Speaker 1: It's Nightside with Dan Ray on WBS, Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2: And thank you, Emma.
Speaker 3: I like your energy. I hope I can match it
Speaker 3: for the next four hours.
Speaker 2: My name is Dan Rey. Yeah, I amma. How are you?
Speaker 2: I'm good? Are you? I'm doing great? You sound great,
Speaker 2: you sound great.
Speaker 3: You're filling in tonight for Nicole, but I'll tell you
Speaker 3: you did a great job.
Speaker 2: So thanks much. Thank you for the intro. All right,
Speaker 2: we'll talk soon. Hope to see you soon.
Speaker 3: Well, good evening, everyone, welcome and in we start another
Speaker 3: full week of Nightside. Be here with you all week long,
Speaker 3: Monday through Friday. I am delighted tonight to do a
Speaker 3: program that we've done once a year now for this
Speaker 3: is our eighteenth annual college Admissions Panel. I think this
Speaker 3: is a critically important program for everyone who listens to Nightside,
Speaker 3: and I hope we've mentioned this and promoted this enough
Speaker 3: so that if you're a parent or a grand or
Speaker 3: betty at a student in high school thinking about applying
Speaker 3: to college.
Speaker 2: We have two.
Speaker 3: Legendary emissions directors with us tonight. I'm going to start
Speaker 3: off with Grant Goslin. He's the dean of Undergraduate and
Speaker 3: mission Singular and Financial Aid at Boston College. Grant has
Speaker 3: been with us now for several years. He succeeds John Mahoney,
Speaker 3: who has retired, but in the meantime also was the provo.
Speaker 3: You've always had great, big shoes to fill, Grant, but
Speaker 3: you're doing a fabulous job.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much.
Speaker 3: This is your fourth or fifth year with us. Maybe
Speaker 3: maybe it's a little more tell us, tell us how
Speaker 3: many years you've been with us doing this.
Speaker 4: You know it's been a few. It's good to be
Speaker 4: back with you, Dan. I really appreciate the opportunity to
Speaker 4: engage with you and your listeners tonight.
Speaker 3: Well, I'll tell you you admissions folks, men and women
Speaker 3: do great work. I know that that Bill Fitzsimmons, who's
Speaker 3: also with us tonight and is going to be participating
Speaker 3: in his eighteenth panel. First one we did was two
Speaker 3: thousand and seven. Bill Fitzsimmons is the Harvard College Dean
Speaker 3: of Admissions and Financial Aid. Bill fitz Simmons, welcome back.
Speaker 3: You've had a legendary career from being a student and
Speaker 3: an athlete at Harvard and have worked in admissions there
Speaker 3: for I'm not going to say how many years, but
Speaker 3: it's been a few decades and you're a legendary person
Speaker 3: across the country. So thanks so much for coming back
Speaker 3: for year eighteen. Bill fitz Simmons, how are you tonight.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you, and thank you again for your commitment
Speaker 5: to higher education for all these years, and thanks to
Speaker 5: Amma for giving us that energy for us to have
Speaker 5: another great show. Because when you think about what's happened
Speaker 5: in over those eighteen years and how higher education has
Speaker 5: become much more critical in lots of different ways for
Speaker 5: people in America around the world, it also, at the
Speaker 5: same time, things that are happening not just at BC
Speaker 5: but at Harvard, but even on the newscast, you know,
Speaker 5: things that are happening in the state of Massachusetts with
Speaker 5: community colleges and junior colleges. And it's always good for
Speaker 5: us to remember that about eighty percent of the students
Speaker 5: who go to college in the United States go to
Speaker 5: public universities. And it's also good just to remember that
Speaker 5: as you step back from it all, most of the
Speaker 5: rest of the world sees America's higher education institutions as
Speaker 5: the gold standard. So there's a lot for us to
Speaker 5: live up to. But there's an awful lot going on
Speaker 5: just in this state alone. That makes me very optimistic
Speaker 5: for the future.
Speaker 3: Well, both of you, like you just to give some
Speaker 3: folks an idea, this is the busy season. Well every
Speaker 3: year is that? Every time of years of busy seasons?
Speaker 3: For an admission dean or admissions director Bill fitz Simmons,
Speaker 3: give me an idea about you at Harvard. You actually
Speaker 3: go out and seek out people for admissions and application
Speaker 3: to Harvard University. You're out finding people. How many states
Speaker 3: in your career in the last few years have you
Speaker 3: traveled to just basically tell people in different parts of
Speaker 3: the country about higher education and about Harvard University.
