College Tipsheet

Gary (00:01.926)
Welcome back to another episode of Uh-Oh College. We're going at a different angle today. We're going to go and view a college admissions process from the perspective of a student and from a parent. Hi, this is Gary Stocker. Welcome to this episode. And today we're joined by father and son Marty and Reed Vandorf. And they're calling in to us today from Washington. Marty and Reed, welcome.

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (00:28.689)
Thank you. Nice to be here. Thanks for having us.

Gary (00:31.09)
And you, like millions of others in our country, have just completed the college visitation and decision and selection process. And Reed, I know you've even started college and you'll tell us about that here in a minute. But I thought the value on this would be to kind of tie in the Van Der Werf's college journey, if you will, to some of the things they see that are related to the bigger picture. And so we'll take it in that direction. And Marty, I'll start with you.

You just in the last year completed the college visit process with your son. Share the highlights, share the lowlights with us.

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (01:10.269)
Well, the college search is pretty confusing because there's so darn many of them and they all sound kind of alike in a lot of respects. And so trying to decide which ones you're actually interested in versus all of the noise of the ones that seem good at the beginning. And then you start looking into them and think, maybe you're not so interested. That's the hard part is it's kind of weeding and,

Weeding them out and then getting down to the ones that you actually care something about. That's really the hard part. Reid's got an older brother. He's three years older than Reid. And so he had gone through the college search and Reid had actually gone on at least one of the college hunting trips with us. And so we knew a little bit about the process. We knew a little bit about, hey, here's what to expect if you go visit a college. But

You know, Reed's interested in different things, different part of the country, different types of schools. So we learned a lot, you know, um, with his process as well.

Gary (02:19.178)
And so we'd kind of a similar question. And for the most part, college students go through this process once. And I know you finished it earlier this year. From your perspective, what were the highlights? What were the lowlights of going through that process of making that college decision and knowing that it could impact the rest of your life?

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (02:38.501)
Well, I mean, to be honest, I try not to think of the whole like impacting the rest of your life part of it. I told myself that in general, with a couple exceptions, wherever you get a degree from, it's all going to look the same. I mean, the exceptions being, I don't know, maybe an Ivy League degree or something like that. But in some ways that makes the search harder because you get maybe a couple dozen emails from colleges every day, each offering you something different.

But at the same time, they all kind of bleed together. You can't look at each and every one of them because there's hundreds upon hundreds. You just somehow have to choose. That was definitely the hardest part for me, aside from also making a decision, writing an application. But I think a highlight would just be, I mean, I don't know, it was fun. Got to visit a lot of places I've never visited before. I ended up going to a school where...

Um, my first time in that state.

Gary (03:38.275)
guys, I had some audio issues.

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (03:42.313)
Excuse me? Sorry? No.

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (03:48.437)
Go ahead, I think. Okay. I don't know. It was... You ended up going to a college that... Your first to me visit, it was the first time you'd ever been in that state. Yeah. I don't know. I enjoy writing. I had... It was interesting coming up with essays, just writing, just reflecting on my life. I don't know. It's...

Kind of over now, but wasn't that bad.

Gary (04:24.089)
And then we had some audio issues there for a minute. So if you're close to the microphone or something, make sure you're leaning toward it. And again, I can edit out the bad stuff, so don't worry about that.

Gary (04:35.666)
Like the cough I just did. So Reid, I have a couple of questions in a row for you. I'll just do them one at a time. When you started the process, was there one or two things you were looking for in a college?

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (04:38.065)
Okay.

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (04:48.361)
I think the primary thing was that I didn't want to go to school anywhere close by, much to the disdain of my parents. I think for the most part, I kind of narrowed it down geographically. I didn't want to go basically anywhere further south just because I don't really like the heats. You know, Texas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, they all have really good schools, but the climate just wasn't for me.

Gary (04:54.774)
Hahaha

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (05:16.505)
So just anywhere hot, essentially, I ruled out. East Coast was all too close to me. I've been to most of the East Coast states, and I'd just rather see a different part of the country. So I did apply for some schools in New England. I also applied for a bunch of schools on the West Coast, in the Midwest, just because I'd never really been there, and I just wanted to see, I don't know what it was like.

