Trends from Early Action & Early Decision Results – College Bound Mentor Podcast #21

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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 #21 and you’ll hear trends from the Early Action and Early Decision results. 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 #21: Trends from Early Action & Early Decision Results

The Early Action (EA) & Early Decision (ED) results are in. In this episode, Lisa, Abby, and Stefanie reveal the latest trends based on the results. Hear why you need a testing strategy, whether safety schools exist anymore, the most competitive majors, how campus culture is driving college decisions, and how ChatGPT is impacting college essays. This episode covers everything from Early Action to enjoying college. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

  • Is testing coming back?
  • Why are public colleges & universities becoming more popular?
  • What are the most competitive majors?
  • How is campus culture driving college decisions?
  • Does legacy matter anymore in college admissions?
  • How do videos play into the college application process?
  • What do colleges want to see in supplemental essays?
  • How is ChatGPT affecting college applications?

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.

Abby Power 0:03
They want to see kids who can come to campus and get stuff done with all different kinds of people.

Lisa Bleich 0:08
Hey, CBMers, welcome back to College Bound Mentor, where we help you survive the college application process and beyond. We’re your co-hosts, Lisa, Abby, and Stefanie. And on today’s episode, we thought it would be interesting, or maybe not interesting, as maybe that’s not the right word, but we wanted to just talk about what are some of the trends that we’re seeing happening. A lot of the early action results came back last week. So we have a lot of news and a lot of things that we’ve noticed in terms of how students did, and so we wanted to just go over some of those trends. So why don’t we start off with talking about testing? So we’ve definitely seen that testing is making a comeback. Abby, what do you think about the testing comeback? I was actually kind of excited

Abby Power 1:01
about testing coming back, because I think it makes admissions much more clear. You know, there’s more transparency when test scores are involved, and it makes creating a college list easier when we need to consider test scores. But now that only some schools are coming back, I think it’s complicating things even more. Yeah, couple of years, I have told kids where, you know, for whom testing was not a good fit. You know, either they had test anxiety or we just knew that their test scores were not going to be commensurate with their academic performance, that maybe their time and energy and money was better sent spent somewhere else and just not to test. But now I don’t really feel comfortable saying that, because we don’t know which schools are going to require testing. University of Miami just came back to require testing, and I’m actually surprised by that one, but anyway, so that’s how I’m feeling generally about it. I think you have to give it a shot.

Lisa Bleich 2:09
I think that’s right. I think you can no longer say I’m just not going to look at testing like you have to have a testing strategy. And maybe the testing strategy isn’t going to try as much as they can. But if I don’t do well, then I will find the schools that legitimately are test optional, like and otherwise, I think you put yourself at a disadvantage if you don’t look at the testing at all. Agree?

Abby Power 2:29
Yeah, I think that’s untenable at this point, because we really don’t have a sense for which schools are going to be requiring it in the coming year,

Lisa Bleich 2:39
right? Hopefully. I feel like last year they came out, like right after the cycle ended. I don’t remember exactly when they announced when, when Harvard and Yale and Dartmouth was the first to announce that they wanted the testing back. And then we’re going to have a trickle down effect, like step what do you think about the trickle down effect from schools requiring, schools not requiring.

Stefanie Forman 3:02
First, let’s talk about how we feel for our kids. I mean, the mixed messaging, I just I don’t know that I have a lot of empathy for them right now. And like what you said just now, Lisa, is you have to figure out which schools are truly test optional. So, yeah, a lot of schools were test optional before COVID. But still that that’s really confusing. So we talk about this a lot of the time between the three of us, that we feel for you guys, we’re here for you.

Lisa Bleich 3:29
Such a pain to have to figure out, like, should I submit the test? Should I not submit the test? Like you go through every single school. So rule of thumb in terms of how to think about that is, I would usually say, like, look at the mid 50 percentile, which the good news is, if more testing is coming back, that’s going to recalibrate. Because that’s because actually testing scores have not gone up. You know, across the nation, they’ve actually gone down. But because people only have submitted scores that are really good, it seems like everyone is doing they don’t knock on the testing out of the park, so that is actually maybe something positive that will come out of it, so you can see that. And then I also would say, look at your school on your school profile and see how your tests compare to other kids in your school. And if you’re at the mid range or above, then it’s probably a good idea to submit your tests, but it’s definitely a hard, hard way to to make that decision. Okay, so that’s testing anything else in terms of a takeaway that we want to well, to

Stefanie Forman 4:30
your point, I guess the trickle down effect, too is some of these schools that will not announce that they’re going test optional. Do we think they’re gonna so let’s say we have a really awesome candidate, and they’re doing they have great leadership, they have top academics all around, really strong students, but their test scores don’t match up. So they’re gonna start going to these schools that are not requiring Tech. Asked that they’re going to get an influx of applications?

