All right, we're live. Welcome back. College Coffee Talk. Pearl and Andy Lockwood. Good morning, Pearl. Good morning, Andy. Hi, everybody. Hello. And like always, join us in a synchronized sip of your coffee or other beverage. Good morning. Good morning. That's delicious. Thank you for cleaning out the mug that our daughter used before she traipsed off to work. Right. It's 6.30 this morning. She's got her city job. One of our kids home from college. Didn't really consider that we use these as props on Monday mornings. Right. She knows. Off the grounder. Anyway, so this is a show about all things college. Getting into college, paying for college, why you even bother going to college, how to avoid protests at college, you name it. We talk about all sorts of college activities and thoughts. And it's an opportunity for you to toss in your questions here for free to get some free college coaching. free college advice. So welcome to the show and please introduce yourselves in the chat and say hi and put your comments in there. Let us know you can see and hear us coming in loud and clear. So we have a couple topics on tap today and then Pearl threw in a brainstorm that she had while she was in her small office, smallest room in the house, where she does some of her best thinking. Today's topics are college essay mistakes and we want to talk a little bit about what we sometimes refer to as magical thinking that we see parents and kids go through. And then we'll make time, even if we have to run over a little bit, which hopefully we won't, for your new topic of the week, which is called... Don't do this. That's our new segment. We're going to feature something each week that you shouldn't do. So... This week's don't do this will in fact involve magical thinking and where it can get you into trouble. Is it don't ellipsis do this or is it don't do this? Because there's a dramatic pause. That's true. I was just being dramatic. There is no ellipsis. It's after the three words. Don't do this. Actually, there's no ellipsis. Don't do this. Very matter of factly exclamation point. Don't do this. So she's being dramatic that time as opposed to the rest of her waking hours. Trying to make sure we're all up on a Monday morning. Okay. So welcome. So who's with us here? Let's just say hi. Have you logged in, Pearl? Or are you not able to do that? I am not able to do that today because of something I need for my segment. One of your don't dos? Don't do this. Yes, I do know something. Well, let's see if I can turn this on. Hello, Dawn. Hello, Corrine. Hello, several other people who are anonymous. So welcome. All right, so I want to talk briefly about the college essay. And we're running these boot camps all summer. And there's a kickoff meeting later in June. And then we start with the actual writing in July. Essays are a primary source of anxiety and difficulty. So I wrote on our email list the other day, I wrote a little bit about what a good essay should do, some features in a good essay, which I guess I'll briefly cover right now. And then I want to talk a little bit about what essays don't have to do, or what you don't have to do when you're writing an essay. meaning how to avoid some mistakes that people make. So I mentioned the other day a college essay, and I'm talking about the personal statement on common application. No matter what, you know, you get a choice of topics, but no matter what you choose, it should show some sort of personal growth, which implies that there should be some sort of before and after. There should be some sort of moment or I've heard the term an inciting incident when your son or your daughter had some realization or some sort of pivot point that changed her opinion or outlook or trajectory of the essay. And then they should be interesting. That's probably the number one, I guess, issue. with college essays is that they may be grammatically correct and stuff that your English teacher can help you with, but they're not always interesting. They're not always engaging. And I think one of the reasons for that is because when you do writing assignments in school, whether it's for English or history or something, those are sort of expository. They're about other events or books or quotes or things like that, but they're not about you, the writer. So this is a different type of writing. I threw this together. I don't think I shared this with you. So this is going back. This is an outline of an essay that a student of mine from years ago named Luke did. It was a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. So the before, I was working on a moisture farm on a lame, desolate planet. I hated it and was desperate to leave and become a pilot. And then my uncle bought a couple of droids, one of which played me a mysterious message by mistake. Then the inciting incident. I took the droid to old man Kenobi, a weirdo who lived outside in the outskirts of town, who said he knew my aunt, uncle, and my deceased father. After watching this mysterious message, the old man tried hard to get me to go on a mission to defeat the empire. I refused. I was crazy. But