I mean, I've lived so far back then. I'd lived my entire life on the East coast, more or less. So I just wanted to see, I mean, you know, it's a huge country and even a huger world. So I just wanted to see a different part of it.

Gary (05:58.058)
Cool. And I'll be honest, I've never heard hot climate as a ruling out factor for a college. So you went on a word for being creative with your college search criteria there. And when you met with the college reps, and I have particular interest in this, Reed, when you met with the college reps, do you recall, did they do more telling about their college or did they do more about asking to learn more about Reed Van der Werf?

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (06:23.345)
Well, I think I honestly think they did a little of both, but I think I was more interested in hearing about the specific colleges, because I was going into the college search process as someone with an undecided major, and I wanted to find a school that could support me no matter what I ended up finding an interest in. So I was personally looking for knowledge on the school. I think maybe if I had a specific major in mind, I would be asking like,

more questions about specific programs and they could be trying to get a read on me. But in general, I think that reps are just trying to get you to apply or that you've already accepted they're trying to get you to, you know, confirm your admission there. So I think in general, they're trying to sell the school to you. And while they do want to get to know you because I mean, it always feels good when someone gets to know you, right? I think in general,

Gary (07:19.735)
Yeah.

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (07:21.453)
It is a pretty impersonal process, I would say.

Gary (07:26.662)
Interesting, interesting. And then are you willing to share your final college selection with the listeners?

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (07:33.649)
Yeah, of course. I am a freshman at Colorado College. I just completed my first semester there.

Gary (07:42.796)
And were there one or two reasons why that was your final choice?

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (07:47.237)
Um, well, I think first of all, it would have to be that I just really liked the environment of the school. Um, it's in Colorado Springs, which is about an hour south of Denver, and it's right next to the mountains. You can see just these really striking mountains from anywhere on campus. Um, I mean, you know, here in Washington, DC, we got a lot of concrete mountains, but, um, definitely nice to see some real ones for a change too.

Um, and also, I mean, of course there was the money factor. They did offer a lot of financial aid. Um, we're pretty comfortable in terms of paying for college just in general, um, which was really nice. But I also just thought that, um, the school system was interesting. It was a little bit different. Um, wanted to try something different. Um, yeah. So this, the school has this, um, program called the.

it's called like the block schedule or the block program where you essentially take one class at a time for three and a half weeks. You meet every day for three and a half weeks with one class that lasts for three hours and you do that four times a semester, eight times a year. So it's just like a hyper concentrated class essentially instead of taking, you know, six classes at a time, you take one at a time, but like essentially divided into

Gary (09:09.826)
Yeah.

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (09:15.197)
different like eighths of a year.

Gary (09:19.49)
So I do have a tourist tip for you. So sometime in the next three years down in Colorado Springs, you've got to get your parents out to Seven Falls. Have you done that yet?

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (09:28.974)
I'm not.

Gary (09:30.402)
Seven Falls, Marty, is a fabulous tourist trap, not trade, not trap, but there are seven waterfalls. It's a fascinating place. So, Rita, I just gave you a way to kill half a day with your family when they come out there.

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (09:35.964)
Alright dad, write that down.

Gary (09:45.122)
So Marty, any pattern? Marty, any, did you see any patterns with the way colleges were recruiting your son? Or really both of your sons?

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (09:46.042)
Sounds great.

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (09:57.609)
Well, they went to a high school, a public high school in Bethesda, Maryland, that frankly is pretty highly regarded. And it sends a number of children every year to the Ivy League and other big selective well-known colleges. So, you know, it's very different, I think, around the country, the patterns that you see.

college recruiters may not know a lot about the students themselves, but they do know about high schools and they do regard, I think, high schools differently based on their experience. And so the high school where Reed and my older son went, they got a lot of visits from college reps. In fact, Reed would come home and say, here's the schedule of college reps who are coming next week. And there might be four or five a day coming there, particularly in the fall.

