11/10/97 ONLINE ORIGINAL: FIVE FRESHMEN, FRESH FROM THE ORDEAL

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FIVE FRESHMEN, FRESH FROM THE ORDEAL

College visits. SAT tests. Essays. And more applications than anyone wants to remember. That's what students and their families endure in the whirlwind junior and senior years of high school. To learn just how students feel about this often-unnerving process, Business Week's Chief of Correspondents Jim Ellis on Oct. 30 talked to five college freshmen about the trials and tribulations of their college search.
The students were:
Geeta Dayal, an undecided major (leaning toward chemistry) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Michael Greenman, a student in the six-year law program at the State University of New York at Albany.
Melissa Rodriguez, an undecided major (learning toward either creative writing or aquatic biology) at Brown University.
Amanda Saberson, an undecided major (leaning toward business) at Indiana University.
Irene Tan, a business administration major at Carnegie-Mellon.
Here are highlights from their roundtable:

ELLIS: College planning is the major high school event for many students. When did you start?
GREENMAN: I had a sister four years older than me, so I got to go along and see the colleges that she was interested in. So I was exposed to the process when I was still in eighth and ninth grades.
SABERSON: In the beginning of my junior year, my parents began making me go to visit colleges whenever we had days off school. Basically, I didn't want to go: I thought it was way too early and that I was way too young. But after we started seeing some campuses, I got into it.
DAYAL: At my high school, a lot of people thought about college too early. They were getting stressed out about it in the ninth grade. Since I was 12 and saw a public television special about MIT, I knew that I wanted to go there. But other than working on getting good grades, I didn't start until my junior year seriously listing any colleges. I had a list of about 20 in my junior year.
RODRIGUEZ: My high school was the exact opposite. I had no idea where I wanted to go and didn't get serious until the fall of my senior year. It was a little bit hectic.
ELLIS: That's a really high-pressure time, isn't it?

SABERSON: It's really stressful. It's really overwhelming. All of a sudden you're getting all this mail, from schools that you don't know much about, and you know that you're facing making a big decision for your future that will affect the rest of your life.
ELLIS: Are there strategies to lower the stress levels?

DAYAL: One of the best things a student can do is apply to some schools with rolling admissions. That way they can apply in August or September and hopefully be accepted in the fall. Then they know that they're going to go somewhere, and it takes a lot of the pressure off.
TAN: That's right. Students should definitely use either rolling admissions or schools that allow Early Action [which give nonbinding offers of admission early, as opposed to Early Decision, which is binding]. That way, you know sooner, and it really takes away some stress.
ELLIS: Does it make the process more bearable if you concentrate on a particular type of school or curriculum?
RODRIGUEZ: Because I couldn't afford to apply at a lot of colleges, I focused on schools that had good English or creative writing programs. That made the choice easier.
GREENMAN: It also helps to go in knowing what you want to do [after college]. Because I already knew that I wanted to go into law, it allowed me to focus my college search. So SUNY's 3+3 law program, where you do your undergraduate work in three years and then get your law degree in the second three, appealed to me.
SABERSON: I wish I had known what I wanted to do. But because I didn't, I decided that I wanted to go to a big school--one that gave me a lot of choices in majors, and one where I could change my major if I had to without having to transfer and risk losing credits.
ELLIS: Everybody takes college tours. Did you get a lot out of them?

RODRIGUEZ: Totally avoid talking to the representatives of the school. It's better to talk to real students.
TAN: Right. Don't believe anything the tour guides tell you. They're paid to be perky. You have to find out for yourself what things are really like. It's better to take a sleeping-bag weekend. At Carnegie-Mellon you'll stay with a volunteer, and watch them go to class. They're more likely to tell you what's going on than somebody from the admissions office.
GREENMAN: I visited Indiana University where Amanda goes. My sister's roommate had a brother there, and I stayed in his fraternity house. That was so much better vs. other universities that I visited because it gave me a chance to talk to somebody my own age to give me a social view of the school, and not only what they give you on the tour.
ELLIS: Exactly what should a parent's role be during the college search? Can they be too involved?
DAYAL: Because my parents hadn't been involved in looking at colleges since my brother went years ago, I really did almost everything myself--going to my parents when I needed a check written or something like that. But I've seen it happen where the parent takes over. If your parent says "Apply here!" but you don't really want to go there, it really puts a student in a bad situation.
GREENMAN: I had parents who basically supported me. But I have a friend who has parents who had been pushing her since she was in elementary school to go to this one college. She didn't get in, and she felt really bad about it. I think for them to put that kind of expectation on their kid is a terrible thing.
RODRIGUEZ: Actually, parents are a lot more helpful after you've been accepted. They know you and can talk to you about whether you'd really be happy at a school. Or they can sit around the table with you and tell you exactly what you're going to have to do [financially] if you choose one school over another.
ELLIS: Do students always apply only to the schools with the best fit, or do other considerations shape the decision?
TAN: If all your friends are applying to a certain kind of school, then it puts a lot a pressure on you to look at those schools, too. You say that since you're on the same intellectual level as your friends and can do the same work, then maybe you should be looking at the same schools.
DAYAL: The danger is that many times people will think that they should apply to this top school or that top school but don't think about what will happen if they don't get into that top school. They'll apply to all those schools that are really hard to get into, and then they'll have a backup that they really don't want to go to. The big problem is just trying to tell people to [also] apply to a variety of schools--mid-range, sureshots, and top choices--that they wouldn't mind going to.
ELLIS: Now for the big question: How many schools did each of you apply to?
DAYAL: Ten schools. I basically applied to all those schools because I couldn't decide which schools to cross off my list.
RODRIGUEZ: I applied to four schools because I didn't have the money to apply to a lot of schools. But they were four very different types of schools that would have given me different experiences, from a school in-state in Florida, to Brown, to Oglethorpe--a small school in Atlanta with a great program.
SABERSON: Six.

GREENMAN: I sent away for 11 applications, and applied to nine of the schools.
TAN: For me, it was so many that I can't really remember. It was in the teens, probably about 14. I wanted to have choices, everything from Trenton State to Rutgers to small colleges. But I can't remember exactly how many...
RODRIGUEZ: Yes, when this process is over, you kind of blot it all out and get on with your life.

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