Lisa Bleich 5:03
Yeah, sure. I mean, obviously that’s, I mean, it’s, it’s all interconnected, right? So when one school requires something, and then it trickles down to other schools that maybe don’t, and then it shifts the way that students think about how they’re going to apply, or it shifts the way that they approach it. So then they say, Oh, I better apply to more schools, and then that kind of leads to the next huge trend that we’re seeing is that applications are up across the board for particularly for the public schools. The large publics saw a huge increase, like Steph. What was the actual increase that we saw?

Stefanie Forman 5:37
The increase in public schools, 11% with versus private is 5% but also the early action applications, which are mostly associated with public universities, he went up by 17% so almost 20% that’s huge.

Lisa Bleich 5:55
UT Austin had like 90,000 applications, and like 48% more from out of state. So guess what? They did, defer, postpone. We can’t get to your application, and that’s just so disaping, so frustrating. The kids spend so much time working on their applications, trying to get everything in, trying to do everything well, and then they just get more uncertainty, which is the postponement, the deferral, and that is, and I’ve been doing this for almost 20 years, and every year I say, Oh, there’s more deferrals. This year I have never seen, and this is a year like no other. There’s been so many deferrals for kids that are so qualified to which is really frustrating. Some of the kids, you know, maybe they were reaching, and so they got deferred. But so many kids are super qualified. It’s so hard to predict which ones are going to get postponed. I mean, sometimes it’s just random, I guess they don’t get to the application, and then other times, I don’t know the answer. Do you guys have an answer?

Abby Power 6:54
No, no answer. And in my case, I am very disappointed about one student who was very highly qualified for Michigan and didn’t get in, I’m in any other year he would have gotten in. No question. Yeah, it’s making things very unpredictable,

Lisa Bleich 7:15
very unpredictable and very frustrating and disheartening for the kids. I mean, I think that’s the part that’s the worst. So I think takeaway is, like, you gotta just build that into your expectation. Mm, hmm, yeah,

Stefanie Forman 7:27
there’s no, no likely schools and safety schools anymore. Well,

Lisa Bleich 7:31
fewer and fewer. It makes it really hard to find a likeli or a safety school or a target school, because even if you’re qualified, you could be over qualified, and so then they’re not going to, you know, accept you for that way, which gets into the other trend, which we’re seeing, which is technology that’s impacting admissions, and how they’re using technology to predict yield, you know what? Meaning, what students will matriculate if they come so it does make it very stressful. I think if

Abby Power 7:59
you think about the confluence of all of these things, the testing uncertainty, the so many applications that admission staffs can’t even get to some of the applications, so they’re just deferring the sort of expectation that it’s going to be a longer time frame, and these kids are getting all their work done over the summer. Yeah, it’s just so unfair. I mean, it’s really, it’s really not fair to the kids. The process at this point, I think, is very, very challenging.

Lisa Bleich 8:34
It is challenging. I mean, there were some highlights, though. I mean, we did have a number of kids that got into their early schools, right? And so we don’t want to only focus on that. And I think that if we look at the kids that got into the early either the early decision schools, it seemed like it was schools that, I think you had said this Abby, like kids that were super, super qualified for those schools. It really wasn’t a reach. It was a like, a good target, particularly for a select school. And that was where we started. We saw success, yeah,

Abby Power 9:05
that was definitely my experience at schools like Georgetown, Middlebury, notably,

Lisa Bleich 9:13
Emory WashU Cornell, even to some degree. Yeah,

Abby Power 9:17
these were kids who were immensely qualified for these schools, not reaching,

Lisa Bleich 9:24
right? Not reaching. And I think that’s another key,

Abby Power 9:28
brown even, yeah, Brown’s a reach,

Lisa Bleich 9:32
a wild card, but

Abby Power 9:33
no, Brown is a reach for everyone except the young man who got in was, I can only use that term. He was immensely qualified,

