Steve Burleigh On Staff at UCLA Extension

April 15th, 2012

April 15th, 2012

Steve Burleigh Teaching at UCLA Extension College Counseling Program

By Stephen Burleigh

I am now teaching an online course called The Business of Educational Consulting for the UCLA Extension Certificate In College Counseling Program for the spring 2012 term. It’s an honor to have been asked. As a graduate of the CCC program I’m very familiar with the rigorous standards UCLA has for instructors in all of the certificate programs. It’s been a thrill to design the course and learn the online teaching techniques required to facilitate professional online learning. Instructors are now encouraged to incorporate various types of media into the course to enhance the learning experience and make the material accessible to all types of learners. It’s been exciting to be part of the effort to implement new techniques for online education. You can find my course at: https://www.uclaextension.edu/r/Course.aspx?reg=Y1842

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College and Future Earnings: All About The Benjamins

August 17th, 2011

College and Future Earnings: All About The Benjamins
By Stephen Burleigh

I got a call the other day from a mother who was concerned about her son who is getting ready to apply to college. She’s worried about what he should declare as a major. The good news is that the boy knows what he wants: he wants to get rich, filthy rich. She explained that his view of the world is slightly skewed because where they live all of his friends’ parents are either movie stars or hedge fund managers. (I immediately made a mental note to start hanging out at their local Starbucks.) Her son has decided that his talents are more suited to hedge fund managing than movie stardom. And the investment guys have assured him that the road to hedge fund managing has lower risk and better financial upside – invoking the old Peter Principle if the last couple of years are any indication.

Anyway, her question stumped me. If he had chosen movie stardom the answer would have been a snap. As we all know the road to movie stardom is the road most traveled in college; it is paved with debauchery and narcissism, or as my generation called it – sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. (*disclaimer – anecdotal only: the author has no direct knowledge of these indulgences) This called for more than my usual, “Take two aspirin and follow your bliss.”

Fortunately, her call came right after an article written by Beckie Supiano appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education (http://chronicle.com/article/Education-Pays-but-So-Does/128526/) that summarized a study called “The College Payoff: Education, Occupation, Lifetime Earnings” conducted by three Georgetown professors on lifetime personal income broken down by degree and profession. Physicians and surgeons with professional degrees top the list with lifetime earnings of $6,172,000. Chief executives with a doctoral degree earn $5,131,000, while chief executives with just a masters degree earn $5,160,000, and chief executives with only a bachelors degree have to get by on $4,483,000. Professors with a PhD, like those who did this study, have average lifetime earnings of $2,803,000.

The study does not include move stars or actors, but the average annual salary of an actor in 2010 was $5,000. Johnny Depp made $75 million that year, Ben Stiller made $53 million, and Leonardo DiCaprio made $48 million. Lloyd Blankfein, the ceo of Goldman Sachs, saw his income slip from $68.5 million in 2007 to $13.2 million in 2010.

I’m guessing these luminaries share the same zip code as the mom who called me. These are the outliers, as Malcolm Gladwell might say. But the College Payoff study once again demonstrates that level of education directly correlates to increased lifetime earnings, no matter what your bliss is.

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Education Cuts: An Immodest Proposal

August 4th, 2011

Education Cuts: An Immodest Proposal
By Stephen Burleigh

We did it! We’re raised the debt ceiling and lowered the deficit. How sweet it is. Now every American will have to tighten his or her belt and do their part. Everybody that is except those welfare parasites who make over $250,000 a year, can’t be trusted on commercial transit, have to resort to private jets, and who risk skin cancer by having to shelter gazillions in profits in climate challenged tax havens like Bermuda or the Cayman Islands. They’re exempt; and that’s a good thing because they’re the job creators.

