One of the most undervalued parts of the college process is actually making a successful transition to college. The 32% of students who don’t make it to sophomore year in the United States can attest to the difficulties involved. Today, we’re going to take a deeper look at those challenges and how to best address them for kids who are going to college for the first time.
Welcome to The Highway to Higher Ed podcast, where we consider issues facing students applying to college as they attempt to make the transition into higher education. I’m your host, Alex W. Merrill.
Alex
I’m joined today by independent college counselor and educational consultant Dana Ponsky. Dana earned her BA from the University of Maryland and a master’s from Bowling Green State University and college student personnel and a postmaster’s certificate in enrollment management from the University of Miami. She began her career as a career counselor and eventually directed orientation and first year programming at several colleges, including the University of Michigan. She transitioned to the high school setting in 2009, where she served as a school based college counselor. And in 2018, Dana shifted her focus to working full time on her business as an independent college and educational consultant and entrepreneur. Today, Dana supports high school and college students, families, schools and youth leadership programs and programming services to guide students to and through the college admissions process. Dana, welcome to the show.
Dana
Hi, everyone. Thank you for having me.
Alex
Now, which school are you at right now?
Dana
So I’m currently helping support grow the college counseling office at the Idea School, which is located in Tanfly, New Jersey. So I’m a little bit of a glutton for punishment. I have two full time jobs. I’m starting a college counseling office, and I run my full time college counseling independent practice. So I’ve always had two dream jobs, own a business and start a college counseling office. I just happened to be doing them both at the exact same time. You know what? Beggars can’t be choosers. So it’s a wonderful experience to go through, and they both help to inform each other, which is a really nice opportunity for me.
Alex
Rewind back a little bit and tell us how you sort of got into college consulting. What sort of drew you into that field in particular.
Dana
So my story kind of starts with us. In high school, I never had a college counselor. I was a solo educational consultant for myself. My parents both went to college and they were very supportive, but I was a very motivated student and I really had an enjoyment getting this was, at the time, free internet, where you could get the Peterson’s Guide of approximately 3000 pages that were really paper thin. And I loved reading this guide. I loved learning about these colleges, and I just thought it was going to make me an excellent participant in Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit. So I really enjoyed that process. And then I went to college and graduate school and focused on working with students in higher education while I was at a university called Barry University in Miami, Florida, I was the director of orientation, first year programming retention program and leadership development. And I started realizing that a lot of my students that were at the university, did not necessarily know why they were there, and were not very well prepared for the college experience. And my job is to keep them there. And I’m thinking, this is really hard. And that’s when I actually learned about this career known as college counseling. And so what I started doing on my own private time was started to get involved in organizations like College Summit, which is now called Peer Ford, and I started doing college access. And that’s where I learned about this really interesting job as a college counselor. I transitioned from the university setting to a high school setting to do just that help kids take this useless data bank that I had had and now make it applicable to helping people. This is going into my 13th year of focusing on working with mostly high school students and their families to navigate this process. And it’s been a wonderful experience for me because it takes the expertise that I gained while being on the higher ed side and bringing that into the high school side and really help bridging those two worlds for the betterment of my students.
Alex
Well, you brought up an excellent point. I think there’s actually kind of an intimate link between the process of determining where you’re going to school and your success in staying at that school. As you see on your website, what you intend to do is meet the student where they are and help them find the right college and navigate the college admissions process with as little anxiety as possible. Can you explain how you simplify the process for students?
Dana
To me, the college process has gone from something like I said I did by myself when I was a teenager back in the 90s, where it was not a very complicated process at that point. It was figure out schools that match your grades and your test scores and then apply to them, and now it’s just a completely different beast. And I think that because my focus is so strong on meeting students where they’re at, that is simply what actually reduces the anxiety of the process. I think what we have conditioned our students to believe is that there is a box, and everyone should fit into that box. And I do not espouse to that theory. I believe that there are boxes, and they are all different shapes and sizes, and my job is to help identify the students and what box they would fit into that works best for them so that they can be the most successful. And I think that when we focus on that and who they are as people and who they are now and who they want to be. Immediately looking and identifying colleges and programs that match that part of who they are immediately takes away a significant level of the anxiety. I look at every single student as a complete individual, and I work really hard to get them to stop thinking as themselves as a member of a community, and really actually, for the first time, focus on who they are as individuals. And once you get over that little hurdle, it makes for a much more seamless process.
