608: Admission Nutrients (Part 2 of 6: Collaboration): Important Ingredients for a Well-Balanced College Admission Process—And Life with Raissa Diamante

The College Essay Guy - Episode 608 - Raissa Diamante_otter_ai

The College Essay Guy - Episode 608 - Raissa Diamante

Mon, May 19, 2025 3:37PM 1:01:23

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Collaboration, college admission, Harvey Mudd College, supplemental essay, AI in essays, equity in admissions, student background, intellectual curiosity, leadership, service to others, admission review, committee-based evaluation, student advocacy, race in essays, STEM education.

SPEAKERS

Speaker 1, Raissa Diamante, Ethan Sawyer

Ethan Sawyer 00:08

E

Hi friends and welcome back to the podcast. So in our previous episode, I introduced what I'm calling our college admission nutrients. These are qualities that can be important for a healthy quote, unquote college application process, then also a healthy, well lived life. These are qualities like intellectual curiosity and service to others, leadership or initiative, collaboration and consistent engagement. Now side note, slash reminder. These are in no particular order, and colleges also value other things today, though, we're doing a deep dive into collaboration. Why is it important to colleges, and where does it show up in the college application process? And my special guest is Raisa diamante, the executive director of admission at Harvey Mudd College. Now Raisa deserves some special thanks, because she was kind enough to be interviewed right in the middle of admission review season, but we met during her lunch hour, and I had the chance to discuss with her, among other things, what does the admission review process look like at Harvey Mudd, why is collaboration particularly important? And spoiler alert, it's one of the main things that they look for. Some tips for the supplemental essay, which side note is a prompt that Harvey Mudd has kept some version of for the past 15 years. We do a little analysis of a real essay from a past student, and Raisa shares sort of like a college admission officer perspective on that essay. What does Reisa think about students using chat, GPT or generative AI for their essays. What do students miss or get wrong about the college admission process? And finally, can students write about race in their college application essays? If you've never met Risa, like I said, She's the executive director of admission at Harvey Mudd. She grew up in a mixed immigration status home, and is a proud product of the LA Unified School District. She believes in the power of data and storytelling as a means to operationalizing change. I love that phrase. She takes pride in developing and implementing strategies that help make institutions more representative of our society. Prior to working at HMC, she was a Director of Multicultural recruitment at Swarthmore College and worked at the office for Multicultural Affairs at Barnard College. She earned her bachelor's from Berkeley, her master's from Teachers College at Columbia. In her spare time, she enjoys playing with her child, working on puzzles and being an introvert. Hope you enjoy you you. Hi, Raisa, welcome to the podcast.

R

Raissa Diamante 02:48

Thank you for having me here. Ethan, this is fun. Yeah, and

E

Ethan Sawyer 02:50

thanks for I know it's busy time for you. I know you're in reading season, which we're gonna get to in just a minute, but thanks for being with me in a busy time. I'd love to just start by letting folks get to know you a little bit. I sent you ahead of time this roles and identities exercise, and you highlighted some of your top ones. I'd love it if you would just be willing to just maybe get into a few of the roles that are most resonating for you lately, and just say a little bit about each of those.

Raissa Diamante 03:17

R

Yeah. So you know, there's that top five that I that I marked, which is anticipator, builder, coach, connector and strategist. And I'll, I'll be honest, it was hard to go from the long list to 10 and down to this five. And there's a few that I'm trying to call in, I'm trying to build on, that's idealist, empathizer and risk taker. We'll talk about that in a little bit, but the anticipator, builder, coach, connector, strategist, type, I mean adjectives. That really goes back to what I've been doing for the past 10 years prior to tackling this role of executive director of admission. This is my first full year in this role, but for about 10 years prior to this, I got to create a whole different role, and it was called the Director of Enrollment, strategies and operations. It was one I created, and one that I defined, and one that I redefined as the needs and the the our times changed, right? Basically what it was, was that it allowed me to freedom, to look at day to day practices and policies of the Office of Admission of Harvey Mudd and also expand that to what's happening in the greater world of college admissions. And as I'm looking at that, I was asking constantly asking myself my boss and our staff do our current practices and policies they match with our objectives and programmatic needs. And the answer was typically yes for that part, but the part where there, at times, was a disconnect was more the philosophical foundations and values of the office like you. Yeah, we got we got that done. But is that the way we wanted it to get done? Is that the way in which we, you know, keep the our best interests of our students and our applicants at mind, in mind, or are we just doing it the fast way, or are we just doing it the convenient way or the cheap way, you know, thinking about budgets and all.
 But as I was thinking about these different issues that would come up. Technology was changing and and also my relationships with different folks within the college, without, within the within the field of higher education, were also deepening. So I was then like, Okay, if we're gonna do this right, we're gonna leverage technology and align or relate, and, you know, build on our relationships. Really align everything. And what I like to tell folks is that I got to operationalize change. I got to, you know, I had the chance to make change happen, and it's still continuing to do so now for that, we're just continuing, but the change happened in a way that it was sustainable, it was systemic, and hopefully one that could be worked on and and reiterated on right as time and needs changes. So so the builder, connector, strategist, anticipator, descriptors, they really speak to me on the separate but related path. I've really had to double down on that coach, cheerleader, mentor role. I was actually looking for the word empowerer.

