parents just like yourself so we welcome more parents to step forward and volunteer for us because we have a lot of things to do and also every year we have a transition we have guest speakers probably every two months or so and we also do a teacher teachers and staff appreciation breakfast and we do the college fair at the car fair dinner to be more precise and kind of complicated plan b and involves many many many things so we're really glad that nerviest will spend the time here tonight with us and all and share with us the information and just very briefly merritt is has many connections with belmont high she herself graduated from this very school and her mother when she was here as a student her mother university married this is the assistant director for undergraduate admissions and she actually is in charge of reviewing applications from belmont high without further of the you ok great i myself i graduated in two thousand and eleven so i graduated from tops in two thousand and eleven i graduated i was a graduate from high school in two thousand and seven my mom was the p t o president so i had to come here just going happen to be here  so it's you know really nice and also really weird to be standing in front of you is so great so and this is my fourth year at tuffs in the admissions office so i do review applications from belmont  high along with a lot of other sort of suburban boston schools and the state of vermont randomly as well so i'm going to just start out i have a little sort of profile of the class of twenty eighteen so this is sort of what our admissions six looks like for our current freshman class and probably the most relevant for what i'm going to be talking about is sort of the first half of the shoot so i don't quite know there's lots you might just sort of have to share that's ok like among your tables but basically what you're going to look at is you know the number of applications we had what our acceptance rate looks like as well  and last year we had just over nineteen thousand applications to tufts and we have an acceptance rate of about seventeen percent of our class each freshman class is about thirteen most selective year it was the most it was sort of a record year for us in terms of number of applications that we received and our selective eighty and i hope that i can sort of talk to you guys today  t highly selective college admissions and general sorry as i'm like walking around you guys can't see me at all i'll get back around they  promise so i'm going to talk about sort of highly selective admissions process and hopefully even if your sons or daughters are not interested in tufts this can still sort of apply to you and you can still sort of use this information to sort of help guide them as they apply to college and can i just get a sense of sort of where your students are in high school are most of you parents of seniors in your eyes are going to you're a parent of a senior oh the data right so that's the numbers that's your g p a your testing and you can sort of you can see our testing means on there from the accepted class last year and i don't sort of put those on there and that's all on our website and i don't put them on there to sort of scare you because i hope that when what you get out of this is an understanding of what we call the holistic reading process which if there are senior parents i'm sure they would have heard it heard those words to the point that they wanted to just like hit the next person that said holistic reading process and maybe junior parents are there as well who knows but i sort of want to help you understand what that means from our end with nineteen thousand applications and a seventeen percent admit rate we can't just look at the data rate so i'll talk about data first and then sort of the voice piece second which i think is probably the most important part of a student's application and i'll explain why in a little bit so  data rate g p a testing the most important thing that our office is looking at when we look at a student sort of high school transcript rate and i would say this is probably true for a lot of highly selective colleges as we're looking at at the classes the student chose to take and we're looking at it next to the school profile which says what classes are the student offered for belmont high school i don't usually look at the school profile because i know what they were offered because i went there but what those are telling us is this these are the classes the student was offered some schools have a p courses right some have honors courses some have none of that and what is important to me is i'm looking at what classes did the student choose to take and are they challenging themselves that is more important to me than seeing straight a's in a curriculum that isn't challenging that student and so i think right now for parents of juniors something that students are probably thinking about are or what classes they're going to be taking next year and i think it's important to talk to students about sort of having that perfect balance of you're challenging yourself enough that you know on your college application it looks like you're challenging yourself right and it you can tell i can tell that they can do the work at tufts because they're handling the work in a very demanding curriculum but you're not overwhelming yourself because you know taking five a p s in one year is great but if you're getting sees in them you're drowning and i don't want to see that either  and so that sort of sweet spot is really important and i think when we're looking at an application toughs is a little unique in that we have a liberal arts school and we also have an engineering school and so  use the engineers as an example if you're applying to our engineering school i look at challenging yourself in a different context i'm looking mostly at those math and science courses right in the same way as if a student were applying to the liberal arts school and they