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Extra Credit: How to Handle the Why College/Why Academic Interest Essay with Lisa Marker-Robbins
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- [00:01]
Lisa Marco Robbins
Your passions are going to switch over time. So don't, don't put all this pressure on like I'm figuring out my forever job. Right?
- [00:20]
Abby
CBMers welcome back to College Bound Mentor where we help you survive the college application process and beyond were your co hosts Lisa, Abby and Stephanie. And I don't know about you, but we are deep in the Y college Y major essay reviews, brainstorming finalization right now. It's always a popular essay and it's always a challenging essay. So we are super excited to bring back Lisa Marco Robbins a conversation we had about how to tackle this very important essay. And so now we want to turn and welcome to our guest, Lisa Marco Robbins, the CEO of Flourish Consulting and host of College and Career Clarity. We're going to talk about how schools admit by major together and we're also going to dispel some common myths about the Y college why major essay. First of all, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us.
- [01:16]
Lisa Marco Robbins
Well, thanks for having me. I love your all new podcast. Huge fan already. So you guys have.
- [01:23]
Abby
Thank you. And we love yours as well. You have, you've got a lot more experience on us, so we're learning from you, which is really good. So how do you feel about going over some myths and truths about how to approach these essays? Some do's and don'ts like we did episode?
- [01:40]
Lisa Marco Robbins
Yeah, absolutely. That was a fantastic episode that I listened to that you already had. So yeah, let's do it.
- [01:46]
Abby
All right, well, thank you. All right, so one of the first myths is to talk about how much you love the school and extol its every virtue.
- [01:56]
Lisa Marco Robbins
No.
- [01:57]
Abby
Why not? Isn't that what they want to hear? How great the school is?
- [02:02]
Lisa Marco Robbins
Not at all. So, you know, I do advise the students that I work with and helping them get clear on their college major and their future career, you know, you're showing alignment. So if there's something the school offers that is unique in their program, then that's okay to talk about the school, like how they have it structured. You know, sports management sometimes can be in the education school, it can be in the business school, it can be in a variety of places. And so you might be looking for one that is, well, I'm choosing your school because you have this house in that particular college or division of the university. So in that regard it's okay, you know, if they have a special twist on the majority, but not about the campus or the location or the weather or any of that stuff, it can be tempting.
- [02:53]
Abby
So you shouldn't gush about everything. About the beautiful campus, the prestige, the reputation, location. So it sounds just like a brochure.
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Lisa Marco Robbins
Exactly. They already know that they're great. So we're looking for where that alignment is. Right. Between who you are and what they offer.
- [03:09]
Abby
Right. I always say if it sounds like a brochure, then it's. You got to nix it. It's not going to work.
- [03:14]
Lisa Marco Robbins
Fantastic advice. Yeah. Yes.
- [03:16]
Abby
How about name dropping everyone you know who went there?
- [03:20]
Lisa Marco Robbins
Absolutely not. No, this is about you and this is about alignment. Right. So you are trying to show them that you demonstrate that you belong. And frankly, like, maybe you don't belong. I mean, maybe you'll discover through the process that that's not the best fit because every program's a little different. Every major on every campus is a little different. So. So just think of like we're looking. It's like a Venn diagram. And so it's what you've done in your past that informs your future choices of where you want to go and what you want to do and what they offer. And so where those two things intersect. And that doesn't have anything to do with any alum or any notable graduate that you may know of because we get so little of their attention. You got to focus on you. Yeah.
- [04:12]
Stephanie
So great.
- [04:13]
Lisa Marco Robbins
I love that.
- [04:14]
Lisa
The Venn diagram. That's a really great visual.
- [04:17]
Abby
Yeah.
- [04:17]
Lisa
Yeah.
- [04:18]
Lisa Marco Robbins
I think it helps. Like even just do the exercise. Like that would be a piece of advice for families who are going through this process right now. Like, sit down with your kid and do the two circles, like, what do they offer related to this major? Because we're writing the why this major essay, which is a very common and very popular one on the part of the colleges. And then where is that alignment? Make your list and then cross populate it. That's what you need to be talking about.
