Head of School's Blogs

University Road Trip

by Bill GERRITZ 29 October, 2010

During October, I took an 8 state road trip, visiting the campuses and meeting with Deans of Admission at:

Claremont-Mckenna College

Colby College

Columbia University

Cornell University

Pomona College

University of Pennsylvania

Wesleyan University

Yale University.

A year ago, I made similar visits to Brown, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, and Princeton.

Three questions guided the visits to these highly selective schools. How well does ISB prepare students for acceptance and success at these schools? Are there ways we could improve our programs to make our students even more attractive? How is the IB diploma program perceived? In essence, I wanted to be sure that ISB is doing everything possible to support our hard working students in achieving their dreams, both with our overall learning programs and with college counseling.

I chose not to meet with the admissions officers themselves because our high school counselors already have close professional and in many cases "friend" relationships with these individuals. I wanted to go to the "top."  Each conversation lasted from 1 to 2 hours.   Here is some of what I learned.

1. All the Deans were well acquainted with ISB. They indicated that it has an excellent reputation and that our students are looked on favorably. Our college counselors were well known and respected for their professionalism and probity. ISB was seen as a school with a high level of academic rigor coupled with excellent community service and co-curricular programs.

2. All rated IB as the best preparation for their schools.  Four of them called it “The Gold Standard” among college preparation programs. They were quite familiar with the specifics of the IB, for example, mentioning their minimum predicted scores. Interestingly, they value the IB predicted scores more highly than SAT results.

3. When I asked about the profile of the highly attractive applicant, the answers were somewhat diverse but with some commonalities, see point 4 below.  They emphasized that students should learn about the academic/student life characteristics of universities and pick the ones that best meet their needs and expectations. 

4. The selection process of going from 20,000+  applicants down to 6,000 is based on grades and test scores mainly,  going from 6,000 to the final 300 to 1,500 depends mainly on student essays, teacher recommendations and, to some degree, alumni interviews. Students driven by intellectual or activity passions are way more likely to be selected than those who just "check the boxes" they think necessary for acceptance.  The term intellectual curiosity kept appearing in the discussions. They also want students with high levels of social and collaboration skills.

5. All eight thought our change to HAL grading would not hinder and in many cases would advantage applicants from ISB. Three of them volunteered to critique the HAL grading scheme.

6. Only one of the schools was needs blind for non-US  applicants. The other seven indicated that knowing parents of non-US students were willing and able to pay all college costs would be helpful.

7. All eight thought that an Invention Center would be a valuable addition to our co-curricular programs.  They said that very few schools seemed to have such programs in place.

8. All use alumni interviews.  The deans advised preparing students for these interviews.

Bill

PS – Too few of our students apply to liberal arts colleges. In my next blog, I will discuss how and why our students are missing out on some brilliant learning opportunities by not considering these schools. 

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