Speaker 5: Well, and I think you've got the order write a
Speaker 5: whole idea as we go out across the country and
Speaker 5: across the world is to talk about the value of
Speaker 5: higher education. But even before we get there, not everybody
Speaker 5: has to go to college. What everybody has, I hope,
Speaker 5: an ambition to do is to make the best of
Speaker 5: their talents, you know, whatever they might be and wherever
Speaker 5: those talents might lead. We go out with four or
Speaker 5: five different travel groups every year around the United States
Speaker 5: and around the world, and you know, we hit over
Speaker 5: a two or three year period, we hit every state
Speaker 5: in the US. And you know, we're also doing a
Speaker 5: lot now virtually, so we're doing things with Zoom recruiting
Speaker 5: across the country and around the world. And you know,
Speaker 5: when you think about you were speculator, and you and
Speaker 5: I are pretty much contemporaries, Dan as you know, both
Speaker 5: college goaltenders back in our days most successful.
Speaker 2: I cannot compare to what you did at Harvard. So
Speaker 2: I'm embarrassed.
Speaker 5: Well, we all tried to do exactly the same thing.
Speaker 5: And I think I've been in admission since nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 5: been at Harvard since nineteen sixty three, and it's incredible
Speaker 5: to me. I mean, the Harvard I attended was four
Speaker 5: to one male to female. Now there are slightly more
Speaker 5: women than men. There were very few first generation college
Speaker 5: students like me at Harvard at that time, and now
Speaker 5: over twenty percent of Harvard students of first gen and
Speaker 5: about twenty percent of Hell grant recipients. There were very
Speaker 5: few students of color in my era, and today there
Speaker 5: are many. The idea is that there is talent everywhere,
Speaker 5: but honestly, opportunity is not possible. It's not there for
Speaker 5: a lot of people in the same degree as it
Speaker 5: is for others. So the whole idea is to make
Speaker 5: sure we get word out to talented students everywhere literally
Speaker 5: this country and other countries that they have an opportunity
Speaker 5: to developed their talents. That's that's the idea, And they
Speaker 5: don't have to end up at one of our universities.
Speaker 5: But the whole idea, we hope is that they'll end
Speaker 5: up making the most of their own talents. But these
Speaker 5: places have changed.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 5: Over half the students at Harvard now are on need
Speaker 5: based financial aid. We're spending two hundred and sixty million
Speaker 5: dollars a year right now on undergraduate financial aid. And
Speaker 5: as I grew up in Weymouth, we ran a gas
Speaker 5: station and a mom and pop store, and I was
Speaker 5: lucky enough to get to Archbishop Williams and then eventually
Speaker 5: to Harvard. But I will say it's a world. Harvard
Speaker 5: and BC have changed in remarkable ways over this period
Speaker 5: of time, and we will get even better, we hope,
Speaker 5: in the years ahead.
Speaker 2: Well I'll tell you again. I just want you to know.
Speaker 3: If anyone who knows Fitz Simmons was great goaltender at Harvard,
Speaker 3: my nickname in Boston State was redline. So we'll leave
Speaker 3: that part of the conversation all from now. Nothing to
Speaker 3: compare Grant. I want to come back to you. BC
Speaker 3: has in the last fifty years really transformed itself tremendous leadership.
Speaker 3: How many applications is Boston College receiving for how many
Speaker 3: spots these days? It's very competitive.
Speaker 4: It has become Dan, you know, you're right. The last
Speaker 4: fifty years have really been I think the modern story
Speaker 4: for Boston College. We were founded back in eighteen sixty
Speaker 4: three and at the time were really charged with educating
Speaker 4: the sons of immigrants that were left a few educational
Speaker 4: opportunities at the time, and we were largely a regional
Speaker 4: institution for most of our history up until the early
Speaker 4: nineteen seventies when we were facing some pretty significant financial headwinds,
Speaker 4: and the leadership at the time, Father Monan and succeeded
Speaker 4: by Father Lay He had really put Boston College on
Speaker 4: a course for growth regionally, but then nationally and internationally
Speaker 4: as well. We receive somewhere between thirty five and forty
Speaker 4: thousand applications a year. We're looking for an entering class
Speaker 4: of about twenty four hundred students, you know, and just
Speaker 4: as Bill said, you know, our task is really about
Speaker 4: how do we reach students wherever they are to help
Speaker 4: them think about college as an option. As Bill said,
Speaker 4: not everyone will desire to go to college, but we
Speaker 4: hope that students are at least thinking about that as
Speaker 4: an option. And the reality is high schools across the
Speaker 4: country and around the world are not all the same,
Speaker 4: They're not all provided the same resources, and there are
Speaker 4: students that just don't have the wherewithal of their knowledge
Speaker 4: to really get out there and understand the opportunities that
Speaker 4: are available to them. And so it's our job to
Speaker 4: make sure that as we get out in the road,
Speaker 4: we're not only visiting schools that routinely send us applicants
Speaker 4: each year, you know, feeder schools if you will, but
Speaker 4: that we're we're making sure that we're attending schools that
Speaker 4: are are opportunist, opportunistic schools for us, those where we
Speaker 4: see great potential but we just haven't seen the application
Speaker 4: volume yet. We work really hard to get into both
Speaker 4: private and public high schools, to work with community based
Speaker 4: organizations that that really fill the gap around college counseling
Speaker 4: at at many underfunded public high schools where you know,
Speaker 4: if you look in the state of California, for example,
Speaker 4: there there are nine hundred students in a public high
Speaker 4: school to every one school counselor, and that school counselor
Speaker 4: is not earmarked as a college counselor. There they're truancy officers,
Speaker 4: their academic advisors, their mental health counselors, and they also
Speaker 4: do a little bit of college counseling. And so community
Speaker 4: based organizations are an opportunity for colleges to pair up
Speaker 4: with nonprofits that are really filling that gap and providing
Speaker 4: students with access to information about colleges. And you know,
Speaker 4: Bills Team and mine, you know, we're out there really
Speaker 4: trying to make sure that students understand that opportunity is there.
