Ep.8/ 1:1 Coaching Session [Part 1]: How to Start Thinking about COLLEGE ADMISSIONS as a Freshman
In this episode We talk with a high school freshman who is thinking about college admissions, and we discuss why it is so important to start thinking about it now.
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In this episode of Admittedly Podcast, Thomas takes us through a coaching session with a participant who is currently a freshman. Thinking about college admissions ahead of time can make a difference when it comes to analyzing all the options and alleviating the pressure.
At this stage, it’s important to make an inventory of the student’s life: favorite hobbies, favorite activities, interests, different languages… Any information is fundamental to help the person make an interesting and effective choice.
Although having the courage to follow your passion in college is important, not every student will know what this passion is, and it’s ok. That’s why talking to professionals can really help.
Key Highlights
It’s normal to feel pressure as a freshman when thinking about college.
A good college is fundamental, but it’s not a guarantee of success.
Why is it important to think about college ahead of time?
A lot of students have the same thoughts and concerns by this time.
It’s ok not to know what you’re passionate about as a freshman.
About Thomas
Thomas is a parent and alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania. After earning his MBA at the Wharton School in 2003, he moved to Silicon Valley. For three years, he was director of admissions and financial aid at Wharton School. He worked closely with admissions professionals, students, alumni, and professors to create the best possible MBA class.
Thomas has been an entrepreneur his entire life in the fields of finance, agriculture, wellness, and sporting goods. As the founder of Global Education Opportunities, he works with diverse and underserved communities to help them become successful college students. Thomas started the podcast Admittedly because he is passionate about demystifying the application process for parents and applicants.
Related Links
Apply to be a guest: www.thomascaleel.com/apply-for-podcast
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Instagram: @admittedlypodcast
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Hello, and welcome to the admittedly podcast. My name is Thomas Caleel. I'm the former director of MBA admissions and financial aid for my alma mater, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. In this podcast, I don't promise easy answers or quick fixes. But I will use my decades of experience to help you achieve your education goals. Now, let's get started.
Hello, and welcome to the admittedly podcast. My name is Thomas Caleel, your host for today. And today we have something very exciting, very special. Two business school classmates of mine, and very dear friends have volunteered their son Maui, to talk to me today about his career as a high school student. He's in the ninth grade. You can't see it, but he's grimacing right now. This is, this is peak, ninth grade embarrassment from his parents but hopefully we can get him to relax and enjoy it a little bit, and get some interesting information for him.
But also for those of you listening. And many of you thinking, wait ninth grade? Oh, my goodness. I didn't know we were supposed to start that early, or that's ridiculous. There's no reason to start that early. And today, I hope what we can do is kind of walk through and give you a sense of it's not an urgent sense of preparation. There's no urgency here. But it's important, I think, to think ahead, right in anything we want to set our destination, we want to think about where we're going and just help us navigate things and make decisions as they come up instead of scrambling as things occur. And or looking back to three years from now and saying, Oh, I really wish I would have thought about that. My freshman year, my sophomore year, my junior year.
Thomas: So with that, welcome Christine, London, and Maui. It's really a pleasure to have you here. So Christina and London, I'll start with you as parents, why on earth are you thinking about college and the college process now, so early in Maui's career?
Christine: I'll go ahead and start first, you know, candidly, for me, this is actually more stemmed and rooted in the reality that Mellie will be leaving home in about three years time. And so what is scary, is, you know, and so whatever path that ends up taking, I want to make sure that we are setting him up for success. So he's got either A. The tools already, you know, in his belt, or B. Is able to figure out how to obtain other tools that he might need as he progresses towards adulthood. And so, college being, you know, of course, a desirable course, that's part of the reason why we started, at least certainly, I started thinking about it. At this point, yeah, like, things have changed so much since we applied to college and went to college, in terms of this whole process has become extremely competitive. International, just, you know, it feels a little bit overwhelming at the moment, and so the sooner we can kind of get our arms around the, you know, all of the things that need to happen, the better. So, I think just getting some information at this point is helpful, and just making me feel more comfortable about the process.
Thomas: Great. Maui, what's your initial thought of all this?
Maui: I think there's a way to really decide to sell, I still got three years to do this, to like, to get your individual wherever middle of freshman year seems like it's okay.
Thomas: And I appreciate that. And there's a lot of people out there nodding their heads along with you and trying to figure out why on earth we would, we would be doing this, and I think we'll get to that. And so, you know, for your parents, another question, how would you define success for Maui in the college process?
Christine: It's a great question. I would say finding a program that meets his passion and is able to sustain his growth is very much at the bottom line of that. Of course, it would be lovely if he went to a fabulous school, etcetera, but having gone to a great school doesn't, you know, make success or doesn't equal success necessarily. And so it's the institution that can help best provide that foundation for his adulthood. That certainly, I think, is important.
