How to Handle the Why College/Why Academic Interest Essay with Lisa Marker-Robbins – College Bound Mentor Podcast #9

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Welcome to the College Bound Mentor podcast! Each episode, hear trends, case studies, and interviews with students who have gone through it all.

This is Episode #9 and you’ll hear tips on writing the Why College/Why Academic Interest essays and an interview with Lisa Marker-Robbins, Founder of Flourish Coaching. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review if you’re enjoying the show!

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College Bound Mentor Podcast Episode #9: How to Handle the Why College/Why Academic Interest Essay with Lisa Marker-Robbins

Some of the trickiest essays to pin down on college applications are the Why College/Why Academic Interest essays. In the first part of this episode, we share why these essays are frustrating, the format of these essays, and how to write them. We then welcome on special guest Lisa Marker-Robbins, Founder of Flourish Coaching, who’s helped over 4,000 high school students and young adults gain the insight, experiences, and confidence they need to successfully embark on their post-high school path. She busts some myths about the Why College/Why Academic Interest essays, reveals some findings of her study of the Top 50 public universities and their admissions practices, and shares her best advice for students who truly don’t know what to major in. This episode covers everything from college essays to the top schools. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

  • What’s the format of the Why College/Why Academic Interest essay?
  • How do you prepare for the essay?
  • What should you do if you have a specific academic interest?
  • Should you talk about what you love about the school?
  • What did Lisa learn from her study of the Top 50 public universities?
  • Should you name-drop everyone you know who went there?
  • What should students do if they don’t know what they want to major in?
  • When do we figure out what we want to do in life?

Get Lisa’s resources at FlourishCoachingCo.com/Majors and check out her College and Career Clarity podcast, and subscribe to College Bound Mentor on your favorite podcast platform and learn more at CollegeBoundMentor.com.

Check out the episode and show notes below for much more detail.

Show Notes

What is the College Bound Mentor podcast?

Lisa, Abby, and Stefanie know college. They also know students. With over 30 years combined experience mentoring young people, they’ll show you why understanding yourself is the key to finding the right college. Each episode, hear trends, case studies, and interviews with students who have gone through it all – giving you valuable insight to survive the college application process and beyond. Hosted by Lisa Bleich, Abby Power, and Stefanie Forman, Partners of College Bound Mentor.

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 0:01
Your passions are going to switch over time, so don’t, don’t put all this pressure on like I’m figuring out my forever job. Right?

Lisa Bleich 0:19
Hey CBMers, welcome back to College Bound Mentor, where we help you survive the college application process and beyond. We’re your co hosts,

Speaker 1 0:28
Lisa Abby and Stefanie. And

Lisa Bleich 0:31
on the first half of today’s episode, we’re going to tackle the why College, why academic interest, essay. And on the second half, we will chat with Lisa Marker-Robbins, CEO of Flourish Consulting and host of College and Career Clarity about which schools admit by major and how it impacts your application. We will also do some mythbusting.

Unknown Speaker 0:51
So Abby, yes,

Lisa Bleich 0:55
yes, yes. The covid app just went live on a on August 1 and so that means a whole bunch of supplements are going to be coming ready for students to write. And whenever we have essay training meetings, the why College, why major essay is always one of your pet peeves. So what I want to understand or help our listeners understand, what about that essay bothers you so much, and what do students often do wrong? Oh,

Abby Power 1:23
Lisa, I don’t even know where to start. No, I’m just kidding. So colleges are asking students what they want to major in and why that is often the format of the Y major essay, and what they’re looking to see is what the student’s current interests are, and if the program at that given College is a good fit. And when we work with clients through the years, we help them follow their interests and develop their strengths and kind of pursue a path that’s going to make them a really strong applicant. And then oftentimes, when it comes time to picking a major, which, editorializing a bit, is a little bit unfair to ask of an 18 year old anyway, but they do ask it also, generally speaking, you don’t even declare your major till you’re sophomore. So it is even a little bit more unfair than that. But regardless, they’re asking, so we have to answer so often after our clients have done such a good job of pursuing their interest and building their strengths and developing their passions. When it comes time to answer what you want to major in, they kind of veer off into this thing where they answer the question in a way, where they answer what they think they’re supposed to answer, like business or pre med, and there’s a disconnect between the path they followed through high school and what they say they want to major in. Just one really quick example I’ll give you is I just did this for the first time. I had my first supplemental essay meeting of the year, and a young woman who took psychology at her class at her school, then took AP Psychology last year. She just got a five on the AP Psychology exam. She loved it, and was so engaged that her her teacher asked her to be a TA for psychology this year. And when we talked about what you want to major in, of course, I thought psychology. And she said, entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship experience. She’s never taken a business class, but she’s, you know, she’s thinking, well, that’s what I want to do. I think I’d be a really good entrepreneur. So, as you can imagine, it would be very difficult to her, for her to write a compelling essay. Not only does she have nothing to back it up, but her whole trajectory points in a different direction. And we just see that happening a lot. You know, another quick general example would be kids who say they want to be follow a pre med track major in a in an in a lab science. But when you look at their transcript, their science and maybe their math grades are their least strong grades, and maybe they don’t have strong scores on their standardized tests and math and science, where there’s a science section for the ACT, so it’s like, if you are not strong in those areas, it doesn’t mean you can’t be a doctor someday. But when you’re telling a school what’s interesting to you, what you’re good at and what you want to pursue, you have to go with your strengths. And yeah, often we see kids just say what they think they’re supposed to say, I guess,

