Associate Director of College Counseling Taylor Ware presented information on the college admission process to Juniors and Lowers.
The College Counseling Office (CCO) met with Lowers last Thursday and with Juniors for the first time last Friday. These meetings were newly added to the CCO’s program in response to increased curiosity and concern regarding college applications. Similar to the meetings hosted in the Fall Term for Lowers and Uppers, these meetings worked toward relieving stress and helping students plan for the college counseling process.
Sean Logan, Dean of College Counseling, spoke on the CCO’s goals and intentions behind the meeting. He urged students to begin preparing for college early by taking advantage of Andover’s resources from the start.
“[Our] goal is to hopefully give you a sense of what are some of the things that colleges are interested in seeing are and also helping you focus on what’s important to think about in terms of being at Andover. There are courses that are appropriate for the student. All Andover students work hard. It’s a pretty blanket statement, but kids come here because they enjoy their academics and they love learning [and] want to work hard,” said Logan.
Logan continued, “Philosophically, we don’t want you looking past and over to something a couple of years in the future. We want to make sure you’re staying focused on this with an idea towards, ‘OK, here are the things that I need to be doing towards college,’ but it’s like engaging in your classes, being involved on campus, doing all those kinds of things.”
For Lowers, the meeting offered an in-depth overview of the college counseling process, including resources to prepare for standardized testing and advice for course planning. Colette Ruiz ’27 appreciated the timing of the meeting, reflecting on how it clarified students’ doubts about college applications.
“It was helpful because I know a lot of students have a bit of anxiety or anticipation related to [college applications], and there’s other students who [want] to be more enlightened on the subject matter since it’s very common as soon as you enter 10th and 11th grade for people to start talking about this. So it was very considerate to start early on before we return as Uppers because there’s more stress and work. Introducing it earlier has it pre-set in our minds,” said Ruiz.
A key focus of the meeting was making summer meaningful in preparation for college. Reflecting on this message, Henry Zimmerman ’27 encouraged students to explore their passions and interests in order to add purpose to their summer.
“The message that you should make your summer meaningful is a lot more open to interpretation. For some people, a meaningful summer might be curing cancer in a lab. That’s super meaningful. For others, that might mean slowing down, spending time with family, spending more time in your community, being around the people and places you care about… I hope what people get out of that message is that what makes someone else’s summer meaningful is not necessarily what makes your summer meaningful. You should find what makes your summer meaningful, not what makes your summer look meaningful,” said Zimmerman.
In their meeting, Juniors received similar advice for college counseling, followed by an activity which involved organizing their goals and activities for next year. Maya Tomlinson ’28 commented on the points discussed by the college counselors, noting how they gave her a new perspective on college, but simultaneously felt contradictory and repetitive at times.
“I feel like a lot of people see Andover as very rigorous in that it’s very difficult and prepares you to go to a good school. It seems from what the college counselors were saying that that is not the case at all and that Andover could care less as to where you go to school. It’s not that the only aim is to prepare you to go to a spectacular college. The way they made it seem was that college was something that was less important, which is the opposite from what we’ve been taught to believe,” said Tomlinson.
Tomlinson continued, “They brought up a lot of points regarding how your experiences at Andover and outside of Andover will shape your college application process and how not everything should be centered around college applications but you should still have stuff regarding college applications. Some of it contradicted itself in that a big part of the meeting was talking about how we shouldn’t be worried about that [and] whatnot but at the same time, they were telling us to plan out our entire life around college.”
Logan explained that the CCO consciously adjusts its curriculum to account for broader trends in college admissions. While the future of the college counseling program may be subject to change, the CCO’s goal is to to find a balance between Andover life and college preparation. “We constantly tweak our process, and as we look at ninth and tenth grades, we want to figure out ways that best fit with the philosophy of Andover [and] philosophy of the college counseling process and also really address what we see as some of being able to hopefully bring down, [for] students, concerns about the process at an earlier age so they can focus on Andover,” said Logan.
