Georgia Tech for me has been a case study in that and a great example. I mean I came here 20 years ago. At that time we received under 10,000 applications. A good school, I think one that has, if you look at the students that came through then wasn’t hard to get in. We were admitting two thirds of the students who applied, which by the way is the national average still nationally for four year schools,

About two out of every three. And over time for a variety of reasons, this last year we received 60,000 applications. So while our class has grown from 2200 to nearly 4,000, we’re not keeping up with demand. And so 65% admit rate goes down to 15% admit rate over that same period of time. I think what we’ve seen is a couple of different things. I mean one, the fact that we have a truly global higher education market and students from all over the world see America still as a great producer of talent through higher education. And so the interest and the ability to apply the funnel at the top certainly is wide. That is one thing. The ease of applying to college through the common application in particular has made it again, more accessible and easy for students to apply. But then I think what’s also happened is as ROI has continued to be a huge piece, maybe the most popular acronym in higher education and we do acronyms very well in higher education,

Dr. Lisa Damour:

And this is return on investment. What am I getting for what am I paying for my kids’

Rick Clark:

College?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Okay,

Rick Clark:

You come out of the recession 2008, nine in particular, and America’s really asking that question more than ever before. What am I getting each individual major, what is it worth? What’s the return? And as cost has gone up, that ROI question has only become more popular and more understandable. And so I think for schools that answer that question, well, they have a big brand nationally and internationally, they can demonstrate that their students are getting amazing opportunities when they’re done. Popularity has also driven. And so what we see and hear around us is it is so hard to get into college and it is very hard to get into certain colleges, but really if you look at schools that admit less than 25%, there’s only about 80 of them in the country. It’s just that that’s what we focus on.

I was a public relations major in college. I mean if it bleeds, it leads, right? And that’s why we talk about Stanford because they have an extremely low admit rate, but that’s actually not representative of what’s really happening in higher ed. And I think that’s important because coming out of the pandemic with the demographic cliff that we’re heading towards, more or fewer American students were born in the seven eight range and now those kids are graduating from high school schools need students more than they ever have before the admit rate nationally for four year schools. It’s been going up not down. And so I think that’s also important to be reminded of is we have an ecosystem of higher ed and we have a very small sliver and what a lot of people think of is a signpost, Harvard or Yale or whatever it might be in many ways is more of an outpost in the true sense of college admission. I guess the last thing I’ll say is test optional has really made anxiety understandably go up.

Reena Ninan:

You’re talking about SAT and SAT and a CT scores, the

Rick Clark:

Ability to choose if they send a score, not while I’m an advocate for that, it has brought into this conversation a little bit more consternation because it seems less predictable and unknown and of course, and you all are the experts in this area, that unknown brings some anxiety and stress.

Reena Ninan:

We want to dig deeper into the SA team and also talk about financial aid, athletics and also the planning process, but we’re going to pause, take a quick break and we’ll tackle all those questions on the other side of this break. You’re listening to Ask Lisa, the psychology of parenting, welcome back to Ask Lisa, the psychology of parenting. We’re joined by special guest from Georgia Tech, Rick Clark who is an expert on all things admissions. Rick, you were talking a little bit about acts and sat. I want to just go back for just a second and a parent’s writing in about the college application process and asking here how much weight goes into the college essay and how do you make that stand out?

Rick Clark:

Sure. The college essay gets a lot of attention and a lot of scrutiny and stress coming along with that. I think it’s because, and I’m seeing this right now with neighbors and friends who have seniors in high school. It’s kind of the last thing that you control, especially with so many students now applying early action or early decision schools around the country are making a lot of their decisions based on your freshmen through junior year grades. You’ve sort of done what you’ve done. If you were in the French Club in ninth grade, well you can’t go back and eat the bread and do that now, right? You’ve done it or you haven’t done it With the essay though, it’s this one last thing that you can still sort of control you’re writing and I think that’s why it gets a lot of attention and there’s a lot of value in the essay, right?

Because it’s the one place where a student can give voice to all the things that otherwise are just sort of boxes and lines and lots of students can look very similar in those boxes and lines, but when it comes to the essay, unless they have an interview, this is your opportunity for voice. The truth is that there is not a perfect topic. You can write really the best and worst essay of the year on the exact same thing, but I think there is a wasted essay and that’s I think what I hope people would hear from me is that a wasted essay is when you tell the same story in prose. In other words, a lot of students will, I think really miss the opportunity by reiterating what we already know. I think the essay, the best essays in my opinion are ones where it’s a little bit surprising you didn’t see it coming right?

