The Old College Try
by Doug Gillett

Once upon a time, high-schoolers intending to get a college education didn’t face many choices beyond where they were going to attend and which posters they wanted
to put on their
dorm-room walls.

Of course, higher education used to be only for a select few. But according to the Pew Research Center, two out of every five young adults aged 18 to 24 attended college in 2008, compared to less than 24 percent back in 1973. The greater availability of a college education is obviously a plus for today’s teenagers, but it has also forced colleges to be more selective. And while colleges have dramatically widened scholarship, academic and residential options in the hopes of attracting more diverse student bodies, navigating those choices can be a challenge all its own.

Jean Flowers is one of the owners of the College Resource Center, a Columbus consulting firm that helps guide prospective students and their families through those options and find the college that suits them best. She says their College THE OLD TRY process is “broken down into the academic
aspects that we encourage people to focus on, the financial options that we encourage and the social pieces.” Some parts of that process, she says, are more important than others, but all are necessary to set a student on course for a satisfying experience over the next four years of his or her life.

Oh, the Places You’ll Go
The first step, obviously, is choosing which colleges to apply to, and CRC’s Genie Mize says it is important to keep an open mind. “We do a lot of college visits, so sometimes we can suggest a school for somebody that they wouldn’t have thought of,” she says. While some students express an interest in going far away from home just for the heck of it, Mize says most students attend a college within 300 miles of their hometown. She also cautions that a given school “might not be right just because two of your friends are going.”

Melissa Sorenson faced a dilemma earlier this year. She had applied to several schools and gotten into both the University of Georgia and Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, but hadn’t been accepted to UGA’s highly competitive music school. She faced a choice: attend GCSU in the hopes of pursuing a career as a music therapist, or pursue a different major at UGA.

Although Melissa says she would’ve liked to join her older brother at UGA, she couldn’t give up her dream. “The more I thought about it, the more I felt like I really wanted to do music therapy, and I didn’t want to go the rest of my life wondering ‘what if,’” she says. And she already knew she’d be comfortable at GCSU. “The kind of atmosphere that I was welcomed into, it seemed like the teachers really cared about the students; they weren’t just there for doing research. I wouldn’t be spoon-fed anything, but I could feel comfortable going to the professors if I needed help.”

Actually visiting the school’s campus is an important step that some students don’t take, says Hope Phillips of CRC. “A lot of students these days are so used to digital media that they tend to think they’ve ‘experienced’ a college by seeing it on a website or YouTube or something like that,” she says. “But we think that students need to visit, and they need to visit when school’s in session. Sit in on a class, spend the night at a dorm, go to the cafeteria. You can learn a lot about the school from the cafeteria—not the food but the students, the interactions, how they group themselves.”

Making the Grade — from the Beginning
Long before students even start thinking about where to apply, though, Flowers says they need to start positioning themselves for acceptance by taking advantage of advanced-placement courses—admissions counselors will know if they’ve only aced a bunch of easy courses—and by not falling victim to “senioritis.” “Kids who may have struggled their freshman year but then kicked in their sophomore and junior years, as long as there’s an upward trend, the colleges do account for that,” she says. “However, the converse of that—the one who is a great student freshman and sophomore years but then has a downward trend—that’s a red flag.”

With colleges placing increasing emphasis on extracurricular, leadership and community-service activities, Flowers suggests starting a “résumé” as early as freshman year to keep track of anything that might be attractive to an admissions counselor. “Students these days are so busy, they’re going to forget some of the things they do,” she says, “and it’s also a great way to look and see what they might be lacking. We’ve seen some students who came in the summer before their senior year, and [putting together a résumé] really was great for them, because they needed some more activities.”

Keeping Up Appearances
Even when a student isn’t taking an exam or visiting someone’s campus, though, they need to know that colleges are keeping an eye on them. “One of the things that we do tell them is to be careful what they post on Facebook,” Mize says. “Make sure the stuff you put up there is appropriate, particularly starting senior year.” Flowers adds that even a student’s voice-mail message needs to be courteous and professional.

And colleges pay attention to discipline as well as grades, Mize says. “If they have any expulsions, suspensions or legal actions, the school counselor is expected to report it, and the student is expected to report it as well,” she explains. “Colleges are forgiving of teenage things, but they’ve also got other responsibilities— these days they’re very concerned about safety. It’s not necessarily the student who got caught with a beer in his car, but the ones who pose habitual safety problems. The colleges want to know about those students who are ‘ready to snap.’”

The Bottom Line
The final piece of the puzzle is financial, and as with a résumé, it’s never too early to start working on it. Mize recommends filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) right away to see if a student is eligible for Stafford loans, grants or work-study opportunities; the earlier they fill that out, the more likely they’ll be eligible for assistance in the event of a job loss or family tragedy. For merit-based scholarships, too, earlier is always better. “If they can get their application in a month to six weeks earlier than the application deadline, sometimes they are automatically considered for merit aid,” Flowers says. “So many kids get so caught up in all the other deadlines that they miss that one, and it turns out they could have gotten some funds.”

Although there are a wealth of private scholarships out there, they only provide five percent of the overall financial aid that goes to students each year, according to CRC, so families should first focus on the scholarships offered by the colleges themselves. And while the HOPE Scholarship has been a huge boon for students looking to attend public institutions in Georgia, Mize cautions that they’re not home free just because they’ve graduated from high school with a B average. “Not to paint a negative picture, but three fourths of students lose the HOPE Scholarship their first year,” she says, “so we really encourage them to maintain that average. It’s harder in college, but they need to keep it up.”

To see this story complete with photos, pick up the latest issue of Columbus and the Valley at a retail outlet near you, or click here to subscribe online so you’ll never miss a word.

Phone: 706-324-6214
E-mail: contactus@columbusandthevalley.com