- [04:45]
Abby
Yeah. Really, really good advice. How about picking an easier major when you really want something else? Because it will be less competitive and you can always transfer later.
- [04:57]
Lisa Marco Robbins
Absolutely not. Again, that backfires more often than not, particularly if, you know, I think who we hear try to say like that would be a good strategy. A lot of times are the kids who are going after capped capacity majors popular majors. Right. So I want computer Science or I want nursing, or I want, you know, one that has like studio space to it. So maybe it's architecture, performing arts majors. Anything that has field experiences, clinical hours, performance hours, or is a very popular major. And sometimes that's by college, you know. Popular majors. Computer science. Yes. Is popular everywhere. So, but there are some majors that are just very popular on a particular campus because they're really, really good at that. Right. And so if you try to go in as a social work major to become a computer scientist, not going to work. Likely to backfire on you. And they're going to see right through it. Because here's the deal. While they might let you into social work, that capped capacity major is very limited. And there are going to be very few kids who can crack that door once they're on campus and they are looking at your activities, list the classes that you've taken in high school. And that's another place where we're looking for alignment. We already talked about like alignment between what you've done and what they offer. Now they're looking for alignment in what you say you're going to major in and what you're going to do with it and the classes you've taken and the extracurriculars that you have.
- [06:38]
Abby
The only time that we have seen that not necessarily that particular strategy work. But for example, if somebody. You mentioned computer science. Computer science is almost always an impacted major, particularly for schools that have. Either it's in the School of Engineering or if it's in the School of Computer, a specific computer science school. However, sometimes if it's in the School of Arts and Sciences and you're getting admitted to the School of Arts and Sciences, then that could be a strategy. If you don't have. Have everything to support the engineering or the computer science major to do it in the School of Arts and Sciences because there's a little bit more leeway. You can always get into a computer science major if you're in arts and sciences. So it's important to know the school and how they admit to the.
- [07:22]
Lisa Marco Robbins
I agree with that. It's like the. And that could be. This goes back to like, do they offer something uniquely. Because commonly computer science is going to be in the school of Engineering.
- [07:32]
Lisa
Right.
- [07:33]
Lisa Marco Robbins
Or if they have just a computer division or school, it's less common that it's in the arts and sciences, but there's a fair number of those out there. Right. And so it could be like, right. At liberal arts colleges it's going to be. But you know, I think of like Purdue, that's not a great strategy there, even though that is not in the engineering school. Right. So it. So that still can backfire. This is where you've got to get your feet on campus and you've got to talk to them. Like I always preach, be a wise consumer you guys listen to my podcast. You probably are sick of hearing me say, maybe people are too. But like, yes, you're selling yourself to them, but they're selling themselves to you. Be a wise consumer and ask the tough questions. Right. So to your point, absolutely. Lisa, it's what, where's that alignment? How does it work on that campus? Because it's going to be different for every campus.
- [08:29]
Abby
How about say you want to major in something that you have no background in to support your interests.
- [08:35]
Lisa Marco Robbins
Yeah, that. So I think this goes back to those capped capacity impacted majors. Right. I know that it is going to be more important that you show that you've taken some action at those impacted majors. Right. You are up against some really tough competition for a very limited number of spots. Remember Andy Borst? He's at Georgia now, but when he was at uiuc, he had said to me, you know, these kiddos that are don't know what they're going to be majoring in, you know, they, if they're at a school they're applying to a school that admits directly to the major incident impacted major, then you're up to tough competition. We could fill many times over a freshman class there. It happens to be, you know, computer science and business and psychology.
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Lisa
Right.
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Lisa Marco Robbins
At their school. And so you're going to look for that evidence. Now if it's a less popular non impacted major and you state that, you know, I'm interested in this and I'm still figuring it out. Like, be honest, don't try to play the game about like I've got it all figured out and I'm going to apply to this major when you have no evidence of it. But like, just say like, here's why it interests me at this time. Talk truthfully about where you are at this point in time, but know that if it's an impacted major, that is going to be harder when you don't have evidence that you have this figured out or if it's a school that directly says we admit to major.
