00:00:03 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): Hello, hello, hello. I hope you are all doing well.
00:00:07 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): Give a few seconds for the attendees to come in, wait for the audio and the video to…
00:00:13 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): work out and for everyone to sink into the meeting. I appreciate you guys taking the time to be here.
00:00:19 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): There have been a lot of great panels today. I hope you all enjoyed just coming from the college fair and the program fair. I hope you all had the ability to take a look at the keynote speaker and the keynote address at the beginning of today’s session. I know, for me personally, I look forward to implementing the Curiosity Hour.
00:00:35 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): And seeing how we’re able to do that, and get… become a little bit more curious, even though I’m not…
00:00:41 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): I’m not that that old, but I’m getting to the point where I definitely need to exercise my curiosity muscle a little bit more.
00:00:47 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): And so, welcome again. I appreciate you guys taking the time to be here. My name is Ryan, I will be the MC of the panel. A little bit about myself, I am an alumnus of the Pioneer Research Institute. I conduct my research in 2020, and I am a recent graduate of Cornell University.
00:01:01 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): Today, I am joined here with Melissa Rodriguez, Senior Assistant Director of Undergraduate Admissions at Caltech, Sarah Petty, Director of Pre-College Success at Teen Sharp, and Dr. Melissa Gao, Clinical Associate Professor of Management and Corporate Communication at UNC’s Keenan Flagler Business School.
00:01:19 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): And so today’s panel is titled, From Learning to Leading, Do College Admissions and Your True Path Get Along?
00:01:26 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): And this is one that I am particularly excited to be the MC for, because I know that this is a topic that’s on the minds of educators, parents, and especially students as they’re on this college admission journey. When I was applying to colleges, which was only a couple of years ago, but it feels like forever ago, this was a constant consideration.
00:01:44 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): what are the colleges looking for? How much stuff is enough, by showing enough of the quote-unquote right stuff. And so I’m excited today to be able to talk to the three of you, experts in the field, to be able to elucidate a little bit more of this, and ameliorate, hopefully, some of the anxieties that might be out there.
00:02:01 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): And so where I’ll start today’s session, is I’ll ground this with a study that Pioneer recently conducted, where they found that students were most successful in their college admissions when they, one, reported 3 to 4 extracurriculars over the course of high school, and two, spent about 4 to 10 hours a week on said extracurriculars.
00:02:21 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): And so, not an overwhelmingly a lot, as the study also found, students who went more over that 10-hour mark, or more over those for extracurriculars, noticed a drop-off in their college admission search. And so.
00:02:34 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): I think students out there understand this theory, that they should focus on learning rather than padding their resumes, but this, from the student perspective, constantly gets tested. If you go on social media, you’ll see accounts of statistics and, like, where they got into school, which makes me, someone who’s already graduated from college, incredibly anxious, and so I can only imagine.
00:02:54 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): what it is for the undergraduates, or you’ll hear statements from their friends or other consultants being, like, saying something to the effect of, well, getting published increases your chances of getting into a top school by three times, and all of your friends are doing it.
00:03:06 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): And so, as such, students can now feel like… or students can sometimes feel like they’re trying to push themselves into a mold for college, not wanting to take risks.
00:03:14 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): And so, where I want to start with,
00:03:17 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): Melissa Rodriguez, if I could start with you, as someone who has background in reading applications and college admissions, how should students and how should parents and educators rationalize statements based on your experience? Are there certain checkboxes you’re looking for? What do you think of these sentiments that are out there?
00:03:35 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: Yeah, great question. Thank you, Ryan. I think about…
00:03:38 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: the requirements. Those are the things that are necessary, but the way in which you curate those things, that is what helps students really stand out. You know, I think that there is, to your point, an exceedingly, increasing amount of pressure that students feel to kind of
00:03:57 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: check every box, to the maximum, and kind of collecting all of these extracurriculars like they’re infinity stones, and that’s, like, the way to get in. But we have to remember that colleges and universities are places that value and cherish
00:04:11 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: learning and growth for learning and growth’s sake as well. So, you know, I think you mentioned, like, you know, getting published will increase your admissions chances by 3 times, and really trying to, measure the outcomes of things, and it’s just really, really important to center yourself within this, and your true passions, because we get excited
00:04:36 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: about your true passions and the way you convey them, and it’s evident when a student is kind of doing things in a more passive and less motivated way. You know, speaking for Caltech specifically, we are absolutely not the place to do things as means to an end.
00:04:53 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: We… you must relish inquiry and… and growth.