London: No, I think you know, biggest thing for us is we want all the doors for him to be open. Like, when he decides this is something that I want, or this is a college that I really want, again, we want him to be in a position to do that, when he gets there, right, and so I just want to keep all of his options open.
Thomas:That's great. And I love that answer, you know, because, unfortunately, a lot of times will, you know, when I speak to parents, they are very fixated on, you know, they basically take the US News and World Report and they tear off the top 10 schools and hand it to their child and say, no pressure. But these are the schools, these are the only schools that they will consider acceptable. And I think, you know, the three of us having been to, you know, a pretty wide variety of, of universities and graduate programs, I think, I understand that, you know, as Christine, you said, going to a good school is not a guarantee of success. You know, working your way through community college, certainly does not preclude you in any way from being just a tremendous success. And you know, all areas of your life. So I think a lot of this in Maui, to your point, right? Where I think a lot of students, a lot of people your age, and even parents sometimes get a little bit hung up and think about college admissions as the end goal. Right? Why am I worried about something that's not going to happen for three years? Right, I don't need to worry about this until fall of my senior year. But as your father very correctly pointed out, it's about keeping the doors open. Right? Because the worst case scenario would be for you to get to, let's say, spring of your junior year and realize, oh, no, you know, I really have found this program that I like, it's really unique, it really speaks to me, it speaks to what I want to do. If only I had done X, Y, Z two years ago, or last year, or last summer, right? And unless somebody invents a time machine between now and your senior year, there's really no way for us to go back and fix that.
So what we're talking about, we're talking about the concept of college admissions in our, in your freshman year, is not so much this kind of, you know, step by step militant process where we're marching you down a predetermined path, right? It's more about, okay, let's find out what interests me, right? And I know that, in and of itself, is a terrifying question in ninth grade.
I have a son who's in ninth grade as well and we're not using him because he would be rolling his eyes. Far more than you already have, I promise. And so the, you know, the idea here is to really think through, okay, what is it that I enjoy doing? And for most students, most high schoolers, that's a very challenging question, right? And a lot of times parents will come back and they say, they'll say, “Listen, I've got my child is really smart. They're really curious. They're really interested, though, in a lot of different things. And how do we find that thing that they are most passionate about? How do we find that thing that really engages them, and drives them and lights up their eyes?” Right? And not to put your parents on the spot, but that's pretty much exactly what they said. When we had a conversation previously, you know, and they were saying, you know, Maui just, is really interesting guy that has all these really diverse interests, and so how do we think about that, right? Because when you think about college admissions, right, and I know that it's this big, scary, you know, kind of blackbox that nobody will, you know, from which no light ever escapes. And what you want to do is think about college admissions officers as professionals, right? They have a job to do, and their job is to build a really interesting, diverse class. Right? And you can imagine Maui, if you, if I said to you, I want you to pick 1,000 of the most interesting people from this pile of 60,000 applications, does that sound like a mildly daunting task to you? Yeah. So how do you think you would do that? I put you on the spot here a little bit, like what are some of the things that you would think about, if you had to pick 1,000 Student class?
Maui: I would just kind of ignore the super basic the, the run of the mill of stuff and try to go find the more ones that stand out to me. 60,000 and then kind of be methodical about it, instead of like, individually selecting 1000 people at a time during that session to pick up people from those sections.
Thomas: Okay, and so what do you mean by you ignore that you said a lot of very interesting things in there? So you would ignore the super basic things? So what do you mean by that?
Maui: You tend to work college ignore like just the 4.0 GPA, it won't have to be very totalitarian. Because everyone who has applied to every Ivy League school, who has like a 4.5 GPA is AP President senior year, I was a Do you want to be on the football or whatever? Everyone who's trying to position ivy schools gonna be like there every single question because like, they say no, I'll try to apply to like six different Ivy League schools in the United States as a backup school. And so it won't matter in the long term, if you ignore them, there are always going to be more people like that and who really want some of those.
Thomas: Okay, and so then you said you would focus in on what makes somebody interesting.
Maui: Let me tell me something a little more unique than just having good grades and being part of the sport. So I don't know, something like starting a business or like, nonprofit organizations like that, it's not just the high school students.
Thomas:
Okay. Anything else comes to mind?
Maui: Not on the spot,. No. Okay.
