Lila initially flagged about 75 schools—at first, she thought she wanted a small school, until she visited Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina, and felt that it was too isolated. Then she was hot on Boston, until this year’s harsh winter reminded her that she doesn’t like the cold. Feeling so unsure, Lila applied to nine very different schools, from Temple University in Philadelphia to Occidental College in Los Angeles to the University of Vermont in Burlington.
The summer before her senior year, Lila Sheon’s parents bought her a guidebook on colleges. “I literally sat on the couch, watching TV, and put sticky notes on pages that sounded like any sort of possibility,” she says.Feeling frustrated because she was among the last of her friends to decide, Lila says she came to the realization that there is no perfect college. Recognizing that each school has its pluses and minuses eased the pressure she was feeling—and helped her make the decision to attend the University of North Carolina in Asheville. With its Earth Day celebration, Walk Against Racism and nearby vegan restaurants, the school had a socially active campus that lined up with her values. “They don’t take themselves too seriously,” she says. “It just seems really fun.”
For many high school students, the college search begins just as it did for Lila, with books and online research. Then, late in their junior year or during the summer before their senior year, most students in Montgomery County Public Schools meet with a counselor to review their academic record and figure out where they have a good chance of being accepted. Counselors encourage students to think about location, size, the majors that are offered and life outside the classroom.
Reynolds says any list needs to include some reflection by the student, which can be difficult for teenagers. “What am I good at? What will I do in the future? What do I value? And toughest of all: How do others see me?” Reynolds says. “When these questions can be answered, then kids can start to become more self-aware and identify characteristics of schools that will fit who they are.”
Counseling offices at Montgomery County public high schools—which have graduating classes ranging from about 300 to 700 students—employ anywhere from 8 to 15 counselors, depending on the size of the school. Each office has one staffer designated as a college/career information coordinator (other counselors work with students on such issues as scheduling and social/emotional problems, as well as colleges). They also hold college fairs and host reps from schools throughout the year.
With lower counselor-student ratios, private high schools can offer more personalized attention. For example, Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart and Holton-Arms School both employ two dedicated college counselors who handle caseloads of about 40 seniors each. At Landon School, there are three college counselors and one college counseling assistant on staff. With 77 students in the class of 2016, that means each college counselor will advise about 25 seniors.
In October of their junior year, girls at Holton-Arms attend a college fair and are required to seek out and ask questions of four schools they’d never heard of. Current senior Sydney Lampkin recalls asking about the nearest city, research opportunities and how students interact. “Because we live on the East Coast, some schools you just don’t even hear about,” she says.
Increasingly, families in the Bethesda area are also turning to private counselors to navigate the process. According to Mark Sklarow, chief executive officer at the Fairfax, Virginia-based Independent Educational Consultants Association, there are 42 independent college consultants in the Washington area. He says that number has doubled in the past five years and is likely to continue growing.
Shelley Levine, a certified educational planner in Potomac, works with students by the hour or provides consulting services for a student’s entire high school career for a flat fee of $6,000. She says most clients come to her when they are in 10th grade, though she occasionally works with eighth- or ninth-graders. She helps with everything from choosing summer activities to assisting on essays and applications.
Betsy Goldstein hired Levine to help her son Alex starting at the end of eighth grade. Now he is a senior at Winston Churchill High School. When the Goldsteins are at an impasse (Alex wanting to try for schools in California, and his parents thinking it’s too far away and expensive), Levine has been able to mediate (suggesting that they at least allow him to apply). Alex says he is more likely to respond to a task from her than to nagging from his parents. “It’s great to have an unbiased opinion,” he says.
MOST COLLEGE COUNSELOURS will tell you the same thing: Visiting colleges in person is very important. “It’s like buying a car,” says Wootton’s Hitchcock. “Would you ever buy a car and pay $40,000 and not sit in it?”
Daniel Miyares was reluctant to dive into the college search, which he says was all-consuming for many of his peers at Churchill. After a stressful junior year filled with Advanced Placement classes, SATs and participating in four honor societies, Daniel didn’t start considering schools in earnest until the summer before his senior year.
Friends who knew of his high test scores and academic record assumed he would apply to the most-selective colleges, but Daniel was drawn to large state schools because he was looking for a strong business program. After attending a summer entrepreneurship program at Potomac’s Bullis School in 2014, he got excited about the possibility of working in the startup world.
Daniel visited five campuses and was accompanied on each tour by his dad, Henry. “I always let him have the opportunity to think through what he did and didn’t like about the different schools,” Henry says. Daniel was turned off by the way Georgetown emphasized its status and sold the notion of connecting students with jobs in the District. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill had a heavy focus on finance, which did not appeal to him.
At the University of Texas at Austin, Daniel sat in on a business ethics course taught by a faculty member. The honors program he had his eyes on at the university does not have many teaching assistants leading classes, something he viewed as a plus. He also was struck by the enthusiasm of a student in the program who told him he’d get little sleep because he’d likely be involved in so many interesting and fun things to do on and off campus.
“Every person I would tell I was visiting Austin would say it was an incredible town,” Daniel says. “I visited the day after South by Southwest, so there were still remnants of all the music ringing in your ears.”