we all rushed back to my farm only to discover that the Empire stormtroopers had murdered my aunt and uncle. So the after is, well, I brushed off this tragedy like a sociopath, changed my mind, and joined the old man on a hero's journey. Acquired skills and powers along the way, and then I used my newfound powers to confront my father, who turned out not to be dead, and defeat the Empire and discover my destiny. So that's an example of a pretty common before and after. But the thing about essays is they don't have to be so, you know, like a blockbuster movie or even lifetime movie dramatic. It's okay if the student didn't have some sort of traumatic, horrible childhood or lost a parent or lost a limb. It doesn't have to be about anything huge. It can be about something small. You can talk about stuff in everyday life, like your dinner or making dinners or things you do traditionally with your family. As long as it shows some sort of personal growth or appreciation or other insight about it, that's what makes it interesting. And the last thing I'll say, and this is a mistake that I think a lot of people have in their heads, is that these essays don't have to be original. Like when I'm brainstorming essay topics with kids, one of the objections I hear frequently every year is, it's just not original. And my response is, look, If you're writing for an admissions officer who's been at the college you're applying to any length of time, it could be three years or five years, and they read about 1,000 applications a year, and each application has at least one to three essays, sometimes more, you're not going to come up with something they've never seen before. So don't think about original, but do think about interesting. And the more detail and the more insight and the more personal you make it, the better it is, the more persuasive it is. These essays have taken the place of college interviews. Most colleges don't conduct student admissions officer interviews anymore. Some of them do alumni interviews like the Ivy League schools, but those don't have any bearing at all on getting in or not. And again, it's because admissions officers review a thousand applications a year because of the common application, because of test option policies, you name it. So the essay is really replacement for the interview and it's not just the personal statement but it's also the supplemental essays particularly the why are you applying to this college essay which most colleges have these days so you have to the there's different purposes for the personal statement and the supplemental essays but you have to understand what you know what they're looking for in these essays and you know sort of a um taking a step back and looking at it from a 30 000 foot perspective I say this all the time. So I apologize if you've heard this over and over, but this is a marketing exercise. This is your, your last ditch opportunity to explain. This is why you should look at my application and look at me compared to the other 30,000 or 50,000 or 90,000 other kids who are also competing with me, who also have substantially the same grades and the same scores and other credentials. But this is why you should consider me. So if you're going to write something, that's going to resonate with admissions officers, you first have to understand them, your audience. And that's what a marketer does. So don't think of yourself as John or Sally applying to college. Think of yourself as the marketer of John or Sally applying to college. Because colleges are businesses, but kids need to understand that they too are in business for themselves. And that's the business of applying and getting in and hopefully getting money from these colleges. So don't blow the essay. You have to first understand what the purposes are. All right. So that was all I wanted to say about that. Do you have any words of wisdom or wit or both? I agree with everything you said. Okay. That happens all the time. It's true. It's more just getting back to the original point about it does not need to be so original and so earth-shattering, but it is more about demonstrating your judgment of talking about certain subjects and how you talk about them and what things you choose to emphasize in your essay that show how you think, what your values are, and what you're all about. So yeah, I agree. All right, good. Well said. Okay, so the next thing that we want to talk about is magical thinking. So This is a story from, it's probably 10 years ago at this point. I was on the phone with a mom and the daughter and they were planning an upcoming trip to visit colleges. I said, so where are you going? And she said, well, we're going to the Boston area. I said, oh, what are you going to see? She said, well, we're going to take a look at Harvard and then MIT. And I started almost panicking. I think I was, I started questioning myself and shuffling around in the files thinking, wait a minute, she that type of, students because I didn't remember her being of that caliber. And then I, you know, fumbled around quickly, saw that she had like a 94 average and a 1380 