Something that was not really part of how you were picturing the student because that’s what we do in admission is we start sketching a student in our mind, where are you from? What does your family look like? What have your choices been curricularly? What have you done with your precious time outside the classroom? We have this sketch and the essay is that opportunity to sort of color it in and frame it up a little bit and when students just sort of keep going over the lines they’ve already drawn, we don’t gain anything additional. And so I think that’s really where an essay stands out and has value is telling a next chapter instead of reiterating a prior chapter.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

I love that. And I have a daughter who’s now a junior in college and my favorite of her college essays was about her retail job and about dealing with challenging customers at her retail job and all that she learned and she wrote it was funny and insightful, but I can also see it feels like it fits what you’re describing, which is that’s not coming up on her transcript. That’s

Rick Clark:

Beyond

Dr. Lisa Damour:

What she already had shared.

Rick Clark:

That’s right. And your example is a good one because we learn about her how she thinks and how she interacts with others invaluable to college admission committee, whereas sometimes you learn a lot about the grandfather who sounds like a great applicant were he to be the one coming to college. Right.

Reena Ninan:

Rick, you have just spilled a major college admissions insider secret. You have just dropped a major.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

We really appreciate it,

Reena Ninan:

Gem.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Okay, back to the questions from our wonderful listeners. How can parents support their kids in building a strong college application without adding too much pressure on their kids?

Rick Clark:

So I really think that one of the biggest gifts that we can give our kids as they’re applying to college and even considering college, talking about going to visit schools and all this information that we send them and they’re digesting that is to tell a bigger story. I think that parents’ role as I’ve come to understand it is we are coaches in perspective and the more that we can help our first of all instill in them that we want what’s best for them, that we are listening to them along the way and that we have seen many friends, neighbors and colleagues who have taken many routes to happiness and success and fulfillment. That is maybe the biggest gift. I think therefore that people have said on panels that I’ve been on over the years, that students need to own the process and students need to drive the process in a way that it sounds like the parent isn’t even there.

I just think that’s a unrealistic and actually misses some of the opportunity that this provides for parents to partner. And I do think that this is a concept that we talk a lot about is this shift from parent to partner and I think this is college admission is the beginning of that setting up a lifetime relationship that is changing. Again, this is part of why I think it’s hard sometimes going through the college admission, not process, I like to say experience because it demonstrates a shift in the dynamics of the relationship and a turning of the page, but one that sets up the rest of life together and how we support one another, listen to one another, et cetera. So I think the biggest thing that parents can do, and I think we talk about this in the book a little bit, but controlling the conversation by setting up a weekly meeting where instead of letting it bleed into life and all conversations, it’s 10 o’clock, just got back from tennis practice trying to get a snack and all of a sudden we’re talking about the Notre Dame essay.

Reena Ninan:

Wrong time, that’s

Rick Clark:

Not healthy, not constructive, nobody’s benefiting. But if you can say, look, from three to four on Sunday, we are going to really come together and be willing to string together multi-syllabic words into what we call sentences. I have a teenage son so I understand and all questions are on the table and you can limit the number of snacks and no cell phones and have a healthy exchange. I think that’s where parents can be most beneficial is I’m going to coach you in perspective lots of routes to success and I’m not going to let this become the thing in our relationship. The majority of our week is us as a family, us in a relationship, but there is going to be a time where we’re sitting down together to work together and to partner together on what we know for you is an important next step.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

I love this because having been through this, it can take over and it can be all consuming and I can see that it would be such a gift to the teenager and to the parents to be like, we’re going to get to it, but it’s going to have some boundaries around it.

Rick Clark:

I equate it to selling a house. You’re always thinking about, oh, is somebody going to have a better house that comes up on the market? We have to show it today and worrying so much about all the things and it can bleed into all conversations and that is not how we, I know no parent would say that’s how we want to have this chapter close, but yet it happens and I think that putting some of those guardrails in place has a lot of value.

Reena Ninan:

Rick, I know before the break we were talking about test optional whether you should submit your SATs and acts. What role today do standardized tests have in the admissions process?

