Please note that this transcript was auto-generated. We apologize for any minor errors in spelling or grammar.

Julie Shields Rutyna: [00:00:00] So we’ll, we will send you the recording and we will, um, you will receive that in a couple of days. And if you have, um, other people that you think would, would enjoy this webinar, you can share it with them as well. So with that, I think we’ll just get started, drew, and I guess I’ll just ask you, because again, this is just a common question that we get at MEFA.

Early on in the Admissions Pro process, what? What are some things people should focus on? Students parents.

Drew Carter: Yeah, I mean, this is, this is an exciting time. I think, you know, I, I just finished my fall travel schedule and, um, I was, you know, on the road visiting high schools and seeing students in their own communities and, uh, their own environments.

And it, it was awesome because, um, I don’t know, you get, I get a more authentic version of, of who students are and I was seeing kids at opposite ends of the timeline. I was seeing current high school seniors and, [00:01:00] you know, I saw a group today that. Gosh, we had nothing to talk about. They’d already applied to Holy Cross and no, there wasn’t much left to say.

But then at a different school, I saw high school juniors who really were completely clueless and they were just starting the college search process and they didn’t know anything. Um, so it’s kind of an exciting, uh, bookends that, that I get to experience. And I think, um, one of the, one of the challenges we have as adults, um, people like you, Julie, people like me who work in admissions offices.

Um, school counselor sometimes, but honestly, most especially parents, is that, uh, we want to be the, the jumpstart to the college search process for our high schoolers, whether they’re ninth graders, 10th graders, or 11th graders, or maybe sometimes even 12th graders, or a little bit, a little bit, uh, late blooming.

Um, and we feel like the way that we can be a best service is to start asking questions. And so [00:02:00] that’s what we do is we pepper our high schoolers, our 11th graders, our 10th graders, 12th graders with questions because we feel like once we get answers to those questions, we can really, you know, put those cables on and jumpstart this, this vehicle, right?

And so we bombard them with questions, but what. You know, Julie, 11th grade, what kind of school do you want to go to? Do you wanna go to a big school or a small school? What do you wanna study when you go to college? More importantly, what do you want to do for a career when you get out of college? Um, do you wanna live on campus or off campus?

You wanna be an urban and suburban. And then, you know, we are frustrated when, um, teenagers are avoiding these conversations and are avoiding us because they don’t wanna partake in this barrage of questions. Um, they. Don’t wanna partake, but honestly, they can’t partake because all of those questions are, are based on an idea that they have preferences.

They have preferences about an [00:03:00] existence and an experience being in college that they’ve never had before. And it’s understandable that we’re asking those questions because there’s 4,000 colleges in the US and we wanna try to, to narrow that down and filter that list a little bit, but. Doing that by asking students about their preferences for an experience they’ve never had is not the right way.

Uh, it would be like talking to a, a, you know, a person who’s never been in a car before and saying, would you like SUVs more than you like sports cars? And do you want a third row? And, you know, what’s your favorite make and model? And you know, gosh, even sometimes, so we get two possible responses right, from students is they, they shut down and they don’t wanna talk about this.

Or B, they have immediate, fast, quick answers that I think is sometimes even more damaging because, um, most likely what they’re doing is they’re answering the questions because they think they’re supposed to [00:04:00] have answers. But as a professional, I can tell you answers don’t yet exist. They don’t have preferences yet.

Um, they may have heard friends answering these questions, and so they think they’re supposed to have. Answers to those questions. Um, so as hard as it is as an adult, um, with a student who’s just starting the college search and research process as hard as it is, I actually think we have to stop asking so many questions and start.

By in small ways providing students exposure, exposure to colleges, exposure to options so that they can start to develop in small ways their own reaction and their own eventual preferences so that at a certain point they’ll be in a position to answer those questions that we so desperately want to ask them.

Because what we really want to do is to help, um. Now the question really then is, well, what does exposure mean? [00:05:00] And frankly, sometimes at the start, it’s just a, a website or maybe a virtual tour, that’s the easiest, right? It can be on your phone, it can be on a, a tablet, it can be on a computer. Um, but eventually, hopefully in some ways it’s gotta move in real life, right?

It’s gotta be in-person exposure to college campuses, to college existences, to that sort of exposure. Um, but I do like to set the bar low for these exposures. I think what can be paralyzing sometimes is. Families at the beginning of the process say, well, I don’t know where we should visit first. And, you know, um, you know, it’s gonna be, we’re gonna have to, it’s gonna be kind of a far trip to that school and, you know, we’ve gotta schedule the tour and should we go for an open house?