Speaker 4: And just like Harvard, you know, Boston College is also
Speaker 4: deeply committed to need based financial aid and making sure
Speaker 4: that every student who qualifies has the funds they need
Speaker 4: to be able to accept the offer of admission.
Speaker 3: We're talking about two admissions directors. Bill Fitzimmons Harvard College
Speaker 3: is Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid. You've just heard
Speaker 3: Grant Goslin, the Dean of Undergraduate Admission and Financial aid
Speaker 3: at Boston College. I have a lot of questions. I'm
Speaker 3: sure people in our audience does, and I'm hoping that
Speaker 3: there are students out there tonight who are embarking on
Speaker 3: this on this search, this search for the right school,
Speaker 3: for the school that best fits their need, their talent.
Speaker 2: We want to talk.
Speaker 3: About the difference between SAT exams and ACT exams, the
Speaker 3: importance of high school grades, teacher recommendations, essays that students
Speaker 3: might might might be asked to write about themselves, all
Speaker 3: sorts of questions about FAFTSA, which is that Federal Aid
Speaker 3: for Student Loan Applications, which now I think there's been
Speaker 3: some hiccups on that this year, so we have I
Speaker 3: have a lot of questions, but I hope all of
Speaker 3: you out there, whether your parents, grandparents, students do not
Speaker 3: hesitate six one, seven, two, five, four ten thirty six seven, nine, three, one,
Speaker 3: ten thirty. Those are the two ways to get through.
Speaker 3: I'll try, We'll try to get to as many of
Speaker 3: you as possible, I promise, but you have to do
Speaker 3: your part in that style.
Speaker 2: In My name is Dan Ray. This is Nightside.
Speaker 3: Really appreciative of the time that Bill Fitzimmons and Grant Goslin,
Speaker 3: Bill of Harvard, granted BC. The admissions directors at both
Speaker 3: of those great institutions will spend with us tonight. This
Speaker 3: is their high season there in the process of formulating
Speaker 3: acceptances which will be sent out. I'm sure early admissions
Speaker 3: will be coming out probably by the end of the month,
Speaker 3: and then the other admissions will be out. They're still
Speaker 3: they're reading, reading, reading, It's a gargantuan, humongous, herculean task,
Speaker 3: and for them to take some time for us tonight,
Speaker 3: it's really very much appreciated. Back on Night's Side as
Speaker 3: we conduct our eighteenth annual college Admissions panel.
Speaker 1: Now back to Dan ray Line from the Window World
Speaker 1: Nightside Studios on w b Z the News Radio.
Speaker 2: Welcome back.
Speaker 3: This is our eighteenth annual college admissions panel. This is
Speaker 3: an opportunity for you, whether you're a student, a parent, grandparent,
Speaker 3: or family friend, to speak directly with Bill Fitzimmons of Harvard,
Speaker 3: Grant Goslin of Boston College. It is their staff which
Speaker 3: decides who's accepted and who isn't. But more importantly, we
Speaker 3: want to try to guide you. We're not just talking
Speaker 3: about Harvard or BC tonight. Of course, two of the
Speaker 3: pre eminent schools here in the Boston area. But talking
Speaker 3: about other issues, So let me start off with again,
Speaker 3: assuming that the student is interested in going to college,
Speaker 3: and there are a lot of successful people who never
Speaker 3: apply to college. They get out in their own in
Speaker 3: their own business or in the military or whatever, and
Speaker 3: they're very successful people. How important would you say high
Speaker 3: school grades are? I know students focus on the Scholastic
Speaker 3: Aptitude test, whether it's the SAT or the ACT.
Speaker 2: But give us a quick review.
Speaker 3: Bill will start with you, maybe on the importance of
Speaker 3: the marathon of the four years in high school compared
Speaker 3: to that one day performance on the SAT or the ACTS.
Speaker 5: Well, I think you've pretty well summed it up in
Speaker 5: introducing the question doing well on a day to day
Speaker 5: basis in anything. It's the foundation, you know, for any
Speaker 5: kind of achievement or excellent. So let's, you know, let's
Speaker 5: start out with doing well in each and every subject.