- [10:05]
Abby
And so let's talk about that. I know that you did a study of the top 50 major public universities and their admissions practices. Can you tell us what you discovered?
- [10:16]
Lisa Marco Robbins
Yeah. So it was really interesting. We invested a lot of time in early 2024 and we personally got with admissions and at the state flagship university for all 50 states and we're like, you know, here's the reality. There are more liberal arts colleges in the United States than there are research universities. However, over 70% of students who attend college go to A research university, not a liberal arts college. So we're talking to the majority of people here and we're like, how do we support those clients? Right? And so as we were looking at it, we just said to the schools, how does this work? Are you admitting directly to major? Are you admitting to some majors but not others? Or do you not admit to major at all? We didn't just like send an email. We looked at the common app for the questions that they were asking. We sent emails. We also called to verify the information because oftentimes, ladies, as all four of us know, we have got to ask that same question to maybe three different people before we get the right answer. Right?
- [11:24]
Abby
This is true.
- [11:25]
Lisa Marco Robbins
Families, you should do the same thing. So. And we literally like multiple times, verified, verified, verified. And so what we found out was there were only four of the 50 state flagship universities don't admit directly to major. So the rest of them, the biggest category was of the research universities, the state flagships biggest category was we admit all students directly to a major. Then we wanted to find out for them, if you do that, then are there any majors impacted majors that. For which, like, if you didn't, if you didn't go ahead and apply as a high school senior, then you're, the door's closed, you can never change into that major. Or are there any majors for which it's going to be hard to crack that door open? Like we might have a few people that switch, but it's going to just be really hard. So the biggest category of schools was, yes, we admit directly to major, the second category. And this is true of Ohio State. I'm in Cincinnati, Ohio. Ohio State's our state flagship. And they said, you know, it's complicated. We have some majors for which you're a pre major and others that you're a direct admit. So this goes back to Lisa, what you said earlier about like, do your homework and what I said about your poi's consumer, ask the questions. You got to understand this stuff. But there were only just a few, four schools that said we don't admit to major. You literally come into the university, we're going to support you and figure it out. But even some of those schools still said, tell us what your intent. They all said, what's your intended major? Right. They expect students to have some semblance that they've done some amount of work to say, like, well, I have some intention here, but I'm not ready to go all in yet.
- [13:12]
Abby
And I think that's really amazing information. For families to have. But I also want to underscore that for majors like as you mentioned, nursing, anything engineering, anything that's something that you need to get a prerequisite core classes. It's really hard to switch with you in your majors, but usually if you're in arts and sciences or you're something where the you have a general educational requirement, then you do have a little bit of leeway to switch your major. Typically you, you will declare it by the end of your sophomore year. So it's not impossible. But don't go in with the expect that that's going to happen. And if you think, for example, nursing is one that's often very competitive, there are a number of schools that have pre nursing. And so what that means is if you take the prerequisite classes and you get a certain gpa, then you will be able to continue with the nursing. And as you brought up Lisa, one of the biggest things they have to think about. I was talking to somebody admissions person at Washu and they were saying that even though we, we do admit by school, but we recognize that students are going to change their major if we have X amount of pre med students, they say they're interested in pre med even though we know that's not a major. But there are a series of prerequisite classes that have to be taken in order to be a pre med, you know, to go into medical school. So they know that if they have too many pre meds then they're not going to have enough of the introductory classes for the labs and the bio and chem and physics and all the classes that a pre med student would have to take take. Even if they're a psychology major or a history major or a fine arts major, they still have to provide those and have enough classes to be able to do it. So that's part of the reason and I think that's also what Andy from UC said was that they have to be able to support the majors that students want to pursue. And that's a big part of why it's. It seems like it's very limited and that it's very hard.
