Show Notes
Hi, friends, and welcome back to our series, “On Becoming: The Art and Craft of Personal Storytelling” where we take a close look at personal essays written by real students, talk about why we love them, what makes them work, and how they came to be.
In this episode, I’m joined by Hillary Dickman, Senior Assistant Director of Admission at Colorado College. In past episodes, we’ve really broken down these essays and gotten into the nooks and crannies of what makes them work. But in this episode, I really wanted to get a sense of how Hillary sees essays from an admission reader’s perspective.
We get into:
- What Hillary hopes to learn about a student when she sits down to read their essay
- What a great essay can do that the rest of the application can’t
- How much essays matter and whether or not that’s changed over the last few years.
- Why Colorado College does not have any AI reading essays or applications and doesn’t have plans to.
- She gives us an inside look at what it’s like having your essay read in committee by as many as 13 people, and
- There’s a moment in the episode where she imagines that I’m the co-reader reading the application with her and gives me the notes that she would give on the student if I was in the admission office with her.
I loved our conversation. I hope you enjoy it too.
Hillary Dickman is originally from the San Francisco Bay Area and holds a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in Speech Communication from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She began her career in higher education teaching at the University of Cincinnati and the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Since 2021, she’s been part of the admission team at Colorado College, and has also navigated the college admission process as a parent — her older daughter is a recent graduate of Wellesley College, and her younger one is a student at Colorado College.
Play-by-Play
- 2:12 – What is often happening in admission offices during April and May?
- 3:14 – When Hillary reads a college essay, what is she hoping to learn about a student?
- 4:55 – What can a great essay do that the other parts of the application cannot?
- 6:05 – Hillary sets context for the essay and the student who wrote it.
- 7:35 – Hillary reads the essay, which we’re calling, “Where I Grew Up.”
- 11:59 – How does the author explore community building through this essay?
- 15:09 – What is the benefit to orienting the reader towards the topic early in the essay?
- 17:43 – Hillary describes the process of reading applications in teams and presenting files to a partner.
- 20:35 – Hillary breaks down how an admissions committee works.
- 24:15 – Hillary shares what makes it easy to advocate for a student and why real self-reflection stands out.
- 26:23 – Ethan and Hillary break down why a recurring theme and unique details can make your essay stand out when admissions officers are reading quickly.
- 31:12 – Why does Colorado College choose not to use AI systems to read student applications?
- 35:23 – How do small, specific memories keep an admissions officer engaged in your story?
- 40:06 – Does Hillary see the importance or role of the college essay changing in the future?
- 46:43 – What does Hillary love about her job?
- 49:12 – Closing thoughts
Resources
- “Where I Grew Up” Essay
- State of College Admission – National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC)
- What do colleges look for in students?
- College Essay Guy’s Personal Statement Resources
- College Essay Guy’s College Application Hub
Show transcript
Ethan Sawyer (00:00) Hey friends and welcome back to the podcast. I'm so glad you're here. This is our series called On Becoming, the art and craft of personal storytelling, where we take a close look at personal essays written by real students and talk about why we love them and why they work and just generally geek out on great writing. Now this episode is a little different because I'm joined by Hillary Dickman, who is the Senior Assistant Director of Admission at Colorado College. Now, In other episodes on this series, you'll hear me sort of break down the nooks and crannies of why a particular piece works in a particular way. But on this episode, I really wanted to get a sense of how Hillary reads as an admission officer. So we talk about things like what she hopes to learn about a student when she sits down to read a personal statement and what she believes a great essay can do that the rest of the application can't. We talk about how much essays matter in the process and whether or not she feels like that's changed over the last few years. Why Colorado College doesn't have any AI reading student applications. It's all human. She gives us an inside look at what it's like having your essay read in committee by as many as 13 people. Yes, this sometimes happens. And there's even a moment in the episode where I asked her to like, you know, be in the room with me and to imagine that I'm her co-reader who's reading with her and to tell me the notes that she would give on this particular student's application. So it's pretty cool. Hillary is originally from the Bay area. and holds a bachelor's and a master's from Miami University in Ohio. She started her career in higher ed teaching at the University of Cincinnati and the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. For the past five years, she's