00:04:57 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: and all of those things, and those are the qualities that we look for, but the way that they’re manifested is going to present themselves differently, and I cannot stress that enough, that you as an individual is who we want to get to know, and not a mold that you think. I would really encourage folks to consider being moldless in a lot of ways, and making your own mold.
00:05:18 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: As that is really something that stands out.
00:05:23 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): Awesome, thank you. I appreciate that, and I especially appreciate the emphasis there on passion, and being able to find one’s own particular voice, and what they’ve done to be able to demonstrate that.
00:05:34 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): And so, Sarah, if I could then turn to you with your experience in consulting and helping students along this path, and coming up with these stories, cultivating these passions, what advice do you have on the consultant side, and then also
00:05:46 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): what… what’s… what is your reaction at… at sentiments like the getting published increases your chances, and all your friends are doing it, and that kind of… and that, I guess, zeitgeist, almost, that is out there.
00:05:58 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: Yeah, so at Teen Sharp, one of the phrases that we always share with students is, if eligible, apply.
00:06:06 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: We’re trying to get students to see that they should be very open-minded, and that they never know where an interest could appear. So we have, like, a list of programs that we share with students, and we say, don’t think too much, just apply.
00:06:21 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: Because even the process of applying allows them to learn about themselves. The questions are intentionally about, oh, well, what interests you in this? So then they have to do research into it, and those are those types of skills that colleges are looking for, that a student can really research a program.
00:06:37 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: connected back to themselves, and show that intellectual curiosity. So, with students, definitely a lesson is be open-minded.
00:06:47 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: I think one of the worst things I hear is, oh, well, I’m only interested in business, so I’m only going to do business-aligned things. No, no. What… how do you know that? I still don’t know all of the things that I’m interested in, so that I always tell students that. You need to be… you’re lifelong learners. You cannot already just
00:07:07 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: Put yourself in a box.
00:07:09 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: Because you never know what you’ll get out of something. I think of a student that he, he joined the environmental club at his school.
00:07:19 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: And he… he was engineering, very math, science-based, but he ended up just loving the Environmental Science Club. He, like, attended the summit, it was a YES summit the first year, and then he ended up saying, hey, I want to actually lead this. So he coordinated all of the speakers, and got a leadership role within that, and ended up doing some research as well, based on a topic that he learned from it. But all of this came from
00:07:43 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: him just being interested and just following… following that interest line. And he actually was… he ended up being able to connect that back to engineering, right? Because there’s a lot that you can do within engineering to also impact environmental issues. So he actually found a way to really intersperse them, but he didn’t go into it thinking that. He really went in because a friend was like.
00:08:07 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: I really like this club, you should do it. That’s fine. Just do it, and then you can see that if you’re interested in it. I think the most interesting students are the ones that do have a variety of extracurricular activities that they’ve gone deep into, and they may not be completely related.
00:08:26 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: That’s completely fine. They do not need to always have this thorough line that connects back to their passions. So there’s a lot I could say here, but I’m going to let us keep moving.
00:08:39 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): Yeah, absolutely, and I appreciate the time that she went through on the different responses. I had an extracurricular in high school where exactly the same sort of thing. I just had a friend who kept bugging me about it, and he’s like, you gotta do this, you gotta do this.
00:08:50 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): And a little bit hesitant at first, but I got into it. It’s just one of those things that you fall in love with, so always being open to trying new things, that definitely is something that is very important.
00:08:59 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): Professor Guile, I also would like to ask kind of a similar question to you. With your experience as an educator and being in college classrooms, we talk a lot about the passion in undergraduate admissions. I’m curious what you see in your students. What are some of the qualities that you see as conducive to success within the classroom that are things that they could start practicing now in high school?
00:09:23 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): Well, and it’s really… it’s lovely to follow. First of all, thank you for having me, and it’s also lovely to follow Melissa Rodriguez and Sarah’s, discussions about
00:09:33 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): passion and things like that, because that’s exactly the type of thing that we continue to encourage at… even at business school, which is I teach primarily juniors and seniors, and…
00:09:45 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): Saying yes to different opportunities, and really trying to think outside of… or, you know.
00:09:53 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): you know, completely create your own mold for what your future might look like. Because there’s a couple of things. Steve Jobs has this great quote from his, like, famous Stanford University graduation speech, where he talks about how you can only really connect the dots backwards.