Rick Clark:

It is noisy and I would say right now, unfortunately it’s going to stay noisy. If you are a parent listening who has a high school student at any age, be it a junior or a senior, really kind of more in this or even a freshman or a sophomore, it’s going to stay noisy. We’ve seen some schools with big brands go back to requiring tests, but they’re really not representative of what’s happening around most of the country. I mean of course California system, which is a behemoth within college overall is test blinds. We’re test free, meaning they’re not going to look at it at all, know that.

Reena Ninan:

Hallelujah. Thank you. California, that’s major. I mean Taylor Swift, she has a song, Florida, we should do California, no SAT scores needed. We need to shout that from the hilltops. That is amazing. If you don’t do well on tests, we’ve got to place an entire state for you to apply to. It’s great.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

And that’s for anybody, nobody submits, is that what you’re saying? Then nobody submits

Rick Clark:

To copy. They will not accept it. Their system will not allow for the test to come through. Even if a kid tries to sneak it into their essay like, oh, and by the way I made a 1580. They are redacting that out of a review.

Reena Ninan:

Is that for public or private or just

Rick Clark:

Public? That’s public. That’s the state system in California. And so you have many schools around the country. In fact, the vast majority still saying test optional. What’s challenging is a couple of things, and we won’t go too much into the weeds, but it leaves a student questioning, should I send my score or not? The common wisdom is to look at prior years middle 50% ranges and let’s say a school says last year our admitted student range, middle 50% was between a 1320 and a 1450 and a student is sitting there with a 1400. The general wisdom on that would be you should submit your score because that’s well within their band and I don’t think that’s bad advice. However, it also needs to be understood that the math isn’t really matting so much on this right now because if you have a percentage of your students who are electing not to send scores, the averages are actually escalating because only a smaller percentage.

Theoretically, those with higher scores are sending their scores. And this is challenging and I think this is where it’s incumbent upon admission folks to be as transparent as possible to say what percentage of our students sent scores? What was our admit rate for those who sent versus did not send? What is the middle 50% for those who did send and give some real context around this because students are left wondering, does optional really mean optional? And does optional really mean optional for me? I’m a girl from Connecticut who wants chemistry. That answer might be different than somebody from a very different demographic applying to the same school. And so this is where I think colleges have responsibility to go beyond what they have to this point, which is just to say we’re test optional. Send it if you want, don’t send it if you don’t want it’s data and there’s more information that can be provided that would be helpful.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Okay, so here’s another question we have from a parent who is interested in trying to get the process started a bit early. If you want to start summer before junior year, where do I find the college essay prompts?

Rick Clark:

Sure. Well, let’s acknowledge first of all that they’re probably going to change by the time your student gets there.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Right? Key point,

Rick Clark:

Especially right now, I mean there’s been so much shifting happening with essay prompts from schools now the common app, which is going to be the main essay, they’re going to stay pretty stable. So you could go on right now, you could just go Google common app essay prompts and you could be fairly assured that at least 80% of those will be the same for your student. If you have to your point, a rising junior rising sophomore, which again I do, I would tell him, yeah, I think you’re going to probably see most of these by the time you get to writing your college essays. For individual institutions though, literally every year they sit down and say, what could we ask better? How is it that we might ask students to tell us about themselves that’s going to be helpful and how can we learn from the prior admission cycle?

And in that regard, supplemental questions, which are individual to the institutions, change very consistently. And I’ll say coming out of the Supreme Court case from last year, which sort of unraveled 40 years of court precedent around whether or not race could be considered in the college admission process, many schools adapted their supplemental questions as a result of that. And they’re constantly examining, rightly so, their process and how they can best construct their application to get the information they want to make the best decisions for their class. Long answer, but I think important was some of the nuance.

Reena Ninan:

Absolutely. Rick, I want to ask you about athletic scholarships. I know there are a lot of parents who feels like maybe my kid could be playing in D one or in some university or college campus. How much responsibility, and this is a question, these questions all came from our viewers, this one’s from another viewer who says, a listener who says, how much responsibility should I take as a mom in athletic visibility with prospective coaches? Can you walk us through that path of getting an athletic scholarship to go to school?