And like, boy, if we’re at the beginning of the process, I think what we should be doing is provide little mini exposures, right? Let’s, let’s spend 10 minutes walking around that campus that is closest to our home. You don’t think [00:06:00] your child will be interested? Who? That’s not what this is about. This is about exposure to a college campus, and it’s really about seeing how they react to certain parts and for them to see.

How they react to certain parts. It’s not for them necessarily to learn about that college. It’s for them to learn about themselves, to see how they reacted to that campus feel, to that layout, to that suburban, urban, rural environment to that size. The scale could be so different than what they’re used to.

Um. And sometimes it’s right. It’s that whatever that campus is that’s closest to home and you park the car inside the main gate and you walk around for 10 minutes. Sometimes you’re on the way home from the lacrosse game or or Sunday dinner at grandma’s house, and you just see on the highway blank College at this exit.

Great, I’ve heard about it. Let’s drive around for 10 minutes. All of those little mini exposures. They set the [00:07:00] bar low and they’re starting to build up in your child, um, reactions good and bad, so that eventually they are, they’re establishing their own set of preferences when it comes to what a college experience, uh, an ideal college experience might look like for them.

Then they’re in a better position to answer that question. Do you wanna go to a big school or a small school? Now we can start to create a list of schools to really do some research. So at the start, I think it’s, it’s research about colleges that are the easiest to have exposure to. And that very well might just be geographic exposure.

Um, and, and then over that, that’s, that can hopefully start a dialogue in which you can talk to your child about what they liked and what they didn’t like, what their reactions were. And sometimes there won’t be a reaction at the moment. Sometimes it’s an hour later or a day later or a week later, but sometimes it might take a little time to marinate.

Um, [00:08:00] but I think those are now there. When you ask ’em those questions, you’re gonna get much more real and authentic responses, not things that they’re parroting that they’ve heard other students say. Um, and I think to be patient with that, you’d rather be, you know that that first time you start really researching specific colleges, you’d rather be researching the right colleges that might match your student rather than just some names they might have heard of from friends or something like that.

Julie Shields Rutyna: That’s so terrific and your comments are making me think how, when my son was a junior senior in high school, he did say to me at one point, I hate that when I go to family parties, I hear, nobody talks to me about anything else but asks me those questions. Yeah. Yeah. So you’re right.

Drew Carter: I dunno if I said this to you recently, but I, I did say this to a group of parents recently at a, at a larger speaking engagement.

I told them, um, to stop asking their kids’ friends about [00:09:00] college. Um, it is fine. I think during this period of time, like as your son’s experiencing, I think it’s fine to ask our high schoolers about what they’re excited about for college and maybe about what they’re nervous about for college. And, um, gosh, uh.

Maybe even reactions they’ve had to schools they’ve seen, but the overly specific questions about where they’re applying and what their first choice is and all of that. Remember applying to college it, you know, and this is important perspective to have from the beginning. Applying to college is a very public, as your son can attest, is a very public selection and judgment process.

It would be as if Julie, you went to that party and everybody started asking you, well, what jobs are you applying for, Julie, are you applying for the job at Bank of America or are you applying for the job at X, Y and Z? And, well, what’s your gonna be your first choice for that job? And gosh, I, I don’t like when I walk down the [00:10:00] stairs in the morning and my wife looks at my outfit in the morning.

’cause I know she’s gonna have something to say and that’s somebody I’m married to and about my khakis. Nevermind about like a college admissions process, which is a, you know, essentially judging your entire high school existence. And everybody wants to ask you about like, where are you going to apply?

Who are you going to ask to judge you? So. I think college dialogue, the, the casual kind, right with your, with your nephews and nieces and your children’s friends. Totally fine. What are you excited about for college? And gosh, what makes you nervous? Any ideas, what you excited to study or all that’s great talk, but let’s leave the specific names of colleges and where they might apply If, if they wanna offer that up, great, but let’s stop putting them on the hot seat ’cause remember.

They know early on that the end of this is a judgment process. They’ve gotta apply and they may or may not be given the opportunity to attend. [00:11:00] And none of us like that kind of judgment and, and gosh, they’re teenagers when like being judged is just. It’s really harsh, so, um, yeah, I, I, I feel your son’s pain and I hope that as an adults we can sort of do a better job of, of leaving that.