Lisa Bleich 4:18
or what they think that they’ve been told by maybe a, you know, something that you got to major in, something that you can get a job with, or, you know, something that’s going to make sense for them based on what they’ve been told by their family. So we see these happen. These things happen a lot. And so as a result, we’ve developed a y college y major worksheet that really helps students think about how they can write this essay and really do the research before they start writing. And I think that’s really important. So Steph, why don’t you help us understand, like, what’s the first step in this process of preparing to write the Y college y major essay? Yeah,

Stefanie Forman 4:56
first step and I just want to back up a. Little and explain that not all, not every, college is going to have a supplemental essay or essay specific to their college outside of, you know, the personal statement, the one that’s used on the common app. So if a college is asking for why major or why school? Why college type essay? It’s going to be very important to them. And one way to start that a lot of students are like, Well, where do I begin? And so something that shows a genuine interest is that we have students describe a story or experience an anecdote that really help them develop this curiosity and passion. So for example, I’ll just share a few from from this past year, I had one student who was obsessed, and I don’t use that lightly, obsessed with the New York Mets would dress in orange and blue every day. This was her passion, and as a result, she wanted to go into analytics, or even maybe computer science, and how it related to sports in some ways, I had a student who started her why major essay about her love for Rubix cubes and problem Solving and how that led to her love for coding and problem solving. I had a student who was interested in film and communications, and so she talked about how she started a talk show at her high school, and she interviewed the principal, who was a sneaker head and his love for sneakers. So there’s so many different ways to start it, but it that that anecdote, that beginning should really reveal a genuine interest, right?

Lisa Bleich 6:49
And those are such great examples. They really should be fun so that it’s something very specific to you, and what makes you interested, or what piqued that curiosity. And I think those are such wonderful examples. The next thing you want to do is, once you’ve identified what piques your interest, what you want to study, then you want to think about, what do you want to learn more about? In other words, it could be, what problems do you want to solve, if you’re an engineer, if you’re doing something and perhaps pre med, something in the sciences, is there something that you want to help solve? Do you want to look at how you can create different mechanisms to help people with disabilities speak more clearly? You know, sometimes you’ve had students who have worked with students who might be on the spectrum or on the ASD spectrum, or they might have had some issues learning challenges, and so they are want to do computer programming or develop something that can help the those people, that population, communicate more effectively. There was a student that I had who has herself synesthesia, which is where she actually tastes words. So that got her interested in psychological disorders, how the brain is different, and psychology and how she can help understand the brain mechanisms and how those things and then she was also really interested in serial killers. I don’t know how she made that jump, but she made that jump from her own issues with her brain to looking at serial killers. So these are the types of problems that these students wanted to solve. And then it’s an area of like, what areas it could also be what areas of work or industries or issues interest you. So if you don’t actually know your major, sometimes we’ll ask about an academic interest. So it’s really important to identify what are the things that you want to learn in school. Delve in deeper. And that helps with, as Stephanie was saying, going really deep in the curriculum and seeing what classes actually interest you that are being offered in the particular school. Abby, you want to talk about how you you mentioned this already, that your major should align with your previous courses, activities and interests. You want to go a little bit deeper

Abby Power 8:56
on that. Yeah, if you’re thinking about a specific interest. I’m just thinking about specific kids. So the young woman I mentioned before with psychology, she also has taken, she did a summer program in psychology, and this year, she’s taking a free online course in abnormal behavior. It’s really important, if you have a specific interest, that you try to pursue it in the sort of usual ways, in terms of your curriculum, but also outside in some in some creative ways. And

