College counseling

Every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, there is college counselling in the Kemper Auditorium on campus between 2 and 3pm.During this one hour period, people (especially from admission offices) from different universities will come to tell the PA students about the admission process and their school.I attended two, one was an Admission Officer from the Holy Cross school, and the other was also an Admission Officer, only, he was from Harvard. Look, I know we are all very excited and “OMG!!! It’s Harvard!!!!”, but the Holy Cross guy is actually quite go The Auditorium is air-conditioned (an important point in summer, just as Ms. Hanna said “air-conditioned comfort”) and filled with three folding chairs for students. A projector was doing its job on the large screen at the back of the stage, behind a podium for the speaker.The Holy Cross guyThe students file in, the teachers and organizers sit in the front row. The early students go up to the organizer to get their cards checked (apparently, if you gain 10 of these, you get an award, Linda told me that).As the faraway bell in campus chimes 2, the Holy Cross guy straightened up and walked to stand against the stage. He told us amiably that he won’t pile information on us (I find that these teachers really like to say these things, from Boston College, from Holy Cross, from Harvard) and that it is more about interaction between us.

He starts off talking about that we don’t really have to worry about admissions too much, especially the essay. In fact, he says that preparing for college is just “Get in and have fun”. Alright, even I nearly rolled my eyes at that, “How are you expecting me to have fun with all this pressure??”. But…obviously he didn’t explain at all.

Instead he veered off to the “interaction part”, where he asked us to give him 20 things that an admission officer might be looking for. The point he was trying to point out is that we all know the answer to this question in our hearts.

I made some hurried notes on this, here’s the pitiful few: the courses you took in high school, your grades (that is GPA), the standard tests, demonstrated interest etc. I know these will all look familiar to you, but that is just the point for doing this.

Now, here is the really nutritional part of the counselling. Here he gives some advice and directions as to what the Holy Cross is looking for.

The really important thing he clarifies is that: an interview is just a chat, the teachers are only finding a person to talk with, they aren’t trying to trick you with logical problems and puzzled. He gave a silly example of the imaginary interview question: “here is a box full of miniature people, which one do you think is you?” the students laughed at that.(I talked to Rev, our house counsellor who has been in the admission office before, the other day, she said she just wanted to know the students better, and that many things we think they are going to ask could be seen on the papers and tables already, what they are looking for is the personality of your person, something not on paper).The person moves on the terrible part of “do you have any questions?”. This one question no one can escape (I know there are a lot of articles on this last one, but I’ll just jot down the things our counsellor said). He performed a little scenario himself.

Teacher: Do you have any questions?

Student: Yes…wait, let me think…aaaaar I did remember this morning! What was it?

We all laughed heartily (‘cause that is probably what we will look like at the interview).

Chuckling himself, the Holy Cross person gave us an advice to have your questions written beforehand on a piece of paper and take it to the interview instead of memorizing it.

It is not awkward, he claims, instead it makes you look prepared when you pull out a piece of paper of questions you’ve prepared yesterday (I don’t know what you think, but I get the point, but doesn’t it seem a bit affected to you?), as the guy terms it “nerdy, but which simply shows that you are well-prepared.”

According to this guy, this will make a good impression on the teacher (apparently it is a form of demonstrated interest???). On this topic he also talked about knowing the admission officers in person before coming. Not that it can give you any unfair preponderance over the other applicants, but they will certainly give you a few more seconds of thought.

At this point, he starts taking endless questions from the students (things like, is this a religious schools, are Mass required, should we have early decision or early application (I’m not sure about this one), and other stuff).

The person sums it up by giving an analogy of an egg to the application and admission process. The top are the people quickly admitted, the bottom are those quickly refused, the large middle part are the people who are like, “they can go in or be refused” (which makes their interview really important, because their persona on paper is nearly the same).

The Harvard person

That leads on to our second college counselling I attended to. The Harvard person (oh, just a sec, I believe Christina’s mum graduated from Harvard, I heard her talking to the Harvard person on college fair) talked for the first 20 minutes about Harvard. Its courses, majors and minors, the Houses (at this point he added mischievously that “Harvard didn’t copy Harry Potter, neither is Harry Potter copying us”), the Library and study and experimental centers, and the last slot is topped “you can afford Harvard”.In this, he goes in detail of how Harvard is need-based not merit-based on scholarship, and that all students can apply for a financial aid according to their family conditions.I will just give you some notes I took for now:the place you can find students from Harvard with some life-hacks is on college.harvard.edu/nocturnal (I hope I’m not giving you the wrong information), the place to find information on Harvard in general is on college.harvard.edu.