or something on her SATs and not a ton of AP classes and all that. In short, not that caliber. So on one hand, I would never say to someone, you know, don't bother. You'll never get in there, which a lot of guidance counselors do, by the way. I'm against that. But on the other hand, what I did say was, look, why don't we, so you maximize your time, and you don't only see schools that admit very, very, very, very few people. Why don't we round out that list a little bit and see a few other schools? So I'd probably recommend BU or whatever. The point is, they were going to travel up from Long Island to Boston four hours, spend a day seeing these two schools, and then come back, and what were they going to be able to show for it? Well, I didn't like MIT so much. I thought it was nerdy. But yeah, Harvard was OK. I'm like, OK. I'm glad you think so. They admit 3%. I guess this was probably when they admitted 9%. So we see this a lot, this sort of trajectory. Like when I first meet a kid or one of our college advisors that works for us meets with a kid, we ask them, what colleges are you interested in? And it's always these super elite, aspirational schools You don't say. Yeah. Well, again, nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that. But what they lack is a sort of perspective of where they stack up compared to their competition. And that's not just at their high schools, but it's all over the country. So the magical thinking part is, well, you know, they don't accept, they don't require SAT or ACTs anymore. I'll just, you know, I'll just apply anyway and give it a shot for these 12 colleges. So I think if a student is going to apply to, let's say, 15 colleges, which may seem excessive to you, but these days it's not, you know, the common application, you have to cap it at 20, which speaks volumes there. Yeah. But if you're going to apply to 15 colleges, I would say no more than three or four should be these, you know, reach super reach aspirational schools, which not only do you have a very low chance of getting a chance winning. Yeah. But also, but unlike, unlike a lottery ticket, we just buy it. You've got to write, you've got to spend hours and hours out of your life writing essays. Is that a good use of your time? Exactly. And, and mental energy and emotional energy. Is that really, is really smart. And in that process, are you not giving attention to the schools that are likely to admit you and therefore not putting your best admissions foot forward with those schools, with those schools? Well, that's a good point too. So, so I'm writing this new book where I was at the essay part that I just read is an excerpt from that. And one of the, one of the, related topics that I just finished writing about last week is that no one ever falls in love with their safety schools quote-unquote safety schools but frequently ends up attending what they thought were their safety schools right so so diverting your attention away from um from a certain you know from a regular school because you're lusting after um you know going to university of north carolina chapel hill which admits 10 from out of state because you loved the vibe and the colors. And just felt like you when you were on the campus. Yeah, the basketball team, which you won't play for. You know, those are all fine. And I'm being facetious here. Those are all fine things to think about aspirationally, but not at the expense of doing what Pearl said, which is giving attention to your other schools. Because if you don't give them attention, if you don't show interest, that may close the door to those schools also. Right. Yeah. Okay. Talk about. Magical thinking in terms of paying for college, Pearl. Okay, right. There is truly, truly understanding how the financial aid process works and not superseding how it actually works with how you want it to work or how you think it should work. I always say the islands of shoulds does not exist. Let me ask you something specific. How often are people stunned when they didn't get anywhere near what they were hoping for? Usually. Most often. Despite. Despite. Our warnings ahead of time and our calculations and all that stuff. Right. I do try my best to tether people to reality when it comes to these numbers and formulas because people are often... very disappointed when the actual numbers come out. And yeah, maybe they get some discount, but there was something off in the calculation or the figuring of what's actually going to be. But there's also the component of their child standing compared to their competition. Right. Because colleges engage in a practice called preferential packaging, which So if there's two kids, but one is clearly superior to that college and the other one is, but all other things being equal, meaning they look the same financially speaking, financial aid profiles and saying the kid's more desirable is usually going to get more money too. And sometimes that's a mortal blow to parents too. They overestimate the value of their kids. Right. Exactly. Just like they do with, we were talking about this morning, right, in musical