E

Ethan Sawyer 06:29

Yeah, that's good. It wasn't

R

Raissa Diamante 06:30

there. But I was like, Well, I think Coach cheerleader, you know, mentor, I think that's, that's the closest it's gonna get. And what you realize, right? And this is now my 21st year in college admissions. 21 don't have a party lined up, but there's just far too much work to do for one person, right? And all in the work that we're trying to do is important, and there's more than one avenue and more than one methodology to get things done. So this part of me that's like the connector coach, cheerleader mentor part that's that's really just recognizing that, that we need help and the work has to be spread out and coordinated, to be honest. And then the part of me that I'm calling in really is, you know, the empathizer, idealist and risk taker descriptors. I'll focus in on the empathizer part. My partner is a therapist. She's a she's a trained therapist. They are great in this role. To be honest, I want to be like a proto version of them. And you know, work from home. You might imagine that sometimes I overhear phone calls that when she's supervising her would be therapist, because that's part of her work, right? And it's like, Wow, they're so great at that. Like, I want to be more like my partner in the way that they've really been able to show empathy in tough situations. I'll just be honest, right? And then the idealist and risk taker parts. I'd love to call that in more, but to be honest, it's really hard to be both, and especially to be a gay woman, a queer woman of color in leadership in this society. You I find myself being a bit too measured at times like, oh, I want to say that, but I can't say that in this way, because it's too much of a risk. And I wish I was more of my younger activist self when I didn't feel like it mattered, and I just wanted to get it out sometimes I can. I'd like to call that 20. You know, that 20 year old version of me that's protesting Ward Connerly, the UC regents meeting when they're voting on some bills that remove affirmative action from race and ethnicity from consideration for college admissions in the UC system. I wish that part of me I could still be there. It's there in the inside of me, but it's not quite the same fervent pitch that it has now, I'll be honest.

E

Ethan Sawyer 09:02

Yeah, there's so much here. I'm so grateful for what you're sharing so far, what you're bringing. I want to start with some of what you're talking about. In terms of the theme for this episode is collaboration. Is how you collaborate, and I'd love to just get into let's start with some of those early roles that you mentioned, the connector, the strategist, the anticipator. You're in reading season right now. Yeah, I'd love to hear about what a what collaboration looks like inside the office, to get through 1000s and 1000s of applications. And then later in the episode, I want to get into some of these roles, identities that you're calling in. But let's start with like this week. Take us behind the scenes. What's going on? What does it look like? So

Raissa Diamante 09:45

R

Harvey Mudd had another record year in applications. We're very fortunate that that's the case. It means that we have lot of a lot of great students to to get to know through this, through this process. But at the end of the day, it's also. So it's also a hard one, right? So we've done our we've done our evaluations that we when we read applications, basically, right? We've done that we use what's called committee based evaluation and at Harvey Mudd, so it's oftentimes referred to as CBE. Our first our version of CBE has a a driver who is basically this, the staff member, the admission officer that knows your knows where you come from the best. They're in charge of knowing your region. They're in charge of getting learning more about like changes to your state curriculum is calculus even offered like things like that. And then there's a navigator who's another admission officer, but they're they're not the primary person for your your recruitment area, for your territory. So we read every single application with two pairs of ice on them, and now we have a set of students that we've put into committee. And so we're about day eight. So day eight, I can't remember. It's day No, it's day seven. Day eight, it's day seven. Of being in the same committee room with six other admission officers. Harvey Mudd has a strong and mighty team, but collectively, we've all seen your applications, and these are the students now in this committee where we're talking about our applicants, and we're making decisions of who we want to preliminarily admit, and it's great, our goal is to to read carefully, and to also be to read applications carefully in that committee based evaluation part, and Also we want to treat students who have similar opportunities and similar backgrounds Similarly, Meaning, you know, meaning, if you're coming from a low income background or an international background, what's available to you. We're not going to compare a student whose resources and opportunities are different with each other. At the end of the day, everyone needs to be someone that can, that we believe will be academically successful here. So that's that same, that initial standard is the same. But the other parts about what you would bring into the community, your intellectual curiosity, how do you create opportunities for other people? That's the part that we're that we're in now and at some and it's a very collaborative environment, because, literally, it's six to seven people reading the file. Collectively, after that initial read, we're reading it again, and we're choosing to preliminary admit someone or not.
 In a couple days, we will look back at that bin. We call them bins. They're not physical bins. They're, you know, in the cloud, and we'll see that the number of people we want to preliminarily admit will be far greater than the number of people we can actually admit. And then from there, we make the hard decision of determining who will be on our wait list, and it's really hard because we were just so excited about them, and we still continue to be, but then you get a little you have more oomph and more excitement for others, and as people, we don't always all align, right? So it's so you don't you're not instruct. So we don't instruct our our counselors, to take themselves out or their personal experiences out of the equation. Instead, you keep that in but also keep in mind everything else that's happening. And that duality, that duality that you have to that you have to hold in your brain, like sometimes, again, as a director of admission, there's certain decisions that I'm really unhappy about because I'm so passionate about wanting to admit a student, but we can't make an exception for my student when there's going to be a student of a similar situation, and we're not going to admit them. We can't just admit the directors students, and that's hard, because I really care about my students, and so do my colleagues. So but, and you keep that contained and professional, but you, but, we do want you to voice it. And if you need to take a moment, there are times when we stand up, we have to leave the room, get some air again. This is a very collegial place and a very respectful place. No one's, you know, throwing water across the table or anything dramatic like that. And also, there's no there's no paper on the on the table. It is in person. We are literally in a long table across from each other. But you have to be collaborative. You have to keep the the greater goals in mind and but there are going to be times, especially right now, towards the end, that's going to be. Tougher. So this is a, this is a, you know, we we keep to a normal seven to eight, seven and a half hours. Actually, it's like a, I cut down committee by about 45 minutes each day this year. That was my, one of my goals, just because it's too long of a day, even those 45 minutes back to folks so they're not physically sitting in the committee room. There's just, you know, a mental and emotional and physical exhaustion that I was like, no, let's if it means we go half a day more at the end of this process, I'm okay with that, because I'll feel better about the decisions we're making, and it's been a very engaged committee. And you know, someone will say, hey, the student said they're taking physics at a local college. Does anyone see that transcript? I can't find it. I can't I can't see anything. Oh, the student put it under Additional information, the actual name of the college and the grade that they got, like, okay, so we don't have to follow up with a student. And you know, literally, like, we know that when when a college you're applying to emails you out of the blue and says, Hey, we're looking for this grade for this class that you said you're gonna take, I'm sure that i I'm sure that's nervous making, if not nerve wracking, like, if we can spare you that, you know, I don't know, because you'll email, you'll look for it, you'll email as a student, and then might not hear back from our office for another 24 hours. Say, Yes, thank you. We got it like, that's a that's a tenuous and scary 24 hours, right? We want to save you from that. So we're locked in and we're we're trying to see the files again, all eyes open and together. Yeah,

