No Dream Schools-Please

This season is my thirty-first year as a college advisor and career counselor. Prior, I spent a time working at Admissions at Columbia University and volunteered as a tutor and dissertation advisor. I find myself, as excited as ever and eager to lend support this year’s group of students on an adventure whose results are months away.

Things have certainly changed over the decades, in terms of rabid competition, outlandish costs, and uncertain prospects for employment. I have been mulling over the concept of a dream school, based on a student’s imagination, glossy photographs, and choreographed tours.

Prospective students, oftentimes get fixated forgetting that dreams are best when grounded in reciprocity. The best college for most aspirants is the one that wants them and is going to be affordable.

Sharing from my mind’s legacies:

1)   A talented student was accepted to an Ivy League college and another fine school with a full scholarship and living expenses. After some lamentation, he went for the one that funded his education, and later came back to grad school at that same Ivy.

2)   Barely distinguished students, from a local high school with most abysmal grades-found themselves with rejections. Each was accepted to the same more liberal minded, more opened enrollment school in Washington State. Once at college, they became star students on their way to become physicians

3)   One student hated city schools and was fearful of leaving the suburbs. She was accepted into a wonderful urban school with a guaranteed admission to graduate school in Occupational Therapy. After a short period of adjustment, she is thriving.

4)   His so-called safety schools rejected him, a student with less then average grades and a wonderful heart.  added another college, more competitive, and dedicated to seeing individual potential. This same student was accepted to the more competitive school and awarded a Merit scholarship. His mother received an email from admissions saying how wonderful a person her son was.

5)   A student was unhappy about her college choices, decided on a gap year was set on a small liberal arts school. After the year, this girl had many acceptances and chose an urban university where she thrived.

6)   A boy had his heart set on playing soccer and realized that the school he pontificated about attending was totally wrong. After one semester, he changed course and found himself exactly in the right environment.

   

I have so many more stories to share—but will close with the warning—no fixations—leave the door open-for opportunity to knock.