been a part of the admission team at Colorado College and has navigated the process of college admissions as a parent. Her older daughter is a recent grad of Wellesley and her younger one is a student at Colorado College. I loved our conversation and I hope you enjoy it too. Hi, Hillary, welcome to the podcast. Hillary Dickman (02:12) Hey Ethan, thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here. Ethan Sawyer (02:15) Yeah, I feel really grateful, really grateful that you're taking some time. I know it's a sort of busy time for you right now, I imagine. Hillary Dickman (02:22) Yeah, yield season, getting ready to do spring travel. So it's an exciting time in admission for sure. Ethan Sawyer (02:28) Yeah, and just to like speak to that for just a second, what is oftentimes happening in admission offices in April in the sort of lead up to May 1st? Hillary Dickman (02:36) Yeah, well, right now we have a bunch of admitted student events going on. So we have actually everyday students coming to campus to sit in on classes. Admitted students get to sit in on classes at Colorado College, which is really fun. And then we have three big open houses that happen and we have two funded fly-in programs for admitted students. So it's a really fun time to see students on campus. And then at the same time, we're also getting ready to go back out and do spring fairs. So I'll be like gone for most of April on the western slope of Colorado and in New England going to fairs to meet with juniors. Ethan Sawyer (03:14) Wow, wild. Yeah, fun times. So I'd love to, we've talked about essays before, but I'd love to just hear from your perspective and for folks who haven't heard you on a webinar that we've done or a podcast, when you read a college essay, like an application essay, a personal statement, it's part of the application, what are you hoping to learn about a student? Hillary Dickman (03:39) Yeah, I love to learn about how a student became the person who they are. I love to be able to picture that student in our community at CC. So it means really understanding, does this student know who they are? Does this student know how they got to the point where they are right now? Like, what things that they grew up around? What stories? from their childhood or from their teenage years can help me understand the forces that molded them or shaped them into the person who they are now. So I love those. I love gritty details about students' backgrounds, really hearing students' voices. It's not so much about like, the awards that they won or the accolades, that kind of thing. I think a lot of students feel like that's what they're supposed to be highlighting. there are really great ways to work those in. In fact, you guys have talked about some of them on this series. really understanding if this is a student who I could sit down and have an awesome conversation with, that's kind of what I'm looking for. Ethan Sawyer (04:55) What do you feel like a great essay can do that the other parts of the application can't? Hillary Dickman (05:01) Yeah, it fills in a lot of blanks for me because we can read about your activities and kind of get maybe like an outline of who you are, but the fun details come and the voice come through the essay. I also think like one thing that we say a lot in our office at CC is that there's no human who is flat. Right? mean, sometimes you'll hear like, this application is coming off flat or something. We're not allowed to say that because we know that humans aren't flat and that in fact, humans are multi-dimensional, multi-faceted people who hold multitudes. And the essay is where you get that part, right? Like it's one thing to see it in a list that a student is, you know, building rockets and reading classics. And those are really, those give you an idea of the dimension. But then when you, actually hear a student talking about how they love to do those things and how those things show up in their life, it gives you the full picture of the student. Ethan Sawyer (06:05) I'd love for you to set us up here with this piece that we get to read today. So tell us about this essay. Any context that you'd like for the listener to have about this one? Hillary Dickman (06:15) Yeah, for sure. This student applied to CC this year. Every year there are like five or six essays that sort of stand out to me. And this was one of them. And not because it's like a perfectly polished essay or even like, like I can see areas in this essay where we could go back and do some refining, right? But part of what stands out to me is the way that she gets across the really interesting environment. in which she grew up. So this essay came across my desk with her application in Early Action, and it stood out to me. I loved it. And then once she was admitted, she reached out to me to ask about one of our programs at CC. And it took me a minute to connect her and the email that I got with her back to this essay and realize that it was the same student. And then I realized that the questions she was asking me about CC and about the academic program that she was looking at. all fit together in a really beautiful way. So it's always fun when you have that like full circle moment and you get to chat with a student after you've read their application and admitted them and you're like, ⁓ I remember you. This makes so much sense. Like, of course we're having this