E

Ethan Sawyer 16:50

sometimes students feel like it's kind of a mystery what colleges look for or are looking for. And you know, there are often, as there is on the Harvey Mudd website, there's a section that says what we look for. So I want to read from that so that students have a sense that, hey, this information exists. And also I want to like, click in on one particular aspect of it. So it says on the website I'm quoting here, we want students who have succeeded in challenging courses, as you've said, who express excitement from math and science, who appreciate the humanities and social sciences and who want to be an active member of our supportive and collaborative community. So I want to drill down on the collaborative part and ask you a little bit more about that. Why? First of all, is collaboration important, from muds perspective, yeah,

Raissa Diamante 17:36

R

we're a stem institution. STEM it's, you know, science, technology, engineering and math, inherently, are collaborative disciplines. Sometimes I take the shorthand version and say, you know, sometimes we tell people that are Nobel Prize winners or things like that, like, Oh, this is a Nobel Prize winner for this or the fields medalist for this field, and sometimes they'll say one name more often. It's like more than one name contributed to such a discovery that's changed our world, right? But if you drill down even just one step before that, and you look at the number of names, the number of research papers, the number of collaborators that all did work to make that those incremental discoveries that led to that big discovery, it can't argue the fact that STEM is meant to be collaborative, right? Part of also what we talk about, when we talk about collaboration is this, is this ability to to be in tough conversations, to to respectfully disagree with one another, to still hear one another. That's part of collaboration. For us, it's not just a physical like we're going to be in the same room doing this together, but to be able to sit in those moments and and see things forward and see things through that's extremely important for us, that our students buy into that idea. At times, our students are coming from high school experiences where you know, collaboration meant Teamwork. Teamwork meant the person that was most invested did all the work. And for a lot of our students, it tended to be them, because maybe there wasn't that community of folks who were as invested in in the project or as invested in that topic. And at times, you know, there's been resentment like that gets built up, like, well, collaboration really meant I ran the experiments and people just copied my lab work or my lab notebook, right? Or we put out our names on it together and we turned it in. That's not what we're talking about here at Harvey Mudd. It's okay if that's been your experience in high school, but at Harvey Mudd, in practically every discipline that we do, there are holder projects and assignments in which you will rely. On the expertise of others, and you will rely on the help of others to and you can't be successful. Honestly, it'll be very hard to be successful to do it all on your own. So that's we're trying to see evidence of that in your college application. So we're looking closely at what your teachers say about you, or what you say about yourself when you hit a roadblock, when things don't quite go your way, or if things didn't exist, how have you advocated for things to then be created? We actually have a rate in our readings. We have a category called Creating opportunities, and it's about, how do you support people around you, right, whether it's in an academic way, a non academic way, this is just beyond titles and such. It can be part of leadership, but it's definitely beyond titles that we're looking at, that we're clueing in on. Like, are you the student who the teacher says, I like to pair Ethan with my students who are who need the most help, because Ethan is like a second teacher in the classroom, because Ethan can explain things in a way to students that they can understand, and Ethan's not judgmental, and Ethan, Ethan's just a plus in my classroom. That's a, you know, that that's what we're look that's what we're hoping to get right. It's very nuanced.
Yeah, I'm

E

Ethan Sawyer 21:24

curious. This is great, like, it seems like the recommendation letters, for example, the teacher recommendation letter could be a great way for this to show up. I'd love to hear where else, where other parts of the application. Do you see these qualities? Yeah, collaborative qualities show up. It

R

Raissa Diamante 21:39

comes from the students themselves, right? It comes from how they it depends on which question they answer in the in the common app, or even within our own supplementary questions. It's, it's really, sometimes it's a sometimes it is also in the activities list in the common app, where they talk about, or where they talk about creating houses making I was just with her math faculty, math faculty member, and there's a student we were talking about who created math problems that are high level math problems in a group setting for fun,

E

Ethan Sawyer 22:14

like you do. You know, like you do. I mean, most

Raissa Diamante 22:17

R

students do. And then they really talk about how their group is a group that that doesn't exist in a physical space or in a virtual space. But so their reach also has been in some ways more because it's not just limited by geographical like location, but for me, this student is part of a collective of people, again, just from a descriptor in the three liner in their activity, the title and then a two line description in the common app about what they're doing. I was like, they're great. They'd be a great math ambassador. We were looking for math ambassadors for a specific scholarship that the Math Department sponsors. And I was like, Look at this one. Yeah, they're like, they're in charge of this and this, like, that's, you're like, oh, that's ambassadorship, that's collab, and that's working it on it again, not just on your own for I mean, you're doing it for fun, but you're doing it with other people. That's, that's creating opportunities for others who don't have access to these things, right? So