Lisa Bleich 9:41
and so that’s definitely helps, but there is still some uncertain, because there are some immensely qualified kids that got diverted. So we had that as well. So it’s just kind of understanding that that’s going to be part of the part of the process and the expectation. And I think if you can build that in, hopefully it. It won’t sting so hard when you when you do that. The other thing that we saw was that certain majors were really are much, much harder to get into. So what are the majors that you see? Really challenging,

Stefanie Forman 10:14
computer science, engineering,

Lisa Bleich 10:17
yeah, business, yeah. I mean, I would say those three are the, obviously, there’s always like the nursing, those have always been hard, but those three majors, you really have to have a lot of experience, just kind of crazy as a, you know, as a, and even if you do, it’s still really hard to get in. Because I I’ve had students who have a lot of experience in those things, for a 17 year old, and they’re still getting deferred because everybody wants those majors particularly it seems that the large public schools, and those are those schools are admitting into a specific major, into a specific college, and so that makes it a lot harder. So I think a takeaway is that it’s really important that your activities aligned, and your testing aligns with majors. That’s super important. And obviously your classes and your grades, like, if you’re not getting A’s in math or calculus or pre calc for those majors, it’s really hard to get in at the very coveted large public universities. Can

Stefanie Forman 11:20
you give an example, though, of what that would look like? Yeah,

Lisa Bleich 11:24
so I feel like if you’re applying to business and you don’t have, you know, a 750 in math or a 33 in math, you know, minimum 30, that it’s going to be really hard for you to get into those to those majors, even at some schools that aren’t like even at Boulder University of Colorado, Boulder like you need to have those high things. Kelly, I would say, is the exception that I love Kelly, because they’re still very transparent. And if you have a three eight and a 1380 on your SATs, I think, or a 30 on your ACTs, then you will get into Kelly as a direct admit. But even if you don’t, you can still get into Kelly. But if you get in as a pre business, if you do well, when you’re there, you can still do the business school. And it’s such a great business school. So I love that that school is still transparent in terms of what they’re looking for, and it just makes it a lot easier for that. So I think that’s also something to just keep in mind that don’t and and then the other thing that I think people think is, well, I really want business, usually business, but I’m going to apply to arts and sciences and then transfer in later. And that works for some schools, but many schools, it doesn’t. So it’s a little bit of a catch 22 because if you know you, if you apply for business, you may not get in at all, but if you don’t apply for business, then that’s not what you want to study. So is that really where you want to be? So I think that’s also something people have to think about. Do you want to be in the school, or do you want to have the major? You can

Abby Power 12:56
look at the business minors also, which are still pretty accessible at almost every school. So if you’re in arts and sciences and you want exposure to business, which in some cases, for some students, is a better fit. I was just on the on a call this morning with a new family, and the young woman wants to do business, but she hates math. She really loves marketing. So an undergrad, your business, business program is really not going to fit her needs, but maybe we can find a school with a marketing minor, or sort of a more fuzzy business minor, where she won’t have to do the calculus, the accounting, the finance, the investments, but exactly what you guys are saying, your background, your classwork, your success in school has to align with the coursework required in the major at

Lisa Bleich 13:48
the school. Yeah, definitely. I think that’s a really, really good point. And I think also times people might and you could go, you could work in business without majoring in business. You know, I majored in European cultural studies in French. Now one could argue that that is a worthless degree, but it is no way, no way, because Abby did same thing. But you know what it taught me was how to sympathize information and tell stories and make sense of things. Yeah, you know, that’s what you do in marketing. And then I got my MBA later. So there’s lots of different ways. And in fact, I was interviewing an author, and she also was a, you know, history social science major, and then she worked at MTV and marketing, and she said it was all about taking information and using data to tell stories. And then now she’s actually a writer. She got, ended up getting her MBA, and now she’s a writer. So there’s a lot of different paths that you can take. You don’t have to necessarily be in a business school to work in business. So just to keep that in mind, you don’t, don’t force it. If it’s something you really want to do, absolutely do it. But if you think it’s the only way to get a job, it’s not. Also a lot of

Abby Power 14:51
colleges don’t have any business. I mean, maybe they’ve got a couple of business, like classes, their economic department, but the small, liberal. Schools generally don’t have business. Some of the medium sized schools don’t have business. I think kids often feel the pressure from their parents to major in something practical. That’s true. Your point, Lisa, I think employers really value critical thinking skills, logical thinking, you know, logical problem solving skills, communication skills, stuff you’ll learn in almost research skills, stuff you learn in almost any major. And