So while they’re busy creating jobs let’s jump-start the belt tightening and get rid of some jobs. No time to waste. We’ll begin with education, that wasteful entitlement. And to paraphrase Shakespeare’s famous legal advice in King Henry VI, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the teachers.” Well, let’s at least get rid of the bad apples who are a drag on district budgets and have generally ruined student achievement (learning?) in America’s K-12 schools. Actually, the president’s basketball buddy and Secretary of Education, Arnie Duncan, is ahead of the slash curve. He’s been flying around the country selling his brand of snake oil called Value Added Analysis to evaluate teacher effectiveness, which is then used to ferret out the teachers who are responsible for little Johnny’s poor performance on standardized tests. Looks like a sure fire way to catch those slacker teachers who’ve been gaming the system for their $52,674 a year salaries (www.salary.com 08/2011). Unfortunately, Arnie and his surrogates who run school districts haven’t yet refined the value-added formula to account for variations in race and poverty among elementary school students. Decisions are made in a fog of regression analysis. The District of Columbia Public Schools refused to give 8th grade teacher Sarah Bax their algorithm for determining her value added score because…shhhh…it’s a secret. So I’ll just cut to the chase and give you the secret value-added formula used to determine which elementary teachers stay and which ones go in Houston, Texas: y = X? + Zv + ? where ? is a p-by-1 vector of fixed effects; X is an n-by-p matrix; v is a q-by-1 vector of random effects; Z is an n-by-q matrix; E(v) = 0, Var(v) = G; E(?) = 0, Var(?) = R; Cov(v,?) = 0. V = Var(y) = Var(y – X?) = Var(Zv + ?) = ZGZT + R.

Come on people! Moody’s and Standard & Poor are holding the sword of Damocles over our national credit rating. We need to act now. We can’t take the time to master quantum physics just so some out-of-work 4th grade teacher can tie us up in litigation for the next ten years. We have to dump salaries pronto; do more with less. But how?

I propose we use the same system in lower education for separating the wheat from the chaff that we do in higher education: Student Evaluations of Faculty (SEF). SEF at colleges has professors on the run: bad SEF, no tenure for you, doc. And if cutbacks are in the wind, negative SEF’s will trim your sails – hasta la vista el professore. Professors fear the almighty SEF so much that they hand out A’s and B’s like candy. The good news is that grade inflation is rampant at both public and private universities so gpa’s are way up, and the amount of homework is down. Transcripts tell us college students are learning and achieving at record levels. Studies tell us the opposite is true. In Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (University of Chicago Press, 2011), Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, found that:

Increasingly, time-pressured college teachers ask themselves, “What grade will ensure no complaint from the student, or worse, a quasi-legal battle over whether the instructions for an assignment were clear enough?” So, the number of A-range grades keeps going up, and the motivation for students to excel keeps going down.

The common wisdom, for the untenured, at least—whether it is true or not—is to find ways to keep the students happy: Expect little, smile a lot, gesture freely, show movies, praise them constantly, give high marks, bring cookies on evaluation day.

That’s how the big boys do it in higher education. Like Congress they let special interests dictate decisions on major issues. They ask the kids. We could do it in K-12 and save the money we now spend on value-added consulting firms and avoid all that objectivityishness. In fact, there’s already a website called RateMyTeachers that allows kids and parents to rate their teachers. It’s free. Teachers are given a score of 1 to 5 on: Overall Easiness, Overall Helpfulness, and Overall Clarity. Students may also comment. Here are some random examples. I’ll let you play Donald Trump and decide the fates of these teachers.

“Man this guy is the best teacher even better than Fujita he took the whole class to burger king and paid he understands us teens of how boring school can get so he makes it fun.”

“Mrs. C may not be the best teacher, but she’s definitely better than people say she is.”

“Way to hard. Since it is that hard, I did not learn anything even though I thought I understand what I suppose to do.”

“A very good teacher. Is very helpful. Has a nice ghetto booty.” (no way this one gets away)

We’re not going to raise taxes, or reinstate previous tax rates to maintain Title I commitments to pay for our future. We’re demonizing teachers and their representatives in the name of raising test scores so we can lower the bottom line. We’re devising arcane and flawed formulas to do what administrators apparently are unable to do; decide who stays and who must go. We’re paying tax dollars to consultants and think tanks to provide the data, even as those experts acknowledge that America’s most intractable problems – race and poverty – cannot be accurately quantified, though teachers deal with the effects in the classroom every day. We’re increasing class size and eliminating proven educational services like arts and counseling. Why not turn the decision making over to the kids? We had our “adult conversation”. How’s that working out?