Speaker 5: We hope as you go through the process, if you're
Speaker 5: not so lucky to be in a school that is
Speaker 5: offering absolute top academic opportunities, there are things available and
Speaker 5: for example, in con academy sort of free free test prep,
Speaker 5: but also free ideas on how to study different subjects
Speaker 5: as you're going through high school. So let's start with that,
Speaker 5: and I want I turn the next step having to
Speaker 5: do with standardized tests, probably over to you Grant.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sure, Bill. You know, I think the environment around
Speaker 4: standardized test has changed a lot in recent years. I
Speaker 4: think over the last thirty or forty years, there have
Speaker 4: been a small number of colleges that have offered test
Speaker 4: optional admission plan that tended to grow a bit through
Speaker 4: the two thousands, the twenty tens, but really when the
Speaker 4: pandemic hit in twenty twenty, in the next cycle, after
Speaker 4: the pandemic hit, many colleges and universities realized that test
Speaker 4: centers were closed and students really didn't have access to
Speaker 4: take advantage of testing. If a student could take an exam,
Speaker 4: they were doing so under duress, right if the student
Speaker 4: behind them was coughing, they were wondering, you know, might
Speaker 4: they get sick next? And so I think there was
Speaker 4: a huge shift coming out of the pandemic where the
Speaker 4: vast majority of colleges, even those that had not previously
Speaker 4: been test optional, moved into that environment. And then once
Speaker 4: the pandemic subsided, and you know, we moved into a
Speaker 4: different state. Things have begun to evolve again, right, And
Speaker 4: there are some schools that have re implemented testing, others
Speaker 4: that you know, still remain test optional. But what test
Speaker 4: scores have done is they've allowed colleges and universities to
Speaker 4: understand student performance in context, both nationally and globally. Where
Speaker 4: high school curriculums can vary so widely, it can be
Speaker 4: difficult sometimes to really understand a student's strength and potential,
Speaker 4: and test scores can do that. There is a predictive
Speaker 4: element to them. Boston College is an institution that remains
Speaker 4: test optional, though this year we have added a recommendation
Speaker 4: to students that if they have scores, we're recommending that
Speaker 4: they submit them because they again do provide some additional context,
Speaker 4: an additional opportunity for us to advocate for a student.
Speaker 4: And honestly, during the test optional time that we went through,
Speaker 4: there were a lot of students that really struggled with
Speaker 4: whether to submit scores. They looked at a mid fifty
Speaker 4: percent range that a school might provide and they said, well,
Speaker 4: I'm in the middle fifty percent of that range, right,
Speaker 4: And so there were students opting not to submit scores
Speaker 4: when they were scoring in the ninety seventh or ninety
Speaker 4: eighth percentile nationally, but in their mind, if they weren't
Speaker 4: above that fifty percent range, they weren't competitive. And that's
Speaker 4: really not how we make decisions. Test scores are when
Speaker 4: they're used, they're one factor of many that provide again,
Speaker 4: another data element for us to make informed decisions.
Speaker 3: Again, it is a complex process and it can be
Speaker 3: a daunting process. And what we're trying to do tonight
Speaker 3: with Bill fitz Simmons and Grant Goslin, Bill from Harvard
Speaker 3: for many years, granted at Boston College, is to kind
Speaker 3: of demystify some of this. There's all sorts of other
Speaker 3: topics that I want to ask them about. But when
Speaker 3: we get back, we're going to start with phone calls.
Speaker 3: And as far as I'm concerned, we can go phone
Speaker 3: calls for as long as you want to keep the
Speaker 3: phones ringing six one set, well, not the entire night,
Speaker 3: that's for sure, But the gentlemen have committed to an hour,
Speaker 3: and if the phone calls persist, I think we might
Speaker 3: be able to convince Steven a little longer. Six one, seven, two, five, four, ten,
Speaker 3: thirty six one seven, nine, three one ten thirty. My
Speaker 3: name is Dan Ray. I'm just a host of the show.
Speaker 3: I'm I'm learning and continue to learn. Every time that
Speaker 3: we've had one of these college admissions panels, there are
Speaker 3: a whole bunch of topics that I have questions on.
Speaker 3: Don't rely upon me to ask you a question, though,
Speaker 3: because I might just not think of it, and you're
Speaker 3: thinking of it right now.
Speaker 2: Give us a call.
Speaker 3: Coming back on Nightside with Bill Fitzimmons of Harvard and
Speaker 3: Grant Goslin of Boston College. They are both the top
Speaker 3: guys in the admission department. The titles are similar. Harvard
Speaker 3: College Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, Grant Goslin, Dean
Speaker 3: of Undergraduate Admission and Financial Aid.
Speaker 2: Back on night.