Lisa Bleich 9:29
then in terms of Stefanie, you talked a lot about research in the classes and the curriculum, but what about some of the other things? Because that’s where you’re really making the connection with what you’re interested in and what the school offers. So can you go a little bit deeper into that? Yeah,

Stefanie Forman 9:43
so besides, so, so the curriculum, so courses that they’re and also curriculum like, let’s say you have students who, you know, we’re going to be talking about this in a little bit, but they might not be so sure of what they want to major in, or they’re really excited about. Interdisciplinary Studies, meaning combining something in the humanities with STEM or psychology with finance in some way. So to make sure that the school is open to that and and then the let them explore research, some of our students have such passions for specific types of research, and to make sure that, you know, to see if there’s a professor who are doing things in and out of the classroom that they’re excited about, or there’s different research projects hands on. And, you know, lab experiences that they can do clubs are super important. So what are they doing outside of the classroom? Maybe someone’s pre med, but they have a passion for ceramics, and they need to make sure that they have a ceramics club, or that they’re into acapella, or maybe that these clubs align with what they’re studying, so that you’re doing engineering, and that there’s a robotics team at the school service opportunities. So certain schools, it’s important to note, I mean, it should be really important to everyone, but certain schools have more robust service opportunities and really make sure they’re woven into the curriculum. So let’s say you’re participating in, I don’t know, some type of peer mentoring or some type of teaching peer to like teaching program, and you want to make sure that you can continue that in college. Is that school gonna provide that for you, internships and Co Ops, making sure that a school can help provide opportunities for different programs or work study programs in those areas, and then also study abroad. Not all students want to study abroad, but if you do, make sure, not only that, so either your school provides certain programs in the areas that you’re excited about, but if they don’t provide them that they’re open to you doing another program at another school that maybe fulfills the requirements for your major or for what you’re interested in, and then there’s that reciprocity. So those are just some areas that are really important to look at when you do the Y major or y school essay, that everything kind of aligns with one another. And

Lisa Bleich 12:19
it also can really help you identify if you even want to go to that school. That school, or if you’re getting more excited about a school, because as you start to dig in deeper, and really it’s just going through, we we recommend you just go through, put the links in for all of those different areas. So curriculum, research, clubs, service, opportunities, internship or co ops, and study abroad, and then go in and drill a little bit deeper, and then pull out the things that make sense to you or the things that excite you. That’s really how you a school will know that you have really done your research, you’ve demonstrated that interest in the school, and you know how you’re going to engage in the school, the community and the opportunities that are available to you at that specific school, and that’s what’s really important, is that it’s gotta be specific to you and the school, and finding that match.

Abby Power 13:09
Another thing that you can add into those essays to make them even more compelling is any conversations you’ve had with current students or even professors or tour guides, anything you’ve learned from your interaction with the school, whether when you visited or the videos you’ve watched, you can learn a lot. And if you’re really opportunistic and you put yourself out there, you can get really lucky. So I had a young woman who was just visiting Boston College just now, and it’s summer, it’s pretty quiet. She went to the Office of Admissions and asked if she could speak with her admissions rep. And surprisingly, they said yes, and it turned out that they share some interest, so he toured her around some of the departments that she was interested in. So that gave her a lot of great fodder for her essay. I mean, that takes a lot of luck in being in the right place at the right time, but if you don’t try, you know, you’ll you’ll never know. I had another kid last year who was visiting Duke and was super interested in social justice, which I would say, Duke isn’t super known for, but they do have this Peace Institute. So she made a point to go visit it, and she got to meet with some administrators there. Just just did it, walked in and asked questions. And so she learned a lot, and had a lot of interesting things to say for her essay. So it’s good to to look around, you know, to open your eyes and see what’s out there. So one thing that’s important to note is that often schools will ask very directly, why are you interested in this major? But sometimes they combine it with a why school essay. So why are you interested in this specific college, in which case you really have to understand the values, mission and culture of the school to be able to show that your vibe matches their vibe. So an example of that might be school like Tulane, where community service is a real priority for them. So you’ll want to make sure that you. You know, they they see that your prioritization of community service matches their values and mission. That

Lisa Bleich 15:07
was a great discussion about how to write the Y college y major essay. And so now we want to turn and welcome to our guest, Lisa Marker-Robbins, the CEO of Flourish Consulting and host of College and Career Clarity. We’re going to talk about how schools admit by major together, and we’re also going to dispel some common myths about the Y college y major essay. First of all, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 15:33
Well, thanks for having me. I love your all new podcast. Huge fan already. So you guys have