- [15:15]
Lisa Marco Robbins
You know, I got into a very. So I was at IECA in Connecticut back in May at the conference and I was talking to, I went to a session and the Tulane admissions rep was part of a panel and it was a great session and it was on this topic, right. And then I was in their common app and because she, she said the hard at Tulane is in their process as you are admitted To Tulane, you are not admitted to a major. You cannot go into a major until software sophomore year. But the common app said, what is your intended major? What is your second choice major? What minor might you be thinking of? And I thought that's a lot of questions to ask. If they're that wholeheartedly into, you don't need to know your path. So then I got with admissions and we had a fantastic conversation. But they just said like, this is enrollment management is the word that we know it's called, but our listeners might not know. Right. And so do we have enough professors can do we have enough sections of these classes so that you can get in and out in four years. Years. And so there it will. That intention does affect things, even though it's not a commitment. But you know, ask the questions. You had brought up a great point, Lisa, about pre, you know, pre nursing. There's a lot of pre nursings. Right. Then ask them how many students get admitted to pre nursing and then how many will go on. I think that's the, that's the consumer question is, yes, I could be successful in pre nursing, but will everybody who's successful be able to go on to nursing? And most of the time the answer is going to be no. But you want to know, like, okay, what was the GPA or the grades or the experiences of those who were able to go on to nursing or any other pre major?
- [16:59]
Lisa
Right.
- [17:00]
Lisa Marco Robbins
Ask the questions.
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Stephanie
Yeah, pre business is another big one.
- [17:04]
Lisa Marco Robbins
Absolutely. Yes.
- [17:07]
Lisa
Lisa. Other. Lisa and I were there. We were at that same panel and maybe. Yeah, love the panel. So helpful. So I would love to hear your advice on this one. With all the focus on students who declaring majors, what about the students who really have no idea what they want to major in? And it doesn't mean that they're not interested or they don't have passions, but, you know, they just, I mean, you know, at our age, we're still figuring out the things that we love. So what do you recommend to those students who just truly don't know at this point?
- [17:39]
Lisa Marco Robbins
Point you've got to create some time to do the work. That's the first thing. We're all busy. You know, my youngest just graduated from college in the spring and so. Thank you. I got a pay raise. Right. So we can all appreciate that. Pay raise. First of all, your passions are going to switch over time. So don't, don't put all this pressure on, like I'm figuring out my forever job. Right. Focus on taking the time to be intentional, which feels hard during this busy time. But to build self awareness and career awareness, I've found with the students that we work with, we've done career coaching, college major and career coaching for 4,000 students. So this isn't just like, oh, I think this might work. Like, no, I've seen it work over 4,000 times. Right. I know that passions can wane and grow. Like, I'm very passionate about gluten free cooking because I have to be gluten free and coming up with great recipes at my age. I was not at all interested that in my teens. So you don't have to have, I think like find your passion. That's a lie and that's overwhelming. I think when we tell students, I saw in a Facebook group that we're all in, I saw somebody say the other day, like, how could we expect a 16 or 17 year old to know what they're going to do with the rest of their lives? Well, that's the problem. We're not asking anybody to know what they're going to do with the rest of their lives. Is taking an educated and informed, wise first step into your career and it will develop over your lifetime. But if we do so out of awareness of aptitudes, wiring and knowledge of careers, then we're far less likely to say like, I'm the social worker who became the engineer. I mean, talk about a 180. Right? So then the pivots, when you have, you make informed choices that are rooted in who you are, become more like micro pivots in self development. So it's not a forever decision. Don't focus on what am I passionate about and that has to be my career. And finally, passion can grow with proficiency. So as we start to build our skills and we start to learn new things, then your passions are going to build. As you become proficient, you become more confident. So don't feel like, I mean, hello, you're going into college, you're going to college to learn some things. You're not supposed to have it all.