Alex
Could you maybe just illustrate one of those? What type of kid do you sort of see?
Dana
And you say, okay, here’s this box? I’m just hoping to sort of illustrate that. I’ve worked with a student who came to the college counseling experience wanting just ideas, not just the names of colleges. They wanted ideas about what they could do next. And in talking with that student and really trying to understand why were they struggling in high school. And I came to learn and understand it was the structure of the high school experience and the expectations of English. Math. Science. Social science. Foreign language electives that just became so inhibiting and just so complicated that I said to the student. What would you love to have in an experience in your perfect life scenario for a college? What would you love to have? And they go, I just don’t want to be told exactly what I have to do every single time I take a class. And I said, oh, well, there are plenty of schools that are, like, that pretty well sums up high school right there, and it also sums up a lot of colleges. So I said, all right, well, then let’s go look for those colleges that exist throughout the United States who value that type of education, where it’s allowing students the ownership to build the education they want so that they can meet their specific short and long term goals. From that, I was able to come back with a list of colleges that had exactly what that student was looking for, but prior to our conversations, did not even think college was an opportunity. It’s been very empowering for that student, and I think that’s what my goals are, to just meet them where they’re at and realize there are multitudes of opportunities available.
Alex
That’s amazing. So, identity building. What is your favorite part about the college process, and what is your least favorite part about the college process?
Dana
My most favorite part, to be honest, is the moment that a student presses the submit button. And in that moment, I cannot tell you how many of my students hesitate, because I think for them, it’s the culmination of a lot of hard work, and now they’re going to be judged. My job sitting there is, you should be so proud of yourself. You have created an application that is a great representation of who you are, and now you’re presenting yourself to the world, because almost every one of my students says, can you please be there when I press submit? And it’s not always their parents that are there, it’s me. And I think that that’s a very intimate moment to have where we’ve built up to that.
Alex
Is there any ever a case where you would recommend not applying early for a student?
Dana
Yes. Typically a student who struggled may be in 9th and 10th, 10th and 11th, 9th, 10th and 11th, or they’ve struggled initially and really needed the momentum that they’ve gathered in the 11th grade when they started to mature that momentum. I usually say to them, if you apply too early, you’re only looking in your first three years in most cases. But if you wait until the regular decision deadline or the middle of the year, they’re going to get three and a half. And for some students who really need to turn things around in 11th grade, now they’ve got three semesters of showing improvement. And I think colleges really appreciate that they would rather have a student wait to submit an application so that it presents the best foot forward rather than rush through something and then not have that data points. And usually a student that is struggling academically probably not going to be applying to some of the most elite schools. So I usually kind of break down schools between selective, highly selective, and hyper selective. So even if a school is bordering on maybe selective and highly selective, for a student who may have struggled with the strategy of applying, early action probably isn’t as much as if this kid was like, oh, I have to apply to a hyper selected school. It’s already kind of like playing the lottery anyway. So the strategy doesn’t have to play as much because they’re usually not applying to hyper selective schools if they’ve struggled significantly early in high school.
Alex
And what about your least favorite part of the college process?
Dana
My least favorite is when a student has worked really hard and maybe does not get into a school that they really wanted. There’s a real sadness that comes with that student getting. And for many students, it’s the first time they’ve been rejected. I sit on the phone with them or I’m a zoom call and I’m with their parents, and I literally say to them, you have 24 hours, and then we have to start moving forward. When we hit a roadblock, we have to push, figure out a way to get through it. And with my students, I say, this is why we don’t just apply to one college. Let’s start refocus and look at why we liked those other nine that made the list. And I kind of have to go into counselor mode, and I’m not a counselor by training, but working with schools for so long and working with students, I have a knack for being able to meet 18 year olds even though I’m over my 40s, but meeting 18 year olds and just saying, I get it, it’s terrible, it’s annoying, it’s frustrating, it’s disappointing. You got 24 hours.
