April 2008

It's not uncommon for applicants to put down deposits at multiple schools. Sometimes there are good reasons: maybe your spouse needs to find out whether he can relocate to a different branch office, or you might need to stay close to home if your dad's health takes a turn for the worse.

Often, though, there's no good reason: many applicants have access to all the information they would
want or need to make a decision by May 1, and they just want more time to
agonize over their decision some more. Closing doors can be scary, but there comes a time when you just have to pick a horse.

Multiple deposits drive admissions officers completely batty. They have to figure out how many people are actually going to show up at orientation, and in a world of multiple deposits, they can't just look at the number of people who have sent in checks. (That's one of the reasons waitlists have grown grotesquely deep.) Every empty seat is a huge revenue hit for the school, so no school wants to be undersubscribed. I've been there, and I feel their pain.

It's therefore not surprising to me that some schools have started playing hardball with multiple deposits.

From Columbia Law School's admitted students website: We cannot support the practice of placing deposits at multiple law schools. Therefore, if you decide to hold a place at Columbia, we ask that you refrain from doing the same at other law schools. Should we discover that a candidate has made commitments to multiple law schools, Columbia reserves the right to revoke our offer of admission.From the University of Chicago Law School's offer letter:We believe that applicants should have at any time only one deposit or letter of intent to enroll at another school unless there are substantial reasons why an applicant cannot make a decision among outstanding offers of admission.... The Law School will contact individuals who have multiple deposits as of June 15 to discuss their situation and their place in the Class of 2011 may be in jeopardy. [Bold in the original]From NYU's enrollment form:___ I plan to enroll at NYU School of Law in Fall 2008. I have no commitment to attend another law school, have not deferred enrollment at another law school, will not apply to another law school, and have withdrawn from other law schools to which I was admitted. [Bold in the original]Given the difficulties that multiple deposits pose for schools, I wouldn't have any problem with those policies but for the fact that LSAC's own rules prohibit them.

From page 4 of the LSAC Statement of Good Admission and Financial Aid Practices 2007-2008:

Except under binding early decision plans, every accepted applicant should be free to accept a new offer from a school even though a deposit has been paid to another school.That's what lawyers like to call "plain English." No ambiguity there.

What does that mean for you? Ultimately LSAC is just the sum of its member law schools, so don't look to them to slap any wrists here.

These threats against applicants -- to put their offers in jeopardy if they exercise their express right under LSAC rules -- are distasteful and hypocritical, but there's probably not much applicants can do about it. You may ask yourself why you should take any other LSAC rules seriously -- and there are many -- when the schools themselves don't, but, alas, you have no leverage here, and no real recourse.

May 1 is coming up. It's time to pick your horse.

Do you want to be on TV?

Are you a student-athlete in a New England-area high school?

Are you aiming for admission to the elite colleges?

If you've answered yes to all of the above, I'd love to hear from you. (Email me here.)

For a television segment, we'll be talking with student-athletes whose chosen sports factor into their college plans (for example, ivies drooling over squash players, colleges throwing money at female golfers, etc.).

From my colleague Marla Gottschalk, our awesome career and workplace coach:

_____________________________________________________________

Watching television the other night I had to laugh out loud when I saw a new IBM commercial. A young employee is noodling around on a social networking site at work when his boss walks in.

Boss: "What are you doing?"

Guy: "Social networking."

Boss: "Social networking?"

Guy: "Everybody's doing it. I have 826 friends."

Boss: [surprised] "That's a lot of friends."

Guy: "Well, I can find anyone."

Boss: "OK. I need to put together an international team of finance experts who know merger arbitrage, have 10+ years experience, speak Cantonese, and can hit the ground running Monday."

Guy: [blank stare] "I don't have any friends like that."

OK - so what can we learn from this mini job preview? As someone who studies work behavior, I have to say: Plenty.

1. Have a realistic view of your skills and abilities. Yes, you may be experienced using the Internet, but be sure that your skill is really work relevant before you brag about it. If the skill is not work relevant, try thinking of ways to make it relevant. Only then should you show it off.

2. If you really want to get ahead at work, innovate. Take what you do well, apply it to your role at work, and figure out a way to fix problems or challenges. Use flexible thinking and a fresh perspective on problems to really make an impact. Find an appropriate time and place to communicate your suggestions. Even the toughest of issues can benefit from a different point of view.

3. This one is obvious: don't spend time on a social networking site at work unless it makes sense for your job. That is a sure way to make a poor impression, or worse.

Overall, new hires should be highly valued. But they, too, may have something to learn after they land the job of their dreams. Rounding out a skill profile with things that you pick up from watching others and asking great questions never hurts. In fact, it will offer you a competitive edge. Never stop learning. Never.