indicate an interest in the humanities history and english have like thrown up all over this application and like it's in every single essay the teacher recommendations are from english and history right i'm going to be looking more at those courses to make sure the students challenging themselves in those  areas so again sort of balance but the demanding curriculum is more important to me than straight a's in a curriculum or like that's definitely not challenging the stuff they could do more so again that doesn't mean they need  taking all a p as they should sort of know what they can handle but that's probably the most important part of data we do look at testing tough takes the i c t or the with writing and we do super score that testing i think is less important than a lot of people think it is it's probably more important than you want it to be because we do look at it and actually isn't a good indicator of success at tufts but we are looking at four years of work far more than we are looking at that one time that you sat down to take a test that said since we do superstore if you did really well on one section and you think you could do better on another you can take it to second test and i think that's something to start thinking about earlier rather than twenty five percent of the students who were entering the class of twenty eighteen were below that low number and twenty five percent or about that high number so that's sort of the middle sweet spot for the for the freshman class  so when we talk about data i think it's interesting to note that every year about seventy percent of the students who applied at tufts could do the work at tufts and based on data we could admit that  that's a huge number and i think it's really telling because when you have a seventeen percent admit rate and seventy percent of the students based on data could be admitted that is why voice what we would sort of refer to in our office as voice which is the essays that you write for us in the teacher recommendations that we get from belmont high and that is why those are so important because when you have seventy percent of the students looking you know well within that range or just above or just below it that's where you're going to sort of see the differentiating and so that's sort of the idea behind the holistic reading process i'll talk about voice a little bit mostly i'm just going to open this up to questions from you guys about sort of college applications in general but also to touch on voice students that are applying to most colleges are going to have the common application right in that they ask you like name something that's happened to you in the last eighteen years of your life and like describe it ok you're like what it thinks helpful when i talk to students about sort of what they're going to write their college application essay about  i usually tell them to ignore the questions which might be totally bad but we're going to go with it don't look at them what i usually say is think about when you're meeting someone for the first time like what is the most important thing for them to understand about you to understand you what fascinates you what like gets you out of bed in the morning one thing that i think all students should think is what makes me tick that used to actually be a supplemental question on the t application and we people misread the question that year and we got a lot of angry responses because people thought it was what makes you tick or bad we're  just going to get a lot of angry essays this year and that's fine but but i do think it's actually a really important question to sort of lend you can be thinking about it as a junior too although i do think a lot of growth happens in this next year and so obviously that's going to sort of change but this this process can be one of self exploration and i think if you do it correctly like the college application process can like make you a better person i know that sounds terrible but sort of the way you think about what has sheep to you and the way it sort of makes you grateful for things and is very unique and i think the only way to do that is to sort of put away the questions and reflect on what your perspective on the world is and where that came from  and that's where i think you know mulling about topics is really important and i always like to say pretend that you have like an annoying four year old standing next to you when you decide what you want to write your college application essay about i say that because often you get students who say you know i want to write about a person is important to me that's one of the common application prompts and i'm going to write about my grandfather and i read the essay about this grandfather who's the most amazing person in the entire world and i end up wanting to admit they're ground fire to us right that's why the annoying four year i've done it i've been like can we admit their grandfather because that would be really awesome he could be everyone's grandfather attempts to be really fun and that's why the annoying four year old is is kind of helpful let's say you're a student who is really passionate about dance dances like your life right and you want to write about dance because it's like the most important thing that you do you get excited for dance practice every day and you're like ok i'm going to write my college application about dance and the you know a four year old is like why ok i think it's important to pretend they're there and just keep asking yourself that question to dig to the point where you actually get the meat of what your essay should be about  point being with you know nineteen thousand people a bunch of them are going to be excited about dance and we're going to get a lot of essays about dance and the important reason is that the porton thing is not that you dance it's why you dance so let's say you want to write your application about dance the annoying four year old is like why you say i want to write