Speaker 3: Side, calls and questions and students out there pick up
Speaker 3: that fall. We want to hear from you, most importantly.
Speaker 1: With Dan Ray on WBZ, Boston's news radio.
Speaker 3: We have not even scratched the surface, but we have
Speaker 3: with us the eighteenth Annual College Admissions Paneled. Bill Fitzsimmons,
Speaker 3: Harvard College Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, and Grant Goslin,
Speaker 3: Dean of Undergraduate Admission and Financial Aid.
Speaker 2: At Boston College.
Speaker 3: Now gonna get right to phone calls, and as I say,
Speaker 3: rule it will take him as many as we can.
Speaker 3: No begging, no pleading, only getting. This is a wonderful
Speaker 3: opportunity for you to reach either Bill Fitzsimmons or Grant Gostlin.
Speaker 3: So let's go first off to Joy. What a great name.
Speaker 3: Joy is in the great state of New York. Joy,
Speaker 3: Welcome to night Side. You're al with Bill Fitzsimmons and
Speaker 3: Grant Goslin. Go right ahead.
Speaker 6: Oh, gentlemen, thank you so much for taking my call.
Speaker 6: Please don't make fun of my accent. I'm from Long Island,
Speaker 6: New York. You're gonna you're gonna love my name, all right.
Speaker 6: I'm glad you like my name because I purposely married
Speaker 6: a guy who's last name Robin my first name. So
Speaker 6: I'm actually Joy Mouley. Okay, that's easy to You can't
Speaker 6: make that at So my question is, gentlemen, thanks again
Speaker 6: for doing this. It's super insightful for parents like me. Grant.
Speaker 6: I am a very proud Boston College alum class of
Speaker 6: ninety four. Boston College gave me a chance in life.
Speaker 6: I'm first generation college and you know, not having parents
Speaker 6: who went to college. I don't know what I did
Speaker 6: on my application to have BC accept me. I can
Speaker 6: tell you that if I had to apply today, with
Speaker 6: my SAT scores and my grades, I highly doubt BC
Speaker 6: would accept me as a student. My question is I
Speaker 6: hear a lot from parents where their kid is a valedatorian,
Speaker 6: a fludatorian. They've got exceptional grades like four point six GPAs,
Speaker 6: and they discovered the cure for cancer, and they have
Speaker 6: like remarkable resumes, but they don't get into the colleges
Speaker 6: that they want to get into. So for a parent
Speaker 6: like me, I encourage my kids to excel, but I
Speaker 6: also don't want to kill themselves either getting the grades
Speaker 6: and the scores. How do you all look at an application?
Speaker 6: Do you look at it holistically? Is it in their essays? Like,
Speaker 6: what do you guys you know, really look at I mean,
Speaker 6: I know greeves and SATs are important, but let's say,
Speaker 6: for example, that they do well in school, but their
Speaker 6: SATs are alton on the weak side no matter how
Speaker 6: many times they take it. You know, is there is
Speaker 6: there a strategy? Is there a recipe for how you
Speaker 6: look at the application?
Speaker 3: Okay, let's let's start off with Grant, we're not going
Speaker 3: to cut you off. We're going to get a reaction
Speaker 3: from Bill fitz Simmons too, But since you're a VC,
Speaker 3: since you're an Eagle, we'll start off with Grant Goslin
Speaker 3: with this question. Go ahead, Grant.
Speaker 4: Well, Joy, it's nice to meet you. Thanks so much
Speaker 4: for calling in. Always good to meet a fellow b
Speaker 4: C alum. Thanks for your question. You know, this process
Speaker 4: is is stressful and it is challenging. Of course. You know,
Speaker 4: we institutions like those that Bill and I represent are
Speaker 4: really in a fortunate position where we have applicant pools
Speaker 4: that are really full of students that impress us as
Speaker 4: we work through their applications. You know, each each student
Speaker 4: we look at, we're looking at a whole host of things.
Speaker 4: And you mentioned holistic admission and absolutely both our institutions.
Speaker 4: I certainly can let Bill talk about how things work
Speaker 4: at Harvard, but you know, at Boston College where we're
Speaker 4: starting with the transcripts, and as we talked about in
Speaker 4: the last segment, if students submit scores, we're going to
Speaker 4: look at those as well. But the reality is that
Speaker 4: at the most selective institutions, there's a difference between being
Speaker 4: being qualified and being competitive, right, And most of our
Speaker 4: applicants are qualified, right. They could come to our institutions
Speaker 4: and do very well and graduate and be quite successful
Speaker 4: in life. But I've always explained that it's the applicant pool,
Speaker 4: not the admission office, that sets our selectivity, right. And
Speaker 4: if students elect to enter the field of a highly
Speaker 4: selective admission process, they're taking on a bit of risk.
Speaker 4: And you know, we are going to be doing our
Speaker 4: best to make sure that as we craft our class,
Speaker 4: we're bringing forward students from a wide range of backgrounds.