E

Ethan Sawyer 23:18

I love this. I love what you're saying, yeah, and even as we were talking about this, in preparation for the for this recording, you talked about looking for evidence that a student allows others to shine, and that people will want to collaborate with the student, you know, again and again, They'll want to come back to working with them, because, you know, you're creating a community, right, of students and scholars. And I'd love for you to just maybe paint the picture of what it looks like when students come onto campus. Like, what are some of those opportunities for collaborating, some of which they might have thought of, but some of which they may not have thought of?

Raissa Diamante 24:01

R

I mean, you know, right now we're in the second week of our engineering students creating hammer from scratch, like as in, you get a piece of wood, you get a piece of metal, but you don't know if it's the correct hardness and the correct everything. So if you walk down to the machine shops, you'll see a bunch of people with black and yellow toolboxes, toolkits. It's uniform. It's very cute, I think. And you you know, we'll see people like literally staring at something very hard. And they're like, something is happening there. They don't know what it is, but they're really into it, because these are individual hammers that you make. It's not sound like it's a group project, but everyone wants your hammer to be just as good and just as close to spec, meaning the specifications, as you know, as as can be, because you can all win. That's really literally the the. Takeaway message, there's like, you can all make a great hammer. So it can look like that. It can look like our cafe or coffee shop where people are doing homework together. Our office sits next to our Academic Excellence Program, which is like a notch above your tutoring program. I'll say, just because basically everyone in there, whoever, regardless if you're the one getting help or giving help, you've been a tutor before as well. So it could look like that. Collaboration can also look like our more formal programs, like our clinic projects in which for our our students who are majoring in Computer Science and Engineering, they have projects with industry sponsors. Some of them are nonprofit sponsors. Some of them are larger corporations. Some of them are startups, but you're basically a project team for a full year for them. So your collaborators are not just fellow Harvey Mudd students and not just a faculty member who might be an advisor, but a company, a real company, and that's you're flying across the country, there's a group of students flying or who are who have a trip out on on Friday, and they're going to meet with their collaborators in person, and they're going to show them what they have so far. Collaboration can also look like our writing center, which we're looking at, not just we're looking at writing for writing sake, as well as for technical writing. It's almost thesis time. It's the first week of March here at Harvey Mudd, it looks like that. And I still see also students who are still, we have a big skateboarding culture on our campus, so I still usually by this time, you know, you figure it out, you know, because it's mid, mid spring, you figured out if we're going to be a skateboarder or a walker or a biker, but, but we I still see some students still learning how to skateboard. So I see people kind of, you know, helping them out. Yeah, so it goes in many ways. And of course, as you might imagine, this being a college campus, a residential one, there's events, there's support groups. So collaborating is really in every every part of your life. There's a this is a place where, you know it's small on purpose and intentional in its size, but also with the other Claremont Colleges across the street, it really can broaden who you collaborate with beyond the 920 or so students we have on our campus. You know, there's another 5000 students across the way. So it can come in in many ways, something I do want to be mindful of Ethan is that I love letters of recommendations, and I appreciate the time and effort our colleagues, whether they're counselors or teachers, put in them. But there's also a clear a clear inequity in the opportunities for students who are not at schools where teachers have the freedom the time to write these letters. My parents are both public school teachers from the LA Unified, Los Angeles Unified School District. I can't imagine how much time my dad really had to write letters of rec. It's been a while since he's been retired for his students in his pre calc class. So there's a there's we need to recognize that as well. So sometimes, really, our students are their best advocates in the way that they write about themselves and how they see themselves. And you know, the letters of recommendations are helpful. But we also, again, want to be mindful of that. So just want to put that out

E

Ethan Sawyer 28:32

there. I love, yeah, I love the point you're making. And I you kind of alluded to this earlier, but I wanted to just underscore it for a student who's listening that thinks that there might be disadvantaged as a result, or counselors who feel like they're disadvantaging their students. What I heard you say is that Harvey Mudd is intentional about looking at the context of a student's setting community and and really, for example, if a student does come from a large public school, recognizing that there may not be the same recommendation letter coming through and that that's not actually, that's not going to disadvantage a student in the process.

R

Raissa Diamante 29:06

No, definitely not, definitely not we, you know, we take it at face value, and again, understand the context that our students are coming from. This is why it is important for that, that driver, to give that overview, so I'll say so I my last student that I just read or that I just presented to committee was a student from a larger school in mid size city in upstate New York. Is that fair? I didn't name the school or the city, but the you know, but the school is not a school that versus it's not a school that we get a lot of applications from versus other students from other parts of New York. And the question to me from committee was, well, is this normal for their Is this a normal letter? And I'm just like, I don't know, right? And that's. An honest answer, I don't know, but what I'll tell you is that this is a school in which they send this percentage through this percentage their students to four year colleges. The large from the school report, a lot of their students go to colleges where letters of recommendations are not required. So are Stu are teachers used to getting asked for a letter of recommendation, probably not for most of their students, but maybe for some of these tougher upper echelon kids they they are. It was actually a very positive letter. Let me, let me back up and say it was a very positive letter of recommendation, and they were just trying to qualify, like, how how positive is this? And I'm just like, it's very positive. So let's, let's, Oh, can you hear me? Ethan, it says it's,

Ethan Sawyer 30:45

E

E

Ethan Sawyer 30:45

yep, we're back. Okay, yeah, we're back, yeah.