Lisa Bleich 15:27
if you can couple that with quantitative classes on the side, like a minor, that’s always a good thing to do as well. The other thing I think we saw, I’m actually seeing it, I would say more in my juniors that I’m meeting with now about, you know, what are they looking for in school, is that the campus culture is really driving decisions about the types of schools that they’re looking at. Are you guys seeing that as well? Yes,

Abby Power 15:50
specifically, there’s a lot of talking about campus politics and social justice and cancel culture, and on the other side, you know, sort of, uh, closed off conversations on the on the other side of the spectrum. So, yeah, there’s a lot of talk about, I guess, divisiveness and people getting along and being able to have conversations. That’s a conversation I’m having with a lot of families right now.

Stefanie Forman 16:19
Yeah, I think colleges are seeing and we’re hearing it from our students too, but they’re seeing students afraid to engage in open conversations in the classroom, and people aren’t listening. And yeah, I think the word divisive. So I agree. I hear family saying they don’t want extremes. I, some of my families are now shying away from Washington, DC, before and after so so for both reasons and it’s, it’s, it’s a shame that students feel that they can’t respectfully voice their opinions in the classroom. So it’ll be interesting to see what shifts arise from that.

Lisa Bleich 17:00
And some kids just don’t want to be in the melee of it, you know, they don’t want to be in the fray. They just want to like, I just want to go to college. I’m not political. I don’t want to have I don’t want to have protests. I don’t want to be involved. I don’t want to see that. I just want to go to class. I want to have fun. Want to see my friends go to football games like they just don’t want to be in the mess. And then there’s obviously other students who genuinely want to make sure that they’re going to be welcomed. Jewish students want to make sure that they feel welcome. Muslim students want to make feel they feel welcome. Everyone wants to feel like they have a place on campus, and they don’t want that to get in the way of their own, either safety or just their well being. So I think that’s been an interesting shift as students start to make decisions. So I guess the takeaway like, how do you, how do you find that information outside of what you see online? What would you how are you recommending students learn about that? The culture?

Stefanie Forman 17:50
Abby, I love. Can you share I love, what you tell students to pick up when they’re we’re at the campus. What to read you shared with us? Yes,

Abby Power 17:58
yeah. The newspaper, the campus newspaper, which I’ve been paying attention, have evolved over the last couple of years. But, yeah, I mean, if you look on the front page of a newspaper at some schools, it’ll be, you know, the big game. And at some schools it will be, you know, very political or about social justice action. And you know, if you just look at a moment in time, that doesn’t really tell the story, but you can look at the paper over a couple months, they’re all online, and really get a feel for what the students on campus are talking about, what’s important to them. Yep, I was, I actually just did it yesterday with a family on during our Personal Needs Assessment meeting, talking about what the kid want from wants from college, as we looked at Vanderbilts, which was about the big game and storming the court, and then we look at Tufts, which was about, you know, more political stuff. And so, yeah, so it was kind of interesting. But I think that that tells a lot. I also have been telling kids to real. They really need to talk to kids on campus, current students, to see what’s going on. You know, because it is true that at some schools, not that many, but at some schools, if you’re not in the fray, you’re out. And that’s not appealing to a lot of students. It is appealing to other students, but I think it’s really important to know how kids on campus are spending their time and what’s going on and what voices are being heard.

Lisa Bleich 19:27
Yeah, I think that’s so important is because they’re the ones who are in it, in the middle of it, and even schools that might have had a reputation of one way before, I think things are fluid. Things are changing. And so as people shift locations and areas where they go to school, there’s no other way than just talking to the students that are there and seeing what they’re what they’re doing, how they’re engaging, what they’re doing for fun. And I think that’s a really good, really good advice.