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College Grade Inflation and Me

July 28th, 2011

College Grade Inflation and Me
By Stephen Burleigh

I’m not too confident that I’m smarter than a fifth grader. Probably not. However, we now have irrefutable proof that I am smarter than my two adult sons. For the past two or three decades I’ve struggled with the uneasy feeling that they outpaced me intellectually. My youngest son is a professional musician who plays several instruments well and was born with the math gene; and his older brother is a true man of letters who chose the sordid life of professional playwright and screen writer over the ivy halls of academia. For many years the subject of who was smarter was a taboo in our family because I convinced them it was irrelevant as long as I could still kick their butts. Those days are long gone. Sure they whipped me in chess, even checkers, and the stack of serious fiction and non-fiction next to their beds towered over my wimpy pile of New Yorkers. I hated having to ask for help on the Sunday Times crossword from those ungrateful mini-Einsteins.

But now we know the truth. And I feel great. Researchers Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy have completed a study on grade inflation at over 200 four-year colleges and universities. Their study was published in the The Teachers College Record. (http://www.tcrecord.org/content.asp?contentid=16473) You can read an excellent summary of their findings by Catherine Rampell in the New York Times (http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/the-history-of-college-grade-inflation/?scp=2&sq=catherine%20rampell&st=cse)

The bottom line is that the percentage of A’s awarded in college has skyrocketed. Rampell reports, “43 percent of all letter grades given were A’s, an increase of 28 percentage points since 1960 and 12 percentage points since 1988. The distribution of B’s has stayed relatively constant; the growing share of A’s instead comes at the expense of a shrinking share of C’s, D’s and F’s. In fact, only about 10 percent of grades awarded are D’s and F’s.” Back in the day, back in my day, it was much harder to get an A. Not only did I have to walk ten miles through rain and snow to get to my classes every morning, I had to really work for that pat on the back. Not like those two slackers who ate all my ice cream and breezed to class on their skateboards.

Moreover, private colleges give out a much higher percentage of A’s and B’s than public universities. In fact at private colleges 86% of all grades given out are A’s and B’s, compared to 73% at publics today. And guess who went to a big public university and guess who went to fancy pants private colleges?

I graduated from a big public university at a time when the A was still the holy grail. And I got a bunch of ‘em. And those boys went to private colleges when anybody with a heartbeat could get an A in discreet math or semiotics. Thanks to Rojstaczer and Healy the jury is in and we now have confirmation that my generation of A getters is smarter than my kids’ generation of over achievers. ‘Nuff said. QED.  Now if I could just remember where I left my glasses.

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College Admission: International Student Recruiting

July 8th, 2011
College Admission: International Student Recruiting
By Stephen Burleigh

“It’s destructive of the very function of admissions. The credibility of American higher education is at risk if we begin to parcel out pieces of it like car sales.” OMG! Can it be? This is an outrage! Is car buying really going the way of college admissions? That would be a disaster. I mean when I bought our new Lexus IS250 (really cool car) I went to the dealer, drove that baby around the block, got a feel for how it handled and made me feel about myself. Then we sat down and the salesman said, “I’ll sell you this purty li’l thang for a dozen Krispy-Kremes,” And I said, “I drove her; I know what I’ll be gettin’. I’ll give you eight Krispy-Kremes and a tall cup ‘o Joe.” He said, “Done deal.” He threw in a three year guarantee against any defective parts and I drove her off the lot. If only college admissions were that straight forward, transparent, and offered a quality guarantee.

But according to Barmak Nassirian, an associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, college admissions is in danger of being fair. Well, not exactly. He’s upset that some colleges are paying recruiters in foreign countries to entice qualified students to enroll in their universities. I mean, let’s face it, that’s paying people to put fannies in the seats. You might even call it marketing. Nobody’s forcing international kids to sign on the dotted line, there’s no accusation of bribery (unlike NCAA college athletics), just paid representatives out in Asia, and India and Eastern Europe, (did I mention Asia and India?) and other exotic destinations spreading the gospel about their institutions. If a kid signs up the rep gets a bonus.

Now every college worth its pound of flesh has an enrollment management and marketing VP. What do these guys with the fancy title do? Well, they crunch a lot of numbers having to do with teenagers, target them with seductive marketing campaigns, and get paid a lot more than those dastardly international recruiters to do what? Put fannies in the seats, that’s what. Why then is Mr. Nassarian so upset about a few rogue agents in Shanghai or Mumbai? Because international admissions is really big business and colleges claim they want a level playing field. Of course, a “level playing field” in college admissions is an oxymoron.