- [20:05]
Abby
Figured out, passions and interests and do things like that. That's right. Yeah. I love that passion grows into proficiency. I think it's our proficiency grows a passion. Which is something that's so true. It's that 10,000 hours, the better you get at something, the more you like it. And how many students have said, you know, I was really bad at this particular class and then I worked really hard and I went in for extra help and I all of a sudden I really love the class because then I start, it became really interesting to me. The other thing I would just as a follow up to that, I had a student who was very, always her whole life she'd been very stemy, very interested in math. Thought she initially wanted to major in math, but then she also started taking political science classes. She took AP Psych. I'm sorry, AP gopo. She worked on a campaign and then she was really interested in how to use analytics towards political modeling, if you will. So she ended up going to University of Chicago because she thought she wanted to combine those two areas, Applied math and political science. But after her first year at University of Chicago, she realized that, you know what I really want to do? Engineering, I don't really want. I really am more of an engineer, more of a STEM girl. So she ended up transferring and she'll go to Sartin Dartmouth in the fall. But she, it was, it took her a while. She, she had that interest in STEM and it got a little bit sidetracked and then she came back to it. So it can work in a lot of different ways as far as that goes.
- [21:32]
Lisa Marco Robbins
Well, you know, I, I do think as you share that when I'm working with students, we have them take the Berkman personality assessment. There are other personality assessments I do think you get what you pay for. So be wary of like something that's free on the Internet, that tells you to go be a, you know, a zookeeper, but to look at those and then that's a starting point. But I think informational interviews and job shadows are crucial in building the career awareness piece. Right. So had what I, what I get curious and we don't need to dissect the whole thing. But like, did that young lady, like, did she job shadow some engineers and talk to them about their jobs and different engineering jobs? Does she talk to people who were doing the, you know, this analytical piece that she thought she might want to do? I think sometimes we students are just going like, oh, that sounds fun and interesting. And there is a little bit of alignment. Like I could tell you right now if all the hats that I wear professionally would go away tomorrow. And I had to totally reinvent myself. Hopefully not at 55. I can list for you some jobs that I'm like, I think I could be really good. I could become proficient and more passionate about that. And I think it would align with who I am. You're making a first step out of many good steps. But at some point you have to make a decision.
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Stephanie
Yeah, I like looking at it as a first step. It's a Lot less overwhelming.
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Lisa Marco Robbins
I mean, is that the truth, even for us as adults? Like, I'm sure a lot of your listeners are parents, just like my listeners in my podcast. You know, if somebody's like, oh, I'm on a weight loss journey and they want to lose 50 pounds, that first step of, like, getting the app or signing up for, you know, the training or cutting out sugar probably feels really big, too, for any of us as human beings, that forever only focusing on the very end and all the things you need to do and all the things you need to know, it will undermine all of our success.
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Stephanie
Agreed.
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Lisa
Yeah.
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Abby
It's funny because when I was in school, I couldn't decide on a major, so I knew I liked to speak French, and I knew I liked to read, and I liked history, so I picked European Cultural Studies because it got. I got to do all of those things. And then my youngest daughter, who's probably the most like me professionally, my other two were a little bit more focused. She's also still. She's not still. She's 24, almost 25, and she is still figuring herself out and trying to understand the things that she likes to do. And she also has a lot of interest but no clear passion. So I've been telling her a lot, proficiency leads to passion, but she's so. She's working on it. So it's just interesting because sometimes your career is something that's introduced. Like, it takes a lot of different things that you bring together, and it's the combination of those things, which is probably why we all like this profession, because it pulls together the combination of all the things that we like to do, but we didn't necessarily know it was a profession when we. When we set out upon graduation.
- [24:40]
Lisa Marco Robbins
I also think, like, if you look back. So if teens would talk to older people who have, you know, have some experience or, like, how we all have landed where we have, you'll see common threads. You know, I was a classroom teacher back in 1991. Like, that's how I started my career. I loved. I've always loved working with teenagers, even when I was barely out of being a teenager. I loved making lesson plans and making things exciting and helping people learn and develop themselves, Right? So while what I do now is very vastly different and, oh, my word, the Internet barely existed back when I started, and now I have an online course on the Internet and a podcast. Like, I couldn't have known what the possibilities were, but there are common threads, and I let that inspire teenagers. Like, we all can see things in ourselves that have pulled all the way through. And, you know, I think, Lisa, even the example you just did use, like, there. There are some common threads there, right?