about dance because i dance six days a week ok why i dance six days a week because everyone tells me i'm like really good at it and so i have kept doing it and i keep doing it more and more ok why well i'm really good at dance because i am very expressive and i like i'm really free like when i'm dancing it's completely it's very different from what i am in real life ok why well it's really different because i come from the sort of like conservative family i feel sort of like very restrictive at school with all these like a p s and all these things and i'd like to sit at home and dinner every night at six o'clock and like dance is the one place where i like feel myself like vets where the essay is does that make sense so i think like this and you know usually i talk about this to students and parents i don't know how helpful this is honestly to just parents but hopefully in talking to your to your son or daughter about how they're going to be writing their application thinking about the why behind things is almost more important  than the what and in that same vein i think the way that students write their applications can be more important than what they write about if you're so if your son or daughter is funny let them be core and that's the thing that i think a lot of people miss when they're applying to college they hear that colleges want to hear you know about the community service that they did they want to hear about the extracurriculars or the leadership opportunities that they have and we do but you also have to remember that we have your list of extracurriculars we have what we call the activities list on on your common application we see what you do outside of class and the essays should be telling us why you do those things to that point i think most schools that well i don't actually know if most but many schools that your son's or daughter's will be applying to will have supplemental questions tough has three so we ask for the common application essay and then we have three supplemental essays they are why toughs let your life speak which is a quaker saying  talk about sort of the environment in which you were raised and how that shaped sort of your perspective on the world and then the third one we give them a bunch of different options one of them is like celebrate your nerdy side create one of them is like pick a law in nature or you know grammar or whatever and talk about you so those are kind of fun when schools have supplements it's important to think about what you've already told the school because you have with tufts you have four different essays you have four opportunities to tell us something and they should be four very different things and that's something that you're going to see when you have you know one supplemental essay or two supplemental essays think about what your common application essay says about you and use the opportunity to use the supplement in a different way all of those i think are really important because one i literally know nothing about the student except what they give me in four essays two or maybe three recommendations a list of activities and a high school transcript so you have to use those those essays to talk about different things in different aspects of your life so that i feel like i come out knowing enough about you that i can go into a committee of six of you know my colleagues introduce you and say why i want to admit you at tufts every application is read by first when someone from belmont high school applies to test it's going to be read by me i then send it on to one of my colleagues gets read a second time and then we sit in a committee of about five of us and we talk about that application as well we all sit in our pajamas and there's lots of snacks and it's wonderful favorite time of year also it's i will say that this is the most like people i've seen in a really long time i've been interacting with like paper files for the last like tonight so it's really nice to see   the way we think about data even if you you look at that profile and you are a student who is above all of those means you are valedictorian you are the you like have all eight hundreds you have a four point zero right you've taken all a p classes that's wonderful if this is the bar to get into tufts like that data piece gets you here right the voice piece is going to get you the rest of the way does that make sense because when you do have a seventeen percent admit rate when you do have nineteen thousand applications and seventy percent of them are within or above  sort of range and what we're looking for that's where the voice piece is going to be really important and we're going to look at is this person a good tough fit are they tough see what are they sort of bringing to our community are they going to be like the you know quarterback on our football team are they going to be the only like harpist that we have on campus or are they going to sort of help fill our philosophy department that a has new faculty members or are they just going to be like an all around awesome like roommate and friend and class member and all of that has value in that sort of the things that we're discussing when we look at an application and then we're talking about them in committee i have no idea that was helpful or what you were looking for oh good ok great i would love to take a couple questions and maybe it will sort of guide me in different directions of things to talk you can do about it is going to be an institutional priority and you have no idea what it is for what school at what time like i sort of with that example of the quarterback like let's be honest tough sucks at football we're good now but we used to be bad there was a time we desperately needed a quarterback right that year that might have been an important institutional priority for toughs the philosophy department example is another really great one we might have just hired for faculty members in a department that we're excited to grow right and