Lisa Bleich 15:40
yours as well. You have you’ve got a lot more experience on us, so we’re learning from you, which is really good. So how do you feel about going over some Myths and Truths About how to approach these essays, some do’s and don’ts episode, yeah, absolutely. That

Lisa Marker-Robbins 15:58
was a fantastic episode that I listened to, that you already had. So, yeah, let’s do it. All right. Well, thank

Lisa Bleich 16:04
you. All right. So one of the first myths is to talk about how much you love the school and extol its every virtue. No,

Abby Power 16:14
why not?

Lisa Bleich 16:15
Isn’t that what they want to hear? How great the school is. Not

Lisa Marker-Robbins 16:19
at all. So, you know, I do advise the students that I work with and helping them get clear on their college major and their future career. You know, you’re showing alignment. So if there’s something the school offers that is unique in their program, then that’s okay to talk about the school, like, how they have it structured. You know, sports management sometimes can be in the education school, it can be in the business school. It can be in a variety of places. And so you might be looking for one that is, well, I’m choosing your school because you have this house in that particular college or division of the university. So in that regard, it’s okay, you know, if they have a special twist on the major but not about the campus or the location or the weather or any of that stuff, about

Lisa Bleich 17:10
everything, about the beautiful campus, the prestige, the reputation location. So it sounds just like

Lisa Marker-Robbins 17:18
exactly they already know that they’re great. So we’re looking for where that alignment is right between who you are and what they offer. Right? I

Lisa Bleich 17:26
always say, if it sounds like a brochure that it’s you gotta Nix it, it’s

Lisa Marker-Robbins 17:29
not gonna be fantastic advice. Yes.

Lisa Bleich 17:33
How about name dropping everyone you know who went there?

Lisa Marker-Robbins 17:37
Absolutely not. No. This is about you and this is about alignment, right? So you are trying to show them that you demonstrate that you belong, and frankly, like, maybe you don’t belong. I mean, maybe you’ll discover through the process that that’s not the best fit, because every program is a little different. Every major on every campus is a little different. So just think of like we’re looking it’s like a Venn diagram. And so it’s what you’ve done in your past that informs your future choices of where you want to go and what you want to do and what they offer. And so where those two things intersect, and that doesn’t have anything to do with any alum or any notable graduate that you may know of, because we get so little of their attention, you kind of focus on you.

Stefanie Forman 18:28
Yeah, I love that. The Venn diagram that’s, that’s a really great visual, yeah,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 18:35
I think it helps, like, even just do the exercise like that would be a piece of advice for families who are going through this process right now, like, sit down with your kid and do the two circles, like, what do they offer related to this major? Because we’re writing the why this major essay, which is a very common and very popular one on the part of the colleges. And then, where is that alignment? Make your list and then cross populate it. That’s what you need to be talking about.

Lisa Bleich 19:02
Yeah, really, really good advice. How about picking an easier major when you really want something else, because it will be less competitive and you can always transfer later,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 19:14
absolutely not again. That backfires more often than not, particularly if, you know, I think who we hear try to say, like that would be a good strategy. A lot of times are the kids who are going after capped capacity majors, popular majors, right? So I want computer science, or I want nursing, or I want, you know, one that has, like, studio space to it. So maybe it’s architecture, performing arts majors, anything that has field experiences, clinical hours, performance hours, or is a very popular major, and sometimes that’s by college, you know, popular major. Just computer science. Yes, is popular everywhere, but there are some majors that are just very popular on a particular campus, because they’re really, really good at that, right? And so if you try to go in as a social work major to become a computer scientist, that works, likely to backfire on you, and they’re gonna see right through it, because here’s the deal, while they might let you into social work, that caps capacity major is very limited, and there are gonna be very few kids who can crack that door once they’re on campus and they are looking at your activities list, the classes that you’ve taken in high school. And that’s another place where we’re looking for alignment. We already talked about like alignment between what you’ve done and what they offer now. They’re looking for alignment and what you say you’re going to major in, and what you’re going to do with it, and the classes you’ve taken and the extracurriculars that you have.