Alex
That actually segues the next question, really, which is about how clearly your website lays out the three phases of the college process. The three are preparation, guidance, and creation. Explain those three phases in your thinking there. So I have come up with those kind of three categories partially because when families initially reach out to me, their perception is that this college process is gigantic and that it is unmanageable. And so what I try to do with families is I break down my services so that they can say, you know what, maybe my student just needs help with essays. Maybe my student just needs help with creating a college list, and they don’t need every single service that comes with college counseling. And so what I try to do with my families is explain to them, you can have me on board as part of your village for the entirety of everything that’s on these three kind of silos, so to speak, but also that you can break this process down so that if you just want to focus on the preparatory part, we can do that. And then once you’re ready for the creation part or the guidance part, we can do that. So it’s allowing them to kind of see it in manageable parts so that then it creates a bigger hole. And I think that that’s part of the anxiety reducing process is to help families compartmentalize it in a way that’s going to make it manageable and something that they can grasp and immediately say, okay, I don’t have to worry about everything starting off well.
Alex
You’re definitely preaching to the choir there. I mean, the entire foundation of our organization really is combining personal, academic. Like, to me, those things are inextricable. If a kid hates a teacher, they’re just not going to learn anything from them.
Dana
It’s funny you say that because I talk to my students and I’ll say to them, what is your favorite subject? At least favorite? And I go, But I don’t want to know about the relationship you have with the teacher. I just want to know if you like the subject and they have a really hard time, but it’s so important. And I said, yes, but you’re always going to interact with people at some point you might not like, but it can’t interfere with your ability to do your job. But it’s something that you have to focus on right then and now because you either got to get a paycheck or unfortunately, you got to get a grade. You got to do your job. And sometimes we have people that may seem like they get on our way. What are we going to do to dig deep, to get through? Are there any other stories of triumph or failure that you want to share. Well, I think part of it is I don’t actually believe in failure. I believe everything happens exactly as it should. Yeah, it’s a little bit harder to kind of explain that to some other people and to get them on board. I don’t believe that any of my students have ever failed. I believe my students have not got what they wanted, but I believe very wholeheartedly that they’ve all gotten what they’ve needed. And I think that the need comes from a place of getting a phone call a year later going, you were right. This is such a great school. I never would have imagined that this would have been the right place for me, or, you’re right, this is not the right major for me. I took a couple of classes, and you were right, that subject seems like a lot more interesting. So I don’t look at anything that my students do that might not meet the goal they have set as a failure. I look at it as an opportunity for them to find what it is that they’re looking to or that’s going to make them much more successful later on.
Alex
One thing that stuck out to me in discussing Dana’s background and experience as a college consultant is her embracing of the anxiety. I think oftentimes that is avoided or rejected or certain attitudes, I guess, of intolerance, really. I think that the best approach to anxiety, really, is to embrace it and to accept that it’s there. Another thing that stuck out to me in the conversation about Dana’s background was for what I would call acts of identity formation. Often, I guess, I see the college process is sort of an endpoint or a functional sort of event in their life rather than a cathartic one. It can be a real moment of crisis or triumph, and that can shift, I think, the way that they actually think about themselves.
Alex
What are your thoughts on how to best support kids as they make that leap into higher education?
Dana
There’s so many parts to the transition to higher ed. But I think what’s probably the most important part is and this actually kind of speaks to family members of students who are maybe earlier in high school. I think allowing your students to have disappointments. Allowing your students to have roadblocks along the way. And if you can use word failures. Allowing them to not do well things is going to help with their transition a lot better. I am actually less interested in how they structure their class time as I am as to what they’re going to do when they’re not in class, saying to them, like, what clubs and organizations are you interested in participating in? Kind of know that before you enter the school. And I think that finding just one thing in that time frame that’s not when you’re sitting in class and maybe not when you’re studying, is going to connect you to that university community.
I think it’s fundamental to that initial transition process. This is something called the sophomore slump, which is why you actually have a lot of students who transfer after their second year of college, because that first year, year and a half, was kind of not the reality of what the remaining part of colleges and so I say to families, give yourself grace. If you are gung ho at the beginning, it just understand it will peter off and then it will kind of hopefully be in a good flow. But if you’re not feeling it right off the bat, give yourself some time. And in most cases, it will start getting better and better.
Alex
I think that the number I’ve seen a lot around is 32%. Don’t make it too sophomore year. Why would you say that? Is there what’s your explanation for that?
