Wanna' Do Over ?
Or
How Luck Made a Do Over Unnecessary


If only we knew then what we know now. But who would guess that the high school junior would be so different as a high school senior?

College entrance exams and the search for the right college occur when kids are still juniors. And most applications are filled out in the fall, when the student is still just transitioning to senior year.

So what if your kid could do it all over, based on how the student has changed over the year, and what you have found out about the admissions process and potential for scholarship, would it be an entirely different search?

A year ago when Hans the high school junior was taking the SAT and the ACT, he lived for golf, considered Religious Studies or Philosophy his potential major, and was attracted to schools like Berkeley, Northwestern, and University of Chicago.

By summer, relatively strong scores in hand, and his love of golf even stronger, he decided he wanted to play college golf, but recognized his game was more in line with Division 3 schools. He also recognized, with our “help,” that he might be more comfortable closer to home than not.
His summer search for the right college involved checking golf scores on college web sites along with the academic profiles. In the end, he came up with three private colleges; two were just an afternoon drive away, the third several states away.

A college fair visit in mid-October introduced him to a golf playing state university, only two hours away, as well as a local non-golf playing private college, only 25 minutes away.
By the time he was filling out applications, we insisted he include the large, Twin Cities campus of the University of Minnesota, our alma mater, as a final safety net.

Meanwhile, Hans the senior was enjoying his participation in the school’s comedy club, his work as the editorial cartoonist for the school paper, as well as a couple of creative writing classes. He took a philosophy class that left him somewhat under-whelmed. And he visited the local indoor driving range less and less, replaced ultimately by time spent posting on a blog for a writing class.

One day when we were casually talking about what he really wanted to do in the future, he mentioned that maybe he’d like to be a writer. No discussion or anything, he just threw it out there, as if to figure out how it sounded if he said it out loud.

Then his first acceptance letter came, and with it a boost of confidence that finally allowed him to say, “I’m going to major in English, with an emphasis on creative writing.” That first letter included a note from the director of admissions, complimenting him on his essay. Not much later, he received a call from the school, urging him to apply for a writing scholarship on top of the four year academic scholarship already offered. Flattery can take a kid pretty far, and in this case, Hans was excited about what I imagine was a sense of the school’s appreciation for his quirky, edgy writing, maybe even as a reflection of his quirky self.

Out of six schools, he decided on that small private school that loved his writing, is only 25 minutes from home and doesn’t have a golf team. It is a school becoming known for its’ strong writing program. A school which since he began filling out the application has been in touch with him, either by phone, mail, or e-mail, encouraging him, creating a sense of a budding relationship even though he didn’t get the writing scholarship Who doesn’t respond favorably to being wanted?

So if we had known that he wanted to major in Creative Writing and didn’t need to play golf, and in fact was excited by an urban versus rural setting, would the search have been much different? I think so. I am sure that two of the colleges he applied to wouldn’t have made the list if we knew then what we know now.

All that advice about finding a match, not gunning for a prize, seems to have worked out here. I think it’s a match. And I think Hans got damn lucky.