00:10:12 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): And, you know, he took a calligraphy class in college, which then led… was integrated when he was designing the first Macintosh computer, and that is why, like, all of us have such beautiful font choices, in our life, and how design elements and really creativity
00:10:30 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): became the… one of the key drivers, that differentiated Apple from other competitors.
00:10:39 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): And I really think we… you don’t know who you’re going to become until you give that
00:10:45 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): opportunity, a little bit of a chance to explore. And the… thinking about the pathways that you want to explore, the careers that we are preparing you for, most of them don’t exist yet.
00:10:59 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): And so really thinking about what…
00:11:03 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): Excites you about learning and inquiry, and how you can take those, kind of.
00:11:11 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): ideas of the things that really get you going, and then you can start to maybe, you know, connect those dots backwards. Even from, you know, even as high school students, to really think about
00:11:24 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): who that makes me as a person. We run through a lot of different kind of career exercises in some of the classes that we teach, where we really have you think about what are… what are some future opportunities for you, but what really
00:11:40 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): excites you in your day? Like, what classes that you’re taking that really you look forward to going to? You think the homework’s amazing? What extracurriculars are really the things that
00:11:51 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): not only are the things you want to spend your time on, but the things that you look forward to spending your time on. And how can you lean into those, rather than just trying to check a box? Like, you’re… you’re not…
00:12:05 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): you’re not a box, you’re not just a number, like, you are a whole person, and that’s who I think colleges want to see show up, is that whole person, and that’s who, you know, I want to educate, is the person who’s just there and ready to be who they authentically are.
00:12:23 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): Awesome. I appreciate that response. One of the things you hit there, the concept of homework possibly being fun to students, I think that that’s incredibly controversial, but I think that that’s a very useful heuristic in trying to evaluate, oh, is this something that I like doing? Is this something where I want to do the work?
00:12:40 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): As opposed to it being a chore. And I… so I appreciate that, and I appreciate your insights in what you’ve been able to see at college.
00:12:48 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): And so, pivoting here a little bit, with the theme of the summit being to lead us, to lead us to learn, and leadership, especially within college applications, being something that students feel as almost an essential thing of being on it. I know when I… I remember when I was in high school.
00:13:04 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): it was, oh, if I want to get into a top echelon school, I have to either start a club or be a president of one. You’d see, like, the announcements or things on club listings, where it’d be like.
00:13:15 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): I guess that this is a club, but I… it’s very obvious, like, what the goal of the club is. And so, Melissa Rodriguez, if I could go back to you, what is… what is the value of leadership? I know that leadership within clubs and within different rules is something that is important, but what…
00:13:34 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): How do… how, in your experiences, have colleges evaluated leadership within the college admissions process?
00:13:40 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: Yeah, that’s a really great question. Leadership is meant to be someone who, again, is… is…
00:13:48 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: intent on relishing the process of doing something. Hopefully, you know, also in collaboration with others, so being a leader doesn’t just mean that you are kind of, you know, forcing people and bossing people to do certain things. Leadership might come up as being a visionary, right? And maybe you are the president of a club. At the same time, we see leadership come through in a lot of different ways, so…
00:14:13 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: Letters of recommendation, when we’re reading those. You’re not necessarily the president of your calculus class or anything like that, but a recommender might be saying, this is a student who maybe they’re not the most vocal, but when they’re, you know, typing into class.
00:14:28 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: they say something profound when they are speaking, and maybe they have invited a lot of interesting dialogue, or maybe they’re very excellent at, you know, helping elevate the learning experience for others. So leadership is something that can come through in paid work experience. Like, there’s just so many different ways in which a student can be a leader. I think that it is just about, again, how that’s presented.
00:14:51 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: But there’s some… that’s, again, just kind of to drill home this idea that you don’t have to have it all figured out and have this, you know, I made this nonprofit and I’ve raised all of this money. There are so many different ways that you can lead and impact your community, your school, your own notions of what you want to be. And so I really encourage you all to think about this in very flexible, creative ways.
00:15:16 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: Because there is so much more potential beyond just the very kind of linear, maybe more expected ways to be a leader.
00:15:25 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): Yeah, absolutely, and I appreciate that you went through a lot of the different ways, if almost non-typical sometimes, that people think of, where you don’t necessarily think of leadership being something that comes up in a recommendation, because for whatever reason, you think it’s only something that can show up in an activity list, or in an honor, or something like that.
00:15:44 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): So, I appreciate you taking the time and being able to Go through this.