Rick Clark:

Yeah. Well, first I was looking at some of this data recently I happened to have two of my own kids who play different sports. And so I’m surrounded by lots of parents who even at a fairly early age are talking about college scholarships. And as someone who has worked with our athletic department here for quite a while at a division one level, I think people would be shocked either at the percentage of students who actually do end up with scholarships and what percentage of those scholarships are full rides. The vast majority are not. And even at the D one level, that’s true, right? Even at the division one level, it’s generally your quote revenue sports like football and basketball where you’ll have the full rides and then many of your, what we would call Olympic sports or people might call non rev sports are going to be partial scholarships.

So I think just the reality of that, the fact that I think only 7% depending on the sport of high school students at the high school varsity level move on to play division three, division one college athletics. So it’s a lot smaller percentage than people think, and the money available is usually lower than what people think. That said, I think for parents, the truth is right now, these showcases and all of the different types of, I would say unfortunately mechanisms in place to be identified has again shifted dramatically even in the last five years, regardless of sport, volleyball, baseball, basketball across the board, there’s been a real change in this and much of that does fall on the parents to have to decide, okay, my students and their future aspirations and their particular club, typically club sport level now, where do we need to invest to make sure they have an opportunity to play at the college level? It’s tough, right? Because the best advice here is going to be I think to talk to parents who already have college students playing versus sometimes the club coaches or even the high school coaches because there are some other factors going into their advice that should be taken into consideration going to

Dr. Lisa Damour:

That was very diplomatic. I’ll say it. This can get shady. What do you mean the motivations aren’t always pure?

Rick Clark:

Yeah, that’s right.

Reena Ninan:

Oh, I’ve just missed this. This has totally gone over my head.

Rick Clark:

Sure. Ultimately, there’s a lot of money in these identification camps and showcases. I mean, and kids will fly from Atlanta just as an example to Dallas and to Raleigh and to Richmond and to Philadelphia to get their students seen by coaches. And this is the position that a lot of parents are being put in because look, at the end of the day, we love our kids and we want what’s best for them. I mean, if parents didn’t love their kids so much, a lot of these problems would go away.

Reena Ninan:

I would fly team, let’s stick with the loving our kids. I would fly to Uganda if you told me I could get my kid in early and they’d play sports, but I get it. I understand. That’s a whole other can of worms. We probably got to do a whole episode on athletics, and you’re

Rick Clark:

Right, because the other piece that’s changing a lot right now is the portal, the transfer portal, because some of the students who used to have an opportunity to go play at a certain level are now having to take a bit of a different route because the way colleges are pulling kids who are already demonstrating talent at the level at maybe a lower class division. And so that’s also shrinking the straight out of high school funnel. It is rife right now with challenges and consternation, understandably. And the truth is, even being with our athletic director yesterday, they don’t have all the answers. So much is changing in college sports right now.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Okay, let’s talk about money. We can’t have this conversation with talking about how you pay for college. How do families set themselves up for financial aid scholarships? Where should they be looking? Where are we with fafsa? fafsa, where are we?

Rick Clark:

The year behind us can be described in no other way, but just totally fubar can go Google that on their own. I’m not sure if that one went over your head. Google own leisure and the Department of Education, of course, rightly is saying this year is going to be better and that we’re going to open everything on October one. But opening an application on October one versus schools receiving the data they need to be actionable is a very different story. And we won’t rewind to the year that was because it was a total mess and hopefully in many ways an anomaly. But where we are right now in time is there is a simplified fafsa and that’s what Congress had asked the Department of Education to do back in 2020. And that is in place and there are some really good things. The IRS retrieval system where these two things are talking with one another and getting that ironed out is a good thing.

It’s more simple for students and for families and there is more federal money available than ever before, and that also is positive. I think though for most families, the biggest message is that there are net price calculators on all college websites that should absolutely be utilized in order to get a good sense of what for your family this particular college might look like. And it’s understandable that colleges take a lot of scrutiny because it’s hard to understand what’s it going to really cost for my family. I see your price tag, but is that really what we are going to pay? And that’s where if you put good data into the net price calculators, you can usually get a much more accurate sense of this. I think that, again, I would go back to the prior conversation and say, talking with families who have gone through the admission experience prior to you as well has a lot of value because there again, you’ll hear those type of stories around what they were and were not awarded.