conversation. So yeah, she was one of three or four that really stood out to me this year. Ethan Sawyer (07:35) Well, I'm so excited for folks to hear it and I'm excited to talk to hear from your perspective about the things that you love about it. We're going to like break it down and everything. So I'd love for you to read it. Would you be willing to just to share it aloud so we can hear it as a piece? Hillary Dickman (07:49) Of course, I'd be happy to. The large moth made from layers of painted paper mache on the attic ceiling stared down on a circle of people shouting. An email of gossip accidentally sent to the whole Pine Hill list revealed tangled interactions between neighbors in the commune where I grew up. Here, I learned that true belonging means contributing to the fabric of a community, even during conflict. These same adults who preached respect for different perspectives during the Friday night kids meeting couldn't make decisions without dysfunction. The contradictions led me to question the strength of the self-proclaimed eco-village. Mr. McGregor, who yelled at us for leaving a hose on after eating carrots from the shared garden, couldn't even finish a meeting without a red-faced run out. Meanwhile, the kids banded together to rummage through chicken wire and large cardboard peace signs to reclaim skateboards that were hidden as punishment for being left out. The adults met in the attic, but the kids met in the game room. We spent countless hours playing the game Bananagrams beside a bent ski pole collection and under folk music posters. Each player started with a certain number of lettered tiles and the rest sprawled in the center of everyone. Like disjointed letters that made the crossword puzzle result of the game, the people fit together. I looked at the faces around me, blurting, peel, for everyone to take another letter and progress the game. Words transformed from inside my mind to small tiled letters that patterned onto the table runner I sewed last year. When no letters were left in the middle, I announced bananas, signaling the end of the game. I straightened out the smooth tiles of my favorite word at the top of my puzzle, intertwined. It hung there on the banner above the fireplace that displayed our values as a commune. I liked how it sounded and what it means, individual threads weaving together to form something stronger. I remember making art prints for the walls under that banner and under the wing of a former Peace Corps woman who now spent her days with an acoustic guitar around her neck and a seam ripper in hand. The long-bearded Brit who taught me how to bend my knees and face the wind while skiing swung open the door to warm up by the fire after maintaining the network of cross-country trails at the top of the hill. I realized that everyone brought something to the community, even Mr. McGregor, whose fall garden harvest steamed from the ceramic bowls that lined the long wooden table that fed us during Thanksgiving. Through my experiences with members of my community, I began to notice how every person added a different piece to the puzzle. Seeing the bigger picture from the moth's perspective, I accepted the idea of conflict because the community wasn't defined by its tension, but its desire to continue on as one. At the end of the day, food was on the table, hobbies sparked human connection, and the messy but intentional community was grateful to be together. So I stood under a wide branch tree, paintbrush dripping pink over plywood, inspired to make my own gathering place to share. On the last screw, I grasped the drill with my right hand. With my left, I tossed up a banana-shaped sack that held the clinking bananagram tiles. Like a challenge that welcomes people to to gather, I'm nearly unbeatable in bananagrams, is my fun fact. Every person has interests and experience that determine the letters in their words. Each word is part of a larger puzzle that intertwines into something more. I want to spend my days as an architect, understanding other people's crosswords and designing spaces that whisper what the monanograms tiles and being a pinehillian remind me. You belong here and there's a place for you to build something too. Ethan Sawyer (11:50) Lovely. Yeah. What do you notice as you read it here for the however many it's time? Hillary Dickman (11:59) Yeah. I think my first takeaway from this when I was reading it was this kid is a community builder. And she spent her whole life understanding the importance of community. And we love people who want to build community at CC. And as I reread it, those bits really pop up to me. The ways that she can see how everybody has something to contribute in a community. and that you really need all of those different interests. Like you need Mr. McGregor out there working in the garden. And sometimes Mr. McGregor has to be the kind of cranky person who tells kids not to steal stuff out of the garden or not to step on the newly planted seeds, right? Like that's sort of a gardener's role. And you need the person who's maintaining the cross-country ski trails or the downhill ski trails because that's part of the experience of living in this place. And you need like, the people who are putting the food on the table and who are sewing the banners and the tablecloths and doing all of these different things with their hands. Like this is all part of the