Speaker 4: You mentioned being a first generation college student, you know
Speaker 4: that was given a chance. And I think both of
Speaker 4: our institutions are really proud of the work that we
Speaker 4: continue to do at providing an opportunity for access to
Speaker 4: students whose families didn't have that opportunity before them. We're
Speaker 4: proud members of an organization on this quest Bridge, which
Speaker 4: is a national nonprofit that works to match first generation
Speaker 4: and low income students with top universities, and we enroll
Speaker 4: over one hundred students a year through that program. And
Speaker 4: so we're balancing opportunities like that with going after students
Speaker 4: that might come from schools that do have really strong
Speaker 4: track records of sending students to universities like ours. But
Speaker 4: you know, there isn't a formula. We're looking at after
Speaker 4: those objective criteria very much, how that student has engaged
Speaker 4: in their community, their school community, their local community, how
Speaker 4: they may have wrote about areas of interest or backgrounds
Speaker 4: or experiences that they've had that we believe would enrich
Speaker 4: our communities as we're bringing them into to Boston College.
Speaker 4: So I wish I could tell you there was a formula,
Speaker 4: but there isn't. Our decisions are made after really close
Speaker 4: consideration of both objective and subjective criteria.
Speaker 3: Bill at Simmons, let's get a little view from across
Speaker 3: the river to Joy's issues.
Speaker 5: Well, I think Grant summed it up well. But that's
Speaker 5: you know, a simple way to think about it. And
Speaker 5: by the way, Joey, I am thrilled to hear yet
Speaker 5: another first gen success story such as yours. And you know,
Speaker 5: I all I can say is that as we were
Speaker 5: running our gas station and convenience store in Weymouth and
Speaker 5: thinking about what we might do in the future, I
Speaker 5: had three siblings, all of us you know, decided various
Speaker 5: ways that we wanted to head off to college. I
Speaker 5: was lucky enough to have one sibling go to Yale
Speaker 5: who knew another one go to stone Hill, and yet
Speaker 5: another to Boston College, and we all had great experiences.
Speaker 5: I think the way to think about it, especially over
Speaker 5: to say the fifty year period, is that one of
Speaker 5: the great success stories, among other things over fifty years
Speaker 5: in college admissions, is the fact that so many women
Speaker 5: now are applying to college, which was not the case before.
Speaker 5: As I said initially, and one of the reasons it
Speaker 5: is a bit more difficult to get into college now.
Speaker 5: Is a good thing in the sense that people from
Speaker 5: many different backgrounds who might not previous generations have applied
Speaker 5: to college are now applying. And the other really great thing,
Speaker 5: and you can see it right here in the Boston area,
Speaker 5: is that there are so many great choices, public and private.
Speaker 5: We sometimes forget that. You know, we are living on
Speaker 5: what the world calls the America's college town, and this
Speaker 5: is a you know, there are forty five institutions of
Speaker 5: higher education in the immediate area, and if you look
Speaker 5: even beyond the institutions of higher education, this area is
Speaker 5: the best in the world right now. If anyone interested
Speaker 5: in the applied life sciences. When you look at higher education,
Speaker 5: you look at the hospitals, look at the research possibilities.
Speaker 5: This is an amazing place to go to college. And
Speaker 5: the fact is that seventy percent of Americans will end
Speaker 5: up going to college within fifty miles of their homes.
Speaker 5: That's been for quite a while, and most ninety percent
Speaker 5: will go within five hundred miles of their home. So
Speaker 5: there are so many great possibilities. And the way we
Speaker 5: make our choices is that we look at as Grant suggested,
Speaker 5: we look at the entire person. We call the whole person,
Speaker 5: and we'll look at academic accomplishments. We'll look also at
Speaker 5: extracurricular accomplishments, things that you do to help around the home,
Speaker 5: things that you might do in work possibilities, as we
Speaker 5: did in the gas station and store, and we lived
Speaker 5: right across the street, so we had plenty of opportunity
Speaker 5: to do that. But we're also trying to figure out
Speaker 5: of all these you know, mostly fully qualified students who apply,
Speaker 5: who might make the biggest contribution to the fellow classmates
Speaker 5: into the faculty during college, and then what kind of
Speaker 5: contribution they'll make to the world later on and you know,
Speaker 5: this is there about fifty of us and it's a
Speaker 5: one person, one vote, and we put everything up on
Speaker 5: a screen for everybody to see and discuss and then vote.
Speaker 5: But I think we do exactly what you would do
Speaker 5: if you go back and even just think about your
Speaker 5: own high school and you could admit a relatively small
Speaker 5: number of students from your high school to spend four
Speaker 5: years together in an educational environment. Whom would you choose?
