Alex
I think the gap year programs are highly sort of underutilized. What do you think about the gap year program?Â
Rana
I think the gap year program is right for a lot of kids. I think sometimes parents are a little nervous about the idea of their student doing something else. Sometimes they think, well, they do something else for a year, they’re never going to want to go to college. But by and large, I think students do better who have taken a gap year. But I think of one student who took a gap year during the pandemic, and I have one student currently who I’m working with who is planning to take a gap year. I think it would be good for a lot more than availing themselves of it.
Alex
Well, and I mean, I think there’s this sense of like it’s a race in American education for some reason, like there’s shame in staying back or in repeating a year or starting late. And it’s like, why?
Rana
Well, there’s even a little of that as kids start school in kindergarten or first grade, people like trying to push them to get in sooner. I think that there is a fair amount of peer pressure on students, but also on parents because they’re hearing from their peers who have children of a similar age.
Alex
Could you describe, sort of like, what your best college visit was like and why it was so good?
Rana
Well, I actually have three favorite college visits. I’ll only tell you a little bit about each of them. One was to Landmark College, which is a very small college that is specifically for students who have learning differences, ADHD, or who are on the spectrum. And I was there for three days, which is very unusual. I mean, a college visit is usually a day or a little less. The part that was the most interesting or most rewarding was the student panel, where the students talked about what they were like when they came. And many of them had very, very little self-confidence, very little faith in themselves, and how now that they understood their strengths, they were like, really different people.
Alex
What were the profiles of the students that he saw on the panel? Were they talking about anxiety, ADHD, Dyslexia?
Rana
Most of them had ADHD as well as a whole host of other things. And most of them did not have the most successful experiences in high school. This just was kind of life-changing for them.
I really liked Olin College of Engineering. My background is in engineering. It is a very small engineering school. But what was interesting there is we were on a visit with high school students. They were really sharp and we got to see the projects of the students who were at the school. We got to see the facilities, and it’s really a very small school. They are adjacent to another college, so they got to use the facilities of that other college, their clubs, their extracurricular activities as well. It was definitely very special. And I’ve been to a lot of schools with engineering.
The third one is one that I’ve never gotten a student to go to because it’s kind of in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania, and that was Juniata. It’s a small liberal arts college where the majority of students build their own major. There seemed to be a real connection between the professors and the students. And I was on a tour of counselors. They had their choir come and sing for us and we were there in the evening as well. And they were having a concert. Pretty much all the students were there and some of the community members were there. It was just a really nice, warm feeling and a feeling, really, of connection between the students and the professors.
Alex
One thing that stuck out to me in my conversation with Rana about her background and focus and work was how much she really factors financial aid into the sort of structure of the process. She emphasizes doing that first, having that sort of guide the process. It really points to sort of the complexity that exists as far as college applications go. I mean, there’s so many dreams and ambitions, lifetimes worth of them really packed into this one process with so many political, sort of internal conflicts that exist between parents and kids and the teachers and the coaches and everybody that’s sort of been a part of their lives. So really negotiating that space is really predicated on the money. I mean, that’s kind of like the most foundational block to it. So I find that really interesting that she starts there and sees that really as step one.
Alex
Take me step by step through designing a list of schools for students. What does that look like exactly?
Rana
The first thing I want to do is get to know the student. I’m going to go over their academic record, their grades, what classes they took, any special talents they might have, any jobs they might have had. I’m going to talk with them about what they see themselves doing, if they have any idea about what they want to study or major in. I’m going to talk with their parents and get a sense of any constraints there are. I often want to know also where their parents went to college, if they went to college, if they went to college in the United States or someplace else in the world because people have a lot of preconceived notions about college, and it’s sometimes different depending on what their personal experience is like. I do a number of surveys and questionnaires to get a sense of the student’s readiness for college. I try to get them to tell me through these surveys and questionnaires and interviews what their needs and wants are, and for each one, whether this is a must-have or this would be a nice to have.
It’s a bit of a science and a bit of an art. I think that’s where different counselors may fit somebody better than just going online and using one of the search engines. So I do use search engines, I do use tools, but I’ve also visited over 150 colleges. So having been there and been on tour and talked to people on admissions, that makes a whole world of difference, just as it does for students.
