Foundations — Grade 12 • Jackson, Mississippi
The Face Behind College Decisions
A local publication annually produces a list of the colleges that local high school graduates will attend. As a college counselor at one of those schools, I read it with both great interest and a hint of sadness.
While Mississippi State University is once again the leading destination for area graduates, the reasons are many. How great would it be to know the reasoning behind every student choosing to go to Starkville? It can’t be because the baseball team won the university’s first-ever national championship in a team sport. That happened well after May 1 — the traditional deadline by which students make their deposits for where they will attend. Is it because a lot of students like downtown Starkville better than the square in Oxford? Unlikely. Is it because there are more students who want to study agriculture or aerospace engineering? Probably not. The reality is that we don’t know the decisions that went into each student’s choice, but we can be pretty sure that cost, location, and comfort with the campus and community are high among them.
I love seeing how far students may go from home, knowing what the butterflies in their stomachs will feel like when they leave in August for far-flung destinations in California, Maine, or any place in between. I hope that students will arrive on campus and dive into the unfathomable resources at their disposal: speaker series, performing arts programs, study abroad opportunities, summer research grants, career counseling services, and so much more. I hope that they won’t simply focus on the fears they may have of studying something other than what their parents have told them they must do or hyper-focus on finding new friends and dive into a social scene that will cause their first year to be a disaster. I hope that they aren’t too scared to ask a professor a question in class, go to office hours to better understand a concept, or talk to their RA when they’re homesick or have some other need that can be met if they take the risk of expressing it. I hope that a fear of failure won’t keep them from trying out for a play or musical group, forming a new club, or seeking out a leadership opportunity as early as their first semester. I hope that they understand that their new school is a community of students feeling much of the same uneasiness, and that the best way to get through it is to get moving, get involved, and leave the familiarity of their room and circles of friends they have known for years — to branch out beyond their comfort zone.
At St. Andrew’s, we know the stories behind our college list pretty well. About forty percent of our students will stay in Mississippi for college, with the University of Mississippi and Mississippi State University being the top choices for those who stay in state. Some choose these schools because their siblings, parents, or grandparents went there and it’s simply a comfortable next step. Some go there because it’s clear from our first meeting that cost will be a factor, and due to readily available merit-based aid for good test scores, it’s an easy calculation to make. Some go because they want a particular program in engineering, language, science, or some other area that excites them. Some students will tell us as early as our first meeting together, in the winter of their junior year, that they will attend one particular school, and sure enough, they end up there. Others will walk into the office and exclaim that they will not attend a college in Mississippi or in the Southeast, later realizing that the prospect of getting on an airplane and leaving the familiarity of their home, is simply too much to overcome.
Typically, sixty percent or more of our students leave Mississippi for college. As I look at the list of places our students are headed — more than forty different destinations for just less than ninety students — I realize that if I had placed bets at the start of their senior year on where they would end up after graduation, I would be in trouble. There’s the student who was likely to play a sport in college who ended up deciding that they’d had enough, ending up in a place I never would have imagined as a result. There are the students who applied early decision to schools they fell in love with, knowing through our College Planning Night presentations and individual conferences that doing so increases the chances of being admitted, sometimes by a factor of two or three. There’s the student who applied through QuestBridge, a program for high-achieving students from families with modest incomes, who is headed to a place no student from St. Andrew’s has attended for at least seventeen years. There are the students who wrote us emails when they were turned down for admission and felt shocked, dejected, stunned, not understanding why they weren’t admitted. There are others who called us or wrote with more positive feelings of shock, using phrases like, “I can’t believe it,” or “Is this real?” There are others who are attending schools they may not be as enthusiastic about, but their peers might envy them over their own.
One will stand on the hills of Southern California next fall, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and because I have walked that campus on a couple of occasions, my envy is real. Two will be in my hometown of Dallas at a place I almost attended but ultimately decided was too close to home. Should I have gone there too? Did I make a mistake in not giving it more of a chance? Heck, I lived less than twenty minutes from the campus and I never even toured it. One will serve our nation at West Point, one will go to my mother’s alma mater, a place I visited with her, my brother, and our dad in 1988. Often students will dismiss schools we suggest because they’re in places that are “too cold,” but we have students going to Michigan, Wisconsin, and Maine nonetheless. Will they immediately recognize the new accents, get invited to spend holidays in new states with friends, spend summers on the lakes and coastlines of these beautiful places, or land their first jobs in Chicago, New York, or Boston as a result of this leap of faith?
There is a face behind every one of these college decisions. The privilege of college counseling in a setting such as St. Andrew’s is that we get to know the stories behind those decisions. We know that there are students who finish the year overjoyed by the prospect of their next destination, while others may be more skeptical or anxious about their next step. We know the people behind the names in the publication, and whether it is a school where acceptance was certain or a place that surprised us when results came out, we quietly celebrate every one. We do so with the knowledge that their experience at St. Andrew’s has them prepared for success as well as the hope that they recognize this readiness in themselves and put their talents and gifts to work in their new homes.
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Foundations — Grade 12 • Jackson, Mississippi