R

Raissa Diamante 30:50

Just to reiterate, this was, I should have said this at the beginning. It was a very positive letter of recommendation, but just for me, it was just like, well, I've never visited this school. You're correct. But this is, you know, this is the context that the student is has is in. So I take this praise as true, true like praise, and not just a a one off thing, kind of, or not just a dime a dozen thing. I'm really bad with euphemisms and things like that. So it's very common. No, this is not a common this. This does not seem common, is what I said.
 But yeah, so Well,

Ethan Sawyer 31:28

E

speaking of you mentioned students opportunities for advocating for themselves, and you mentioned the supplemental essays. I'd love to talk about a past prompt of Harvey Mudd. And I say past because who knows when folks are listening to this, and how prompts have changed, you know, by the time folks are hearing this. But I'd love to look at a prompt that Harvey Mudd used last year. And again, everybody listening, make sure you check the website for the updated prompts and look at an essay. And I'd love for you to just, if I could just, you know, kind of read it to you and take us into your head what's going on and what you're learning about from the essay, and then maybe talk a little bit about the role that supplemental essays play in the process. Would that be okay? Yes, yeah, let's go. Cool. So the prompt was HMCS, collaborative community. There's that word, again, is guided by our mission statement. Through an intentional interdisciplinary curriculum, our students seek to build a skill set adaptable to society's needs. How has your own background influenced the types of problems you want to solve, the people you want to work with, and the impact you hope your work can have? So I want to read this prompt or read this, sorry, this sample essay, this is from a few years ago from a student. And you know, again, there's I'm kind of asking two questions, like, what is the role of the supplemental essay? But then, what do you hear? What are you noticing in this particular essay? So here it is for everybody listening, and we'll link to this in the show notes at Rishi Valley boarding school in grade 10, during the height of the COVID 19 pandemic, there was a breach in the school's bubble, and several people got infected. As a result, classes were suspended for three to four weeks, and everybody was split into even smaller dorm size bubbles. Since our house parent happened to be our physics teacher, we continued learning physics, and he even volunteered to teach other subjects, math and chemistry. There was a group of us interested in learning math and physics, but we all brought different experiences to our learning. We began discussing Olympiad level questions and concepts on an old Blackboard that had been lying in the dorms common room for years. Miraculously, one of us had, quote, unquote, borrowed chalk from the classroom, so we had to ration six to seven sticks of chalk for a month. It surprised me that we were able to turn a significant barrier into a fruitful educational opportunity as a team, not only did we resume our learning, but we also targeted other areas of our interest, namely advanced number theory and geometry. We also introduced a friendly and casual competition where we were split into teams to solve a math olympiad paper. At the end of the day, we assembled to present our solutions, parentheses, our room, one. We also happen to happen, happen to have a small telescope in the common room, which we set on the roof of the house with ample time in our hands. We explored using the telescope, and eventually figured out how to use the telescope's limited features effectively, we made guesses as to which brightly lib orb, brightly lit orb in the sky was Jupiter or Saturn, and with some trial and error, we figured which was which, and saw Jupiter's Great Red Spot and Saturn's rings and all their glory. We felt like the scientists of the early 1600s discovering and tracking heavenly bodies like never before, we pushed our limits and made use of what we had, transforming a restrictive barrier into a constructive opportunity to continue our academic journeys. And the essay ends at Harvey Mudd, I aim to continue solving academic problems in astronomy and physics through research. I'm excited to continue gazing through telescopes and tracking heavenly bodies while collaborating with others to solve problems I know I can find my scientist peers and scientific Haven at Harvey Mudd. I wish to work with the kind of people I can have an intense debate with on the workings of a subatomic particle right after which we grab a few cookies and shoot some three pointers at Harvey Mudd, I'm eager to meet fun loving scholars with different backgrounds that will bring different skills, knowledge and experiences to the table. So race as an admission officer, what do you what do you notice as you hear that? Yeah,

