I might have been the last kid in America to apply to college using a paper application. That was no fun, and the move to online applications is at least one change that’s been positive. But in other ways, the college application process has become much more stressful in the last two decades. If you’re a student: I feel for you.
And if you’re a parent: I have three boys, and I feel for you too.Every year, selective institutions become more selective. This trend has had cascading effects on all undergraduate institutions. The ultra-qualified applicant who can no longer count on admission to a school like UPenn may now target Vanderbilt, which means the student who would have targeted Vanderbilt in the old days is now forced to look elsewhere, which means… you get the idea.
In this environment, there are two good reasons to hire a college advisor. One is the obvious one. The other is less obvious but more meaningful.
The obvious reason is that a college advisor can help you maximize your chances in this competitive landscape. They can help you find high-impact extracurriculars that will differentiate your application, plan your standardized testing strategy, and draft clean, persuasive, big-hearted essays. They can help you bring the best version of yourself to the page. In a crowded applicant pool, tiny things may be the difference between a yes and a no.
But here’s the other thing an advisor can do for you: they can help you figure out what will make you happy.
Education is a process, not an end in itself. Yes, to be sure, some of the things you learn in college will lead to career opportunities later. But education is good for you, it’s good for the soul, it will help you understand who you are and what you want. The right college for you is the one in which you have a chance to explore, pursue eclectic interests, and become the person you’re meant to be. And that means that the right college for you is not the right college for someone else. Fit is real; fit is important. A college advisor can help you find the school where you belong.
And the fact is that you can get a good education at far more places now than you could in the past. If selective institutions are harder to get into, it’s also harder to get a job teaching at one of those institutions. That means that the brilliant teacher and scholar who would have taught at Yale in 1950 is now teaching at Oberlin, or the University of New Mexico, or any number of other institutions. That’s a good thing. It means that if you approach this process with an open mind, you have tons of options, whoever you are and whatever your academic record looks like.
—Aaron Thier, Director