With all the caterwaul and hand wringing about the decline in American education guess what American industry is rated number one in the world. Give up? American higher education. Our colleges and universities win the international race by a country mile. Germany isn’t even close; England retains a little luster; and those menacing Chinese who are threatening our leadership in every other category aren’t even a blip on the radar. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, “the Academic Ranking of World Universities, published annually by China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University, American institutions continue to dominate the top echelons of the influential list: 54 percent of the top 100 universities are in the United States, according to an analysis, with Harvard retaining the top spot, followed by Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley. The only three non-American universities in the top 20 are the University of Cambridge, at number four, the University of Oxford, at number 10, and Tokyo University, in the 19th spot.” Furthermore, as Fareed Zakaria points out in his book The Post American World, “In India, universities graduate between 35 and 50 Ph.D’s in computer science each year; in America, the figure is 1,000.”

Last year over 670,000 international students came to study in the U.S. The University of Southern California (USC) had the highest number of foreign students enrolled with 7,500, NYU was second, and Columbia University was third. Foreign families love our colleges and our colleges love them. International student recruitment is big business because it has a really big bottom line. The kids aren’t smarter or better prepared. Diversity? Really? Check the statistics on diversity among America’s top 100 colleges. When you separate athletes the numbers are shameful. Foreign students pay full tuition, do not qualify for federal financial aid, and must sign an affidavit proving they have at least one year of tuition and living expenses already in a bank account – and they must prove it every year. We’re talking 50 grand or more in the bank ready to turn over to a college bursar. International students aren’t being aggressively recruited because of their talent and brains. They are deficit reducers. And as more colleges deal with historic deficits, competition for these full pay dreamers will heat up. Maybe Mr. Nissarian would feel better shilling at a car lot.

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The U.S. News Rankings and Me

June 17th, 2011

The U.S. News Rankings and Me
By Stephen Burleigh

I stopped by my local Barnes & Noble the other day to pick up a new pair of reading glasses, and remembered I needed a new K&W Guide to Colleges for Students with Learning Disabilities to replace my dog-eared, out of date, copy. What a valuable resource this hefty tome is for anyone stressing out about where an unconventional learner with a diagnosed disability will land in higher education. The K&W Guide is everything a college guide ought to be. It provides thorough and detailed information on the extent of support services offered by a range of colleges across the country and profiles each school’s services. It groups colleges into three categories based on their level of support resources. What it doesn’t do is opine on which college is “best”.   You read the K&W and you come away with a sense of relief, a feeling of real hope for unconventional learners as they embark on the next chapter of their academic, and let’s face it, social lives. The K&W guide makes it possible for a parent to match a college or a program with an individual student’s needs. The guide was created by Marybeth Kravits and Imy F. Wax, to fulfill a need, and not to maximize profit for their publisher, The Princeton Review. They are performing a service.

As I wait my turn in line at the BN cash register my eye catches the new U.S. News Best Colleges issue; the one that says in bold letters right on the cover, Exclusive Rankings. And then it happens. I can feel the twitching in my brain, the need, the anxiety, the adrenaline beginning to pump. I’m like a recovering alcoholic who needs a drink and is forced to stand at a bar staring at a bottle that says, “Best Hooch in Town. Get Drunk Now!” You see, everybody in the college admissions game knows the U.S. News College Rankings guide is a farce. Even the people at the colleges and universities who participate in creating the list know it’s a lot of hocus-pocus. Lloyd Thacker has spent the better part of a decade debunking and exposing the rankings at The Education Conservancy (http://www.educationconservancy.org/), and Loren Pope created the book and website “Colleges That Change Lives” (www.ctcl.org) to provide an information service that evaluates the quality of education that actually occurs on campuses.

Other professionals have dissected the U.S. News Rankings formula and exposed the bad science and profit machine behind it. Malcolm Gladwell sliced and diced the guide in a delightful article for The New Yorker. (February 14, 2011) Gladwell points out that among other glaring weaknesses, the U.S. News rankings reward admission selectivity over efficacy, i.e., what the colleges actually do, by an overwhelming margin. In our present economy affordability and accessibility are of increasing importance in higher education but are not factored at all in the rankings – the least affordable and accessible colleges are perennially considered the “best”. Can one really compare Penn State to Yeshiva University, asks Gladwell. Then why are they just one tick apart in the same survey?