00:15:48 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): Professor Guile, if I could also go to you, I’m curious, again, within leadership and teaching your college course, and how that has different direction. I know you just talked a lot about passion, or about passion being a driving focus, and that being something that is incredibly present and incredibly important for students to have going into college. Could you talk a little bit about leadership and different qualities of leadership that you also see?
00:16:13 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): At the college level.
00:16:16 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): I think, you know, as a primarily a classroom teacher, we see a lot of, you know, the types of leadership in classrooms that Melissa talked about. One of the things… so, I teach business communication as my primary model, and a lot of people think that
00:16:34 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): a model of leadership has to be the person who takes charge, you know, is the one that speaks first, tells everyone what to do. That is just one model of what a leader looks like, and in fact, sometimes it’s not always the most effective model of what a leader looks like. Sometimes a leader
00:16:55 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): is the person that brings out the best in every other member of their team, even if that means taking, like, their ideas taking a backseat. It’s the person who goes out of their way to make sure every single member of that team’s idea is heard and given airtime.
00:17:11 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): In order to ensure that the best idea, not just the loudest one, gets put forward. And so, one of the things that I like to think about in terms of leadership is something that we call, like, appreciative inquiry, where it’s a strengths-based model that’s an approach to leadership, where you really think about
00:17:30 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): what kind of leader am I, and what kind of leader could I be? So am I a person that’s sort of an invisible, sort of driving from behind type of leader? Am I the person that’s going to be, like, the front speaking, you know, the front face of this, strategy? And then really.
00:17:50 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): Identifying those strengths allows you not only to
00:17:54 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): Really lean into that, being that kind of leader, but also, in terms of admissions stuff, being able to articulate what leadership looks like for you.
00:18:03 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): And because then you will be able to make that more transparent when you’re, trying to convey that to scholarship committees and admissions, counselors, at least as far as I know.
00:18:17 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): Yeah, absolutely, especially the communication aspect, and then also that humility that comes with listening to other ideas, being an involved and team player. That’s definitely something I’ve appreciated as I’ve gotten older, is seeing a lot more teams, and I also have to imagine that also in your private industry experience and working with different companies, this is also that… something that you see a lot.
00:18:37 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): Absolutely.
00:18:38 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): Awesome.
00:18:39 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): So, I’m going to turn now to, actually, a question at the… in the chat. So, I see a question here from Temukchin, and so Timucin, I hope I’m pronouncing that correctly, asks, when applying to a university, is it worth showing yourself on the side that suits the university’s mission, or should I just show myself the way that I am?
00:18:58 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): And I would also probably ask is, is there a middle ground between the two? Which end of the spectrum should it be? So, either Sarah or Melissa, if either of you want to take a crack at answering this, feel free to do so.
00:19:12 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: And I think Melissa has said it, that the universities are really looking for the individual, and actually, both, both Melissa’s have said that, that you’re not, you’re not a box.
00:19:24 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: Right? And, you know, I think one of the, the things that worries me when students, when I’m working with students, is when they ask, oh, well, what does the college want to hear?
00:19:35 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: Like, I had a meeting with a student just this week, and we were fleshing out descriptions for her activities, and I asked her just more about one of her activities, and she’s like, oh, well, what do you think the college would want to hear? And I was like, I’m not interested in that. I just want to know what you did in this activity. Like, what was your impact? How would that activity be different without you?
00:19:54 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: How did it impact you? What did you learn from it? I said, we’re not thinking about what the college wants. This is about you and your development. And the best descriptions are the ones that show that you genuinely really wanted to be in that.
00:20:09 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: I can tell very quickly when I’m working with a student, and I ask, oh, well, tell me about this activity, and they’re like, oh, I didn’t really do anything. I mean, we met, like, maybe monthly, and that’s about it.
00:20:21 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: I’m like, oh, well, great! I mean, how… what are we going to put in a description? You’re not going to be able to talk about it at all in your college essays.
00:20:27 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: And that happens. I wanted to also highlight that connection back to your, college essays. Supplemental essays. A very common one is intellectual curiosity. Another is describe an extracurricular activity. See those, a lot, very often. And if you have really not been deeply involved in your activities.
00:20:47 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: and you don’t have anything to contribute to that essay, it’s very challenging. It’s very challenging. When I’m editing essays, I can quickly tell if the student didn’t do very much.
00:20:58 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: I can quickly tell, because it’s very general. And then I put a question, hey, we need to put an example here. What did that look like when you collaborated with another club, let’s say? And they said, oh, I just put that there, because that’s what, you know, we’re supposed to do.