Now you can't go to all those things nor do you really want to go to all those things. It's just impossible to really absorb that kind of information. And it's also impossible to get excuse from that many classes. But anyway, so Reed would kind of pick and choose who we wanted to actually hear from. And Reed wants to say something. Yeah, I mean, I will say that Colorado College was actually not one of the schools I visited.

Gary (11:03.722)
And then we're gonna...

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (11:23.617)
We heard from it from a different place. I just thought that was worth noting. Yeah, so Yeah, I mean definitely keep your you know options open when you're looking for colleges I think we went to like an info session for a bunch of different schools and that's how I heard about Colorado College Among other options. Yeah But yeah, yeah so, you know Gary just to give you a sense of all the different things that were happening so, you know Reid takes the SAT and

And then the college board has information and then colleges start to reach out to read based on his SAT score and his interest in going to college. So he starts getting a ton of email, a ton of stuff in the mail. The college reps are coming to his high school. He's talking to friends. He might be talking to peers. He's talking to me. He's talking to his mom about colleges that might be interesting. And so you're getting it from all these different perspectives.

Yeah, the amount of email and Reed was saying to get Mike at a couple dozen a day. I mean, I think he was getting some days as many as 50 emails a day from colleges. And it is an incredible amount of information to try and wade through. I think because we come from a pretty wealthy area and we, you know, have, we're probably also in a community.

Gary (12:33.11)
Yeah.

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (12:43.537)
where it's very likely, probably much more likely than many parts of the country that both parents went to college. The pattern you probably see here is more selective colleges I think are recruiting in our area and really reaching out to students in our area. And the one thing, what Reid's talking about is one thing we got in the mail was from something like eight great colleges or something like that. And

We tuned in for a webinar on the given night, and I was interested in Reed looking at some places like Claremont McKenna College, and I think Connecticut College. They all did this presentation for about three minutes. One of the colleges was Colorado College, and when Reed heard about the block program, I think he was immediately interested in it, and that's really how he learned more about it. Yeah.

Gary (13:41.358)
And then Reid, having gone through the process, and there will be students and their families, probably high school students and their families going through the process now, that will listen to this podcast. If there's one piece of advice, Reid, that you would give really both the students and their parents as they go through the same search process you just went through, what would those two pieces of advice be?

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (14:04.453)
Um, man, that's a tough question. Um, I think in many ways, the college search process is really difficult because you're essentially trying to tell someone who you'll probably never meet everything about you and you know, why they should like you essentially. Um, and that can be really hard. Um, it can be, especially when you're trying to figure out, you know, what to write for your often multiple essays or, um, short answer questions.

for individual colleges, it can be just really tough. Like what makes me stand out? I mean, personally, when I was doing the college process, I had friends who were athletes or had like won competitions. And I just felt really just completely normal compared to just some of my peers. And so it was just really daunting. And I would honestly say that...

you'll hear stories about how, you know, people who got into college will write about like, I don't know, a slice of toast and how it's really meaningful to them. I would say that when you're going through the college process, so long as you can communicate like how, like your personality, like who you are, your individuality, I think that, I mean, is ultimately the person on the other end is also a person. And so if you can communicate just something about yourself,

like something that makes you unique, even if it's not something extraordinary, I think that can really, I don't know, that's the piece of advice I would give. I think it can really help.

Gary (15:42.062)
Interesting. Marty, a couple of questions for you. And you and I have talked college finance on occasion. Was there anything during Reed's college search process that suggested either overtly or covertly that a college had financial issues?

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (16:02.745)
Yeah. And let me talk about that, Gary. I was going to say one addition to what Reed just said, is that I think what Reed managed to do in his essays and the way he responded to questions is he really got across his personality. People are afraid to really say something that's a little bit outside the bounds of what they hear is the right thing to say in a college essay, but you

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (16:32.381)
personality come across. And I thought Reed's essays really did that and made him stand out. And I think some people are like, oh God, is this the right thing to say? And they really stress about it. I think if it feels like the right thing to say, as Reed said earlier, he likes to write. That sets him apart, I know from a lot of college applicants, but do a bunch of drafts, think about what feels right and then go with your gut. But getting back to, getting back to,

whether financial strain comes across. The one thing I noticed a lot, Gary, to be honest with you, is the colleges with lesser known names, they seem to send very much, almost like form letters through email. You could compare three or four of them, and they had almost the exact same wording. They even sometimes use the same font.