But I graduated from a large prestigious state university that slipped a couple of notches a few years ago (we wuz robbed!), and my two sons graduated from a couple of private schools that weighed in around 11 in their respective categories at the time. So even though I know the rankings are bogus, I’m staring at the magazine thinking it would be so be cool if our schools popped into the top ten. What I really mean is wouldn’t my sons and I be so cool. And what that really means is that I want, I mean I need, six guys in a cramped office in Georgetown who have created a commodity out of smoke and mirrors, hearsay and irrelevant statistics, just to make money for a publisher, to assure me that I’m cool. Now that’s sick. But I’m dying to take a peek. So I buy the rag. Our alma maters didn’t make the jump up the ladder.  I don’t feel cool. In fact, I feel lousy.

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The Legacy Advantage

June 10th, 2011

The Legacy Advantage
By Stephen Burleigh

The acceptances are in and the SIR’s (statement of intent to register) have been returned.   Financial aid awards are being appealed and renegotiated – or not.  Time to pop the cork on the champagne or just sit back and enjoy a nice refreshing glass of iced tea, depending on your drinking habits and how much stress invaded your household during the college application period.   If you’re a student who spent the last half decade or so getting by on 4 hours of sleep trying to redefine the meaning of “achievement” just so you could join the fraternal order at one of America’s premier name brand selective colleges, you are either giddy with joy or contemplating the hard knocks at Big State U.  If BSU is your fate then you may already be looking forward four years from now to grad school, where you will assuredly claim your rightful position among those precious few the second time around.  What you might not know is to what extent your family connections, or lack of them, affected the decision at old Ivy U.

Well, now we know.   If mom or dad went to old Ivy U. you got one heck of a break in the admission process.   If grandpa or grandma graduated from there you’re still an IU friend with benefits, though with a little less love than the bear hug you get from the mom/dad connection.  If you’re a primary legacy it is not a given that you would have been accepted anyway, despite what alums and mom and dad want you to think.   Because even though you may be a straight “A”-over 2100 SAT guy, you also automatically received a 45.1 percent boost in the likelihood of your admission over all those other A-2100’s who applied.  If other applicants have a 15% chance of admission, your chances were 60%.  Las Vegas would be a ghost town if casinos offered those odds.

Michael Hurwitz, a doctoral candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of   Education, recently published his study that quantifies the impact of legacy in selective college admissions.  Overall, any kind of legacy connection can add 23 percent to the likelihood of admission.   Goldie Blumenstyk reported the results of his study in an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education – http://chronicle.com/article/Private-Colleges-Increased-Aid/127599/

Even more provocative is another finding that the old justifications for legacy admissions – legacy only tips the scale slightly, he/she would just as likely have been admitted, legacy admits increase giving to the university, multigenerational ties are forged and will benefit the university – may be false.  Richard D. Kahlenberg edited a collection of essays and studies on legacy admissions called Affirmative Action for the Rich (published by the Century Foundation, distributed by the Brookings Institution) which argues convincingly that none of the old assumptions withstand scrutiny.  A full report on the Kahlenberg book may be found in an article in Inside Higher Ed written by Scott Jaschnik at – http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/09/22/legacy

The overwhelming advantage for wealthy, white, legacy applicants continues at the same time race based affirmative action has been eliminated in several states and is under fire in many others.   Isn’t it time to re-examine the concept of merit and apply it equally across all socio-economic strata in selective college admissions?

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Economy Makes 2011 More Competitive Than Ever

April 21st, 2011

Economy Makes 2011 More Competitive Than Ever
By Stephen Burleigh

Given the state of our economy it’s no surprise that the number of applications to the most selective colleges and universities reached record highs again this year. Harvard received 34,950 applications and accepted 6.2%, while Yale received 27,282 applications and admitted 7.4%; Brown University admitted 8.4% from 30,948 applications. These statistics are deceptively high when reduced by the number of Early Decision admits at several institutions and outreach for athletes and students with special talents.