Speaker 5: Where you just take the ones with the highest test
Speaker 5: scores and grades. Probably not, although you'd factor that those
Speaker 5: those variables in, but you'd look way beyond that. And
Speaker 5: I think that's what colleges do, and that's really what
Speaker 5: a great private sector organization will do as well. Look
Speaker 5: at everything, look at all the talents.
Speaker 2: Joy. I hope that that covers the waterfront for you. Okay,
Speaker 2: thank you so.
Speaker 6: Much, Thank you so much, y'all, have a good night.
Speaker 6: Take care.
Speaker 2: Where's your daughters first choice? Joy?
Speaker 6: If I could ask, well, I mean she grew up
Speaker 6: with you know, BC merch as they say, and into
Speaker 6: the BC Women's hockey games and she plays hockey, so
Speaker 6: you know, but she would not turn down an offer
Speaker 6: from Harvard either. I'm also glad of the Columbia University.
Speaker 6: I have five degrees, and I cannot stress enough the
Speaker 6: chance that they took on me having, you know, not
Speaker 6: the greatest academics. But BC was really my starting point,
Speaker 6: my my my bounce into five years later being accepted
Speaker 6: into Columbia for graduate school and moving on. And I
Speaker 6: worked on Wall Street. I was an investigative reporter. I'm
Speaker 6: now a doctor of vacupuncture with my own practice, and
Speaker 6: BC gave me the foundation to really realize what I
Speaker 6: wanted to be. So I am living proof that if
Speaker 6: you give someone a chance to excel, chances are they'll
Speaker 6: do it. I had the right tools and I'm forever
Speaker 6: grateful for that.
Speaker 2: All Right, well, thank you very much.
Speaker 3: Best of luck with your daughter and your and whatever
Speaker 3: out of the children are replying.
Speaker 2: Thanks Joan, thanks for listening to that.
Speaker 6: Thanks have a good night. Take care you too, have
Speaker 6: a great night.
Speaker 3: We'll take very quick break back with Bill Fitzimmons of
Speaker 3: Harvard and Grant Gostlin of Boston College right after this.
Speaker 1: Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World
Speaker 1: Nightside Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 3: Let's go next to Sam is An Everett. Sam, you
Speaker 3: were next on Nightside with Bill Fitzimmons of Harvard, Grant
Speaker 3: Gostlin and Boston College.
Speaker 7: Go right ahead, good eating gentlemen. How are you.
Speaker 2: They're doing great? Sam? What's your comment or question?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 7: Comment in a question? I am a high school dropout.
Speaker 7: I'm from Boston. I live in Michigan Hill. I ended
Speaker 7: up going to Roxbury Community College. I was a single father.
Speaker 7: I raised my son on my own. I went to RCC,
Speaker 7: and then I applied to a number of school was
Speaker 7: accepted by all of them except for Harvard. Ended up
Speaker 7: at Amorous College out in the AMers, Massachusetts. Came back
Speaker 7: to Boston, went to law school or a practicing lawyer
Speaker 7: here in the city. I dedicated at least two hundred
Speaker 7: hours a year of non billable pro bowl work for
Speaker 7: underserved folks. And as I'm sure the Kale knows, community
Speaker 7: college is now free in Massachusetts. And I have two
Speaker 7: part question. The first part of the question is how
Speaker 7: much outreach do each of your institutions do respect to
Speaker 7: drawing from the community college pool. And the other question
Speaker 7: I have is and it's a concern that I have
Speaker 7: seems to me that community colleges are becoming more and
Speaker 7: more trade schools and not focusing on liberal acts and
Speaker 7: creating thinkers. There seem to be designed. It seems that
Speaker 7: their mission has become to help people get you know,
Speaker 7: respectable jobs, but not move on to the next step,
Speaker 7: to go to go to for your school, to get
Speaker 7: a higher degree.
Speaker 3: I think they got the question and just hold on, Sam.
Speaker 3: I want to give them each a chance to jump
Speaker 3: in here. Bill, why don't you start this one place.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, okay, one of the Sam. You've had quite
Speaker 5: an educational journey and you probably know more at the
Speaker 5: ground level about you know, what is happening in the state,
Speaker 5: about the projection that people can be on, you know,
Speaker 5: depending on which avenues they take. We have about a
Speaker 5: ninety eight percent graduation rate, and honestly, very few people
Speaker 5: drop out, so we only have a limited number of
Speaker 5: spaces available for transfers. But I will tell you whenever
Speaker 5: we see good possibility of you know, whether it's bunker
Speaker 5: Hill Community College or Roxbury CC or any of the
Speaker 5: others around and about, they would certainly get a lot
Speaker 5: of attention in our pool. It's a even on the
Speaker 5: newscast coming in tonight, your your point was made, you know,
Speaker 5: that there's been a great, great thing that's happened this
Speaker 5: year this you know, twenty percent increase in students going,
Speaker 5: you know, to community colleges in state, and that's got
Speaker 5: to be good long term for the health of the
Speaker 5: state in terms of developing the full talents of the
Speaker 5: people in the state in a way perhaps that's never
Speaker 5: been done before.