Abby Power 19:52
I absolutely agree. And you cannot always, you know, yeah, believe the headlines. I mean, things are being exact. Graduated and then also got reported. So both but I will just just a quick anecdote from a couple of years ago. This is four years ago. I think now, I had a client who worked on the Trump campaign from an immigrant, very conservative immigrant family, and he ended up going to Berkeley, which can you imagine? And he loved it. He got into a frat. He has good friends of all different political colors, and to read in the paper about what was going on at Berkeley, you would have thought it would have been completely inhospitable to him. So I think you really need to do your due diligence and talk to kids and see because it’s so subjective, and

Lisa Bleich 20:47
what one one kid might say may not jive with what your beliefs are. So it’s important to talk to as many people as possible. We did an episode of with a with Zoe. We interviewed her when she didn’t get into early decision school, and then she ended up having the opportunity to go deep and really think about what she wanted for schools. And she ended up choosing a school that, at the outset, she really had no interest in. She was like, she kind of poo pooed the school. Now, I’m not interested in it. But then when she got down to it, she’d gotten into a lot of really great schools. Had a lot of good options. And, you know, some people were saying, Oh, just go to this school because it’s the highest rank. Highest ranked. But when she started looking at social media, reading the paper, going onto campus, seeing the people that she was going to be with for the next four years, she realized that, no, like, even though this might school might not be quite as high highly ranked, this is these are my people. This is where I’m going to feel comfortable. This is where I’m going to be able to be able to thrive. So I think that’s also really important when you’re looking at culture, because we get a lot of kids that wanted to to transfer because they didn’t do that, you know, they went to the highest ranked school, but they didn’t really think about, how do the people that surround them impact their experience? So I think that’s really important.

Stefanie Forman 21:59
I think this is also helpful, because I think so many of our students, they don’t know where to start when we say to do research. And it is, it’s daunting. It’s a website doesn’t tell you much, and there’s pictures and promotional and it’s you see what you want to see. So yeah, I think it’s just, yeah, I just to double down on what you guys are saying. It’s so vital to the process, and yeah, talking to students who are there and to the point too things change so quickly, so an experience of a current senior could be very different from the experience of, well, obviously another senior, but a current sophomore, like, that’s how quickly

Lisa Bleich 22:37
helping things equilibrate. But who knows?

Abby Power 22:40
Yeah, yeah. Because in the past, I would not have said that. I mean, obviously things evolve, but a lot of schools really maintain their vibe over years and years and years. For the most part, this is the first time that I think that that’s not true at many schools. I think you really, really have to talk to kids and see what’s going on. But to your point, Lisa, I hope, I hope it normalizes. I hope it

Lisa Bleich 23:04
goes back, but normalizes. Another I guess trend we saw is that there’s more of an emphasis on videos. And sometimes videos are replacing interviews altogether. Sometimes they’re additive, where you could submit a video, so that’s something. Have you had many kids submit videos and what have you how have you advised them on how to do it?

Abby Power 23:25
We may want to edit this out, because these videos make me so mad. They made me, I mean, put so much pressure on the kids pressure. Yeah. Some kids, it’s a gift to them, right? Some kids just eat it up. But some kids, it puts so much added pressure on an already stressful situation, I’m incensed about it. Okay, I don’t know what else to say, but yes, I’ve had a bunch of kids do it. They’ve looked all different. I mean, I had one man who’s super creative do a brilliant one effortlessly this year, and he got into his early decision school. Effortless for him. It was fun. He was so excited about it. And then I have a young woman who’s consent, you know, who just read about having to do one for Wash U and she’s just completely anxious about it. I mean, as if she could take any more. And I’ve just seen all kinds of different approaches. Some kids just speak to the camera and talk about what’s important to them. Some kids do like a little day in the life. Some kids do a performance. Some kids make it really immersive. A bunch of years ago, I had an amazing one where kid was a long border in Brooklyn, and he worked at a skate shop, and he kind of took the admissions people like through his day on his longboard in Brooklyn. So for some kids, I think it’s an amazing opportunity to fill in gaps or express themselves, and for some kids, it’s debilitating. So on balance, I am not a fan, but, you know, I. I

Stefanie Forman 25:00
will say, though I, you know, I agree, like, for some students, it’s debilitating, but I will say that some of my more reserved kids, when they kind of got over that the camera shy part of it, they really like, came alive on camera. And it wasn’t that, it wasn’t that they were the most creative student or or did this like, original idea, but they were just able to shine in their own element and just focus on something they were really passionate about. And so it was really fun to see them in a different light. But yeah, I think sometimes less is more too. So when I have students who just speak about something genuine that might not be part of their application. Like someone was just, oh, they talked about their brother and how they were a caretaker for their brother. And I was like, and, and, and it was just so genuine. 60 seconds, and, and the brother was who had special needs was in the video too. And I was just like, wow, I want to be, I want to be in this person’s life. She’s going to make this world better, and she got into where she wanted to go. But, yeah,