The Common Application makes it easier for students to add so called “reach” schools to their list regardless of how unrealistic the chances of admission. Also, many of the most selective colleges and universities practice need blind admissions that guarantee that 100 percent of admitted students’ financial need will be met. Middle class families suffering financial setbacks have a “why not take a shot “ approach to the process; why not encourage Dick or Jane to apply because you never really know, anything is possible, and we’ll save a bundle if he/she gets in. Then of course there are the bragging rights that come with being the one-out-of-ten anointed by a selective admissions office. There is the prestige of a degree from a highly selective institution, and the perception that such a degree opens doors throughout one’s post grad and professional life. Whether the college is a social or academic match fades into the background as financial pressure mounts.

Financial considerations have also had an impact on the University of California system both on the supply and demand side. Due to California’s historic budget shortfall, all ten campuses have slashed budgets and reduced enrollment while raising tuition and fees by a third. At the same time more students are applying, because the system retains its academic luster even with higher fees. It’s still a bargain compared to selective private research universities. The thinking seems to be; I’ll throw a Common App at Harvard and Yale, but I‘ll also take a crack at Berkeley or UCLA. The Los Angeles Times reports that this also applies to students outside of California. (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-uc-admit-20110419,0,2915587.story )

In an effort to increase revenue almost a third of UC Berkeley and UCLA acceptances went to applicants outside of California who pay about $23,000 more to attend a UC campus. This new wrinkle raises the bar for California residents who now compete for even fewer slots. Overall UCLA and UC Berkeley each admitted about 25% but as a third were from out of state those two campuses have become among the most selective in the country. California cutbacks have been equally severe at the Cal State University system and the California community colleges. Both Long Beach State and San Diego State received over 60,000 applications making admission as competitive at these universities as at many UC campuses.

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How to Embark on a Stress Free Senior Year

January 6th, 2011

How to Embark on a Stress Free Senior Year
By Stephen Burleigh

“I was really stressed this weekend. I have a calculus class coming up, which means I have to do the homework for the past two weeks. I also have a physics quiz, which, of course, I was behind in that class by two chapters. So I played field hockey on Saturday with the team, and then did all the physics homework on Saturday and Sunday. Then I had two papers for English class. They are short papers, but still, I had to read the stories and then try to say something intellectual about them and relate them to my life. So I took No-Doze on Sunday night and kept drinking coffee, but I fell asleep writing my physics lab. A few hours later, like at 4 AM, I woke up with a stomachache, but I had to do these papers, so I drank more coffee, and just kept writing. I had severe stomach pains this morning which is probably like appendicitis or something, but look at me, I am still drinking coffee! I will finish the papers during lunch and then try to do all this stuff for ASB. I swear I am not going to make it; I am going to die!”

This is how Eve Lin described high school life in Denise Clark Pope’s excellent book, “Doing School”. In Pope’s study all six students profiled said they experienced severe anxiety or breakdowns, and four out of six had persistent health and sleep problems.

Eve is, in her words, “preparing for acceptance to the Ivy League.” Many students believe that acceptance to a selective college is the key that unlocks the door to success in life, and that enduring any amount of stress is worth the reward. The average admit rate for all Ivies this year (2008) was about 12%. Does that mean the other 88%, many of whom had perfect SAT scores or were valedictorians, are failures?

The first step to a less stressful senior year begins with you. Try to approach the college application phase of your life organically – from the inside-out. Ask yourself some questions, keeping in mind Polonius’ famous advice to Horatio in Shakespeare’s Hamlet,“this above all things, to thine own self be true.”

  • What are my core values?
  • What do I enjoy doing?
  • What am I passionate about?
  • What would I like to change about myself?
  • Where would I like to be in ten years? Fifteen years? Twenty years?
  • What career inspires me?
  • Who do I admire?
  • What physical, cultural, and academic environment supports my sense of self?

If you’re unsure about the answers consult with parents, teachers, counselors, or mentors for advice. The better you know yourself, the better your chances of escaping the pressure of becoming a slave to a list of colleges picked from a rankings magazine designed to impress your parents or your best friends. Define yourself, pursue your own path, and be bold enough to set your own realistic expectations.