that year students who are really interested in that and who are also academically qualified and write a strong application might be an institutional priority for us the world sort of looking for and and so that sort of things that you have no control over and it could be different for each school that you're applying to and it could sort of play in your favor and it could not  but that is sort of one of many factors and i think you know if if for example we hired for faculty members in philosophy and we're looking for more philosophy majors even if you indicate an interest in philosophy it does not mean that we are sort of looking for well it's ok if they're a little academically softer it's ok if maybe they didn't do sort of the application quite as well we're still looking for that quality and that sort of that owns the high and the application so yes the certainly institutional parties are one of many things that we're thinking about  yeah yes absolutely so i'm the question is about interviews and do people still do those we do have an interview process as part of our application and it varies for different schools ours is totally optional and it is sort of in your hometown so it would be and it's with alumni and so we have our you after you apply you would request the application the interview and if we have enough alumni interviewers in that area they will reach out to you and say let's go to a coffee shop and chat about tests certainly different institutions do it differently some people have interviews on campus some of them do it even before you apply if you want to some of them don't have that option at all i think for our process it is because it is optional and because we can't guarantee it because sometimes we just don't have enough alumni interviewers in a certain area we it can only help your application but it doesn't hurt your application if you don't have one if you don't request one because we just like can't accommodate for everyone so i think it's a nice option and i encourage people to request it because quite honestly it was the reason i ended up going choosing tufts when i was admitted and i had sort of a couple options and i remembered sort of really clicking with my alumni interviewer and and she was a recent graduate and i sort of reached out to her again and we chatted and i was like yep that's the school and so i think it has almost more value on on that end than it does for us in sort of helping but they do sometimes really really help us get to know a different side of a student especially if you talk about something if you get an interview here i please do this don't talk about things that are in your application it is obviously you're going to talk about the things that you do outside of school in the classes that you're excited about and that's wonderful but sort of before you go into your interview read through the that application that you sent to remind yourself what the admissions committee already knows it's wonderful if you wrote an application essay about how you're really excited about marine biology u se the interview for either something different or to expand on that and talk about where it came from maybe you did a summer program that was really cool and you want to talk about that really specifically so that sort of when when you're thinking about interviews that's really important i think know they do not so but we see sort of what the converse they will write up this is sort of what we talked about so i'm not saying remind yourself of what they already know it's because that's sort of who you're going to be meeting but essentially they're going to be telling us what they talked about and so you're using it to the fullest potential if you talk about things that maybe like we don't know yet or in a way that we haven't heard them yet just sort of another way of like i said use every essay to talk about a different side like this is another opportunity to to have us learn more about you so no they don't see the application but they write up this is what we talked about they send it to us and then it becomes part of the application  rate and below like all of those might be considered a stretch and we admitted twenty five percent of the you know twenty five percent of the class of twenty eighteen was below that number so it's it wasn't a total stretch for them but certainly when you're looking at the means of a school and you're and you're below them you might think ok this might be a little bit of a stretch and that's fine and there are plenty of students for whom test might be considered a stretch that are admitted because of again that voice piece  i think if if you consider toughs a stretch that voice piece is just that much more important than it is for a student who might be above those means ray in terms of the second part of your question i don't want to sort of pretend that i'm a guidance counselor and i don't know that i like have the correct answer that i want all of you to sort of follow to a t about how many you should be applying to that are stretches versus not because i think that's also kind of a personal decision in terms of you know things like cost like it cost money to apply to every school and that for every family may feel different and things like priorities like distance might feel different  in how many you're applying to might have to do with that too so that when i'm going to sort of abstain and have you have discussions with guidance counselors about but certainly i have plenty of students that i have personally admitted that might have considered toughs when they were applying a stretch school and i think there are students that feel like a very good fit for what tough does an institution  is and every school is very different so all talk sort of specifically about tufts but i think in general you can get the vibe from a school it's really important i think to visit if you can just sort of to talk to students and get the sense of what  we call vibe also publications