Dana
I think there is the world that we don’t talk about as much is the financial situation and the financial burden that higher education and its costs have on individuals and their families. And I think that plays a much bigger role in attrition rates being as high as they are, because students begin to realize that not just paying for tuition, but just paying for books, paying for housing, paying for entertainment can be very burdensome. And also a lot of scholarships that students receive are based and tied to how they do academically at the university. And so if you don’t maintain a 3.0 or 3.2 in your first year, you lose your scholarship and that could be 2000, 3000, $10,000, making it unaffordable. Every college seems to have support services for kids, whether that’s tutoring services, tutoring centers, would you consider those underutilized programs, and how successful would you say those programs are? Every university is required to have basic Ada, Americans with Disabilities Act. And so I think that there are more students utilizing them. I think there are a lot of schools that are recognizing the value in having more tutoring or social emotional support and by having bigger counseling centers where they have more staff for writing labs and math labs. So I think that there are more schools that are jumping on board with it to serve the students, because as colleges provide more access, they have to provide more services to meet the students where they’re at to help them through the process. So I think that the greatest thing we can do for our students in high school especially, is teach them about self advocacy so that they understand what services they need to help support them. If you’re used to even if you don’t get accommodations, but you’re used to meeting with the teacher regularly to help with writing assignments, talk to a college when you’re visiting and ask, what are your writing centers like? How accessible are they? Can I go at any time? Is it big, is it small? Figure out what you’re going to need to get through high school is probably the same thing you’re going to need when you get to college.
Alex
Do you think that students sort of face unique challenges today in transitioning to college because of the pandemic? And what are those challenges?
Dana
One of the things that I have found interesting in particular within the last year is I find that a lot of students recognize the value and ease of being close to family. The idea of being far away, especially from parents and family member in which they may live. I think that I have a lot of students who may have started this process and said, oh, I’ll go anywhere in the United States, I’ll take a plane ride and now I’ll stick within a four hour radius of where I live. And the comment is I don’t want to be that far away from home. Majority of students in the United States stay within a 25 miles radius of their home. That is the norm. That does not necessarily exist in the Northeast. Particularly in the Northeast, you’re probably going to start seeing students stay closer to home. So you’re going to have more regional universities that are going to potentially have higher numbers of students who apply that maybe would have gone further away. So I think it’s really potentially shift the landscape of where students apply, particularly on the East Coast. What are some of the obstacles that we alluded to it a little bit, but what are some of the obstacles that parents are facing today and admissions, particularly in light of the pandemic? I think that the biggest obstacle is listening to the news. The biggest obstacle to this process is to think that this process has become so unruly and so unmanageable that it’s almost impossible for their students to get to college. There are 3000 universities in this country and I can guarantee that every student in the United States will get into at least one. And I think that the reality is that we have students who are going to schools we’ve never heard of, that are becoming doctors and lawyers and engineers and owning their own businesses. And as parents, I’m constantly saying if students social emotional wellbeing has to supersede the name recognition of a university and we need to look at this process as college is not the same as it was 25 years ago when you were there college and the process of getting in was not the same when you went to college. It’s a tough adjustment and attitude. It is. But at the same time, I think that for parents, especially after the pandemic and everything, it’s be very tuned in to the social and emotional well being of your students and understand that we as adults have dealt with such a blow over the last year and a half. Students are dealing with much differently and we don’t really know those long-term effects. So I think we just really have to kind of understand and push for them to be pushing and back off, or they need to back off. But when it comes to the college process, we only talk about 25 schools in this country, and there are so many others. And I think that if you want your student to be happy, healthy, and successful, being openminded to the remaining 2925 schools is going to be very helpful in that process.
Alex
One thing that stuck out to me in discussing the role of financial aid is really the relationship between that and dropout rates, because you couldn’t sort of maintain a certain GPA. I would say that’s true to a certain extent. Perhaps it’s the other way around, really. Perhaps it’s that they can’t make it yet. They sort of are able to cloak that in the GPA, saying, I’m sure money is a huge factor in that, and it’s a reality for many of them, but those questions of identity, I think, are just as big. Another point that Dana brought up that I thought was very interesting was self advocacy. I think that’s probably one of the more key sort of fundamental skills in succeeding in college that I think is underappreciated, and it’s takes a certain degree of assertiveness and confidence to be able to do that. Having a little coaching along the way is almost critical in that regard. If you’re doing that on your own, that feels a little scary, especially when you’re in a completely new circumstance. Everything’s changed, you’ve moved out of home. But I do absolutely agree that it’s so critical to success in college.