Lisa Bleich 20:55
The only time that we have seen that not necessarily that particular strategy work. But for example, if somebody you mentioned computer science, computer science is almost always an impacted major, particularly for schools that have either as it’s in the School of Engineering, or if it’s in the School of Computer a specific computer science school. However, sometimes if it’s in the School of Arts and Sciences, and you’re getting admitted to the school of arts and sciences, then that could be a strategy if you don’t have everything to support the engineering or the computer science major, to do it in the School of Arts and Sciences, because there’s a little bit more leeway. You can always get into a computer science major if you’re in arts and sciences. So it’s important to know the school and how they admit to the

Lisa Marker-Robbins 21:39
I agree with that. It’s like the and that could be, this goes back to like, do they offer something uniquely because commonly, computer science is going to be in the School of Engineering, right? Or if they have just a computer division or school, it’s less common that it’s in the arts and sciences, but there’s a fair number of those out there, right? And so it could be like, right at liberal arts colleges is going to be, but, you know, I think of like Purdue, that’s not a great strategy there, even though that is in the engineering school, right? So it so that still can backfire. This is where you’ve got to get your feet on campus, and you’ve got to talk to them. Like, I always preach, be a wise consumer. You guys listen to my podcast. You probably are sick of hearing me say, maybe people are too. But like, yes, you’re selling yourself to them, but they’re selling themselves to you. Be a wise consumer and ask the tough questions, right? So to your point, absolutely, Lisa, it’s what? Where’s that alignment? How does it work on that campus? Because going to be different for every campus.

Lisa Bleich 22:45
How about saying you want to major in something that you have no background in to support your interests?

Lisa Marker-Robbins 22:51
Yeah, that. So I think this goes back to those capped capacity impacted majors, right? I know that it is going to be more important that you show that you’ve taken some action at those impacted majors. Right? You are up against some really tough competition for a very limited number of spots. Remember, Andy Borst, he’s at Georgia now, but when he was at ui UC he had said to me, you know, these kiddos that are don’t know what they’re going to be majoring in. You know, they, if they’re at a school, they’re applying to a school that admits directly to the major incident impacted major then you’re up to tough competition. We could fill many times over a freshman class there it happens to be, you know, computer science and business and psychology right at their school. And so you’re going to look for that evidence now, if it’s a less popular, non impacted major, and you state that, you know, I’m interested in this and I’m still figuring it out, like, be honest, don’t try to play the game about like, I’ve got it all figured out, and I’m gonna apply to this major when you have no evidence of it, but like, just say, like, here’s why it interests me at this time. Talk truthfully about where you are at this point in time. But know that if it’s an impacted major that is going to be harder when you don’t have evidence that you have this figured out, or if it’s a school that directly says we admit to major

Lisa Bleich 24:22
and so let’s talk about that. I know that you did a study of the top 50 major public universities and their admissions practices. Can you tell us what you discovered? Yeah,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 24:33
so it was really interesting. We invested a lot of time in early 2024 and we personally got with admissions at the state flagship university for all 50 states. And we’re like, you know, here’s the reality. There are more liberal arts colleges in the United States than there are research universities. However, over 70% of students who attend college. Go to a research university, not a liberal arts college. So we’re talking to the majority of people here, and we’re like, how do we support those clients, right? And so as we were looking at it, we just said to the schools, how does this work? Are you admitting directly to major? Are you admitting to some majors but not others, or do you not admit to major at all? We didn’t just like send an email. We looked at the common app for the questions that they were asking. We sent emails. We also called to verify the information, because oftentimes, ladies, as all four of us know, we have got to ask that same question to maybe three different people before we had the right answer, right? This is true. Families, you should do the same thing. So, and we literally like multiple times, verified, verified, verified. And so what we found out was there were only four of the 50 state flagship universities don’t admit directly to major so the rest of them. The biggest category was of the research universities, the state flagships. Biggest category was, we admit all students directly to a major. Then we wanted to find out for them, if you do that, then are there any majors impacted, majors that for which, like, if you didn’t, if you didn’t go ahead and apply as a high school senior, then you’re the doors closed. You can never change into that major. Or are there any majors for which it’s going to be hard to crack that door open, like we might have a few people that switch, but it’s going to just be really hard. So the biggest category of schools was yes, we admit directly to major The second category. And this is true of Ohio State. I’m in Cincinnati, Ohio. Ohio State’s our state flagship, and they said, you know, it’s complicated. We have some majors for which you’re a pre major, and others that you’re a direct admit. So this goes back to Lisa, what you said earlier about like, do your homework, and what I said about your be a wise consumer, ask the questions you got to understand this stuff. But there were only just a few four schools that said, we don’t admit to major. You literally come into the university, we’re going to support you and figure it out. But even some of those schools still said, tell us what your intent. They all said, What’s your intended major, right? They expect students to have some semblance that they’ve done some amount of work to say, like, well, I have some intention here, but I’m not ready to go all in yet.