i have magazines up here i certainly don't have enough for all of you because i did not realize how many there would be but i have magazines and you know certain publications but also websites we have wonderful blogs just to sort of get a feel of the vibe of a school and see if you're a good fit if you feel like you're a good fit for a school like chances are they're going to see that in the application and that so often happens to us and i'll tell it specific example in one minute but i'll just sort of they're very down to earth they're very humble and it is a very sort of it's a more collaborative place than you might hear from a lot of schools that are that are that academically competitive it is not a cutthroat place it is a place where people like you are a silly a lot and playful that's a word that i think our dean uses probably more than any other word the dean of admissions says playful i think like five times a day it's like a knowing we all want to him but i think it's very true to tough so i think you know when we're looking at students who take what they're learning very seriously but maybe don't take themselves too seriously like i see that and i say tops and there are certainly you know students who i have read who i'd just say like they're a little bit lower than army this kid is tufts like and i will fight tooth and nail in committee for that kid if i have to and i think there are always people in our office i mean everyone in our office will do that for a student that they truly believe is like very testy there are also people that sort of hit notes i think that speak to different people and that's why we always have two people read every application and often you will send it to someone that you think will connect with that application and there is a kid on campus now from vermont that sort of  me was it was it was a stretch for him for sure and he wrote this like beautiful essay about he like he works in a grocery store like bagging groceries  and he wrote this essay about how he was going to it was his birthday and he was going out into the woods he was like camping with his family for his birthday and they stopped at this place to get a cake before they left and this place was like disgusting it was like falling down there was like a plug like in half by eleven piece of paper that's a big like taped on the window like it was like so sketchy and he was like i want to go in here and his mom is like we ordered this cake like we're getting the cake so they go in and it's like this lovely mother and her daughter that owned the shop and it was the most delicious cake he's ever had and he wrote this beautiful essay about how this like one moment like he was horribly ashamed that he had almost like cost this family business and he like used what he learned in this moment to like every day when he worked in the grocery store like putting it was just like beautiful the way he wrote it was beautiful the like earnestness behind it was beautiful and like it was something so small and like so silly like it was so little and you think about all these students who are writing about like a huge service trip or like trying to fit in everything they love about the swim team into like one essay and then you think about this kid who like literally wrote he was like we were going to get a cake i didn't want to and like i almost cost this family like really deserved business and it like hit me like here i am and that was like the best essay i read that year  and it was tiny it was like such a tiny thing so keep that in mind too i guess yeah early decision question to different schools you might get different answers all answer for tough so i mean i think the way i will describe it is if we have a student in early decision who is academically qualified we get so excited about them like they are wonderful they write a solid application they're great the teacher recommendations are glowing they're getting a's they're just killing it like kids cool right and they're applying early decision great let's take on we have the space like let's do it if we have a student in regular decision who is awesome they're getting a's they write an awesome application we love them wait they're like really strong all the teacher recommendations are great that's awesome or dealing with a class now that is filling up and so we need to talk about it in a different way so it is not necessarily easier but i will say if you if you feel like you have a school that is one hundred ten percent and like the financial piece is important to those so i mean and for us i think we are very careful to defer students if we want to see the regular pool because we do want to sort of leave enough space in our incoming class for students who financially early decision is not an option for them toughs is a huge financial commitment as are many schools that your sons or daughters are going to be looking at and so i think when you're thinking about early decision like that needs to be a topic of discussion as well and so we about every year about a third of our classes is early decision that's between early decision one and two so we aren't necessarily filling up the class with early decision kids and therefore making it harder for regular decision but i do think like if we have a really strong applicant and we want to take um like we'll do it in early in regular we're going to bring them to committee and talk about sort of where they're going to fit in this whole class because then we're filling up space yeah no we do not so in no sort of realm of like when you're talking about any sort of community within like people from california or like students of faculty or like you know anything like that there's no quota for us i mean we are sort of always looking at people individually and in the context of their environment oh no yeah also something like way over my pay gr yeah i mean i think we think about it in the way that it is going to like add a different perspective in the classroom