Another interesting fact is that the person told us again and again that Harvard doesn’t care about demonstrated interest (whilst some schools, the person adds, keep track of the students who come to visit campus and give credit for that during the admission process), the average class number is between 12 and 20.

A boy asked about the most popular classes on campus: which turned out to be Economics and Computer Science, Psychology probably taking the third. The weird thing is, Harvard doesn’t require a TOFEL score. He said something about a CSS profile (I’m not sure on that point). But there it is, all the facts I gained for Harvard by college counselling.

The thing is, you people if you ever come to Andover, take advantage of this resource. ‘cause like Rev said, they have it all in one place, not needing you to fly all over the place looking for the school or college.

The College Fair

Yesterday at the Cage (I think it is also called Case Memorial Hall or something like that), there was a huge college fair (90 schools!). This fair is used to let the students meet the people from college and talk and know more about the schools.I went there right on time, meeting Christina and Linda along the way. We were each given a “college fair” bag and a whole list of what schools there were.Linda was really jumpy that day, she was so anxious about her Finance homework (apparently they have to go to the college fair and get certain information from three colleges: one state college, one Ivy League, one whatever), and was busily trying to find the state colleges on the paper (which were Framingham, North Carolina, Pennsylvania).(I saw Nicole’s dad text her, something about Yale, Stanford, Harvard are the best, another list of the second-best, and yet another for the worst at the fair).

The three of us got in. The fair had just started. It is usually used as a gym, but it is just enough for the schools to squeeze in. Long rolls of white tables were pulled out, on it the schools spread their information leaflets and school sign. Some other ones even have 4 to 5 different pamphlets, on things like athletics, food and housing such.The gym has a high ceiling with ropes dangling down from the top and a second story circling the top. Seeing that many schools are free of students, we hurried in.

Harvard is usually the most popular

Harvard is usually the most popular (according to Ms. Hanna), so we rushed there to avoid the crowd. There were 3 old professors at three tables.

One was really old and speckled, wearing some glasses and glancing about in an old-granny sort of way (a bit kind, but his eyes drooped tiredly);the middle one wears glasses but has another pair dangling from a string on his neck, he had a small mustache and his eyes were strangely magnified by the glasses (and seeing that he really likes to open his eyes wide, it sometimes gets comical);the last is a friendly looking (a bit Chinese looking as well) guy, his hair was all white, and unlike the first two, he wore a deep blue shirt (not the white Harvard one).

Linda went up and started to “do her homework” (asking questions and making notes essentially), I waited behind her with Christina, reading off the leaflet and listening. At this time, other students were streaming in, in them some people off-campus (mostly parents).

I talked a bit with the two-spectacled old professor, and the person was really interested in Psychology, even recommending a certain book called The Structural Dynamics of the Psyche, and pointing out the fact that undergraduates could do research in their labs with the funds from the school.

Harvard’s graduation rate is 98 per cent

After leaving Harvard, we went about with Linda, while I kept an eye out for Yale and Stanford. We found Yale (and unfortunately I didn’t find Stanford) packed on our way to Framingham. In fact, Linda had just finished her questions when she realized she got two more that she forgot.Knowing that she feels embarrassed and awkward, I told her I could ask the questions for her. They were: What are some resources the school offer for students to help them on their careers and finding a job? What makes the school unique?We went back to Framingham, they had a specific office that’s got all the resources needed for students, when talking about uniqueness (I think the person was only babbling, not exactly that unique-looking in fact) the person talked about location (like, 20 minutes from Boston, close to the White Mountains etc.) and the chocolate chip cookie which was invented by one of the students. (Personally, I don’t think that is much of good information).

I mixed up North Carolina and Framingham, but one of them said that they were the first school for teachers and that the first teacher “in space” (using the person’s description) graduated from their school.

And of course we went back to Harvard, to the old-granny professor. I forgot the first part, but at the uniqueness one the professor said that Harvard’s graduation rate is 98 per cent, and the houses and extra-curriculum classes were abundant and the sort.

In the end, we squeezed our way into the Yale throng, listening to the (this time younger) person talking about Yale.

 

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