theater, right? Yep. Right. Kids majoring in musical theater. I actually don't think that's a bad major, but a lot of kids pursue it and they end up with a waitressing job. And same thing with all the club sports teams. There's a ton of kids who play club sports growing up. I mean, not just for the school, but also these private travel teams. And virtually all of them around here who play lacrosse think they're going to get a full-ride Division I scholarship offer. And to be fair, a lot of them do, but most of them don't. So if you understand the odds are like, you know, you've got like a – maybe around Long Island there's a 5% chance that you'll get some sort of scholarship to play. It's probably more like 1%. If I'm saying that not everyone's in the top 5%, it's like a woebegone effect where everyone's above average. Everyone's not above average. So the sooner you, like Pearl said, tether yourself to reality, and it's okay to have hopes and dreams and aspirations, but you've also got to have your feet firmly planted on the ground. The sooner you do that, the better. With that, I will share in today's inaugural pioneer segment of Don't Do This. I feel like we need a graphics person. Yes. For Don't Do This? Yeah. We need to increase our budget. Maybe we have a person walking to the end of a cliff and then they take a step, something like that. Okay. Anyway, in addition to casting a wide net and making sure you're evenly attending to everything that you're putting forward to the schools in that wide net that you hopefully cast, I always advise... and I know this is difficult because we're talking about your emotions, but I do stress, stress, try, at least put it in the forefront of your heads, to stay as unattached to these outcomes until you know what these outcomes are, what your actual choices are. I know it's difficult because you're propelling forward towards something But that effort should be the same across the board for all schools that are in your auspices that you are considering. And you're not going to single out one and then all of a sudden, this is where the magical thinking takes off. You think the more I want something is going to make it so. And then you can find yourself in a very precarious place because you'll let your emotions get the better of you. And all I'm suggesting is you can get attached at the right time, when you have the actual choices in front of you, when someone has said yes to you, and that is a real possibility. At that point, unleash, get emotional, take a deep dive, get all the merch, do all that, but not a minute before then, because you'll be heartbroken the more you let that grow. So on that line, along those lines, and I see this all the time, I'm continually saying, I get your interest. I get it. I get it. It's fine. Stay unattached emotionally to the extent that you can until it becomes a card in your hands. If you're a poker player, a real actual choice, not some hypothetical wish want. That's not that's not a choice. That's a hope. It's different. OK, with that, where did I go? OK, I found the following from a parent. who wrote in the Cornell University parents group chat on Facebook. Hi, parents. I wanted to take a moment to thank you all for the support and kindness you have shown as I have worked with my son to navigate the transfer option process to Cornell's ILR school. Your encouragement and advice have meant the world to us, and I'm truly grateful for this community. Although we were hopeful that my son would soon be joining Cornell, Unfortunately, he was not accepted for the upcoming fall semester, despite exceeding in all required classes and demonstrating dedication through near full time work and an internship related to his field of study, he was informed that Cornell was not able to offer him admission with reasons unspecified. I like how she's reapplying right now to the group. Here we go. This is where it can be a problem. This is so embarrassing. In anticipation of his acceptance, I purchased a variety of Cornell merchandise to encourage and excite him about the prospect of attending. I have a very nice assortment of hoodies, tees, size medium, blankets, and other Cornell fan items that we no longer need. I would love to offer these items to anyone in the group who might be interested. If you're willing to cover the shipping costs, they're yours. I hope I can bring... Anyway, you get the point. Don't do that. Don't do that. So she's in the mom's group? Because I got a really strong interest they just let you in even if you Yeah, do you think she's in the Harvard group? Depends, you know she could open a store I You can't make that up. I didn't that is I didn't don't do that Stan attached Because it's, you know, we're laughing, but it's sad. This was completely avoidable for this family. And how much sadder and emotionally affected must they have been as a result of allowing themselves to get carried away? It's exciting. But we're adults. We're all adults, including these kids who are applying for... for these schools. I feel like the kid was probably some hapless, innocent bystander. Probably brushing his mom