- [25:43]
Abby
Yeah.
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Stephanie
Our youngest son is a junior in college. He's got a. An internship in finance this summer. He has no idea what he wants to do, but he has this general idea he grew up playing chess, that he just likes thinking about strategic things. You know, he can't articulate it, really. He has no idea how that applies to business. He knows he doesn't want to do finance, but he's taking the opportunity to figure out the small parts of what he's doing this summer that really of interest him and float in his boat and make him excited. So I think the other nice thing to do is to have an open mind and try different things and then try, you know, try to identify. Be very, you know, very thoughtful about identifying what parts of what you're doing you really like. Same with classes. I mean, there might be some parts of your math class or your bio class that you really enjoy and some you don't, but it all kind of can put the pieces of the puzzle together to help you figure out what. What kinds of things you're really good at and really like.
- [26:43]
Lisa Marco Robbins
You know, Abby, when you talk about your son, I try to word it this way that I. I've seen it resonate with students. Like, what were the things? So I. If I were talking to your son, I would say, like, what were the things that you did in your internship this summer? Which, by the way, everybody, internships are another experience that helps us get clear. But what were the get tos and the have to's? So a get to is the thing. Like, if I did that all day long that day, it doesn't exhaust me. I still have energy at the end of my work day. I'm excited. If that's on my to do list for tomorrow, I'm excited to go to work. What are the have to's? Well, I own multiple businesses, and I have to get into the finance of those businesses sometime, and I hate it. That's. I have to. It's draining. Those are the things we tend to put off. So the. As you're like, he's doing a great job with that experience and tracking those things. But if we turn it into, like, get tos and have to's, fill me up, drain me, that, I think that can help students as well.
- [27:40]
Stephanie
Okay, I love that. And now I'm going to have him listen to this part of the podcast because he'll listen to you more than before. He'll listen.
- [27:47]
Lisa Marco Robbins
Of course he will. And I'll send my daughter over. Right.
- [27:51]
Stephanie
You send your daughter this way, on that way.
- [27:54]
Abby
Perfect. Well, this was great. All right. Well, I feel like we could talk all day. Are there any, like, last pearls of wisdom that you want to share with our listeners?
- [28:05]
Lisa Marco Robbins
Carve out the time to do the work you've got to. And I think, too, when, when our teens are still in our house or your young adult still in your home, it's the time where you can support them the most before they're out in the wild without you. And you're not on a college campus. So whatever, however old your child is, it's not too late. But it's going to take time and intention. And if you're in that spot of trying to still figure it out and even where you go to college, like, we're giving away that template, that email template that we were sending. Like, that was directing us every time we reached out to one of those 50 colleges and we were asking the questions of, like, how do you admit students and what are the majors we should be concerned about? If we don't declare it early, we're giving that away. And your listeners can have it, too, at flourishcoachingco.com forward/commors, so you guys can put it in the show notes. But flourishcoachingco.com majors, you can download the spreadsheet of all 50 states and what we found from them. So we're sharing our data and we're sharing how, as a wise consumer, a family, you can ask the same questions no matter where your students going. Liberal arts. Liberal arts colleges do admit students to the major, even though they're still more flexible than a university. Ask the questions. We're giving you a tool to be able to do it.
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Abby
That's great. And we'll also have our why College, why major worksheet available for students to download as well. Well, thank you.
- [29:42]
Lisa Marco Robbins
Great resources.
- [29:44]
Abby
Yes, great resources. So thank you so much for coming on College Bell Mentor. And thank you CBMers, for tuning in to catch more episodes of College Bell Mentor. Make sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and tell a fellow parent or student about the podcast. Visit collegeboundmentor.com until next time. You got this.