Doesn’t mean it’s going to be your case in particular, but I think it’s a very different story than just what you see on websites or certainly what you see in threads online and down rabbit holes of social media, which you don’t want to go. But the bigger thing though right now is it is warranted to be asking what’s the value. And I think that for families visiting colleges this fall and in the year ahead, those are good questions to be asking. And a lot of schools like to just say, here’s the starting salary of our students and that’s not unhelpful. But I hope people ask the next question too, which is, well, what does that mean for students in my major? What are some of the companies that are hiring for students who are studying what I’d like to study? What does it look like for me to build a network and get mentoring while I’m a college student? And how have you been investing in that in recent years? Yes, the math and the statistics help. ROI dollars invested for dollars return starting salaries, mid-career earnings as well, all good and out there. But I think that people asking more specific questions is really important right now more than ever. That’s

Reena Ninan:

Great. And for people who aren’t as cool as Lisa and Rick, I googled it, FUBAR is messed up beyond all recognition. Just if you’re wondering and you’re not up to speed on the lingo as they are. Rick, I do want to ask about college consultants. Are they worth the high price tag? Is SAT prep paying for it worth it? And if you don’t have the money, how can you do this on your own? Is it possible?

Rick Clark:

Yeah, so I think the answer with college consultants is almost every other answer in college admission, which is, it depends. It depends what the goal is. There are some families who really want some type of an intermediary. They feel like in order to stay healthy, maybe in their relationship with their student that’s applying, they really want somebody to be the one saying the essay is due, the deadline’s coming up, have you done X, Y, and Z? And stand in the middle to be a bridge and a conduit for health. And I think in that regard, there can be value, right? Every family is different in that sense, where I don’t think there’s value. And yet where you’ll see a lot of independent consultants touting is guaranteeing almost anything. The truth is, as we said earlier, predictability is going down at many schools around the country.

And for the schools that are going up in predictability, nobody needs anybody to explain that to them. So I think that it’s more about family dynamics than guaranteed outcomes in my opinion. That’s where there can be value in independent consultants and college counselors. When it comes to SATs and a CT, again, it depends. The truth is there are some schools where here in the south in particular, there’s a number of publics I can think of where literally there’s a sliding scale of the amount of money you will receive if you have a certain SAT and GPA. So if it turns out that that’s a school that you’re really interested in putting in, I’m making up numbers, $2,000 for a test prep in order to really get back 8,000 additional for four years. So that’s a $30,000 quote advantage. And there can be value there. Do you have to do a $2,000 SAT prep? No. Every kid is different. Some can do this online and places like Khan Academy and others have amazing resources

Dr. Lisa Damour:

That are free

Rick Clark:

And they’re free. And this is where we probably need to be to remember the lessons we learned about our own students during the pandemic. I happen to have one of each one who can absolutely go do this themselves and will be proactive, the other who really could probably benefit from somebody facilitating and coaching and guiding. And so that’s our job as parents is to know our own kids and to think about what’s the best investment here.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Wonderful. Okay. So Rick, I know this to be true of you. You’ve demonstrated yet it again, you’re so reasonable, you’re so practical, you’re just so balanced in your approach. Okay, so here’s our last question for you. What else can families do to make this whole thing less stressful?

Rick Clark:

Yeah, so I’ll start with parents. My sky banner message, the one that if I could rent a plane and fly it back and forth across the country, I would say about college admission is that parents of high school students should talk to fewer parents of other high school students about college and more parents of college or recent college grads because, and we used to do this when our kids were little and we were trying to figure out how to potty train them or why they’re not reading or something. We didn’t talk to other parents of the same age. We talked to parents, a chapter ahead of us, but somehow we forget this as our kids are in high school. And that only ups the stress and anxiety because my experience, maybe this is just my community, they lie, these other high school parents, they lie, they exaggerate, they take one anecdote and that becomes representative. No kid from our school has ever gotten into brown or whatever the sort of trope is. But then you talk to a parent of a college student or a recent college grad and they say things like, you know what? This school that she loves was never on her list until the very end, or he didn’t get into his first choice, but it has been, he doesn’t just drink the Kool-Aid, he sells the Kool-Aid. He’s a tour guy,

She has an internship, she’s dating a guy we like.

And yet this wasn’t anything we could have predicted. And I think that that is, there’s so much value in that. So that’s one thing I would say to tamp down the anxiety and stress, talk to other parents from high school students about the upcoming football game or something else. How fast in the neighborhood. I would say for students, my big thing is don’t apply to a school you wouldn’t actually attend. It’s really amazing how smart kids do dumb things, and that just makes no sense. The goal should be, let me come up with a group of schools where I am excited. I would be so excited to go there. And if there’s 4,000 schools in the country and you’re applying to 10, you are way more selective than any other school in the country. You get to narrow that down. And I think if students will adopt a mentality of, I get to do this instead of I have to do this, then it will radically change the way they approach everything.