Sometimes it’s still having fun conversations about college, but really leaving the, the specific names and the judgment out of it. Out of it.

Julie Shields Rutyna: Yeah. Now as a student goes along in that process and I, I love how you described that will start to build for them. Um, we hear a lot about this word fit. You know, find a college that’s a good fit.

Um, how can a student begin to figure out what, what is, what is a good fit for them? What are some colleges that might be a good fit?

Drew Carter: You, you, um, you do hear a lot about fit. You don’t hear it ever from me. Um, this, this will be maybe the most controversial thing I will say. [00:12:00] I don’t really buy it. Um, I think what that requires is a level of self-awareness that.

Is really setting the bar very high for a 15, 16, 17, 18-year-old. It is also asking them to project into the future. You know? ’cause when we say to a 16-year-old who’s just starting the process, it’s the school gonna be the right fit for you? Well, you, you’re asking about a level of awareness for a 16-year-old a but also not a 16-year-old.

That the, you know, the three years in advance of that 16-year-old, that’s really hard. And then it also requires a, a level of knowledge about a college or university and, but a level of knowledge about themselves and, oh boy, I, I think that I, I, I think it’s fine just to say, do you like that school? And not, or not, and why?

Yeah. Um, fit, I think [00:13:00] is, is asking too much because so much of it requires this like. Level of discernment, introspection that, um, few adults are capable of, and we’re asking high schoolers to, to really embark on that. But, but what the, the idea behind fit makes sense, right? It is. It begins with conversations maybe about size and location and maybe academic offerings and extracurricular offerings.

Um, you know, distance from home is part of that. Um, I, obviously financial fit should be part of that conversation, and that is a really complicated conversation. Maybe not, maybe not having that at the beginning is, doesn’t make sense, um, because there’s a lot left to be discovered about financial fit. But I think the, the qualities behind fit.

Makes sense. Um, the, also, the other thing about fit is that it suggests that there’s just one, right? Like, is that school the right fit for you? Honestly, like, I think there are [00:14:00] probably hundreds of schools that are the right fit for most students, and I think most students would be happy at a lot of different places.

Um, now I’m, you know, my professional job is to sell one place, but the truth is I think. You know, so I, I, I live here in Groton and I walked outside right now. I could see maybe about a thousand stars on a, on a dark night. There are 4,000 colleges in the universe, or sorry, 4,000 colleges in the United States, you know, four times the number of stars I can see.

And, and all these colleges are stars in some way, right? They’re all stars in some ways, and I think students, um, are stars in and of themselves. There’s so many places that they could be happy. A, a great deal of the happiness that students will find in college comes from within. Right. It’s not the, the specific nature of that college, but providing that exposure early on, you know, starting to build a set of preferences and ideas behind, um, [00:15:00] some of the qualities behind fit, location and size and things like that, um, will put a student in a good position to start to really then investigate specific colleges.

I don’t think that can happen really until you’ve done, um. Some sitting on couches. You, you know my couch metaphor, Julie? I do, I do. Yeah. So like, I, you know, the, the, this, the example I use sometimes is like when I first went to buy a couch and, you know, it was my first experience of like, in a furniture store and they, they, the furniture salesman asked me what kind of couch I wanted and I was like.

I didn’t know there were kinds of couches. I just thought you were gonna point me to where all the couches were and, and I ran away from that conversation, like high schoolers do so often. Right now, I wasn’t a high schooler. I was a, a 30-year-old or something. Um, but what I really needed to do was just kind of be left alone and to sit on a whole ton of couches and to, to build up a vocabulary.

You know about Chase reversible options and to [00:16:00] build up a set of preferences, 94 inches and corduroy. And so that, you know, by the time I got the sixth or seventh furniture store and I’d had some time to sit on a lot of couches without the pressure of questions, I then had the ability to answer those questions from that sales person and tell ’em exactly what I was looking for.

Uh, but it was only because I. Have been left alone just a little bit, uh, to sit on couches. So that’s, I guess that’s part of my, my advice early on is to get your kids sitting on couches, and that means visits to campuses, visits to relatives and friends who might know people attending colleges and driving around schools and looking at websites and just those little opportunities to sit on some couches and, and to build a set of preferences.

Julie Shields Rutyna: I love that. I love that. When they do get to the, the point of, of trying to find specific colleges, what, what tools do you recommend? How do they, how do they go about that?