Lisa Bleich 27:30
I think it. I think that’s really amazing information for families to have. But I also want to underscore that for managers, like, as you mentioned, nursing, anything, engineering, anything that’s something that you need to get a prerequisite core classes, it’s really hard to switch with you in your majors, but usually, if you’re in Arts and Sciences, or you’re something where the you have a general educational requirement, then you do have a little bit of leeway to switch your major. Typically you you will declare it by the end of your sophomore year. So it’s not impossible, but don’t go in with the expectation that that’s going to happen. And if you think, for example, nursing is one that’s often very competitive, there are a number of schools that have pre nursing. And so what that means is, if you take the prerequisite classes and you get a certain GPA, then you will be able to continue with the nursing and as you brought up, Lisa, one of the biggest things they have to think about, I was talking to somebody, a missions person at WashU, and they were saying that even though we we do admit by school, but we recognize that students are going to change their major. If we have X amount of pre med students, they’d say they’re interested in pre med, even though we know that’s not a major, but there are a series of prerequisite classes that have to be taken in order to be a pre med, you know, to go into medical school. So they know that if they have too many pre meds, then they’re not going to have enough of the introductory, you know, classes for the labs and the bio and chem and physics and all the classes that a pre med student would have to take, even if they’re a psychology major or a history major or a fine arts major, they still have to provide those and have enough classes to be able to do it. So that’s part of the reason, and I think that’s also what Andy from you are you see said was that they have to be able to support the majors that students want to pursue, and that’s a big part of why it’s it seems like it’s very limited, and that it’s very,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 29:32
you know, I got into a very so I was at IUCA in Connecticut back in May, at the conference, and I was talking to, I went to a session, and the Tulane admissions rep was part of a panel, and it was a great session. And it was on this topic, right? And then I was in their common app, and because she, she said, the heart at Tulane is in their process. As you are admitted to Tulane, you are not admitted to a major you can. Not go into a major until sophomore year, but the common app said, What is your intended major? What is your second choice major? What minor might you be thinking of? And I thought that’s a lot of questions to ask, if they’re that wholeheartedly into you don’t need to know your path. So then I got with admissions, and we had a fantastic conversation, but they just said, like, this is enrollment management. I is the word that we know it’s called, but our listeners might not know, right? And so, do we have enough professors? Can Do we have enough sections of these classes so that you can get in and out in four years? And so there it will, that intention does affect things, even though it’s not a commitment. But, you know, ask the questions you had brought up a great point, Lisa, about pre, you know, pre nursing, there’s a lot of pre nursings, right? Then ask them, how many students get admitted to pre nursing, and then how many will go on? I think that’s the, that’s the consumer question is, yes, I could be successful in pre nursing, but will everybody who’s successful be able to go on to nursing? And most of the time, the answer is going to be no. But you want to know like, Okay, what were, what was the GPA or the grades or the experiences of those who were able to go on to nursing or any other pre major, right? Ask the questions, yeah, pre

Abby Power 31:19
business is another big one. Absolutely

Lisa Marker-Robbins 31:21
yes,

Stefanie Forman 31:23
Lisa, other Lisa and I were there. We were at that same panel, and we, we, yeah, love the panel. So helpful. So a quite I would love to hear your advice on this one, with all the focus on students who declaring majors. How about the students who really have no idea what they want to major in, and it doesn’t mean that they’re not interested or they don’t have passions, but, you know, they just, I mean, you know, at our age, are still figuring out the things that we love. So what do you recommend to those students who just truly don’t know at this point,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 31:56
you’ve got to create some time to do the work. That’s the first thing we’re all busy. You know, my youngest just graduated from college in the spring, and so thank you. I got a pay raise, right? We can all appreciate that pay raise. First of all, your passions are going to switch over time, so don’t, don’t put all this pressure on, like, I’m figuring out my forever job right? Focus on taking the time to be intentional, which feels hard during this busy time, but to build self awareness and career awareness. I’ve found with the students that we work with, we’ve done career coaching, college major career coaching for 4,000 students. So this isn’t just like, Oh, I think this might work. Like, no, I’ve seen it work over 4,000 times, right? I know that passions can wane and grow. Like, I’m very passionate about gluten free cooking, because I have to be gluten free and coming up with great recipes at my age. I was not at all interested that in my teens. So you don’t have to have I think, like, find your passion. That’s a lie, and that’s overwhelming. I think when we tell students I saw in a Facebook group that we’re all in, I saw somebody say the other day, like, how could we expect a 16 or 17 year old to know what they’re going to do with the rest of their lives? Well, that’s the problem. We’re not asking anybody to know what they’re going to do with the rest of their lives. It’s taking an educated and informed, wise first step into your career, and it will develop over your lifetime. But if we do so out of awareness of aptitudes, wiring and knowledge of careers, then we’re far less likely to say, like, I’m the social worker who became the engineer. I mean, talk about a 180 right? So then the pivots, when you have you make informed choices that are rooted in who you are, become more like micro pivots and self development. So it’s not a forever decision. Don’t focus on what am I passionate about? And that has to be my career. And finally, passion can grow with proficiency. So as we start to build our skills and we start to learn new things, then your passions are going to build as you become proficient and you become more confident. So don’t feel like I mean, hello, you’re going into college. You’re going to college to learn some things you’re not supposed to have it all figured out about