Raissa Diamante 35:33

R

I mean, a few things. First, I'll comment on the question itself. That question has existed for Harvey Mudd for at least 15 years in some way, shape or form. So I, and I like that question before it was one of those, like, choose your own topic questions, but we liked that question so much, we made it the only one you can answer, because we're like, we get so much out of the question, is what I'll say, right? So we no longer have a why Harvey Mudd College question. We just basically say, this is what we're about to show us how you align. That's like my short version of that, of that question, yeah, and what I what I heard right in the students voice and in their essay is a great alignment of who we are as an institution and of our community in which, definitely they were in a in an unfortunate circumstance, they were in the most fortunate position possible, right? So we got to, we have to, we have to acknowledge that, right? Most people don't live with an instructor in physics, right? And most people, except I, live in my math not my math teacher, but a math teacher my dad. It's not all it's cracked up to be, I'll be honest. But you know, so there's a again, that fortunateness, fortuitousness, in that not so happy times, right? Not so great times. So the first thing is, we got to recognize the difference in resources that the student had. So that's the first thing we train our readers to know, is that understand the resources that someone's coming from. Now, what did they do? What they did was something amazing. They created a community in which you encouraged and invested in someone's intellectual curiosity, whether your own or other topics that might be of your friends can that's what Harvey Mudd is about. You're all taking the same classes because of their core curriculum, core curriculum, but there's an added layer to it with your own personal interests, right? I heard a lot of clarity in their voice as well, in terms of what they what they valued amongst from with their peers, and also for themselves, that they who tackles on an Olympiad paper, a question for an Olympiad paper, just for kicks. I know I love that. I would not have known to look that up myself as a high schooler, but they did, and they they made it a fun thing, right? Hard work can be fun. Hard work can be fun is not an official motto for Harvey Mudd, per se, but it is something that you have to be willing to do, and that you and to do this with others. The word choice of friendly and casual competition, I think I heard that that stuck out to me is like, Oh yeah, that feels like mud you know it's like, we want to win, but, you know it's but we also don't want to be jerks about it. Oh, that's the shorthand version. We're not trying to sabotage friends or anything like that. Again, back to that whole idea that everyone can make that perfect to specification hammer you just it's that same idea, right? I definitely clearly see the students passion for astronomy and physics. We don't admit to majors at Harvey Mudd, but this is but seeing this helps me really be able to envision them in our in that major here at HMC, right? What can they what would they bring in? They'd bring in this enthusiasm. They'd bring in this like, willingness to make the best out of something not so great, the that's, that's what I'm that's what I'm hearing when, when you read that to me, Ethan, and then I was thinking about, you know, like within our own evaluation system, I'd probably start coding parts of it to read Back to our committee so that they hear your voice. That is what we do. Also, we don't just say great essay. That's, I mean, it is a great essay, but we might pick out certain things that would help illustrate what kind of a person is coming through from that essay.

E

Ethan Sawyer 39:57

Nate, so what I'm hearing is that it's. So there are actual excerpts that, potentially, that students are kind of equipping their readers with so that they can go fight for them, as it were in committee. And so maybe part of the work is sort of like a super leading question, but it's like equipping the reader with like these excerpts. Oh, I need

R

Raissa Diamante 40:16

slaughter. Yeah, I can't just say great essay. They really love physics and astronomy. I need a little more evidence, right? Because you can make that claim, but if you can't point to it, right? Like, the question from committee, I guess it's happened before. Like, Well, where are you getting that from? The specifics to back, yeah. Like, it's an essay, one, you know, my shorthand might be, you know, true impact for collaborative spaces. See physics, rec like I might say, like that, but, but I'm pointing to something because, again, we can make deductions and connect pieces. Let's connect the dots, but we need something to connect to. We need something to infer from, right? If we need to make an inference, and if it's not, you know, stated there in itself. Yeah.

E

Ethan Sawyer 41:07

So I'd love to talk a little bit about chatgpt, and I'd love to hear first from your perspective, like, how do you feel about students using AI or chatgpt? And then related, or separately, what are the conversations that are happening? That are happening in your office around the use of of AI and chat? GPT?

Raissa Diamante 41:26

R

Yeah, so I'll start with we don't have a policy against using it or for using it, and there's not one from the faculty right now. This is not an isolated question for Harvey Mudd, but it is one that all faculty members are asking. Again, I was just sitting with faculty in a different conversation, and one of them basically asked me, How do you know it's not chat GPT? And I said, I don't know. It's not chat GPT. I don't, right. I can't, absolutely, 100% know this is also, again, we have an honor code on our campus, where you you attest that the work that you're submitting is your own work, right? And you know, that's, that's part of the the ethos and the expectation of campus. So it's a very, it's a very important question. And with that said, in my personal opinion, about chat GPT, is that, or any other generative, generative AI, is that it can be used as a tool, perhaps as a starting point right or a midway point A for students who don't have the resources to to collaborate with others on their their written work, that could be a place for it. I will say that it would worry me if that's the first only and ending point for the way that you might, that you might seek out guidance in your writing, because it's not perfect, and at times it's actually quite incorrect. So I hate for students to see that as the only place, I hope that there's at least an adult or trusted peer that you can work, that you can talk to and rework your essays with, but at the end of the day, you know it can be a useful tool, but shouldn't be the end all and be all. I'll share my personal experience. I don't know. Ethan, you asked me for a bio, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so that bio is a bio I've used for years, you know, and I now have a two year old. So I said, Oh, I should re update that and include him in this. I got curious, right? So I plopped it into chat GPT, because I was about to do a talk with a collection of folks who are directors of pre college STEM programs, like stem enrichment programs for high school students, and I'm about to be in a room, you know, a conference room, and I'm one, I'm a plenary panelist. Like, well, actually, I want to, I want to have a good showing. They're going to read my bio out loud. And I stuck into chat. GPT, it sounded so horrible. And I say horrible, my feelings about it horrible at GPT probably thought it was awesome, because I told chat GPT who my audience was going to be, and all this stuff, and then so and I didn't know I felt horrible about it. So I actually had a colleague come in, someone who knows me well, and I said, Can you look at my bio and tell me, tell me what you think about it, right? And then my colleague, very plainly and quickly, stated, like, this is like the LinkedIn version of you.
S

Speaker 1 44:54

And I'm like, okay, oh, like, my LinkedIn doesn't even sound like this. Okay? It, right? I don't actually know what my LinkedIn says. I haven't looked at it in a while.