Thomas: Yeah, I'm not trying to put you on the spot. I'm just, I'm just curious, like, because it's, it's when people are applying to college, I know we're getting a few years ahead of ourselves. People tend, and this isn't totally normal human bias, they, they tend to look at admissions from their own lens. Right? How do I get in instead of flipping that question and saying, “What is this school looking for?” Right? And so in general, in general, you make, you make some very interesting statements that are true, but with everything and omissions, there's a but right? So I think on the one hand, you're very correct, that a vast majority of applicants do have 4.5 GPAs, or very high IB scores, you know, almost perfect SATs scores. And that gets, as you very correctly pointed out, it looks very much the same, right? Everybody's president of two, three clubs, or a good athlete, or not everybody, a lot of students are, but one of the important things is really looking at those grades and things in the context of where the student has come from. Right? So if you are from a good school district or a private school, your parents both have a high level of education, right? Then a 4.4-4.5 GPA and a 1600 SATs score or 1500 SATs score. Do you think that that's impressive? Or do you think that would go in your, in your bucket of okay? Everybody has that?
Maui: It's like, almost expected if it's like to the private school, you want it department who's gonna do whatever they can to get that business grades up to get them to get to that high heckling.
Thomas: Can you think, could you think of any instance in which a student coming in with maybe a 3.5, or 3.3 GPA would be competitive at a top school?
Maui: Well, if a student comes from a less fortunate area of like living, or less fortunate circumstances. Let’s say they have to work full time on the side to take care of their sick grandmother, and they can't really do it. Looking at supporting their family and juggling school at the same time, and they even managed to get that 3.5 GPA. That's more impressive than just like cats doing nothing having a provided again for one year.
Thomas: Exactly. So that's spot on. And that's absolutely one of the things that admissions committees will wrestle with. And interestingly enough, this year on the common app, many schools introduced a standardized question that said, if you have obligations outside of school, please tell us what they are. And some of them were religious practice, helping clean the house, caring for siblings, family members work part time, full time. So there's really now starting to be, and Harvard actually started discussing this years ago, which is, you know, if you have and we want to hear your story, right? There's no right path here. There's no right story. And I think what happens a lot of times is that students and parents talk and they have a very, very small data set. Right? So students in a particular school all talk and they say, “Oh, I can't get into this school because of this, or this person who's like me didn't.” And they forget a lot of times that there's a universe of students out there from a wide variety of, of socio economic backgrounds, international backgrounds, experiential backgrounds, right? And so all of that becomes very, very, very important. Okay? Because the schools will look with a very fine, at a very granular level, with a very fine tooth comb, and look at what you've been able to achieve relative to your advantages or position or privilege or however you want to, you know, however you want to phrase that.
So, that brings us and I think ties into the next thing that you said is, you know, Looking for somebody who's interesting or unique? And you brought up some good examples, right, starting a business starting or involvement with a nonprofit. And I think the important thing, if we carry your line of thought further is really, again, what are you doing that is uniquely you? Now, that does not mean that you have to run out and do something totally off the wall to try and stand out, okay?
And the funny thing is, is we would see this in business school admissions from certain countries, where one year everybody would play outdoor rooftop soccer. And then next year, everybody would be ice skating, and then next year everybody would be doing something else, right? Because that year, some parent decided, okay, we're going to, you know, we're going to differentiate, and we're going to do fencing, and then everybody just would go and do fencing. And so you get these, like, generally like two to three year blocks, where everybody would do the same activity, and then it would start on another activity, right? And that's not good.
And what happens is that leads to these discussions where, you know, in the parent circles, parents are upset because they'll say, you know, I don't understand. Susan did everything right. She was class president, she was a two sport varsity athlete, she had a perfect GPA. How did she not get into any of her top choices? And what happens is, and I've talked about this on an on an earlier on a different episode is this concept of courage, right? And having the courage to follow that thing that really interests you, right? That brings that spark to your eyes. Now, you may or may not know what that is right now, right? And I think that's the thing that most families and most students wrestle with is they say, “Okay, fine, we hear your point. Great. But I just don't know.” Right? And so I think that's a, that's an interesting way for us to talk a little bit. You know, Maui, I am going to put you on the spot. What are some of the things that you like to do? And what are some of the things you do inside and outside of school right now, if you don't mind sharing some of that.
Maui: So like, both, for inside and outside of school, I swim. Although right now, outside of school, it kind of stopped for a little while, because I was swimming competitively and ready to swim for one team at a time. And then I play the drums. If you can see it, my drums set is behind me
Thomas: I can see a little drum on the corner there. That's pretty cool.
Maui: And I played piano for a couple of years. About six years. I did seven years of Japanese school. In terms of outside is huge.
Thomas: Are you still in the Japanese school?
Maui: I stopped after seven years.
Thomas: Okay, great. And, and anything else that you do?
Maui: I made a cooking class for school. It's pretty fun. Oh yeah, I forgot about that I work on the weekends for local pizza place.