Alex
If you could give parents one piece of advice in entering this Paul’s admission process, what would that be?
Dana
Focus on fit. Focus on who your student is, who your student thinks they want to be. Understand that there is no one right career. There are thousands of careers that you may not know about today, and there are going to be thousands of careers that don’t even exist yet. But focusing on the fit of who your student is today, and a somewhat long term game, but not long term, 25 years long term, maybe five years, seven years from where they are right now, and plan in that way. But focusing on the fit of location, focusing on the academic programs. Don’t just find a school that has one program that you really like. Find a school that has programs. There’s many options. Focusing on the size of the institution, focusing on the services that are available. I think the career development parts of the university, career centers, I don’t think that families utilize those very well. That is really helpful. If you’re, a student says, I really want to work for Google, you got to go find schools where Google recruits. That’s a helpful thing. Google recruits at way more than just five schools. Fit is just really important. It comes in multiple ways. And as parents and family members, if you can go ahead and really focus on that, you’re going to have a very successful overall college admissions process and outcome.
Alex
Switching gears for a second. If you could give students one piece of advice entering the falls and mission process.
Dana
Probably the best thing I can say to them is for so long as students. You’re told to think about yourself as a member of a community. Whether that’s a member of your schools community. Member of a faith community. A sports community. A theater community. It’s always about yourself within the context of something bigger than yourself. The college admissions process is really about the individual and how you as an individual might thrive in a place that has multitudes of communities within it. And so I think that it does tie back to the focus on fit. But I think talking to students and saying, now is the time to actually stop thinking of yourself as a member of a community and start thinking yourself simply as an individual. What do you want? What are your challenges? What are your limitations? What does your perfect life that you don’t actually have? What do you want it to look like? Not what do your family members want it to look like, your friends want it to look like your teachers? Just what do you want? And so often my students might say to me, nobody’s ever asked me that. They want me to make a decision about, do I want to join this community? And I go, yes, but I just want to know what you want. And so I think that’s a good place for students to focus on the individual wants.
Alex
So say you had a student going off to college. What would you say to that student?
Dana
Have fun. I think I say that from a person who’s been at home like everyone else for so long. I just think that that’s the most fun part is just to say, have fun, whatever that means to you. That could be have fun in class, enjoy the subjects that you’re going to be exposed to. Have fun meeting people that you’re going to really like and people you really don’t like. Have fun trying things that you’ve never heard of before. There’s a famous idea, do one new thing every day that scares you. I say that to my students when you’re on campus, just every day, do something different. It could simply be go in a different path to class, but be very conscious to push yourself beyond the boundaries of what is the most comfortable, because that’s where you’re going to really begin to connect. There is a lot of enjoyment to be had. And it’s okay that if some stuff doesn’t work, it’s okay. If your friend group that you started with the beginning of college is not the friend group you had sophomore year, it’s okay. And just give yourself the grace, give yourself the patience, give yourself the encouragement, and do one thing every. Day that scares you.
Alex
Here are some overall themes that I noticed in my conversation with Dana about college admissions and college transition. It was interesting that she pointed out there’s an intimate connection between finding the right school and succeeding there. The placement has almost everything to do with how well you can succeed there. But I think that completely undervalues the cultural element and just all the complexity of the concept of confidence that underlies a lot of success. You have to have some sort of self belief, right? I think a lot of it has to do with you fit into your surroundings. Another point that you brought up frequently in our discussion was what she put as there’s no failure. Rejection in the college process isn’t a failure at all. In fact, it’s sort of meant to happen that way. It’s a signal that that school wasn’t right for you. But I think there’s a lot of faith in the college process. I’m very much a believer that we end up where we’re supposed to be. Lastly, I would say one theme of our conversation was that you need to find the right program for you. I think college consultants are sort of hardened. There’s dreams that have crystallized for these kids and their parents and the people around them. They are very demanding and wanting that particular dream to come true. And I think a lot of college consultants, I think, want to sort of to shatter. That something she just can’t control. Dana has been doing it for a long time. The clients that she first started serving are, in their career, like, have gone out and started their life, so she can sort of see the track of their life as well. It’s important to keep that in mind. It’s not an end goal, it’s just the start, really. But I think it’s easy to distract about.