community that they're building and each person brings something different to it. And I thought she did such a beautiful job of highlighting that. Ethan Sawyer (13:13) Yeah, it seems like you mentioned at the start that you want to read essays where you can imagine that students in the community and as a community builder. it reminds me of a lot of schools have added this, what's a community that you're a part of and how has it shaped you? And this seems like just such a beautiful example of just diving into, here's who I am as a collaborator, as in some ways. the kid, but in other ways, towards the end there, of course, there's that shift and it's like the building and the really practical and literal building of space for others. Hillary Dickman (13:53) And that bit I thought was so interesting because it feels like it comes a little bit out of nowhere, right? Like if I were working with her on this essay, I might have tried to weave it in sooner. But also, I don't know. maybe, so, maybe this is something that I see easily because I think about spaces and I love thinking about spaces and I love design and I love thinking about like how a space affects the people in it. And so maybe she got lucky. And she got me for a reader, right? Where I was like, ⁓ of course you want to be an architect. Because you can see how these spaces that you grew up in facilitated this community being what it was. But you can also see it from the other side, that maybe she cares about spaces because she understands the way that the spaces helped grow her community. But I do love the details that she puts in there, like the bent. Ski pole collection and the folk music posters and the peace signs. I mean you can just totally see like this sort of crunchy hippie gathering right of people out in the woods and you get such like a visceral feel I think for for what it was like to be there growing up. Ethan Sawyer (15:09) Yeah, I'm so with you. One of the things I appreciate from the opening is there's this little combination of things where there's something at the start that intrigues me, that pulls me in, that makes me curious. And then there's an orientation moment. So the first sentence, like the large moth made from layers of painted paper mache on the attic ceiling stared down on a circle of people shouting, I'm like, what's happening? then this next sentence, an email of gossip accidentally sent to the whole Pine Hill list revealed tangled interactions between neighbors, between neighbors in the commune where I grew up and we go in the commune rather where I grew up. And I'm like, okay. Here's where it situates us in a moment. And then there's this little insight here. I learned that true belonging means contributing to the fabric of a community, even during conflict. And so there's this hint, even at the start here of like, here's the, you know, what we're going to be dealing with. And here's the, sort of situates us among all the topics in the world. of here's something that's happening in this particular community. And I really appreciate that. I like when an essay orients me to what the topic is gonna be. And let me ask you this, this is maybe kind of a leading question, but do you sometimes have these moments when you're reading an essay and you're kind of like hunting for the topic for like, you know, a couple of paragraphs and it's sort of, I have this experience sometimes where I'm like, where are we? Like, what are we talking about here? Hillary Dickman (16:34) Yes, that drives me a little bit crazy actually when I can't figure out what the point of the essay is until I'm almost all the way done. And sometimes I just, it like loses me. And so that's one where I'll kind of skim through to the end to see what am I, what is this working toward. But I do appreciate that she gets to the point quickly here and gives us like a real sense of space and place. but still is able to get to the point of what she wants to say. Ethan Sawyer (17:06) Yeah. I wonder, do you have the luxury in your office of being able to like reread the essay? Like if you get to the end of it, do you then go, okay, this is what the essay is about. And now I'll go back and read the whole thing. Hillary Dickman (17:17) Yeah, look, I don't think we're supposed to, but I take my time because I, especially when it's a student who you know is a real contender for admission, just based on what you've seen so far in their application, and you really want to be able to get to know them. And I find that if I am going to end up representing this student in committee or subcommittee at some point, it's better if I figure everything out on the front end, right? Like rather than having to go back and reread the essay a week or two or three weeks later. So I give myself the luxury of rereading it. It also helps when we're reading in teams. Sometimes we'll do like a prep and present, right? Where I am reading the file initially and then presenting it to my partner. And I need to be able to actually present the essay to my partner and tell the partner what. the essay was about and what I liked about it. And if I have skimmed it and didn't really understand it, then I can't teach someone else what it was about. So I end up looking a little bit goofy if I don't do a good reading hit on the front end. Ethan Sawyer (18:26) Totally. Well, and I wonder if we could like do a mini version of that