Drew Carter: [00:17:00] I mean, there’s a, there’s a million great online tools and a lot of high schools, um, have their own tools that students can use, whether it’s SCORE or Naviance or Maya Learning.

And there’s a, a variety of different platforms out there, and they have wonderful sorting fashions. And honestly, I think the, um. The best function there is, you know, if, if there is a school that you’ve liked, whether through your own research or through exposure in person, um, if you add that to your list within that platform, it will suggest other similar type schools to you that you can then take a look at, and that, that’s probably the best function.

And that didn’t, you know. That didn’t exist 20, 30 years ago. Um, you had to really know somebody who was really sophisticated about colleges to say like, oh, actually you like Skidmore. Oh wow. If you like Skidmore, then you would probably, like Lafayette, you should check out my, you don’t need that person anymore.

It’s, these platforms would do it. So those, that’s really a good place to start. And also it’s a, there’s an [00:18:00] ability to do some record keeping there, right? If you, you’re building, you’re starting to build a list of, of, of. Dropdowns of filters, and then a list, small list of colleges. And that will help by suggesting other colleges that you might be interested in and some you could X out and some you could add to your list.

So I would suggest that’s a great way to start because that also is the platform that your counselor and parents can have access to. And those are great research tools.

Julie Shields Rutyna: You mentioned, um, a little bit back about the judgment piece and how students know there’s, you know, at the end of this process there’s gonna be some of judgment.

Encourage students to stay sort of, uh, confident and balanced in this process so that they, they can know that, but not get all caught up in it.

Drew Carter: Yeah. Confidence and balance, that’s, I mean, I think, uh, I think that’s something I’m in search of as well, Julie.[00:19:00]

The funny thing is, is that it is a very public judgment process, right? Like I, you know, sometimes I, I, I say jokingly, um, you know, I work in missions. My job is to be judgy, right? My job is to like make selections and to make choices. But the truth is, in the end, the kids have the final say, right? Like, I, I work in admissions committee and we choose students to admit, and then in the end, the power goes back to them and they get the opportunity to say.

Here are the school, this is the school I’m gonna enroll at. So in the end, the students have the final say, and there’s a part of that that I love. Um, there’s also, you know, people out there in the, in the world of higher ed who, who talk about, um, rankings and not the public rankings, that that gets a lot of attention and, uh, especially on social media, but about a student building their own rankings.

Like, you know. Uh, researching colleges and researching their own set of preferences. And then, [00:20:00] you know, building that list within, um, you know, whatever school platform you use. And then saying like, well, these are my rankings. I’ve ranked the colleges and here’s the, my. Top 10 colleges and it has nothing to do with the US News World Report has to do with me and my set of preferences, and I’ve built my own set of rankings for schools.

And I love that idea. I love that idea because students are really the consumer in this process. And there’s a lot of colleges who are, um, I was talking to a parent the other day and I said, uh, the parent happened to be a school counselor. And I said, you know. Everybody’s dealing with their own anxiety here.

Students are thinking like, oh gosh, am I gonna get in? And the colleges on the other side are thinking like, oh gosh, are they gonna want to come to our school? Like we we’re all having these anxieties about will the other one like us? And the truth is, in some ways we’re kind of both right? Um, but know that [00:21:00] colleges.

Are, are really going out of their way to help students learn about them, about their schools. Um, it’s never been easier to research college and universities these days. There’s so many visit programs and colleges wanna make it easy for you to, to see their campuses in person, but also online through virtual tours and webinars and ability to connect with students.

Um, I’ll say, uh, two pieces of like, these are just little pieces of advice when it comes to. Researching schools, number one. The, the thing I do if I see a college campus and, you know, when I’m traveling, I always go check out schools, um, because I love learning about colleges and universities. Um, the first thing I do is like a quick drive around to try to get a sense of like where everything is.

Um, I always ignore whatever the, the big campus map is. Things are useless. They all look the same at every college, everywhere. And it, I can’t make sense of those. And even the one at my own college, I, I ignore that one as well. Um, so I do a quick, like drive around and sometimes a walk around if [00:22:00] necessary just to get a lay of the land and then I go to the student center.

Every college has that like student union center for student activities or student center. And I walk around in there, I find the, like the coffee shop or the sandwich place and I just kinda like walk around for a couple minutes and you get a real sense of like what the culture’s like there and what the kids are like because um, that’s a place where they’re really themselves.

