A Simple Framework

As the landscape of higher ed and college admissions continues to shift, so does the work of college counseling. Here are a few of the challenges that we're currently navigating:

 ✔️ increased uncertainty and student/family anxiety around outcomes

 ✔️ an overwhelming volume of information and a perceived lack of control for students

 ✔️ institutional changes (financial health, reputational concerns, application increases, test score policies) that can abruptly impact desirability and/or feasibility for some students

 ✔️ concerns about “savvy” major choices, for current and future job markets

 ✔️ questions about the value of a 4-year degree and interest in skills-based learning

 ✔️ and more.

It’s a lot to wade through, and we're feeling the pressure. It reminds me of Covid! 

During the early Covid years, I needed to streamline my thinking in response to the changes we were witnessing and trying to support families through. There was so much information we could pay attention to…but was it all relevant? If so, for whom? When? In what ways?

Out of these questions, I developed a simple framework...to give clarity to the messy process of building lists when everything felt uncertain. To reassure students and families. To illustrate areas of action and choice.

It simplified an unwieldy set of circumstances and information, by focusing on four core factors and by being visual. 

In the face of the challenges outlined above, the framework still has utility for helping individual students build a flexible, values-based application strategy. 

The concept is simple: 4 core factors, evaluated simultaneously across each institution under consideration, to visualize and assess the overall health + risk of a student’s proposed application strategy.

The four factors are:

• likelihood of admissibility

• student rating of fit

• family rating of fit

• notification windows

Using this simple framework, we can ask robust questions. For example, how might a student or family develop a rating of fit? How might college counselors set estimates of admissibility (and evaluate those estimates later)? How might changes in the higher ed and college admission environment impact the health of a student's application strategy?

I believe that answering these questions - and more - can help us better support students in building a values-based application strategy.

It's a simple framework with a lot of value, and I look forward to sharing more in future posts. 

Stay tuned -

Beth

Rosecliff College Consulting, LLC