together. Like if you'd be down to just like imagine that I am your, you know, reading partner here and I haven't read the essay yet. Like what are the things that you glean from this essay? What are some of those takeaways that are exciting to you or that you feel like in that context you would want to, that you would highlight as an admission reader? Hillary Dickman (18:46) Yeah, that's such an interesting question. yeah, if you were my reading partner, I would tell you that a few of the things that I learned about this student are that she is super community minded. She grew up in a place where everybody has something to contribute and she recognizes that. She sees the value of each person in her community. I would tell them that she's also an artistic student who works with her hands. And you see that really from the first line where she's talking about the painted paper mache moth, everybody recognizes different things in a space. And for her to zero in on that in her first sentence tells me that she's an artist and she's someone who values handmade objects. And then we see that throughout when she's talking about the handmade ceramic bowls, she's talking about the table runner that she sewed. And so I know that this is a student who who loves to work with her hands and thinks like an artist. And then I would say that she's also a leader. Like I look at the way that she is working with the other kids in the commune who are playing bananagrams with her and she's leading the game. She's taking us through the game, showing us kind of how she, how she interacts with other kids at the commune. And so we've got a kiddo who is understanding the value of community. and at the same time creating community in this essay. Ethan Sawyer (20:13) Yeah, thank you. I appreciate you taking me into the room as it were. So what's different? Let me ask you this. What would be different from a presentation that you would make to another reader versus if you were speaking about this student in committee? And there might be somebody who's listening who doesn't know what committee means. So will you just explain briefly what it means and in what context a student would be read in committee? Hillary Dickman (20:35) Yeah, for sure. So for us, and it's different at every school, right? But for us, when a student is sort of on the bubble in terms of their admissibility, we will bring them to committee. And that means that all, they're usually 13 when we're fully staffed, we have 13 traveling staff. So 13 reps who have responsibility for a different geographic part of the world. And so we'll all gather in a room together. And as a territory rep, I'm assigned the files that are from my geographic territory and I get them usually 24 hours, sometimes 48 hours in advance. Typically I have like, well, for each round it can vary, but up to 12 maybe that I have to prepare. And so I will spend sometimes as much as an hour. It depends on how good I was at note-taking in the beginning and how complicated the application is, but. I'll spend a good amount of time the day or night before our committee presentations are due, going back through and like really reading the file with a fine-tooth comb. So I will reread the essay. I'll look at the things that I highlighted on the first time through the essay. I'll look at all of my comments. I'll look at all of my highlights on the teacher recs and in the activities and build sort of a case for the student. And we try to be really honest about what a student's strengths are and also their weaknesses so that we're giving the full story to our colleagues. And then I get two minutes to present my case for each student. And so I will kind of start by giving them the context of the high school and then go through kind of chronologically through the app. When I say chronologically, I mean like the same way that you would read a common app, right? So the demographics page to the activities page to the essays and then to our supplemental essay and kind of give some summaries and note what really stands out in a positive or perhaps a negative way. And then I usually finish most of our committee presentations finished with something that's a strong sentence or two of advocacy for the student. And then something like, I know I'll be voting for this student and I hope you will too. It feels very cheesy and we kind of laugh at each other, but. But it's always fun to add on that note of advocacy. And then we vote. typically, students require, we'll usually take the top half of students from a group who got the most votes. And then whoever doesn't make it through committee will be deferred or waitlisted. they're not, because they've made it this far, they're not going to be denied. Ethan Sawyer (23:21) And when you're in a typical round like this, how many students would you say you're reviewing and committee in this particular way? Hillary Dickman (23:29) Yeah, it depends on the round that we're in, whether it's early decision or early action or regular action, because early decision is typically smaller. But during early action and regular action, we might be reading 80, maybe even 100 files over the course of two to two and a half days, sometimes more than that. It just kind of depends on how well we did in subcommittee of like sorting students. And it's a little bit different every year. And then during early decision, typically we can