Like they were just recruiting by the gross rather than by picking out individuals. It almost, it read to me like they had bought the biggest buy they could get from the college board and they were just spamming as many people as they possibly could. And in some cases, and I pointed this out in a blog post that they even

sometimes didn't even personalize the email. It said something like, and sender or end recipient, please respond. It didn't even have reads. It was a lot of them. A lot of it was very poorly done. And Gary, if I can, if people are really interested in reading, can I give a shout out to the series that I did on Medium about the college search? Because...

Gary (18:07.31)
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Gary (18:25.186)
Absolutely.

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (18:26.381)
Yeah, if you look under my name and look on Medium, it'll give you a whole lot more details about the college search. And I even have some screenshots of some of these emails because it's kind of atrocious. There's a lack of quality control. Now, does that reflect on the finances of the college? I don't think that there's a direct reflection, but I think that what I got out of it, Gary, is that

Colleges that perhaps are struggling are really having a hard time personalizing their recruiting effort. I think they're casting massively wide nets and hoping that they'll just get one or two people to respond. For me, the desperation shows a little bit.

Gary (19:36.17)
So Marty, I'm going to jump in because I'm having trouble with audio on your end.

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (19:40.018)
No, shoot.

Gary (19:43.454)
Okay, we're just going to move on. I'll edit this last part out. Yeah, you're back now. You're back now. But I lost a few seconds. So I'll just edit this section out. I don't know what's going on, but it was fine for a while and now it's starting to cut out a little bit again. And part of it's the technology that the vendor that I use, Riverside, has. It's always worked before, so, but they actually are recording locally on your PC or phone, whatever you're using, and dumping it to the web at the same time.

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (19:43.634)
Are we?

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (19:47.265)
Oh, okay. Oh, sorry.

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (20:08.881)
Yeah. Oh.

Gary (20:09.922)
So that's one of the things that gives us a nice holiday sound, but don't worry about it. We'll capture because I'm watching you record all the time. It's just the audio is not always coming through. All right, let's continue. So, Marty, it's been a long time since my wife and I went on the college search process with our two adult children. And I vaguely recall, I think I've still got a couple of those brain cells left, that we had a chance to chat with other college parents as we were doing the tours and stuff. Did you have a chance to do that?

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (20:14.684)
Okay.

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (20:19.058)
Not yet.

Gary (20:39.563)
reflection did the appearance that you had a chance to chat with, share with you on your tours.

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (20:48.665)
I think a lot of people were looking for something unique and different on college tours and folks for the most part, I think were kind of disappointed. I'll give you an example. One thing that always disappointed me on college tours is when they didn't take you to the

That's a really important part of, of going to a college. You're going to spend a lot of time in your residence hall. And then we went on a bunch of tours where, um, they didn't show you the residence halls. They said, well, they're full up, there's people living in them right now and that sort of thing. And you're kind of like, that's not a complete picture of the college. If I can't go inside, you know, a room, you know? Um, and I think, you know, I found that disappointing. Um, we would, when I've talked with other parents, um, people would be

you know, turned off by everything from the reception they got, the, you know, the moment they arrived on campus to a tour guide who seemed a lot more robotic in their responses than, you know, really giving good information about the college. And I think, you know, Reed and I came across that more than once, where tour guides were frankly not very well informed and gave you bad information.

Gary (22:14.27)
A lot of interesting observations there. And then, Reid, I want to come back to you with a follow-up question. So just from your perspective, leave mom and dad out of this one, when did colleges rule themselves out on occasion during this whole process? You said no way because for some of these colleges.

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (22:31.721)
Um, yes, I actually remember, um, for one specific college, uh, it was me, my brother and dad, we were all together. We were at this info session and this person was giving a presentation, but the thing is, um, no one could hear him. And, um, he just kept on talking. Um, like people were saying, like, we can't hear you. Like, um, can you speak up? And we just couldn't hear him.