and in and in student government and in you know every sort of group that you're in so it is something you know if we have a student who has grown up in a very rural town in the midwest and they grew up on a farm and like that is offering maybe something different that is one of many factors that we will talk about in committee i not the only factor certainly if we like you know last year for instance you'll see forty nine states were represented in the class of twenty eighteen like we didn't get south dakota that does not mean that like if there's a one south dakotan applicant like yeah they're coming but we're going to take i'm like you know to go that is one factor of many that we are thinking about and i think you know certainly those different perspectives are valuable and so we're thinking about that certainly but it is one of many just sort of as like being an athlete is one of many sort of factors that we're thinking about are they going to be an impact player on this team or that team or are they again like philosophy department  one let me clarify to sort of people in the liberal arts there are plenty of students in the liberal arts who are really into bio chemistry or physics or math and so i sort of met if you're looking at humanities specifically but there are many students and i think probably the majority and i actually think like one hundred percent of the students who who end up coming to don't know what they're going to major in even if they have been pre med since they were three right because tough sort of asks you to explore a lot in the first few years so in the first couple years so certainly i think a lot of people are undecided and that's great and in that case i want to see you trying out a lot of different things in high school and i want to see you sort of challenging yourself generally and that might mean one year you're taking you know you're doubling up in in math and the next year you're back down to one math and you're you know doubling up on the earth you know you drop foreign language to take like two history classes in senior year because you're so so excited about it so for every student it's going to mean something different i think very low walls that's actually a very unique factor unique quality of toughs we have about twenty percent engineering students at tufts but we actually are the only school in the nation to have a zero net attrition rate in our school of engineering so we actually graduate as many if not more engineers than we admit so most engineering schools actually lose about forty percent of their class before they graduate that's the national average which is terrifying and horrible and at tuffs we actually we we don't lose any and if we do we lose them into the engineering school we have as many if not more liberal arts i mean sorry into the liberal arts school we have as many if not more liberal arts students moving into engineering so there is a lot of sort of fluidity between those two schools you do apply to one or the other but that is not yeah no i actually i'm sorry i have no idea we have a separate financial aid office and i sort of understand the very basics of the you know meeting one hundred percent of demonstrated need and but the nitty gritty of the c s s profile profile i'm unfortunately  of not as familiar with and you guys all can you know look me up on on our web site and e mail me questions that i can certainly you know forward along to financially people or the right people for the kinds of things that i don't i so we are not completely need blind we are what our dealings to call a need blind hybrid so we are as need blind as we can be until sort of the very end of the process we sort of in you know you hear about schools who are new blind and then have to go back to not need blind and we do not want that to happen that sort of like the worst case scenario and so i think for us it's something we want to do when we can sustain and so that some we are looking at at financial aid but sort of closer to the end of the process and it's something that sort of the dean looks at when the class is almost finished and where we at need line means that you we we think about need and financially and like not at all we just we don't think although we do have a very large hill so if you have tiny feet i don't know if you're on your own kid yeah oh such a good question yeah i mean i think again when well there's an easy answer for students who are looking at engineering and that is please have a math or science record but i know that sounds obvious apparently it's not  please do because it helps us sort of understand who you're going to be in the classroom and and as an engineer i think you know we always want the more recent the better because there is so much transformation that happens in high school if you we have a recommendation from someone in ninth grade like i'm going to note that and i'm going to say teacher act but it's from ninth says this because i know that you've changed so much and that's not to say if you had someone in one thread and then again in eleventh like that's great and they can even talk to speak to some of your growth as  a student people who who know you well outside of the class or i think you know for me it's always really valuable when a recommendation says this student came after class a lot and worked with me on questions that they had that might actually mean that it's a class you kind of struggled and that's ok and sometimes it's actually more helpful because that teacher knows you better than because you did like you showed the grit to like come after class or come after school so those can actually be really helpful i think in any way that a teacher can know you a little bit outside of class to can can help that a lot sometimes that means that you do one teacher recommendation that's the core academic subject and then you have another one and that's great too  with but so she i was on the tennis team too and so she was also my coach and