Thomas: Very nice. What do you do there?
Maui: Oh, yeah, I'll do opening and closing, do customer service, or fold topping, I'll make pizzas. Many pretty basic stuff for physicals.
Thomas: Okay, so there's, there's a lot here. And you know, you'd sound like a very, very interesting young man, quite frankly. So let's, let's kind of start at the top, with the swimming. You when you say you're swimming competitively is that? You know, I always ask people, and this is a hard question to answer, like, how good are you know?
Maui: Not super good. In terms of like, scale, one through 10, probably like, four and a half. I'm not gonna drown or anything, but I am not an olympic athlete, I probably similar around that area
Thomas: Okay. And that's fair enough. And you know, everybody is kind of smiling and chuckling a little bit with that question, but really, you know, as you're thinking about progress and process, and one of the reasons it's good to kind of think about this freshman years, we do get approached by families who have what I would say our competitive level athletes, right? Who are going to go on and play division one through three college athletics. Maybe be recruited, maybe pitstop at the Olympics. But I think there is a level of candor there, between “Hey, you know, I'm a decent swimmer, I really enjoy it. You know, we're soccer player I might do at club level at school, but it's not something where I'm going to get recruited.” And sometimes the conversation is around, is more around, you know what I have a chance. And so let's kind of think about what we need to do. Do we need to bring in you know, nutritionists and outside coaches, and think about how our summers go? Because if that's, you know, if you're at that level, you really have to treat it. Your mother's, your mother's reacting in shock to that. But you know, if you, if you want a chance to play to division one level, chances are you're pretty good. And you have your support team and you're really thinking about how do I elevate myself to the point where that's a realistic possibility, right? How do I make the Olympic team or at least compete in the Olympic trials?
So okay, so swimming is something fun. That's going to be a good competitive outlet for you. What do you swim?
Maui: Definitely not long distance. Not necessarily spirits either, like probably closer to more mid distance races.
Thomas: Okay. Very cool. And the music It seems like you've been involved in music for a long time now. What was the switch from piano to drums. Was that when your parents were like, “Okay, we've made you play the piano. Now you get for six, seven years now you get to pick your instrument.
Maui: The original deal was I didn't want to do piano anymore and I was kind of forced into it. I made a deal, if I start another instrument, can I start piano. And there's, I think the drums and the piano kind of overlapping for a little while, until eventually I got a job last September and they said, Okay, you can drop piano.
Thomas: Okay. So what kind of, what kind of drumming do you do?
Maui: I mean, I'm still learning right now so it's a lot more like, basic stuff. A little more pop alternative rock stuff.
Thomas: Okay. Very cool.
Maui:There's still pretty basic technique. Just getting a feel for it.
Thomas: So if you think about like Maui, high school senior, what is what is your what is your music life look like at that point, ideally?
Maui: Well, I will still be still playing drums? Definitely hoping to be better than and now. Maybe like, really, really big question mark on that one. Joining or starting a band was definitely a big question.
Thomas: Okay, cool. Fair enough. And then, so Japanese school. That's, that's pretty neat. And you ended that after seven years? Correct? Would you say you're fluent,
fluent enough to like get by?
Maui: Definitely rusty right now, but I can get by independently if I had too.
Thomas: Fair enough. And you live close. You live close to Los Angeles. Right? And there's a large Japanese community there. Do you go to like Little Tokyo and those areas often?
Maui: Not too often.
Thomas: Okay, just, just curious, because I'm a, I'm a just a terrible foodie. I love to cook. I love to eat. So leading into the next question. You said you took a cooking class?
Maui: Yeah, I'm doing it right now. Our teacher, he used to cater to a lot of people on different Instagram requests and crazy dishes he makes. He's a very, very good cook. His teaching methods are questionable. At the very least. He's a, he's good, but it doesn't carry over into teaching as well. But like he has like he has some, like seniors are acting as TAs. We work in groups of four. So that all works out yet. This will make it through.
Thomas: Right. What is it that you like about food?
Maui: It just tastes good. I don't know.
Thomas: Okay. So what's the most interesting thing you've eaten? And what's the most interesting thing you've cooked?
Maui: Cooked? I think the most recent thing is I made, made from scratch pasta. The chicken alfredo. So the list has just been this for $1. I shouldn't head raw and then maybe cedars.
Okay. The shrimp heads are much better if you just lightly tempura batter them ad fry them. That's just a pro tip.
Maui: Fair enough.
Thomas: Thank you for joining us today. Please take a moment to subscribe to the admittedly podcast and download this episode. I welcomed to share your thoughts and questions with me. You can find us on social media at admittedly podcast. I look forward to continuing our journey together.