Lisa Bleich 34:22
passions and interests and do things like that, right? Yeah, I love that. Passion grows into proficiency. I think it’s our proficiency grows a passion, which is something that’s so true, is that 10,000 hours, the better you get at something, the more you like it. And how many students have said, you know, I was really bad at this particular class, and then I worked really hard, and I went in for extra help, and I all of a sudden I really loved the class, because then it became really interesting to me. The other thing I would just as a follow up to that, I had a student who was very always her whole life, she’d been very STEMI, very interested in math. Thought she initially wanted to major in math, but then she also started taking political science class. She took AP psych, I’m sorry, AP gopo, she worked on a campaign, and then she was really interested in how to use analytics towards political modeling, if you will. So she ended up going to University of Chicago because she thought she wanted to combine those two areas, applied math and political science. But after her first year at University of Chicago, she realized that, you know what, I really want to do engineering. I don’t really want I really am more of an engineer, more of a stem girl. So she ended up transferring, and she’ll go to start and Dartmouth in the fall. But she it was, it took her a while she she had that interest in STEM, and it got a little bit sidetracked, and then she came back to it. So it can work in a lot of different ways. As far as that goes.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 35:48
Well, you know, I do think, as you share that when I’m working with students, we have them take the Berkman personality assessment. There are other personality assessments. I do think you get what you pay for. So be wary of like, something that’s free on the internet that tells you to go be a, you know, a zookeeper, but to look at those, and then that’s a starting point. But I think informational interviews and job shadows are crucial in building the career awareness piece, right? So had what I get curious, and we don’t need to dissect the whole thing. But like, did that young lady, like, did she job shadow some engineers and talk to them about their jobs and different engineering jobs? Did she talk to people who were doing the, you know, this analytical piece that she thought she might want to do? I think sometimes we students are just going like, oh, that sounds fun and interesting. And there is a little bit of alignment, like, I could tell you right now, if all the hats that I wear professionally would go away tomorrow and I had to totally reinvent myself, hopefully not at 55 I can list for you some jobs that I’m like, I think I could be really good. I could become proficient and more passionate about that, and I think it would align with who I am. You’re making a first step out of many good steps, but at some point you have to make a decision. Yeah,

Abby Power 37:12
I like looking at it as a first step. It’s a lot less overwhelming.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 37:17
I mean, is that the truth even for us as adults like, I’m sure a lot of your listeners are parents, just like my listeners in my podcast. You know, if somebody’s like, Oh, I’m on a weight loss journey and they want to lose 50 pounds, that first step of like getting the app or signing up for, you know, the training or cutting out sugar probably feels really big, too for any of us as human beings that forever only focusing on the very end and all the things you need to do and all the things you need to know, it will undermine all of our success.