get through that in a half day. It'll be a smaller number, like maybe 30 students. Ethan Sawyer (24:05) What helps you make a great case for a student? Are there things that come through in an application that make your job easier? Hillary Dickman (24:15) Yeah, absolutely. are. When students know themselves really well, when they have used the college application process as an opportunity for reflection and for sort of digging deeply into figuring out who they are and how they became who they are, that shows. And I think some students are, some students have more practice at that, right? Like some students have been journaling since they were maybe in fifth or sixth grade and I remember reading an essay this year where at some point toward the bottom of the essay, the student mentioned the number of journals that were sitting on her bookshelf. And I was like, of course, because I've gotten this far through it and recognize that this student is a stellar writer. Like she's practicing writing, right? She's not just all of us. And she's practicing reflective writing and thinking about herself kind of in the context of the larger world. I, sorry that that's not really like a, it's not like a to-do list kind of thing, right? It's like a way of being, learning to be a reflective person, taking the time out to figure out who you are. That comes through when we're reading an application. Ethan Sawyer (25:31) I think what you're pointing to is, I mean, I'm really resonant with it, of course, because I think it points to like a particular orientation for this process and a way to go through it. And I think that, you know, oftentimes students will kind of go through it in this sort of transactional way, right? Like I got to do this to do that, you know? And that's, I want to name it, that's like a fine way to do it. if, and, and, you know, that's one way to do it. And then there's this other potential, a way of going through this process that you know, allows for some deeper stuff to happen. And I often think of this personal statement or the college essay as sort of being like the wonderful byproduct of going through a process of self-reflection and Hillary Dickman (26:14) Yeah, it's a cool opportunity, I think, for students to get to know themselves better and then to be able to share that with us. Ethan Sawyer (26:23) Yeah. want to, there are a couple of moments in this essay that you mentioned that I want to draw the listeners attention to that I think are so neat. We spent countless hours playing the game, Bananagrams, beside a bent ski pole collection and under folk music posters. And these are just those great visual specific details. You know, it's true. Like there's, you know, just beautiful verisimilitude there. Each player started with a certain number of lettered tiles and the rest sprawled in the center of everyone. Like disjointed letters that made the crossword puzzle result of the game. The people fit together. I look at the faces, learning peel for everyone to take another letter and progress the game. Words transformed from inside my mind to small tiled letters that patterned onto the table runner. said it last year. I love even just this word pattern, you know, which is like, don't know if that's a word. I don't actually care. I know what it means here. You know, Hillary Dickman (27:14) It's so different from like a clinking sound, right? Like it is the sound that a tile, a bananagram tile would make if you dropped it onto fabric on a wood table, which I love. Ethan Sawyer (27:24) Totally. It is a word. means like, you know, like the pitter patter, sort of like the repeated tapping word. But it's so interesting because I often hear that word along with pitter patter. You know, when no letters were left in the middle, I announced bananas signaling the end of the game, straighten out the smooth tiles. Favorite word at the top of my puzzle, intertwined. And this is a theme that seems to come up in this essay. So there's commune, which is mentioned at the start and in the end of this sentence, the next one, it hung there on the banner above the fireplace that displayed our values as a commune. I like how it sounds and what it means, individual threads weaving together to form something stronger. You know, that theme comes up like, I want to say like three or four times in this essay. And, you know, I just think that's part of what helped it stand out for you. So I, you know, for students who are listening, if you're like, wow, that, that came up a few times. Well, it's the thing that Hillary was going to, you know, potentially take into those other meetings, you know, to be able to advocate for that student. you know, don't be afraid if there's a thing that's really important to you to repeat it, you know, once or twice. Hillary Dickman (28:22) Yeah, especially because typically we do read really quickly, right? Like not everybody is going to go back and make sure that they're understanding every bit of the essay the way that I kind of give myself the luxury to do. And so it is OK to have a little bit of repetition in there, I think. Ethan Sawyer (28:41) I, will you speak to that for just a minute because you mentioned, you kind of alluded to this earlier, but from your conversations with colleagues, your institution, other institutions, you know, there's, there's a speed that happens with us. And I think, I guess I'm curious