Students regain control of college application process
News // Stamford
April 25, 2010 Updated: June 17, 2016 4:44 p.m.
By DANIELLE CAPALBO
Hour Staff Writer
It was long a tradition at King School for seniors to tack their college rejection letters to a public "Wall of Shame" -- a means to neutralize the sting with a sense of humor, maybe, or to prove it didn't matter.
Then something changed.
Without prompting from teachers or administrators, this year's graduating class chose to move its focus from failure to achievement. Now, nearly 50 acceptance letters vie for space on the "Wall of Success," located in a special room for the high school's seniors. The display marks a 180-degree shift from last spring and embodies the culture of college-prep at King, where students have regained control in the face of apparently bleak acceptance rates at colleges nationwide. It's not about rejection anymore, because it's not about which school accepts a student -- it's about which school a student accepts.
"'Be a consumer.' 'It's a $155,000 investment.' This is what students hear over and over again here," said Candy Cushing, a college counselor at King, where 100 percent of the school's seniors go to college within two years of graduation.
When Cushing came to King a decade ago, she brought years of corporate savvy. A former CitiBank recruitment director, Cushing translated that savvy into a college-prep curriculum for high school juniors, whereby they take Meyers-Briggs personality tests, learn about "buyer's remorse" and ultimately decide what they want out of college -- not what pamphlets or their parents dictate.
"They have to see what's behind just the hype," she said. "We empower them."
In that respect, King is a microcosm of the new world order when it comes to college applications and admissions.
"Most students will be picking their college, rather than vise versa," said Kevin Carey, policy director at Education Sector. "There's a perception that it's harder for everyone to get into college, but for most students, that's not true. In the grand scheme of things, very few schools have low admissions rates."
David Bonner, a college counselor for King seniors, said that of about 4,000 schools nationwide, fewer than 90 schools accept 30 percent of applicants or less.
"The names we focus on just tend to be those 90 schools," he said.
Carey said he anticipates that more emphasis will fall on "the great middle" of the higher education market and that, as a result, those schools will have to market themselves transparently to students and parents.
Along that line, Bonner and Cushing said they seek to push students' sites beyond the relatively small -- albeit well-known -- pool of hyper-selective universities by encouraging students to forego prestige for "fit": the way a school actually satisfies a student's needs and wants.
The philosophy of "fit" is why Casey Correa, 18, said she would never have applied to Yale.
"I care about Division III softball and a good study abroad program," Correa said. "It just made sense to apply to places that offered what I wanted."
After she narrowed down the criteria for her perfect fit, she applied to just one school -- Bowdoin -- and got in.
Mike Zeko, 18, applied to seven schools, seeking a place to study sports journalism. He's headed to Texas Christian University in September.
For other students, like Kate Hyman, 17, fit means art, biology and horseback riding.
"You have to do some work as a consumer to get to the nitty-gritty of what your educational experience will look like," Carey said.
As the May 1 deadline approaches for settling on a college, Cushing said that King students are making decisions that represent an array of post-grad paths as diverse as their preferences.
"It's not cookie-cutter," she said. "Everyone finds their place."
Two King students graduated early to play Division I football, Cushing said -- Kevin Pierre-Louis at Boston College and Silas Redd at Penn State.
Then there's Kendall Sidberry, 17, whose path just happened to converge with a stunning list of top-tier names. He received acceptance letters from Johns Hopkins University, Brown, Yale, Harvard and New York University.
"I'm choosing between the Ivies," he said, with a caveat. "It's not so much about the names. It's the resources -- the fit."
Sidberry said that his list of "fit" criteria included support for undergraduate research, which is why he said he'll probably pick Harvard.
"I tried to craft my college list to find schools where I'd be happy," he said.