R

Raissa Diamante 45:05

And she says, like, yeah, it's just, you know, it's stiff. It doesn't sound like you. And I said, Okay, thank you. And then they went on their way, and I said to myself, like, Well, when I get in front of these like, 100 or so people, they're not gonna get a LinkedIn version of me. I mean, I will wear a suit, I'll dress for the occasion, but my personality is not, you know the word operation, operationalize. I use that word because I do believe in making sure that change is sustainable, systematic and iterative, right? Meaning you can change it as needed. I That's a one like, link in, linked in, like word I would like keep in most of my bios, but it was just, I was like, I don't want to say was soulless, but I definitely was like, uh, that is that how I want to repent to represent myself, right? I'm the one going, I'm the one speaking. So I hope when students look at their essays, whether whatever tools or assistance and guidance or they're getting, they're looking at that, you know, piece of writing, the one piece they have truly 100% control over in this process, that they can still make a that they can still affect. Right? I hope they, they, they feel good that it sounds like that, that it represents them well. So,

Ethan Sawyer 46:29

E

yeah, you mentioned, when we were prepping for the podcast that you, or as a staff, you'd put in the, you know, Harvey Mudd prompts and asked it to write essays. Yeah, say, what you say more about that?

R

Raissa Diamante 46:41

Yeah, we did. We did take our, you know, our prompts, we stuck it into the the into a couple generative AI, like platforms and our we had our interns also do it. And, you know, change it, write this as if I'm a so and so person from such a just place who did this and this and this, what would my response be? And we asked some students, and they're like, Yeah, that's close. I would have probably said something like that. Would you have said it like that? Like parts of it and again, you know, there may be, hopefully, our high school students are mature as well, but these are students who were going into their senior year of college, so they've had a bit more time in the world, but they're like, No, I would not have felt comfortable. Or some students said, Yeah, I would have been comfortable. So those are all. Those are all statements that our students did, but some of them were really mad about how chat GPT characterized them. Like, well, this is like a derivative, basically, of who I am. So they were annoyed. When I'm recalling one seated who was annoyed. She's like, well, she's like, it's like, well, well, that's great, but I thought it was more than just that. Well, side, side note to anybody flying to law school now, or they're in loss, or, yeah, anyway,

E

Ethan Sawyer 48:03

well, side note to anybody who's listening and who's curious to hear more about this, there's, there's a white paper that I'll link to in the show notes, called navigating college applications with AI that's written by Jennifer Rubin and her colleagues at Foundry 10 on how Students and how teachers are or have been using chatgpt and generative AI in the application process. She's going to be a guest in future weeks on the podcast. But for anybody who's interested, just a quick side note, a plug for a future episode, yeah, for anybody who's interested in more. So I'd love to know race of what you feel folks should know about this process, like, what do what do you feel like folks get wrong, like parents or students, about this process?

R

Raissa Diamante 48:48

I think what they get wrong is that people really think it's just random. If this was random, I would not spend my Saturday, which I just spent, you know, a day on Saturday in the committee process with my co workers. And I know they love me, and they like being we like being around each other, but I think we would have picked not to do this on a Saturday. I'm sorry that Saturday in March, where there's a lot of good basketball games. I'll just say I'm a big basketball fan, though.

E

Ethan Sawyer 49:17

Yeah, I just went to the CSUN game on I was

Raissa Diamante 49:20

R

at the UCLA USC women's basketball. Oh my gosh. I was not cheered for,

E

Ethan Sawyer 49:25

but did you dropped 30?

S

Speaker 1 49:28

Yeah, and she air balled. But anyway,

R

Raissa Diamante 49:33

that was, that was, oh no. That was fun. But so it's not random. It is a human. There is a human element that is processed, but it's definitely not random, right? We put in a lot of effort to to train our staff, put in a lot of effort to to keep each other accountable, so that we are treating students fairly and with an equity mindset we are that is intentional. All. So I think the whole fact that people think it's random, that's, that's number one. The second is that the idea that there's a perfect candidate for perfect college, that's also not true, right? The only part that's perfect in this process is how you are, how you choose to represent and present yourself. That's the version that's that's the part where you know you can, if you're true to yourself and you're you feel confident in the way that you're representing your accomplishments, your aspirations, the direction you'd like to go to in the future. That's, you know, that's, that's the goal right there. The goal is not to find perfect student for perfect college a, right? That's that's maybe the two things, yeah, definitely, that it's not random, and that there's no such thing as a perfect A plus perfect A equals college a.

E

Ethan Sawyer 50:56

Yeah, you mentioned equity. I'd love to hear a little bit about what do you feel like is working well in terms of either way that Harvey Mudd is approaching access and equity, or, you know, as a profession, and then maybe a little bit about what you feel that whether you feel there's still work to be done, yeah,

Raissa Diamante 51:17

R

in thinking about equity, I think what we're doing well is that we're always questioning if we're doing well, right? So Harvey Mudd College requires, this is an example. Harvey Mudd College requires that students complete calculus, chemistry and physics prior to enrolling as a student. Here we know that the reality is that this is the last major study that was there was before COVID, but over half of the high schools in America don't have calculus, chemistry and physics offered, right? That's before COVID. So inherently, we're already not able to speak to half of the high school graduating seniors. Right? Again, we're small school. We don't have to admit, we don't have to we don't have to worry. Sometimes people say we don't have to worry about that. You're such a small school like well, if this one small school is a clearly saying you're, you're going to be a barrier for half of the people graduating from this country. That's, that's a big question, right? So it's not about filling the class on it's not about filling the class. We can fill the class. But the question is, how do we answer that question, knowing that the reality of where students are coming from and what's available to them keeps changing? So we we are examining that question. We continue to examine that question. We continue to ask ourselves, what's an adequate you know, if you don't have chemistry, how can someone who doesn't have chemistry because it wasn't offered to them? Or, you know, the teacher retired and they couldn't fill the chemistry position the year, they would have taken it again. These are all situations that happen every all, every time, like, what would be an adequate academic preparation, it would give us confidence that this student can do Harvey Mudd and password and do well academically, such that we could admit them and then, you know, require that they take a chem class prior to Harvey Mudd. Because that, even that barrier of being able to admit someone is basically that's the biggest barrier, because once you admit someone and they want to come, they'll take that chemistry class. But what is that question of, where are we? What does that look like, academically speaking? So that's, that's a, that's a big question, yeah, what? What are two what? Which alternatives work and don't work, and for what reason? And we can't answer this question in a vacuum as Office of Admission. This is a faculty question. This is a support services question, because the worst thing we can do is admit someone for whom when they come here and they're not academically successful, and we knew ahead of time that there were all these indicators that said they won't be successful. I don't want to do that to someone that's, that's that's not good, that's horrible, actually. So, yeah,