i think so she knew me and in a way that a lot of teachers didn't and i'm sure there are some teachers also that do sort of like band or something like that so that was about can also be kind of helpful but i think it'll be different for also for everyone but definitely if you showed like some extra grit in that class that can be very helpful  sure absolutely yeah so we require a guidance counselor recommendation on a teacher recommendation and the teacher one should be like or academic subjects like math english history what am i missing science foreign language from eleventh or twelfth grade that if you want to submit a third letter of recommendation that could be anyone you want it could be a violin teacher it could be your karate instructor or it could be your coach something like that so that is certainly welcome with if you feel it would add ask yourself if it adds something different  don't just sort of send them to send them i think people going through this process sort of parents and students and teachers think like more is better like inundate them with information just give them everything  and i'm not saying this because i want to read less i promise ask yourself if everything is adding something different and valuable usually without one that's like a sport or music or an art or something that is true it's adding something different and so that's great once you get to four five six seven eight nine ten recommendations they're probably not adding anything different that we haven't seen so just be conscious of that be thinking about that yeah yeah i mean i think that is where it is my job like that is where sort of you have to trust me in knowing the environment that your student is in i read schools that are tiny and up in the mountains in vermont and every student has to milk cows and like haul hay in the morning and like there are two people per class like literally that is a school i also have public schools that are like five hundred to a grade and it is my job to understand what the difference in those communities are and to understand like to cut the kid some slack when in the big school the guidance counselor just isn't going to know them as well is my job to look in other places to find what the student is all about teacher recommendations because often then they have more contacts than the guidance counselor obviously and also their own essays and i just sort of have to be a little bit more resourceful but i think the my message is sort of like don't worry like i understand where you're coming from and i know when a school maybe doesn't have quite the same contact with it counselors that other schools might because they're smaller rate so that's sort of on our end like that's our job to sort of and it's our job in committee to sort of say all right here we are at blank high school let me tell you a little bit about this high school before i sort of dive in you're not going to hear a lot from guidance counselor recommendations i'm going to put a lot more meat into the teacher acts because i know that the guidance counselors met with this kid probably twice so that's sort of my  taking very challenging classes for example if he had taken a lesser challenging class he would've gotten better range sure so how do you know when and i understand that all my high school we don't do like a grades it is what it is so how do you take that into consideration and how do you remember that because you're reviewing thousands if you yeah so i mean again that's as i moved from school to school it's my job to sort of remember and check every sort of school report so we get secondary school reports of basically like this is what the school is all about we do weighted g p a as we do on way to g p s like i have schools that like this the g p a scale is on an eighty eight point scale what so like when a kid has a seventy nine like that's not a c plus right and like i have to remember that so in as i move from school to school about sort of my job to remember like the school doesn't do weighted g p s so i'm looking at is are these grades yes but the student is also in all of these a p classes they're challenging themselves this much and so i have to look at it in the context of that and that's why we've read regionally about why each of us sort of has a region of the world that we read from and that's because you get to know the schools in those areas very well  and it's your job to sort of remember what every school is sort of how they're different and what they're doing so some schools have waited some schools have waited some schools have ib curriculum some of them have like the ib curriculum but not the full diploma some of them have like a p is but only in science and not in english and history and you have to remember that right so that's sort of my job to review the secondary school report before i start any like school group that i'm reading yeah ok so i think this is i mean the first one is probably the most obvious and also you know it can be difficult as the visit i think especially the college visit so so go to campus is the best way and that's going to be number one on my list yes we are in a unique situation in that like we're sitting very not far from a lot of colleges and so i think you have the opportunity to visit a lot especially if you're the kind of i don't know what i want yet you have access to tons of colleges that you can sort of test like don't even think about it as like do i like toughs as you walk around think like is this the right size is this this sort of environment toughs is close to boston it's four miles outside of the city but it also is sort of it's a green campus that has trees it's feels like a new england college campus do i like that balance or would i rather be in the middle of the city or would i rather sort of be out in the middle of nowhere like ask those sorts of questions as you're visiting like big picture ones especially in your junior year so the visit i also think talk to as many people