Where, where food is served to college students. You see auth authenticity. You see like real student life. You also see like. All the advertisements for student activities going on that weekend, you see the kids talking to each other. Um, so that’s my one piece of advice about like being in person. I think that’s a great thing.

Um, the other thing I would say is it, it, it can be really helpful to, to, um, on some of schools’ websites, actually many websites, there’s an opportunity to engage with current students. Um, you have a question about the environmental studies program. [00:23:00] Here, like email these four students and you can ask them, um, you can connect with them and learn about what their life is like.

Um, if you have older friends or cousins who are, who are enrolled in school, you can ask ’em about their school, but more, more importantly, just ask them about what’s important to them now. Um, you know, like college kids think. Dining hall hours and accessibility to signing up for classes and like they think about things being important that high school students never really think about.

So conversations with current college students can be really helpful, whether it’s about that specific school or just about like what you should really be thinking about when evaluating colleges.

Julie Shields Rutyna: Oh, that’s great. That’s great. You know, before I’m gonna open it up for a couple of, see if there are any questions, if people have questions for Drew.

Um, but I wanna just share that this is, um, part of a series. This is the first conversation I’m gonna have with Drew. And um, the second one is going to be on. [00:24:00] Oh, I think it’s November 18th. Well, you’ll find it on our website. Website, but the second one is going to be about how colleges really know about your high school, the level of classes, all of that.

So that’s gonna be the second conversation. And then the third conversation in December is going to be about. Admissions officers are really thinking when they’re reading your file and reading your admissions application. So I hope you’ll join us for those additional conversations. But, um, I, I have more questions, but let’s, I’ll just see if there are any questions that you have for Drew.

Drew Carter: I’ll say, Julie, while you’re looking, there’s a, yeah, I was at a school today and a, um, a student asked me. Um, who should I, I, this is the first time I’ve been asked this question in 21 years. Um, he said, there are so many people talking about colleges and admissions. Who should I trust? [00:25:00] I like, I almost brought a tear to my eye.

I was a moved by the question and just the sort of like the rawness of it. Like he just was really like a little bit overwhelmed, you know? Yes. And, um. I’ll tell you what I said to him. I was like, that, that, that, that’s maybe one of the hardest pieces. Right. Um, and my advice to him was, was school counselors are great resources because they really have your interests at heart, but they have a, a, a detachment because they’re not a family member.

Um, and they also have a connection with, um, with your school, the, the high school you’re enrolled at. So they know. Previous students who enrolled at schools, um, they know your entire academic record. Um, they have an ability to connect with admissions offices and really sort of like find out about policies and procedures, um, that they may not know everything, but they probably know a lot more than your uncle at Thanksgiving.

And that guy on the sideline of the soccer game. [00:26:00] And, you know, some of those people who, who have opinions, um, that the school counselor was probably the best person to start with.

Julie Shields Rutyna: That’s great. Alright, so we have, we have a few questions. Um, so we’ll do kind of a, we’ll call it a lightning round. Um, what are your thoughts on bringing younger siblings on college visits?

Drew Carter: Um, I love it. I love it as long as it’s not going to detract from the older siblings experience. Um, in which case if it is, I would say like to the younger sibling, like. Here’s a Frisbee, go hang out on the quad. You know? Um, they can, they can long for the ride. Um, and I, I, I say I love it because of this reason.

I, people say like, when, when should I start the college search process? Or when’s too early to start? And I, I’m like, I don’t think there’s a point because it’s really, it’s a, it’s an education that the students are going through of learning about schools. And in some [00:27:00] ways it’s a little bit of a carrot.

It’s a little bit of a carrot to students to say sometimes like, oh, you like. Even if you’re in eighth or ninth grade, right? Like, oh, wasn’t that school nice today? You know, five more minutes of studying for that test tonight. It’s probably a good, good idea because, you know, down the road it’s these kind of grades that are gonna build momentum that are gonna make you a strong applicant someday give you better options.

Um, not to say that like this, you know, there is, there’s an inherent value to school that has nothing to do with getting into college. I think, um, younger siblings is great and if they’re gonna bug their older siblings, then I don’t know, give ’em a, stick ’em with a milkshake in the student center and, and tell ’em to leave their older siblings alone.

But there’s value in that milkshake at the, at the student center as well.