I get to write this essay and tell people about myself. I get to go to this college interview, or I get to take an SAT, right? I mean, I know that’s a scratch, but the bottom line is let’s embrace that this is an opportunity. There’s excitement that college admission can actually be more like college itself. It can be a time for learn. It can be a time to ask questions, to do your research, to be open to places you would never expect things to go. And I mean, I teach class here at Georgia Tech. I employ college students. That’s what a good college student does. They hypothesize and they are open to different results and they are curious. And instead of being so directed towards, it must go this way, let’s, let’s think like a college student.

Reena Ninan:

Here’s the question I hear no parent asking and no college admissions expert ever answering, what am I supposed to do with my life after they leave? What am I supposed to do now? Rick?

Rick Clark:

Live? Live. I mean, honestly, it’s kind of like

Reena Ninan:

Fewer dishes. That’s what you’re doing. I’ll tell you right now,

Rick Clark:

You were dishes, you’re less laundry.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Yes, all of it.

Rick Clark:

That’s all good. No, but I mean, I think this is where on the student side, people say, and this is unfair, and Lisa, I think I’ve heard you talk about this. People say, these are the best four years of your life. And I think that’s a, it’s untrue. I hope so. Gosh, that’s sad if those, it’s, it’s not true. But the truth is, they are unique years. They’re very unique and special years. And that’s great. And I think we can help students by framing it that way a little bit. But yeah, for parents, man, my hope is instead of what are we going to do, it’s like what are all the things we get to do? This is going to be amazing.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

It’s great. Well, Rick, thank you so much. You are just incredibly reassuring and insightful and clear-eyed, and we could not be more grateful for your time.

Rick Clark:

Well, it’s great to see both. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Reena Ninan:

Rick Clark from Georgia Tech. The book is called The Truth About College Admissions, A Family Guide to Getting In and Staying Together, and there’s a podcast also under that same name. Rick, thank you so much.

Rick Clark:

Thank you. Have a great day.

Reena Ninan:

So Lisa, what do you have for us? How do you

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Follow Rick? Now that was such great. I there’s great advice. There’s so much. So I’ll just choose one little thing that came up when I was working with my older daughter as she was applying to colleges, but I think it could apply for a lot of families. So my kid was really anxious about the process and really driven. There are also kids where the parents feel like they are nudging, nudging, nudging their kid the whole time. What I ended up saying a lot to my daughter is control the controllables, the things that are in your power. Do what you can on those and you’ll feel fine about how this comes out. And so I could see for a kid who feels anxious, I think that helped her a bit. But I could also see for a kid where the parents nudging, where they could also say, look, your job is to control the controllables. A lot of this will be out of your control, but that’s our reasonable expectation of your place in this process. So that’s one little thing to say. There’s so much Rick brought that we could comment on. Rena, I can’t wait for you to be in this. I know you’ve still got a little time, but man, we’re going to take such good care of you. Cry

Reena Ninan:

Practic. I know. I’m very grateful for you. I’m very grateful. I’m already emotional about all this. But thank you, Lisa. I learned so much from Rick and also from you walking us through all of this, just so grateful. Speaking of anxiety, our episode next week is about a topic that I’m a little bit anxious about entering, but you always push us in the right directions. Should I talk to my kid about masturbation? Yes, folks, that is our topic next week. Lisa’s going to guide us through it. Okay, thank you. We cover, may not, we cover all of it. Rena, we’re covering a lot of ground on this podcast. I’ve got anxiety and I don’t have a lot of anxiety usually, but thank you. Thank you for a great episode today. We’re so grateful to Rick as well for joining us. I’ll see you next week. I’ll see you next week. Thanks for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to the Ask Lisa podcast so you get the episodes just as soon as they drop, and send us your questions to ask [email protected], and now a word from our lawyers. The advice provided on this podcast is not constitute or serve as a substitute for professional psychological treatment, therapy, or other types of professional advice or intervention. If you have concerns about your child’s wellbeing, consult a physician or mental health professional. If you’re looking for additional resources, check out Lisa’s [email protected].