E

Ethan Sawyer 54:32

I'd love for you to speak to students for just a minute, because after the Supreme Court, you know, in 2023 issued this ruling banning race conscious admission. In other words, race can't be said, can't be considered in the application process as a standalone factor. A lot of students, including students on my webinars in my world, are asking me, Hey, can I talk about my race and my culture in my essays? I'd love for you. To just speak to students for a minute. You know, what do you what would you say to a student who's asking something like that? Can I write about my race and culture in my college application

Raissa Diamante 55:10

R

dance? The quick answer is, yes, you can, right? The Supreme Court doesn't the ruling doesn't say you can't state it. It asks admission officers to examine how the lessons learned, the experiences gained. I forget the exact wording. I'm not it's not in front of me right now, from the different activities that you've done, or different experiences that done, how they've helped build your character and who you are. So if part of that is pertaining to your your race and your background, yeah, you can write about that. Can I make? Can we, can the Office of Admission make a decision just based on the fact that you like, I'm Filipino American, just because of my Filipino Ness, because like, oh yeah, we'd love more Filipino kids. Let's admit her, the answer is no, and it's never worked that way to begin with. So but it also made it very clear that you can't do that based on that one aspect of my ethnicity being Filipino. So what I would say to students is that you can write about your background. You can write about your your culture. You can write about about all the things that make you who you are, that help to guide or provide like I hate using the word lens, but it you know our own backgrounds influences how we see the world, how what opportunities are open to us. I'll take myself as an example again. I grew up in the Los Angeles area. I grew up in I didn't know we were middle class. I thought, I thought we were poor, you know, teacher parents. I just felt poor because we were middle class, technically. But I also grew up in a mixed immigration status home. I did not know my own immigration status for a long time, so I I grew up fearful of doing anything bad, because if I did something bad and then the cops again, I don't know, I never really had any interactions with the police, but I just felt like, Oh, I'm gonna get deported. But there was a real, like, not almost a fear, but there was this, like, you know, there was definitely like, less risk taking if I'm gonna go back to that, that I felt like I could do right, and not that I was ever gonna do anything horrible to anyone or that would cause that. But, yeah, I it, it. It was, there was a very clear guardrail of what I should and shouldn't do and what I could try out for and couldn't try out for, because if it didn't go well, it would risk other family members. Right? So I can't even say Now these days, I still don't feel good about talking about that, but it was very clear it very much influenced how I saw the world and what I thought was open to me. So so I hope that younger version of myself, if I were living in these times, I still felt like I could talk about the things I was able to accomplish despite the fact that I I was coming from the circumstances I was coming from. So

E

Ethan Sawyer 58:31

well, as we wrap I'd love to come back to one of these identities that you mentioned that you're calling in. You mentioned the idealist as an identity that you're calling in if you had to fast forward, let's say five years or 10 years, and call in that idealist role. What would you like to see exist, or what would you like to say you're grateful? Is true and looking forward to look but look back,

R

Raissa Diamante 58:57

that is such a hard task for me. Ethan, yeah, and I appreciate the question, but that is so hard, that is very hard, right? That is very hard for me to think about. I'm not a very imaginative person. I've worked at Harvey Mudd, but you know, my very imaginative students, the times I'm just like, I have no idea where they got that from.

S

Speaker 1 59:24

And I, you know, I'm very proud of them and excited that they exist

Raissa Diamante 59:27

R

in the world. But the idealist person in me would just, I think she would hope that there's more folks in leadership and many, many arenas, not just in higher ed, who have who share the same values as I do. So that's, that's yeah, people and people of influence, people of decision making power, who may have more similar or aligned sensibilities as I that's that I think that's the best way I can say I would love for to happen. I

E

Ethan Sawyer 1:00:01

thank you, right? So I appreciate it. Thanks for your time today. I really appreciate you.

R

Raissa Diamante 1:00:06

Yeah, thank you again. I started with this is fun. This is fun. This is a way to step, step away from the intenseness of committee and to be reflective and to hopefully assure some folks, or maybe create questions that that encourages folks to seek answers. So I hope this is helpful.

Ethan Sawyer 1:00:32

E

Thanks, friends as ever for listening. You can catch the show notes at college essay guide.com/podcast in case you missed it on the last episode, which is to say the one before this one, I walked through the admission nutrients. Feel free to check those out and stay tuned, because I'll be walking through the rest of them with my colleague Tom for an invite to our upcoming events, including our free webinars, our pay what you can courses and everything else. Just go to college. Essayguy.com and opt into anything if you're a student, check out the free guide to the personal statement. If you're a parent, check out our handbook for parents to the admission process and counselors. I've got so much there for you. You can opt into pretty much anything you like, and you'll be notified of the next event. Thanks all and stay curious. You.