Abby Power 26:04
I love that story, and it’s making me think I should be more open minded and encouraging by what I said, because

Lisa Bleich 26:15
some people are really good on video, and I think some people are debilitated by it, and I think it’s the hardest if it’s a school like brown where you’ve already submitted like, eight essays and you’ve said everything you possibly can, and then they want a video too. So you’re like, Well, I’ve already, like, said everything because you want it to be something that you haven’t been able to share in a different way, or maybe that is better shown through video. But it’s hard if you’ve already sort of borne your heart out and written everything that you can. But I have seen some really fun ones, you know, that are cute and you see the kids in a different way. So yeah, I’m I’m mixed on the videos. I feel like I’m not. That’s not my place where I shine. So I always feel like I don’t know that I’m necessarily the best one giving advice on what to do, and they’re usually much better at it than I am. So but it’s definitely something that’s becoming a part of it. So something to keep in mind. And I think you’re right, Steph, less is more, and then I guess the the last, the last two things that we’ll touch on briefly is that, and I don’t know how much this is a trend, as it’s been going around for a while, but technology has definitely reshaped admissions. I mean, we see that with how they’re able to just determine everything about students, whether they’ll matriculate, given their profile, given their school, given their income. So they know a lot about you. And so that’s just something to keep in mind. And then I feel like the last one, which a little controversial, is that legacy is under scrutiny. And there was just, did you guys see that article this morning about big donors and how that’s also under scrutiny?

Abby Power 27:46
It’s interesting. I mean, the thing about it, right or wrong, good or bad is transparency would be helpful? Yeah, it would be better if we could answer the question, Does legacy help? Yes or no. It shouldn’t be well, you know, they were hearing one thing here, and Michigan is terrible about that, by the way. You know, on the common data set, they made an announcement a couple years ago that legacy doesn’t matter. On the common data set, they say they don’t consider legacy. But anecdotally, you know, they consider legacy,

Stefanie Forman 28:20
you think it can hurt anyone now? Do you think? Like, no, I

Lisa Bleich 28:25
don’t know if it can hurt I mean, I think it doesn’t help as much as it used to. I don’t know. I don’t know. That’s a good question. Stefanie, I don’t have an answer to it. I don’t have enough data to say that. Oh, all of these legacy people didn’t I think that it’s just something to be mindful of and not use that as your only in like, there’s got to be other things that because it’s, it’s, it would certainly be unfair if it hurt you, because your parent went to the school like that shouldn’t have a bearing on it either. So it is tricky, because a lot of times when those studies where they’ve shown with legacy is that the legacy students are very sometimes they’re not as accomplished, but usually they’re very accomplished. So they could get in on their own, right? And that’s just one other element. So it’s tricky, like everything in admissions. So yeah, I mean,

Abby Power 29:11
I could see a circumstance under which a school is trying to limit the number of legacies, where it could at some point in the process, hurt a student, which really is unfortunate and doesn’t make much sense. And I think, Lisa, you’re right. The only thing you can count on is that it’s not going to get you in. And another thing you can count on is that just because you’re a legacy, it doesn’t mean that the school is the right fit for you. So you should be doing all of the due diligence that we’ve been talking about exactly finding you know a good fit for yourself, no, right? I think

Lisa Bleich 29:44
that totally makes sense. Yeah, there’s just if you if it’s the right fit, regardless of where your parents went there, then go for it. But if you’re applying there because you think you have a more strategic advantage because your parents went there, but it’s not necessarily the school that you. So that where there are other schools where you could equally see yourself, it may not be going to help you as much as you thought in the past. So I think that’s really one of the key takeaways of there any other last minute trends, or anything else you want to bring in Seth, yeah,

Stefanie Forman 30:14
I think just one more thing I’d love, if we can discuss essays and supplemental essays, all that fun. Where to start with the essays. I think we talked about technology a little bit and how that is influencing so many different things when we when we think of the college application process, but also our students. Although Abby, I feel like you’d be pretty good with ChatGPT, I feel like you’re the one who experiments with it the most. Oh, yeah, I love it. I still need to take advantage. But our students know how to use it, and they know how to use it well, and I think colleges are very aware of that. I think, Lisa, you sent a great article from every in our Yeah, Ted, tell us about that post. I thought that was really interesting. The head of Emory admissions and what they came out with in regards to ChatGPT.

