February 2020 // Volume 1, Issue 3
THE BLUE SHEET News from the Nobles College Office
THE DIRECTOR’S DESK One of the great benefits of being a college counselor is that we get the opportunity to build relationships with colleagues all over the world – other college counselors and our counterparts in college admissions offices. Indeed, our connections extend well beyond the walls of Nobles, and in many respects, this is one aspect of the work that keeps me engaged in it; there is always something new to learn, someone new to meet or another campus to visit. These relationships are elemental to our work, but not, perhaps in the ways you may imagine them to be.
I have joked in parent and guardian sessions that if “getting kids into college” were as easy as picking up the phone and telling the college who to take, I’d spend my days with my feet up on my desk smoking cigarettes and making sure they took our “best kids” (as I’m imagining the person who occupied my seat once did – I mean, after all, Harvard had a 92% admit rate in 1941). In the early 2000s, when I first began this work, we would travel in the spring for a lunch at Brown University, where we’d eat sandwiches in our admission rep’s office, trade stories about the year’s admission cycle and talk about how the landscape in college admission seemed to be evolving so rapidly with the advent of the internet, increased ease of air travel, a spike in the 18-24 year-old population, and the online Common Application taking hold. These lunches were vestiges of the old school model where independent school counselors really did tell highly selective colleges who they thought would be the best match. In case you’re wondering, Brown phased out those spring dean’s lunches not long thereafter.
Fast forward to 2020. We work doggedly to make sure that colleges and universities have a sense of who they will get when a Nobles student shows up on their campus. How? By hosting 80-100 college admission people on our campus each fall; attending national and regional conferences that draw people from “both sides of the desk;” annually inviting college deans to speak to the Class II parent/guardian body. We do college visits to refine our knowledge of the landscape and often to spend time with the admissions folks whom we’ve gotten to know – indeed, many are good friends. What these relationships offer, by extension, to your children are trust between our office and many colleges and universities built up over decades. Our relationships matter, but not always in the ways that you imagine they do or should. Nobles has a remarkably strong reputation among colleges and universities, and we hope that by representing the school well, we do a great service to our students, too.
Be well,
IMPORTANT LINKS
IN THIS ISSUE
The Common Application: www.commonapp.org College Board: www.collegeboard.org|ACT: www.act.org Naviance Student: student.naviance.com/nobles Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA): s tudentaid.ed.gov/sa/fafsa CSS/Profile: cssprofile.collegeboard.org Test-Optional and Test-Flexible Schools: www.fairtest.org Self-Reported Scores: www.compassprep.com/self-reporting-test-scores/ Who Superscores?: www.compassprep.com/superscore-and-score-choice/ NCAA Eligibility Center: eligibilitycenter.org
2...Making the Most of College Fairs 3...School’s Out for the Summer...Now What? 4...The 411: SAT Subject Tests 5...Seeking an Inclusive Fit 6...Alma Mater Reflections 7...College Spotlight 7...Winter Wellness Check II 8...Mark Your Calendar / Standardized Test 7...Dates and Deadlines / AP Exams @ Nobles 9...On our Bookshelves and in Our Inboxes
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