off. She's like, no, this is big. I'm going to go buy you a hoodie. And the more I buy, the more likely you're going to get in. The more likely you're going to be excited. It was a motivating thing. I'm buying these to motivate. Right. Because we know how bummed out you'd be if you got into Cornell. Right. What a bummer. I actually thought when you were talking. Can you believe this? We didn't have a production meeting about this. No, you kept this one close to the vest. That was great. I didn't hear you screaming in the bathroom. I mean, the little office. My little office? Yeah, yeah. Were you just cracking up when you read that? Yeah. I was remembering all these people who go on these college visits before they apply, and they act like they've already gotten in. This is Jared's first choice. Or he didn't like Duke. Oh, okay. Well, right. Confidence helps. This is awesome. You should join every college moms group and we will have raw material forever. Well, we do. I'm happy again to announce we do have this new segment. And, you know, sometimes negative examples provide to be much more helpful than just us telling you what to do. It's important to know what not to do also. You were, you were, I was a little confused because in the beginning you were talking about, you were giving good positive advice. Don't be attached. Yes. Whatever. And I was like, okay, how is this? Don't do this. And then you pulled that one out, Pearl. What a funk. That is, that is awesome. Right. Just when we think we cannot be floored, something like this falls right in our lap. Is it wrong of me to listen to that and think, wow, people are really, really stupid? Is that the wrong reaction? They're not very charitable. Emotionally untethered. Emotionally not grounded. That's probably not even an extreme example. No, I don't think so. Emotions run high in this. I don't know if we're like running... That's like neuroses. That's not even... It's beyond emotion. It's pathological. This poor kid. And not helpful. I mean, I would like anyone to tell me. I know perhaps a little harsh, but... I don't know how that was helpful for that family in any way. My guess is he didn't need that encouragement. Yeah. All right. Well, I'm having a hard time processing that, which is unusual for me. Right. But in terms of what is helpful, I will circle back. And I know you were talking about the boot camp. I am entirely uninvolved in the boot camp with the exception of providing snacks if you happen to show up in person. I care about that. I cannot state enough, having had four kids that all went through, these bootcamps are so, so helpful, so valuable. Everyone who goes through them feels this way because what it does, it takes so much stress out of this process because it forces you to a timeline that, just take our word for it, has to be adhered to because the year unfolds like an avalanche with not only fewer things to do, but more things to do that require your attention and good production on, that we cannot overstate the importance of getting all of the essays out of the way before your senior starts their senior year, before they start school that year. So if you are at all interested in the bootcamp, I highly recommend it as a parent you'll get the best advice and get this stuff out of the way so that your application goes in with care that it absolutely requires. And I thought about this analogy. I love analogies. Trying to rush this process would be like trying to very quickly make a banana bread. Okay. You can put all the ingredients in very early. Just shove it in the oven. And I need it in a minute. I'm going to take it out. And how good is that banana bread going to be? It's actually kind of gross. I have you ever made banana bread and tasted the batter. It doesn't taste like if you're making like Duncan Heinz cake, It's kind of gross because it requires the baking time. There's a process that is involved. So, so too is there a process in the essay writing and your application. It requires care and it will show in the end to the admissions committee that you put care and time into it and you make yourself a good banana bread of an application. Anyway, that's enough. A couple comments. It's also about the college list, right? Right. So you avoid the magical thinking. Yep. And Pearl loves analogies. She loves food analogies. I do. Specifically. And food. And this is definitely because our client, Julie, dropped off a banana bread on Friday to our new office. So good. I guess like a house warmer. Right. So nice. Is there any left? Yeah, it was 50% went pretty quickly. Yeah. So I put the link for the bootcamp in the chat and in the comments here and we're offering, currently we're offering a 10% off coupon code. So you'll just private message us if you're interested in it after you review the link and you see everything we have to offer. Okay. Yeah. All right. That's going to wrap it up for this week. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Pearl, for your new segment, which I'm still going to be thinking about. Don't do this. Don't do this. All right. Signing off. Have a great week.