Lisa Bleich 31:09
I mean, they basically came out and said that, like, we know ChatGPT is there. We know that’s there, but this is really the only opportunity for us to hear you in your own voice. And it doesn’t really help you to use ChatGPT because we want to hear you and know about you. I was actually having conversation with Dave, my husband, and I we, I was telling him about how the applications had gone up and, and he’s like, Oh, they need to use AI to, like, go through all the applications and and, like, make decisions that way. And I was like, Yeah, I said, So then people will use ChatGPT to write their essays, and then they’ll use ChatGPT to review it. So basically, no, there’s no people involved. I said that doesn’t make sense. That is not that is not what admissions is about. It’s about people, kind of making decisions about other people, not to say that they can’t use it for the numerical stuff to make that information. But when it comes to the essays, they still have to be authentic, they still have to be the student’s voice, not the parents voice, not the voice of the friend or the older sibling who is a current sophomore at a particular school, but really the student’s voice, and that’s a unique voice, and I think I feel bad when that gets taken away from the student, that that piece of agent to take gets taken away.

Stefanie Forman 32:21
Yeah, yeah. And I to that point though, I feel a little, I mean, you can feel like some of our frustrations, you know, again, just on behalf of our students with all these changes. But I think something that we keep hearing, which is heartening is to your point, Lisa, that colleges really want to hear students off like they care about authenticity with the essays that’s nice, that that’s coming out. So another thing that continues to change are the supplemental essays, and especially since COVID, how many times have they changed? Like every year, essays continue to change, and not just subtle changes, big changes, to reflect the times, to reflect cultural changes, societal changes. What are some of the, I guess, main takeaways from the supplemental essays that you’ve been seeing like, what? What do these colleges want to see?

Abby Power 33:14
I’ve been telling clients for sure, which is such a an interesting message to give, is colleges want to see kids who have been exposed to diverse groups with diverse voices, trying to reach a goal together. So working across differences, having interesting discussions with people with different perspectives. And for some kids, it’s going to be hard to get those experiences. It depends geographically, where you are, and school wise, where you are, but to the extent that you have any control over it, I’ve been telling kids, don’t shy away from challenges and interesting, diverse experiences, because that’ll give you a lot to write about. It can be in your community service environment, at work, at school, in the classroom, in your extracurriculars, you know, if there’s some kind of disagreement that people are having, you know, family, it can be within

Lisa Bleich 34:12
your own family, depending on on how that works. I mean, I had a student who was, you know, she talked about, she actually was one of the kids that did get into Michigan who talked about how she, you know, she her parents were divorced, and her should, uh, two half siblings. So when the two families were together, there was always a lot of disagreements or and so she spent a lot of time when she was younger, listening to the different points of view. And then as she got older, and started forming her own points of view. Because she had spent so much time listening and forming opinions and understanding people’s perspective, she was able to chime in and essentially serve as a mediator between the two parts of the family. So it was even within her own family, she didn’t have to go that far. So I think it’s just recognizing that there’s lots of ways that you can have diverse. Conversations

Abby Power 35:00
agreed. I had a client who took a big risk at Boston College this past year. She was admitted early decision. They have a long standing essay of a conversation partner. They’ve added to it recently, you know, talk about how you’ve, you know, had a different, you know, taught each other something, but it’s been, it’s been a long standing essay there, and she really didn’t have one of those experiences, but with a member of her family who she wants to be a conversation partner, they they are always at odds, and so she’s been walking away just for her entire and it’s made her really sad. So she talked about that, and she talked about ways that she’s going to try to engage so she didn’t effectively, she didn’t really answer the question. We thought it was a risk, but it was just so from the heart, it showed an understanding of what it’s like to not be able to talk across differences, and it worked. Thank goodness. Knock on wood. I’m knocking on wood right now, but, yeah, I mean, they want to see kids who can come to campus and get stuff done with all different kinds of people?

Lisa Bleich 36:05
Yeah, I think that’s really important. So I think a key takeaway is put yourself in situations or provide opportunities to have those experiences on any level. All right. Well, that was our takeaway, our debrief from the early action, early decision season for 2024-25. So thank you, CbMers, for tuning in and to the episode. 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. To learn more, visit CollegeBoundMentor.com Until next time, you got this!

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