Julie Shields Rutyna: That’s great. Um, do you, I think, I think I know what this person means. Do you think the college, you earned your degree. From matters much these days. [00:28:00]

Drew Carter: There’s um, there’s a, a lot of research out there

Julie Shields Rutyna: on

Drew Carter: that right now. Um. It really looked at, you know, folks who were graduating from the middle or the bottom of the most elite universities in the US as opposed to those who might have graduated from the top of less selective sometimes state universities.

And there’s research that suggests that, like to the, the question that the, the name of the college matters much less than I think some people think it, it does. Um. I think the quality of the experience should always be foremost and, and what the student, um, what the student values in that experience. And, and parents sometimes know what, um, you know.

What will be the best environment for their children to, to flourish. Um, obviously students I think, get, get some say in that as well. Um, there’s a great book out there by a, I actually, I, I read it years and years ago and actually [00:29:00] did it as part of a, um, a town wide, uh, read, uh, with a friend of yours, Julie.

Um, and, uh, it’s called How to Raise an Adult. It was written by a dean at Stanford and she wrote it from the perspective of having seen so many freshmen enter Stanford who were academically qualified to get into Stanford, but maybe not emotionally and even academically prepared to succeed in college.

Um, you know, it’s not how to raise a child, it’s how to raise an adult. And, um, there’s some great insight in there, not just about like. Being a parent, but actually like, um, being a parent of a, of, of the age of a child who will soon be going off to college. But, um, anyway, there was, there’s a lot of things in there I liked and, and there’s an argument there too about like, um, really having a, your, your offspring, your child, go to college and being fully, sort of like prepared for college life is [00:30:00] much more important than what the name on the bumper sticker says.

Julie Shields Rutyna: Great. And then I know, I know I get this question a lot from parents. How do you motivate, encourage your high school student to want to start getting involved in this process?

Drew Carter: Yeah. Um, that’s a really good question. I think a, it was, I’ll go back to the first thing I said is stop asking so many questions, right?

Like, they, they, you wanna help by asking questions, but they don’t want to be. Under the machine gunfire of your questions. Um, they want us, they will be more, much more likely to start the process if the process starts a different way than we typically started. We typically start up by asking questions. I think the better way is, you know, a little bit of these many exposures and sometimes they need to be dragged along a little bit.

You know, um, I, I used to use. Oh gosh. I dunno if I can still remember the metaphor, but I used to use the metaphor about like a, a ship’s [00:31:00] captain, right? Like sometimes he’s gotta inspire the crew and sometimes he’s gotta threaten the crew. Um, but never so much that, uh, that uh, he will be the victim of a mutiny, right?

Like, um, you never want to, uh, to, to do too much here. But that’s why I say sometimes like mom or dad is driving and they’re on your way back from. Cross game or grandma’s house and mom and dad says this college, this exit, let’s go. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve always been curious.

Julie Shields Rutyna: Yeah.

Drew Carter: Um, and, uh, you know, building those, those exposures, um, and again, like trying to keep some of the questions out of it that can be so paralyzing early in the process.

Julie Shields Rutyna: Yeah. Oh, these are great questions. All of them. And this is another one. Um, so this is a family. They’ve been visiting local campuses, but mm-hmm. In all the online college quizzes that maybe you do before you, you visit, uh, they ask, you know, what do you wanna study? What’s your major? And this student has no clue, [00:32:00] maybe stem, maybe pre-law.

So how, how do they handle that?

Drew Carter: Yeah. So I mean, that happens in a couple different ways. Number one is right, if you’re doing a search. You any sort of online platform and what do you wanna study is gonna help filter you some colleges. Um, if you don’t know then, right? Like you shouldn’t be answering that question or hopefully it gives you the option to select multiple things.

Select multiple. If it’s an individual college and you’re registering for a tour and they’re asking you what your academic interests are. It absolutely allows you to select multiple, if not also undecided. But the, the, the, that’s an important question is if you have a child who doesn’t know what they wanna study in college, um, that’s the right answer.

They don’t know what they wanna study in college. Most of students don’t. Um, a vast majority of students don’t. Some say they do. But it’s likely they’re just parroting an answer. They’ve heard someone else [00:33:00] say, or they’ve heard you say. Um, I think it’s fine to, I think a better question really is like, well, you know, tell me about your favorite class this year and what did you like about it?

Uh, remember like students are taking six to seven different kinds of classes per year in high school, and at UMass they offer more than 200 majors. So, you know, high school students are exposed to seven different kinds of academic things, yet there’s 200 majors at some of these bicker universities. Like what 17-year-old is saying, like.

