TaborTalk Blog

I once suggested to one of my students that they call an admission office to clarify a detail about an upcoming visit they were planning. You would have thought I was asking them to donate a major organ or just told them they would not be able to graduate from high school. You know the look. Bemused. Incredulous. Paralyzed. Snap out of it, kid, it’s a just a phone call, I thought to myself. I make calls all the time for any number of reasons to an assortment of people on campus and off. But that got me thinking about the whole concept of communication, raising some essential questions. Is it reasonable to expect teenagers to communicate as effectively as adults, or perhaps more importantly, in the same manner? 

Last year, I wrote a blog in which I described the various college tours I did with my son during the summer prior to his senior year at Tabor.

It was day two of the 2019 NACAC conference in Louisville, Kentucky and I knew the session “Early Decision: Who Really Benefits” was going to be packed. I, along with my colleagues from high schools across the country, grabbed a few last chairs, eager to hear what Kirk Brennan, Director of Admission at the University of Southern California and Jeff Schiffman, Director of Admission at Tulane University were going to say about the role of Early Decision in college admission. Given that this is one of the most controversial topics in the sphere of college counseling and admission, I knew there would be some thought-provoking information to gather. I was not disappointed.

“One must travel to learn.”

Here’s a crazy statistic:  Seventy-five percent of the applicants to Stanford are admittable.  However, only five percent of these applicants receive a “You’ve been admitted!” letter or email.  

May is a beautiful time of year to visit the Hudson Valley, and I had the opportunity to take a quick tour of the area and visit four of the schools near Poughkeepsie, NY. Despite traveling only 39 miles between schools, it was amazing to see such a broad range of educational offerings.

Let’s roll the calendar back 19 years to the summer of 2000. That summer found me eagerly anticipating my freshman year in college. As I awaited my mid-August departure, I remember questions running through my mind -- “What will it be like?” “What classes will I take?” “How difficult will my professors be?” and, most importantly, “Who will be my roommate?”

I had the chance to visit Case Western Reserve University in late January as part of a counselor fly-in program that afforded me the opportunity to get an up close and personal look at the university and the city it calls home.

I received a call recently from a junior parent, asking, “What should I be doing right now?” It was a simple question, but I knew what was behind it. How do I help? What is my role?  

At Tabor Academy, we are blessed with strong athletic programs which often attract athletes who wish to eventually compete at the collegiate level. These athletes come in all shapes and sizes and encompass everything from field hockey and crew to wrestling and football. In this blog, I want to discuss the cases of three Tabor athletes from recent years who had different experiences as they made the transition from high school to college.

Once upon a time in the middle of Iowa’s cornfields, a young woman in her senior year at Grinnell College accepted the position of Senior Admission Fellow in the Office of Admission

I spent the first week of December on a whirlwind tour of Virginia colleges with stops at Roanoke College, Virginia Tech, Washington and Lee, the University of Virginia, Richmond and William and Mary.