Counselors suggest students look beyond the official tour while visiting a college and ask some questions about what life is like on campus. Janet Harris, college/career information coordinator at Rockville High School, says students should find out about food, campus activities and entertainment. Ask how accessible the professors are, check out the bookstore, pick up a campus newspaper, and, if possible, spend a night in a dorm. Though it might seem far off, ask about career services to see how helpful the school is with internships and job hunting.
This past spring, as the May 1 commitment deadline approached, Daniel was still trying to decide whether he should attend the University of Florida, the University of Virginia or the University of Texas at Austin. For his 18th birthday that spring, Daniel’s parents had given him baseball hats for each school. He was leaning toward UT and—as if it were a sign—that hat literally fit the best.
On April 29, he used scraps of orange construction paper to arrange the iconic “T” on the dining room table and covered it with a black piece of paper that read, “Yes, I’ve finally decided.” When he flipped it over to reveal the “T” for his mom, Daniel says she screamed and cried. “It was a huge relief,” he says, “like an incredible weight is lifted off your shoulders.”
ALTHOUGH MOST STUDENTS try to anticipate whether a school will be the right fit, sometimes it just doesn’t work out. Or they change their minds. Indeed, about 37 percent of college students transfer before graduation.
Morgan Byrd was recruited to join the gymnastics team at Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, in 2010 after she graduated from Rockville High School. All was well until she sustained an injury. No longer competing, Morgan says there wasn’t much else to do, and the appeal of that college faded.
She transferred to James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where she was drawn to the hilly campus. Morgan enjoyed hiking on weekends, and she made friends in the orchestra, her church and through the gymnastics club on campus.
Morgan says she now wishes she had given more thought to the entire process. She applied to 25 schools, but visited only five. “If you’re an athlete, make sure you know if you stop doing the sport you will still love the school,” she says.
Counselors say one good way to help ensure that kids find a school that fits is to delay the decision altogether. Jeremy Drysdale, a 2014 graduate of Walt Whitman High School, says he wanted a break after his senior year. “I could go to college and after that work, and then just be stuck in the rat race—or I could go do something very different,” he says.
Jeremy decided to take a gap year with the Youth for Understanding exchange program in Turkey. It was an adjustment being in a predominantly Muslim country and not knowing the language, but Jeremy’s mom, Sylvie Payan, said it was a year of growth. “When I talk to him, I barely recognize him. He is so mature and happy,” Payan says.
“There is a whole new personality emerging.”
When Jeremy applied to college this past spring, he wrote about his experience. After growing up in what he calls the “Bethesda bubble,” Jeremy says going to Turkey was very difficult, but also great preparation for college. “I feel ready for it,” he says about his decision to attend The University of British Columbia in Vancouver this fall. “I don’t feel stressed out about it. I feel confident and excited to go.”
WITH THE COST of some private colleges topping $60,000 a year, price has become a major factor for many families. Nearly 70 percent of graduating college seniors in 2013 took out loans to finance their education, with those who borrow leaving with an average debt of about $28,400, according to The Project on Student Debt.
Swathi Tadepalli looked at several out-of-state schools, including Penn State, but prices were twice as expensive as in-state, and she liked the idea of being close to home in Potomac. The 2015 Wootton graduate chose the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. The campus felt new, the dorms were nice, and she liked the housing arrangements—four people share a living space and there are weekly dorm hall meetings.
“When I came up with the decision to go to UMBC, I definitely had a lot of looks because some people don’t think that it’s the best school ever,” she says, admitting some initial doubts. “But I put my needs in front of theirs.”
Walter Johnson graduate Yasi Hosseini also heard negative comments about her choice of Montgomery College. “The general reaction is to say, ‘Oh, Montgomery College, it’s like 13th grade,’ ” she says. But the 2015 grad says she didn’t doubt her decision because she knew she would be getting a good education with small class sizes and the ability to establish relationships with her professors.
Yasi, who was accepted everywhere she applied, including the University of Maryland in College Park, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, is set to begin attending Montgomery College on a full scholarship this fall. If she maintains a 3.0 GPA, she can apply to the Maryland Transfer Advantage
Program and will be guaranteed admission to UMD in College Park.
Yasi says her parents were a driving force behind her “practical” choice, but ultimately she arrived at the decision on her own. She didn’t want to take on debt, especially since she hopes to go to medical school.
“I knew I wanted the energy that comes with a large school. I wanted to go to games with friends, and have access to a large varietyof majors,” Wootton graduate Alex Mazze says. “There was more socio-economic diversity at Maryland than at the other schools I visited.”
Yasi may meet Alex Mazze if she matriculates to the University of Maryland, College Park. Alex, a National Merit Finalist at Wootton, was accepted at Duke, Cornell, Johns Hopkins and Washington University in St. Louis. This fall, he will attend the University of Maryland.
Alex says some of his friends were surprised by his choice, and he felt a little defensive. From the beginning, he liked Maryland. “I knew I wanted the energy that comes with a large school. I wanted to go to games with friends, and have access to a large variety of majors,” Alex says. “There was more socioeconomic diversity at Maryland than at the other schools I visited.”
With a full scholarship to the Maryland honors program, Alex, who plans to attend graduate school and has a younger sister who is a high school senior, says it was hard to justify the cost of going elsewhere.
Alex’s mother, Carmen Gomez, says the family is thrilled with his decision. She thinks he will work hard, but also take time to explore other interests. “College is just the beginning,” she says, “not the end.”
Bethesda writer Caralee Adams can be reached at Caralee.adams@verizon.net.