Um, you know, mom, I really just want to study sociology or anthropology. No, none of ’em, right? Like, um, so I think really thinking about what some of the students’ favorite high school classes have been, and not just what the classes are, but what about them? And that can help to say like, okay, you might be more of a humanities kid, or you might be more of a math and science kid.

Or you might just be a kid who will need a college. We’ll [00:34:00] give you the flexibility to decide what your course of study will be while you are there. There are hundreds. Forget that. Thousands of colleges out there that will say, you don’t have to know what you wanna study when you get here. We’re fine with that.

Everything will be fine if you come in without a major. And there are some colleges I work at, one that doesn’t even let you come in with a major that makes you come in undecided. Explore whatever you’re interested in and then determine your major and graduate on time. So there’s lots of flexibility for those who don’t know what they wanna study.

Julie Shields Rutyna: That’s great. And we have one more. Um, any advice to students visiting colleges, you know, things they should look for and maybe there are certain questions that you think will be telling. Yeah,

Drew Carter: that’s great question. I love it. Um, okay, so, uh, I heard this from a group of students the other day. I’m gonna say this.

Um, it does not matter if the college students walking around that campus are smiling. Okay. Sometimes it’s exam week. Okay. I talked to a group of kids and they’re [00:35:00] like, oh, we, two of them had gone to visit this one college and no one was smiling. And I was like, it might have just been exam week. Like, that’s okay.

You don’t smile on your way to your calc exam. I know you don’t do that. Um, so. Students’ faces, don’t worry so much about that. I do always say, like, try to go to where food is served. Honestly, if, if you said, I’ve got 20 minutes to visit college blank, I would say, um, walk around for 10 minutes and then spend 10 minutes in the student center.

Get yourself a chai tea or a scone or a smoothie. It’s not really about whether that’s a good chai tea scone, or smoothie. It’s really about you spending 10 minutes in that space where the food is served to the kids. You might see a copy of the student newspaper, grab that. You might see the, if kids are talking to professors or what kids are talking about, I think you learn more in that 10 minutes than anything else.

Um, so that’s something great to, um, learn about. Um, just like, obviously like housing is a big issue on college [00:36:00] campuses right now where some students don’t wanna live on campus at all and some students wanna live on campus all the time. So just getting a sense of what the, the dialogue about student housing on that campus is.

Um. Student centers. And then here’s the last thing, and this is something I do. I do it at, um, colleges, and I do it at, at really big high schools as well. Um, I don’t look online about where they say, uh, I should drive, where I should enter campus and where I should park. Um, I just use my GP. Not my GPS, you know, my phone GPS, what is this?

2006? Um, I just used Google Maps and I allow it to get me there and then I just park first spot I can find to park and I get out. And you know what I do? I just start walking and. If I see somebody and then I’ll say like, you know what, I’m looking for the student center. Could you point that out to me? Um, because that little often, that little [00:37:00] interaction is an ability to learn something.

Sometimes they’re gonna be like over there. Great, thanks so much. Um, sometimes they’re gonna say, oh, well, you know, I’m actually walking up that way. Is there something else I can help you with? And there’s an opportunity for a little bit of engagement there, which might embarrass your teenager. Um, but uh, they can walk maybe 10, 15 feet behind or maybe they’ll wanna walk a little bit closer.

Um, so. Just park where you wanna park, get out and walk, grab copies of the student newspaper. Um, but one thing about student newspapers, understand that that’s college students talking to each other. It’s not designed to be talked to you. Okay. The glossy brochures that we hand out at the admissions office, that’s.

Language designed for you. So it’s all literally glossed over, right? Everything’s gonna be great, everything’s gonna be awesome. College newspapers are students talking to each other. So it’s them celebrating, it’s them complaining, it’s them, uh, arguing about things. [00:38:00] It’s the authentic on, on-campus dialogue.

And um, so I think that’s a really valuable way to learn about like what student life is like on a college campus.

Julie Shields Rutyna: Drew, we clearly could talk all night. Uh, but we’re gonna talk again at our, we’re gonna have two more of these conversations. Um, I know that this was so useful and we had some comments thanking you for your, uh, levelheaded, uh, authentic to all of you who have been here with us and who ask great questions.

And hopefully we’ll see you on the, uh, in the next conversations. And I hope everyone has a great evening. Thanks.