Unknown Speaker 37:51
Agreed. Yeah, good,

Lisa Bleich 37:54
yeah. It’s funny, because when I was in school, I couldn’t decide on a major, so I knew I liked to speak French, and I knew I liked to read and I liked history, so I picked European cultural studies because it got I got to do all of those things. And then my youngest daughter, who’s probably the most like me professionally, my other two were a little bit more focused. She’s also still. She’s not still. She’s 24 almost 25 and she is still figuring herself out and trying to understand the things that she likes to do. And she also has a lot of interest, but no clear passion. So I’ve been telling her a lot proficiency leads to passion, but she’s so she’s working on it. So it’s just interesting, because sometimes your career is something that’s introduced, like, it takes a lot of different things that you bring together, and it’s the combination of those things which is probably why we all like this profession, because it pulls together the combination of all the things that we like to do. But we didn’t necessarily know it was a profession when we when we set out upon graduation.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 38:56
I also think like if you look back, so if teens would talk to older people who have, you know, have some experience or like, how we all have landed where we have you’ll see common threads. You know, I was a classroom teacher back in 1991 like, that’s how I started my career. I loved, I’ve always loved working with teenagers, even when I was barely out of being a teenager, I loved making lesson plans and making things exciting and helping people learn and develop themselves, right? So while what I do now is very vastly different, and oh my word, the internet barely existed back when I started, and now I have an online course on the internet in a podcast like I couldn’t have known what the possibilities were, but there are common threads, and I let that inspire teenagers. Like, we all can see things in ourselves that have pulled all the way through. And, you know, I think Lisa, even the example you just used, like, there, there are some common threads there, right? Right, yeah,

Abby Power 40:00
our youngest son is a junior in college. He’s got a an internship in finance this summer. He has no idea what he wants to do, but he has this general idea he grew up playing chess that he just likes thinking about strategic things. You know, he can’t articulate it really. He has no idea how that applies to business. He knows he doesn’t want to do finance, but he’s taking the opportunity to figure out the small parts of what he’s doing this summer that really kind of interest him and floated his boat and make him excited. So I think the other nice thing to do is to have an open mind and try different things, and then try, you know, try to identify, be very, you know, very thoughtful about identifying what parts of what you’re doing you really like. Same with classes. I mean, there might be some parts of your math class or your bio class that you really enjoy and some you don’t, but it all kind of can put the pieces of the puzzle together to help you figure out what kinds of things you’re really good at and really like,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 41:00
you know, Abby, when you talk about your son, I try to word it this way that I’ve seen it resonate with students. Like, what were the things so I, if I were talking to your son, I would say, like, what were the things that you did in your internship this summer? Which, by the way, everybody internships are another experience that helps us get clear. But what were the get tos and the have tos? So a get to is the thing like, if I did that all day long, that day, it doesn’t exhaust me. I still have energy at the end of my work day. I’m excited. If that’s on my to do list for tomorrow, I’m excited to go to work. What are the have tos? Well, I own multiple businesses, and I have to get in the finance of those businesses sometime. And I hate it. That’s I have to. It’s draining. Those are the things we tend to put off. So the as you’re like, he’s doing a great job with that experience and tracking those things, but if we turn it into, like, get twos and have twos fill me up, drain me that, I think that can help students as well. Okay, I

Abby Power 41:58
love that. And now I’m going to have him listen to this part of the podcast, because he’ll listen to you more than before he

Lisa Marker-Robbins 42:03
listened. Course he will, and I’ll send my daughter over. Right? You send

Abby Power 42:08
your daughter this way. I’m that way. Perfect.

Lisa Bleich 42:11
Well, this was great. All right. Well, I feel like we could talk all day. Are there any like last pearls of wisdom that you want to share with our listeners,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 42:22
carve out the time to do the work you’ve got to and I think too when, when our teens are still in our house, or your young adults still in your home, it’s a time where you can support them the most before they’re out in the wild without you, and you’re not on a college Campus. So whatever, however old your child is, it’s not too late, but it’s going to take time and intention, and if you’re in that spot of trying to still figure it out and even where you go to college, like I were giving away that template, that email template that we were sending like that was directing us every time we reached out to one of those 50 colleges, and we were asking the questions of like, how do you admit students, and what are the majors we should be concerned about? If we don’t declare it early, we’re giving that away. And your listeners can have it too at FlourishCoachingCo.com/Majors, so you guys can put it in the show notes, but flourish coaching, co.com, forward slash majors, you can download the spreadsheet of all 50 states and what we found from them. So we’re sharing our data, and we’re sharing how, as a wise consumer a family, you can ask the same questions no matter where your students going, liberal arts. Liberal arts colleges do admit students to the major, even though they’re still flat, they’re more flexible than a university ask the questions. We’re giving you a tool to be able to do it.

Lisa Bleich 43:50
That’s great. And we’ll also have Why College, Why Major worksheet available for students to download as well. Well. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 43:59
Resources,

Lisa Bleich 44:00
yes, great for you. So thank you so much for coming on college bound mentor, and thank you cbmmers for tuning in to catch more episodes of College Bound Mentor. Make sure to Follow or Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and tell a fellow parent or student about the podcast. Visit CollegeBoundMentor.com Until next time, you got this!

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