to hear a little bit more about that because I imagine some students are going through this process thinking like, well, if people are reading it so fast, like, should I even take the time to do it? Like, what do you say to students who, who wonder, should I spend? you know, time doing all these different drafts if it's just going to like sped red by somebody other than Hillary. Hillary Dickman (29:16) Yeah, and even I have to speed read sometimes to get through all my numbers, but I think even when we are speed reading, we try to do it with the utmost care, right? And just like in any work, in admission, you have to prioritize. And if you're reading a student who you're like, wow, this kid has a perfect transcript and they've got excellent activities, and I can see from the first paragraph of this essay that they are a great writer and that they know themselves well and they're going to contribute, you can speed read through the rest of it and keep going and say, I'm recommending that we admit this student. So it's not a terrible place to be to have someone speed read your essay because sometimes it means like, I already know, I don't have to read the whole thing to know that I want you at my school. And every school is different and hopefully if you have a really well-balanced list. you're going to be applying to some places that are maybe a bit of a reach for you where you're the student who is on the bubble, right? And somebody is going to go back. In fact, 13 people might all be staring at your essay at the same time. And so if you're not just like a kid who I can get through most of your app and say, yes, I want to recommend this student for admission and here are the reasons why, and everybody agrees and we send you through. If you're a student who we have to spend some time on and you're going to end up going through subcommittee and committee, there's going to be a lot of people looking at your essay and picking it apart. So yeah, you do want to do the best work that you can. Not to mention that it's just a really neat opportunity for you to get to know yourself better. And that's part of what being a teenager is for. Ethan Sawyer (31:03) A thing I haven't heard you say yet is when our Colorado College AI system is reading, you know, these essays, I'm hearing you talk about a lot of humans. Hillary Dickman (31:12) Yeah, we don't have an AI system at Colorado College. That's not how we do work at CC. That's not how most of my colleagues who I travel with on the road do their work. So I know that there are AI readers being used at some places, right? Like MIT has been playing with theirs for a few years. But I don't know if they're reading the essays or if they're just using them to recalculate a GPA. But we, I mean... reading the essay, reading the whole application as humans is an essential part of our jobs, number one. Number two, our institution as a whole, and this is also true with a lot of other small liberal arts colleges, is not totally sold on AI, right? Like we are thinking about it very intentionally and moving very slowly. We don't have like an enterprise, you know, subscription to chat, GPT or cloud or whatever, because our students are not totally comfortable with the ethical implications of AI, whether that's from because AI steals people's work or because of the impact on the climate. They are using it and experimenting with it. And we are working through that as an institution. But it is not just like a given that this is good and we should use it and let's jump into it. So yeah, it's humans doing the work at CC. Ethan Sawyer (32:35) Is it something that y'all are talking about in your offices about, you know, in, in, meetings, or is it just, you know, not so much. Hillary Dickman (32:42) I mean, occasionally it will come up. Sometimes it comes up on the side of, wow, I read this, especially came up this year with the supplemental essay. I read another supplemental essay with the same closing paragraph. know, there were, it was just like a repeat of it felt like the same paragraph over and over again. So that is giving AI when we read that. And sometimes it comes up with us in the work that we're doing. Like we write, a PS note at the bottom of every student's admission letter. So when you get admitted to Colorado College, hopefully we never have to change this, but it is really time consuming. The rep who is your territory rep and has read your application will write something to you. Like, PS, we loved hearing about how you build community through Bananagrams at your home, right? Like it would be so that that's like the kind of thing that we would write on there. And they're so interesting to write because it forces you to sort of take what you've learned about the student and put it down in like one sentence. So some of us are naturally better at doing that than others. And so we have had conversations about like, it okay to take your PS note and like run it through AI to clean it up or do you need to do it yourself? And so that is a conversation that we have had, but we're really not even talking about using AI as in any part of the application review process. Perhaps it will come up at some point as AI gets better at what it does, but right now it's not even a topic. Ethan Sawyer (34:17) Yeah. It's funny you mentioned that note at the end of the essay. I don't know if Northwestern was doing this