00:21:13 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: I’m like, but did you do that? Right now, I’m doubting that, reading this essay. So it’s more about, like, how can I be deeply involved in this? I think that’s why the Pioneer study showed the 3 to 4, but deeper involvement.
00:21:30 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: you know, I think that is very important, that you are showing that deeper involvement in a club, instead of saying, I’m part of all of these different clubs, because when it comes down to it, even though 150 characters doesn’t seem like a lot of space for the Common App activities descriptions.
00:21:49 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: It’s very easy to differentiate descriptions of when you know there’s been impact, and when you know that student really was just a member of it.
00:22:00 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: I would also just quickly add that if you are noticing that the mission statement does not align with you, perhaps that’s not the university for you, right? That should help you get closer to what you feel is a fit. If you are saying, should I show up as someone entirely different from me, or someone like me?
00:22:18 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: That’s something that you should, like… there should be some flags going on. Caltech’s mission statement, just very quickly, is paraphrased, we want to advance humanity through research integrated through STEM. So if you are not interested in literally changing the world through research and really hard classes.
00:22:36 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: don’t apply. If you are thinking about applying just because it’s on a top-ranked list or something.
00:22:42 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: That’s a whole other issue, so I think that that’s something that… that Temujin can ponder and sit with after the session.
00:22:52 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): Yeah, absolutely. I think that that was kind of the biggest aha moment for me as I went through my college applications, especially when it comes to the why us essays, is what I found in my experience was it’s not just, oh, this is why I want to go to this school. I always… I would talk with my friends, and we’d always scoff, and it’d be like, why is there a why us essay for harder?
00:23:11 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): obviously, I want to go to Harvard because it’s one of the best schools in the country.
00:23:16 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): But it’s the Lyos essay, it being a two-way street. Why are you a good fit for that college? What, in the mission statement, what in the values, what in the core beliefs of the university do you exemplify that, is able to… that you’re able to show that, so that it shows that you’re a good fit for the school, and there is that mutual relationship, and there is that mutual benefit?
00:23:38 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): Oh, and I… oh, I also might add, just in terms of the… the why us, and also just…
00:23:44 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): I think sometimes we see students come in that are… they have this really sort of myopic vision of what their… their life plan is going to be… is going to be, and, you know, give yourself room to change and grow, and…
00:23:59 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): explore different classes, maybe…
00:24:02 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): I… so many of my students switch majors, switch career paths, switch things that they think they want to do, and that’s not going to end just from college. Like, get… going… getting into college is… is not the end point, it’s the starting point. And so really give yourself the leeway to explore, like, what this journey might look like, and that, you know.
00:24:25 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): changing the world through research in STEM, like, sounds great. So, like, you know, if that’s your thing, like, then do it. But that also gives you a lot of room to grow, so think about where you can see yourself flourishing and growing into the person that you’re going to become.
00:24:43 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): Absolutely, and I think that that’s a really good note to hit on, when… when I found out that I would… was emceeing this discussion, because parents aren’t a part of this co-curricular summit, I went and talked to my mom, and I was like.
00:24:53 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): all right, what are… if you could ask a college admissions officer something about, about college admissions and an individual story, what is something that… that you would want to ask? And the way that that conversation went… went is she was…
00:25:05 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): She lamented the fact that it feels like a lot of students now are risk-averse, not taking those intellectual risks because they want to go towards a particular path, or feeling a need to… feeling a need to do everything that one could possibly do to be able to throw on a resume.
00:25:22 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): And so, this is, I guess, a question that I’ll open for anyone who wants it. What role does risk play in telling an individual story about an application? Is that something that is valued? How would you…
00:25:36 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): What would you say to a student that feels like that they’re going in a lot of different directions, but not necessarily knowing what it is specifically that they want to do yet?
00:25:50 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: So earlier in the college fair, I was kind of talking about this a little bit, and how,
00:25:56 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: The college admissions process and the applications and the essays require you to…
00:26:02 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: show up in a way that you have not really been trained to show up, right? You’re writing a Common App essay of 650 words, and you have maybe learned to write a thesis statement at the end of the first paragraph, and then my topic sentence goes here, and that’s not essentially what we need to see in the Common Application, and sure, sometimes we might, but there are also those students that pop up, just kind of Kool-Aid Man kicking through the door in a completely unexpected way.
00:26:27 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: And they took a risk, and I can remember those things, right? And so sometimes I think that there is a lot to be said about, you know, earlier we were asking the question about
00:26:37 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: how valuable is it to just kind of be a very regimented checking of the boxes, and I’m just going to curate things just so, and that will result in a great chance of admission. You know, and again, talking as someone who is representing a very innovative institute.