And so we just kind of tuned them out. And we were, honestly, all of us were just really bored and we just were not wowed by that. And afterwards we were slated to have a college tour, but I just turned to dad and I was like, I don't wanna go here. Let's get out of here. And so that's what we did. We went to our next destination a little bit early. You know, that was pretty nice. But I think honestly, sometimes there's just so many colleges.

sometimes you just have to do that. I mean, even if you're looking at maybe 15, like colleges, which is relatively few compared to how many there are in the United States, if there's just a college that just rubs you the wrong way, I mean, sometimes you just have to write it off. It just means that you have an easier decision in the long run. And like I said, I mean, you're gonna get a quality education basically anywhere. So you just, sometimes you just need to cut from the list, I think.

Gary (23:59.21)
Interesting. And I have one more question for each of you. Marty, I'll start with you. Was, I guess two questions. I'll ask them both at the same time. Was there a mix of public and private colleges your family looked at? And if so, what was the thought process behind looking at both types?

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (24:16.521)
So as Reed was saying earlier, he didn't want to go close by here. So that ruled out University of Maryland, for example, we live in Maryland. Uh, and once you start once, so we ended up applying mostly, he ended up mostly applying at private colleges because frankly, once you get far away from your home state, you become an out of state student and they get to be just as expensive after financial aid as private colleges.

Gary (24:45.717)
Interesting.

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (24:45.833)
So we applied, or Reid applied at two public colleges, I think. Yeah. And the rest were private and he applied at a total of 11. It was 11 or 12. Yeah. So that was really the mix. And honestly, Gary, after we got financial aid offers, the public universities were on the expensive side. The private colleges were cheaper.

Gary (25:16.034)
I've heard that before and it makes sense. And I know for example, public colleges like Alabama have become well known for recruiting out of state students. And I don't know what the logic behind that is, but that's interesting. I wasn't aware of that. Well, Reed, let's wrap it up with one final question to you. And you're in college now. It sounds like you found a great place at Colorado College. If you would just kind of look four years out because, bud, you're gonna graduate.

You'll be starting your four years from now. Yeah, four years from now, you'll be starting your final semester. And just kind of from your own perspective, you know, you can tell dad to leave the room if you want, just from your own perspective, what do you hope to get out of these next four years to prepare for whatever career opportunities that might interest you?

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (26:02.345)
Um, personally, I'm really not sure. And I think that I'm going to college just to learn about a variety of topics because I just like learning. And I was really lucky to go to a good high school. And part of my motivation, like part of my personal motivation to go to college was just to learn more and decided, and decide like hopefully, you know, how I wanted to build my life. And since I haven't,

decided that yet. I'm not really sure what, you know, four years from now is going to look like, but what I'm trying to do right now is just take classes that interest me. Um, and with hopes that they just really ignite some kind of passion, I'm trying to make a lot of friends, make a lot of connections. Um, just because I don't know, that's always pretty useful. Um, so hopefully, you know, in four years I'll be surrounded by friends. Oh, you know, beyond like the easy life.

Gary (26:56.014)
head.

Reid and Marty Van Der Werf (27:01.097)
you know, with my degree. Um, I don't know, maybe, uh, mom and dad will finally give me the car. Um, but, uh, other than that, I, yeah, I mean, I, it's kind of hard question to answer for me personally right at this moment, but, um, I think part of my college, like what I'm going to college for is to, I guess, answer that question.

Gary (27:09.602)
Hahaha!

Gary (27:26.174)
Yeah. Well, Reed, I wish you the very best. And I know the college experience is invaluable. And even though a lot of my work is on pointing out the issues associated with colleges, it's still something you really got to do if at all possible. And I say that all the time. So my guests on this episode about Oak College have been Marty and Reed Banderwerf. They have shared the perspective from both ends, the student and the parent, as they have completed their college search. And we'll be back next time with another episode.

of Uh-Oh College for now. My name is Gary Stocker.