as you can that are students there  colleges on their websites usually having me and we have what we call regional representatives basically you can go on our website there's a map of the world with little pins and it like here are students that are from these places that have said like contact me i go to like e mail me call me and ask me questions and they and so you can do someone who's like from where you're from right or you can do it says what their major is if they are interested in the same kinds of things as you like reach out to those people and i think the friendliness of those people is going to tell you something the way they answer the questions and obviously the meat of their response is going to help so talking to people that can also happen during a college visit like be creepy a little bit like yes go on the tour and yes go to the information session but like also go to the dining hall and like sit at a table with your parents like not saying anything and like listen and like what are people talking about in the dining halls like are they talking about something that they were so excited about in class that they just continue the conversation until lunch and like is that something that's really cool to you ehrlich what are they talking about and how are how are they talking about it same thing if like in the tour there or they start to talk about and you know arts and you are totally like that is not you right like for that portion of the tour like move onto the back like and just eavesdrop on people walking around campus i think that can be really perspective that's like not written toward for you like that is written for people who go to tops right like that is talking about issues that tough students care about it is advertising events that are happening on the tough campus and that's going to tell you a lot about student engagement i mean also if you're like into journalism it's going to tell you what the papers like great so i think that's kind of a cool way and social media also i mean we have submissions has a twitter and facebook and all that but so do a lot of student groups  so sort of bopping around on facebook and things can be helpful so yeah my rank would be visit talk to people social media school paper yeah i know where this is going we do not so i have time i barely have time in the day to shower when i am in reading season so this is i mean we describe reading season as like finals week for two months we are disgusting like you i can barely shower i'm eating like whatever i can order and they can get to me in five minutes like i have no time i do not care what you like i just don't care i do not know if i am answering for other colleges when i say that but like if my dean ever heard that one of us was like spending minutes like on are you kidding like no so but i mean if other schools do it sorry i have a my roommate is applying to medical school and she like changed her name on facebook i don't i think that in our office that's a myth i don't know if it is in other offices we would never i just i honestly i just don't so my favorite thing in the whole world yeah i mean i think my also my job is to understand who i meeting and that is seventeen year olds and  think like when i say challenge yourself and when i say get involved like i mean to the extent that you can handle and still be a like fun and well grounded like a happy person  and that again is why voice is so important i can hear that in your voice as if you are totally bogged down and all you want to do oh my god amazing i mean like all you want to do like do your homework and go to sleep because like tomorrow you have to wake up and do it all again like i can hear that and as i talk about sort of tough students who are balanced and playful and like down to earth and who are in my opinion like way too involved in extracurriculars like they sign up for like one hundred things and they're just like all over the place in that i think that's great those are the kind of people who who have found balance and understand that like yes academics are important yes i need to do well in school but not to the sort of extent that i am hurting myself a little if not to the point where i am just so tired that i want to cry like no one should ever feel  know that like i read hundreds of applications and like i know where like unrealistic is please sleep please tell your kids to sleep if i could i they're very important i mean i think what you're doing outside of school says a lot about you they're very important i like to see that you are doing things outside of school that you are excited about and passionate about i like to see leadership i think that shows great sort of qualities that you're going to bring to college but also i like to see that you know just involvement in general i think people are always like should i rush and what it is a better if i do one hundred things or if i do one thing and i'm like the president president president of it like how can you be president times three and the answer is sort of like neither i mean whatever sort of fits your your style if you are one of those kids who just like i want to do chest and also drama and also write for the paper and also like do it then because you just like are so excited about all these things great but if you're someone who's like services like my being and i see that a lot of search you're know you're president of the working to help the homeless club great and you did this service trip and you volunteer with your church and it's all sort of service oriented that's great too because i can i'm probably also going to hear about it in the voice and so i think i am both are great but i do like to see students who are involved outside of school for sure because i also i think that's topsy because t just going to sit in a classroom like they've got a they've got to do other stuff also i want to clarify our football team is good now and just to be clear we are a division three school but we are