Of course, applying to college doesn’t occur in a vacuum. The demands of your senior year won’t come to a halt because you’re busy preparing for and taking standardized tests (SAT & ACT), researching colleges, visiting, interviewing, filling out applications, getting letters of recommendation, making sure your transcripts go out on time, writing essays (and more essays), and filling out financial aid applications. There’s still your day job as a fully functioning high school senior to deal with. That’s the flash point at which many hard working students run the risk of becoming like Eve. According to the Nemours Foundation advice on teen health, symptoms of chronic stress can be:

  • Anxiety or panic attacks
  • A feeling of being constantly pressured, hassled, and hurried
  • Irritability and moodiness
  • Physical symptoms such as stomach problems, headaches, or even chest pain
  • Allergic reactions such as eczema or asthma
  • Problems sleeping
  • Drinking too much, smoking, overeating, or doing drugs
  • Sadness or depression

A little stress can motivate us to work proactively to find solutions to our problems, but too much stress can defeat us in pursuit of worthy goals. If allowed to continue unchecked, it could put us in the hospital.

Stress, however, is a fact of life. It’s a byproduct of the fight or flight function of our nervous system. Acute stress can save us in a crisis or cause us to rise to the challenge of an important event, but chronic stress brought about by the pressures of daily life; i.e., deadlines, assignments, tests, expectations, family dynamics, uncertainty, can be debilitating unless managed. Here are some tips for managing a stressful work load:

  • Develop time management skills. Don’t over schedule your day. Create realistic expectations and deadlines. Plan ahead and prioritize tasks.
  • Pace yourself. Remember that life is a marathon, not a sprint. That goes for school and the college admission process.
  • Don’t let little things become big things. Take care of small tasks as they arise, don’t put them off until that growing stack of papers on your desk becomes an even larger pile of guilt.
  • Remember, nobody’s perfect. Don’t demand perfection from yourself or from others.
  • Take time out of your busy schedule to have fun or relax. Find out what activities engender a feeling of well being within you. It could be reading for pleasure, playing music or singing, meditation, deep breathing exercises, an afternoon power nap, a game of chess – anything that takes your mind off school and relaxes you.
  • Regular exercise is a proven method of minimizing stress. Don’t over train, but find something vigorous to do that increases your heart rate for at least twenty minutes a few times a week.
  • Eat well, be well. Too much junk food or fast food will contribute to your high stress levels. Good nutrition is essential to a healthy mind and body.
  • Get plenty of rest. Avoid all-nighters, and eleventh hour cram sessions fueled by caffeine or other stimulants. That night of sleep you lose can never be recovered. Sleeplessness and chronic fatigue exacerbate stress.
  • Stay positive. Don’t get caught in a cycle of negativity and frustration. Look for solutions to problems. Learn to be patient and understanding of other people’s behavior.
  • Seek professional help if you feel overburdened and unable to cope. Don’t put off talking to a counselor or health care professional if you feel overwhelmed by stress.
  • Don’t shut out your parents. According to the Mayo clinic, “Adolescents who have positive relationships with their parents tend to handle stress more effectively as adults.”

If you’re college bound you can reduce senior stress by getting a head start on the college process. Use the summer prior to senior year to visit colleges, interview with admissions representatives, prep for a standardized test, and most importantly, to begin drafting personal statements. Most colleges post the personal statement on their freshman admission web pages, often under the “Apply” tab. Look for college essay workshops at local community colleges, high schools, even at pubic libraries. The college essay can be the most time consuming and demanding part of the application process. The more college admission work you do before school resumes the less likely you’ll feel like Eve in November.
-written for NextStep Magazine

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Summer Activities for College Bound Students

January 6th, 2011

Summer Activities for College Bound Students
By Stephen Burleigh

When asked what the greatest three minutes of his life were, Alice Cooper replied, “The last three minutes of the last day of school when you’re sitting there and it’s like a slow fuse burning.” He subsequently recorded the rock anthem, “Schools Out”, with the catchy refrain, “No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers’ dirty looks”. The rest is rock ‘n roll history.

Every high school student can relate to Alice Cooper’s escape fantasy. “No more homework! No more tests! Free at last!” Summer is the time for vacations, hanging out with friends, going to parties, and most importantly, sleeping in. Or is it?