00:26:54 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: Do you think we cherish risk?
00:26:56 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: Yeah, we do. We cherish creativity. We have professors who are literally working to beam sunlight from the sun through a satellite back down to Earth.
00:27:05 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: you don’t just do that in a very prim and proper way, right? You kinda gotta be a little bit kooky and crazy. And so I think that there’s a lot to be said about risk-taking. Again, we look for bright people, and I think that that shows up in a lot of different ways.
00:27:21 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: So that’s just a commentary on risk. Same with research, right? You all are engaging in research in the crowds. It’s not always perfect, right? You’re gonna fail, and you learn through that, and so it’s also not about having a perfect product, it’s about what are all of the things that happened and that you took away through that process as well.
00:27:40 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: Yeah, I love that, and I think… I just wanted to, read a activity description, and I feel like in the activities, this is where you can really show your different… going back to leadership, but as a leader, what part of that is risk-taking.
00:27:56 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: And, you know, there’s this one student I’m working with this year, she founded a hygiene carts
00:28:03 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: Group, for her school.
00:28:05 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: And it, you know, at her… in her district, there’s not funding for, hygiene supplies. So she decided that… that that was something missing, and she had to advocate for it, because it was not something that the district was prioritizing.
00:28:20 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: And, you know, through… she put in her description, raised $750 plus in grants, stock bathroom hygiene parts, managed 20 volunteers, track inventory, urged district to fund and expand program district-wide.
00:28:35 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: that’s pretty impressive. There’s a lot of steps in there, right? That she had to take risks, she had to put herself out there. She talks about in another essay how she was very quiet, she more likes to be in the background, like, even part of this club now, she enjoys
00:28:51 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: She enjoyed, like, partnering with NHS to find volunteers, but now… now it’s kind of like a self-running
00:28:58 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: club. She doesn’t have to lead very much now, because she already set all of the… the… everything in motion. But she had to take a lot of personal risks, as well, of… of starting this. So I think it’s… it’s trying to… risk is part of it.
00:29:14 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: Going back to that phrase of, if eligible, apply. I think that’s just important to say, just take a risk. For a lot of students, it’s a risk, applying to something that they’re like, I don’t know if I’m interested in that. Just do it. Just do it. Take the risk.
00:29:29 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): One of the things I just wanted to highlight about what Sarah was talking about with the students’ stories is also how the student quantified the success, like, in terms of how successful it was, and it wasn’t just like, I started this organization. It’s like, here’s how many carts we have, here’s how many volunteers we have, being able to articulate
00:29:48 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): the…
00:29:49 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): like, the telling the story behind your leadership skills and your extracurricular activities, and I think that’s something that Melissa also hit on, was that, the communication in these essays is really key to, not in both for college admissions, but also for, on the other end, when I’m having… helping my students get into graduate school and find jobs. They need to be able to articulate
00:30:14 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): Their activities in college, and how those activities lean into what they want to be for their future career, and what kind of impact that they had, and how they themselves are invested in that.
00:30:30 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): So, thank you for the qualification, the addition on practically applying those skills, not only for students in college, and then also going to graduate school and beyond.
00:30:40 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): And so, with that, time flies when you’re having fun. It has been a half hour.
00:30:45 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): So, at this point, I think we’ll go ahead and call it here. I would like to thank Dr. Guile, Sarah, and Melissa for your time, your expertise. My hope is that for the attendees, there was something that you were able to take away. My hope is that it alleviated some of the anxieties that you had beforehand.
00:31:03 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): And so, with that…
00:31:06 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): The next section will be in just a few minutes. It’ll be at 2.10 Eastern. It’ll be all about developing tomorrow’s skills today, preparing to lead college and beyond. I think that this is going to be a… or preparing to lead in college and beyond. I think that this is a really good extension on the leadership quality specifically that we talked about, and different ways to exemplify that.
00:31:24 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): So I hope that you, the attendees, are able to
00:31:27 Ryan Dwyer (Pioneer Academics): hop over there and learn from that panel, but I think that that’s all that we have here. Again, I appreciate your questions, your time, your feedback, your responses, and I hope you have a great rest of the session. I look forward to seeing you at the end of the session today.
00:31:40 Sara Petty | TeenSHARP: Thank you, everyone.
00:31:41 Melissa Rodriguez | Caltech: Thank you so much.
00:31:42 Melissa Geil – Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill): Thank you so much.
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