Speaker 2: Sure, but a great quick comment, Grant, is it comment
Speaker 2: in here as well? Quick Grant?
Speaker 4: Yes, Sam, thanks so much for calling in for and
Speaker 4: for your question. You know, I think this the second
Speaker 4: part of it was, you know, a comment about preparing
Speaker 4: students for trades or preparing students for jobs, And unfortunately,
Speaker 4: I don't think that's limited to the community colleges. I
Speaker 4: think the many in the public view, even for your institutions,
Speaker 4: as almost a means to an end. And I think
Speaker 4: you're right that we're losing the opportunity to really educate
Speaker 4: students about the value of the liberal arts, to be
Speaker 4: free thinkers, to be problem solvers, to deal with ambiguity,
Speaker 4: all the things that a strong liberal arts education that
Speaker 4: students might find at our institutions and so many other places,
Speaker 4: I think is a critical part of education. We at
Speaker 4: BC are really trying to also help students that might
Speaker 4: be thinking about a two year path. We just opened
Speaker 4: last year on the former campus of Pine Manor College
Speaker 4: that is now the Brookline Campus at BC, a two
Speaker 4: year residential associates degree program. We know one of the
Speaker 4: challenges with many students at community colleges is the completion
Speaker 4: rate as students are commuting from home and are distracted
Speaker 4: in different places. We're bringing in over one hundred students
Speaker 4: a year, first generation students from backgrounds that where students
Speaker 4: need significant financial aid to explore this idea of a
Speaker 4: two year associate's degree that could give them multiple paths.
Speaker 4: They could go into the workforce after two years, or
Speaker 4: they could continue on at Boston College or at another
Speaker 4: four year institution to complete a bachelor's degree. So we're
Speaker 4: trying to be part of the solution, trying to help
Speaker 4: students that might be thinking about two year associates degrees
Speaker 4: in a different way, not just think of them as
Speaker 4: a track for employment, but to think about a four
Speaker 4: year degree as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and let me just add Grant's point is really
Speaker 5: an important one. And when you're thinking about people thinking
Speaker 5: only about the return on investment that a four year
Speaker 5: college degree will bring. First of all, there's a lot
Speaker 5: of misinformation out there in the world, probably more now
Speaker 5: than there has been in all the time during my career.
Speaker 5: It is absolutely the true that you have a much
Speaker 5: better chance of making a lot more money, just to
Speaker 5: put it bluntly, if you graduate from a four year
Speaker 5: institution than if you don't, and that has been proven
Speaker 5: time and again with studies of Georgetown, all kinds of
Speaker 5: different places over the past few years. And yet there's
Speaker 5: this somehow urban legend out there that this is not true,
Speaker 5: that you'd be better off not going to college, and
Speaker 5: so on. I mean, one of the things that too
Speaker 5: that people use is a way to discourage people from
Speaker 5: going to college. In a funny way, they talk about debt.
Speaker 5: We haven't required loans for our financial aid. Students are
Speaker 5: fifty five percent on need based aid. They are not
Speaker 5: required to take out loans at all. They graduate debt
Speaker 5: free after the four years. So this is a whole
Speaker 5: different thing. This urban legend that somehow going to college
Speaker 5: won't pay off seems to have particularly affected men in
Speaker 5: the United States versus women. So in any case, all
Speaker 5: I'm saying is that we want people to think of college,
Speaker 5: going to college as a way to become better citizens,
Speaker 5: citizen leaders, better human beings, better informed about how to
Speaker 5: live your life, all those other things. But if you
Speaker 5: do go to college and graduate, you do have a
Speaker 5: much better chance of economic success than otherwise, just spite
Speaker 5: what you might hear or on on different social media.
Speaker 3: All right, gentlemen, I gotta stop it there, Sam, great call,
Speaker 3: great question. Congratulations on such success that you have had
Speaker 3: as somebody who talks out of high school.
Speaker 2: Hats off to you, my friend. Thank you.
Speaker 3: Keep calling this program, right, gentlemen, Ken, thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Sam.
Speaker 3: Gentlemen, we have more calls I need to Are we
Speaker 3: up for going a little longer into the net into
Speaker 3: the next hour?
Speaker 4: I hope surely.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I'm happy to do it. It'd be great. This
Speaker 5: is a great show for any institution of higher education.
Speaker 3: Sounds great, sounds great. We will, We'll get to more callers.
Speaker 3: We had a couple of folks who dropped off. Feel
Speaker 3: free to call back. Six one seven, two four to
Speaker 3: ten thirty six one seven, nine, ten thirty back on
Speaker 3: Nightside with Bill Fitzimmons of Harvard Grant Coslin of Boston
Speaker 3: College talking about applying and being accepted to the college
Speaker 3: of your choice.
Speaker 2: Back on nightside,