Today's NYT writes about how insanely competitive the college admissions process has been this year ("Elite Colleges Reporting Record Low Admissions"). It's never easy getting into an Ivy or Ivy equivalent, but this year has hit a new level off difficulty. The admissions rate at some of those schools for the 2007-08 year (so far):

Harvard: 7.1%
Yale: 8.3%
Columbia: 8.7%
Brown: 13%
Dartmouth: 13%

Those statistics are in large part a function of demographics. As another recent NYT article explained, this year and next have the highest numbers of graduating high school seniors... ever. That's a lot of people competing for a more or less fixed number of seats at a more or less fixed number of top schools.

Compounding this demographic reality is the end of binding early decision at some of these top schools, which has freed applicants up to apply to more schools than they would have in years past.

More compounding: waitlists. As applications to these schools have soared, more students get waitlisted, thereby inspiring them to apply to more schools as a hedge. (See my waitlist advice here.)

And finally: as more of the elite schools ramp up their recruiting of lower-income applicants and make attendance more affordable, those schools are receiving more applications from people who might not have applied to these schools otherwise.

The end result? “There is a pure level of panic and frenzy like they’ve never seen before,” according to Scott White, director of guidance at Montclair High School in New Jersey.

That's a perfect storm right there, as those two NYT articles lay out so nicely.

One of the things I struggle with as an admissions consultant is the duty I feel not to feed that frenzy and make it worse. The last thing I want to do is to use scare tactics as a sales tool. And yet... those statistics really are scary for a lot of families, and I don't blame them for wigging out a little, or a lot.

And I've never bought into the assumption -- fed more by the most prestigious mainstream media than the elite schools themselves -- that your life will somehow be worse because you didn't attend an Ivy League school. On the other hand, I will also never deny that these elite schools really are excellent, and that brand names help in the real world. Nobody ever has to defend being a "school snob" to me when they are selecting schools for themselves or their kids. I just hate seeing people go insane about it and forget that there are a lot of ways to become successful -- at least in this country -- and they don't all involve the Ivy League.

I don't like the ubiquitous message to millions of teenagers that their whole identities should be wrapped up in going to school X. That's unreasonably fatalistic -- they have so many choices ahead of them that will determine their success or failure, and 99% of those choices have nothing to do with the name of their college.

I believe in excellence, and I don't pretend that all schools are equally good. There are excellent colleges out there -- some of them are Ivies, some of them aren't. Some of them have famous brand names behind them, others don't. Some kids flourish at Ivies, others don't. Life is complicated, and so is picking a college.

Note that this whole conversation is completely separate from the question of paying for college, and whether a certain degree from a certain school at a certain price is worth the investment given whatever the alternatives are. That's an entirely different analysis, one I've written about, for example, here and here.

I love The Office Newb blog, a "twenty-something's guide to the corporate life." In a post called "Age Is the New Glass Ceiling," the Office Newb pondered "why are we all so quick to judge people based on age? Why do we favor the potential of 'experienced' employees over the proven track record of younger ones?"

It's a great question to ask, and I would reply that younger employees don't really have that much of a track record yet. I know it doesn't seem that way from their perspective, which is why Office Newb is frustrated.

In her great follow-up posting, she writes:

I feel that there are lots of mid-level or managerial positions I qualify for based on my skill set, interests and previous experience, however, they usually require 2 – 3 more years of professional experience than I currently have. What exactly can I do about this? Nothing but wait. And I think that is at the root of the frustration for many young people.

Is it a millennial thing? Is it just the folly of youth? Most likely it’s a combination of both. And for a generation that was taught “if you can believe, you can achieve” being told to wait can be a hard lump to swallow.

From the manager side of the table, I often get an earful about Gen Y'ers who show up in the workforce right out of school and expect management experience right off the bat. That was, in fact, the biggest complaint I heard from a group of managers I gave a presentation to at conference a few weeks ago. So Office Newb has tapped into a more widespread, two-way frustration.

It's a conflict I see over and over again. Gen Y doesn't value or respect experience the way older generations do. That outlook is of course inherent to twenty-somethings of any generation, but it seems to be more pronounced with this one. And that causes a certain amount of friction for everyone involved.

There are a lot of fabulous twenty-somethings out there -- and thank goodness for that. At the same time, it's true that many of them have been raised to think they are more capable than they are at their level of experience, and that they deserve the benefits of experience right away. But life doesn't work like that. Those benefits have to be earned, and earning them often takes time. Not always, but often.

That doesn't mean that every person who is older is necessarily the best at what he does -- competition is a beautiful thing, and it's great when talented people of any age rise to new levels of responsibility. Talent is age-blind, but talent is not the same as experience. They are two totally different metrics. Age isn't just a number. Age means experience, and the working world still values experience.

Good luck Office NewB. I'm rooting for you. And you are right: patience is hard. At any age.