The increasing competition for admission to college drives many students to consider alternate options when making summer plans. Family vacations and social events often take a back seat to activities chosen as much for their potential to sharpen an applicant’s “admission edge” as for the intrinsic joy found in the experience.

There’s no formula for how to spend your summer. Choices abound for students these days, and may be as close as the local YMCA or in the farthest regions of the planet. Sally Stone Richmond, Associate Dean of Admission at Occidental College in Los Angeles says, “I used to joke that as long as a student was productive, i.e. not watching TV or playing video games they would be well received in an admission evaluation.” She quickly adds, “Then I met a student whose paying job was testing games for Nintendo!”

Karen Mittelstadt, Assistant Director of Admissions at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, says that what a student pursues during the summer is evaluated in the admissions process in the same manner as activities during the school year, “What’s most important is whether the student has pursued a leadership role or demonstrates a depth of experience in an area of interest.”

The first choice for many students may be summer school. Mittelstadt says that at Wisconsin a summer college course is looked upon at least as favorably, if not more so, than other choices because it demonstrates a commitment to academic challenges beyond requirements. There are several reasons to take a summer school course. You may want to:

  • Retake a course in which you did poorly
  • Get a high school requirement out of the way to allow time in your school schedule to take another course
  • Satisfy a college admission requirement
  • Get college credit and satisfy a college general ed requirement
  • Take a course not available at your high school
  • Take a course over a shorter, more concentrated time

College credit courses are available at local community colleges, four year institutions, and residential programs on distant campuses.

Graduating senior Marissa Gunnarson from Cincinnati, Ohio combined her interest in medicine with a chance to travel by opting for a residential program at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Last summer she attended a ten day intensive offered by the National Honors Convocation on Medicine which gives students interested in health care careers the opportunity to learn more about the world of medicine through lectures, labs (she had to dissect a fetal pig), and field trips to hospitals and clinics. Marissa believes, “It helps to find a summer program to experience a career before you get to college and have to declare a major.” The highlight for her was meeting new people from a cross section of America, some of whom have now become close friends.

A summer abroad can be a great way to break out of your comfort zone and expand your horizons while experiencing other cultures. Travel abroad can be expensive and the challenges, while fun, can be frustrating at times. If your passion is to travel abroad first identify what kind of experience you’re looking for; service, adventure, skill training, or academic. Look for a good fit and be sure to ask questions before you commit to a program. Find out:

  • The cost
  • The time commitment
  • The location
  • The purpose of the trip
  • The degree of difficulty
  • How much preparation you need (physically & academically)
  • How previous participants felt about their experience

Los Angeles senior Kelsey Berglund found her calling in Costa Rica while participating in a service abroad program led by Global Works, a company that specializes in language and cultural immersion experiences. She says she felt she needed to “do something”. During her three week stay in the village of San Antonio she lived with a local family and worked with residents to alleviate drainage issues in their pueblo. After rising each day at 6:00 am she and the members of her group dug trenches, hauled buckets of water from the stream, mixed the cement, and poured the new spillway. After dinner she taught English to local children. “My experience abroad inspired me to want to major in international relations. It helped me focus on which college programs were right for me,” says Kelsey.

Students who need or choose to work during their summers are not necessarily at a disadvantage to peers who volunteer or can afford expensive immersion programs in the college admission process. When asked whether summer employment received the same weight as other summer activities Mittelstadt and Richmond both commented that students who work, whether to earn money or to gain career experience, receive equal consideration to students who can donate time. Richmond puts it this way, “holding down a job during the summer or school year reveals duty, skill development, mentorship opportunities and responsibility. Not to mention, it offers great money management lessons!

The summer is a terrific time to commit to longer term projects, activities, internships or jobs that the school year doesn’t allow,” says Richmond. It may also be a time to act on a dream, to challenge yourself in an area of interest or in a part of the world you’ve only fantasized about. Whether your interests are academic, service, travel, adventure, skill training, or employment, there’s a fit for you. All that’s required is a little self reflection, the patience to do some research, and the willingness to take a risk. Remember that you are defined by your life experience. Summer activities offer you the opportunity to become the author of your own narrative. That’s important not only for college admission but throughout your life.
-written for NextStep Magazine

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