when I applied to college in 2002. No, was 1998. But I did call the admission office to, I needed to switch my major because I'd applied originally as English and I to switch for theater. And someone had put a post-it note on the essays that said something about my essays and that those making a difference. So I kind of point to that. as like my origin story for college essay That's amazing. So you never know. I guess what I'll say to like, this is me to like the CC team. Like you never know what that little note at the end could lead to. Hillary Dickman (34:56) Well, I'll tell you, Ethan, the most disheartening thing is when we get a note from a student who's like, my gosh, I love the PS note that you put on there. You got to know me so well and I'm going to wash you or whatever. I'm going to Cal or, you know, and you're like, what are we doing? But I know that sometimes it does make a difference. It's a hard thing to like, it's hard to get an ROI on it, right? But we keep doing it because we care about the students we're admitting. Ethan Sawyer (35:23) Yeah, I so appreciate it. It just speaks to my right early heart. There are a couple other things in this essay that I love that I want to just point out. There's so many of these little details where, you know, making art prints for the walls under the wing of the former Peace Corps woman who now spends her days with an acoustic guitar on her neck and a seam ripper in hand. There's just all the different, almost like minor characters in this story. Even Mr. McGregor, whose fall garden harvest steamed the ceramic bowls that line the long wooden table that fed us during Thanksgiving. The reason I want to like come back and highlight these is like for students who are like, you know, I don't have anything to write about or, know, my life isn't that interesting when you start to get into the details and you can include a little bit of a so what in this case, you know, she says through my experiences, my members of my community, I began to notice how every person added a different piece to the puzzle. It's just such a lovely, like no one else could write about the Peace Corps woman with the acoustic guitar or the Mr. McGregor and I don't know. I see you nodding as you're saying, as I'm saying this, but it's just, I, as a reader, as a human who loves language and who loves, you know, this, this form, I don't get bored by these things, even though, you know, you might have your own Mr. McGregor, you know, in your life, but I don't get bored by these. Hillary Dickman (36:40) Yeah, I don't either. That's why it's so great that we have the jobs that we do even because we get to spend all day doing something that energizes us. Yeah, it's hard to get bored when you're getting to know a new human in every application because humans are all so different and that's what makes them really interesting, right? And so getting to understand someone's personality and their voice and... these minor characters who've all had an impact on this student and made her who she is, it's so fascinating. And we all have those kinds of people in our lives or those kinds of experiences in our lives. And we don't all get to grow up in a commune. And that might seem like really foreign or really, I don't know, just different to a lot of students, but we all have like interesting family recipes that... would seem foreign to the people who live next door to us or who sit next to us in our English class. We all have some kind of family tradition or an inside joke with our siblings or whatever. We all have something about us that's a little bit kooky. And bringing those kinds of details to the front is what makes an application interesting. Ethan Sawyer (37:55) Yeah. And it's funny, but this essay actually says this in so many words. The last paragraph says, every person has interests and experiences that determine the letters of their words, you know, speaking about the enneagrams. Each word is part of a larger puzzle that intertwines into something more. I want to spend my days as an architect. Yeah, this is an interesting moment because I was surprised too, when I read this, understanding other people's crosswords, designing spaces that whisper what the enneagrams tiles. and being a pinehillian reminded me, you belong here and there's a space for you to build something too. That last part, in terms of belonging, like I do sense that, you know, sort of the whispers of that in the other parts of the paragraphs in the essay. And I found myself curious too, like, ⁓ tell me more about this, you know, your architect's mind at work. Hillary Dickman (38:44) Well, it made me kind of like, this is one of those times that I then wanted to be like, ⁓ now I got to go back and reread part of this essay just so I can see where it's coming out. And then that's where when you look at it again, you're like, of course, like she's thinking about these spaces that she's in, she's identifying details of the spaces and the things that are around her in the spaces. And as a liberal arts person, right, as someone who thinks that an architecture education should never be divorced from art history and sociology and economics and political science and all of these other things that we study in a liberal arts education. I saw that and I was like, ⁓ man, this is the kind of kid that we want building buildings, who's thinking about not just like a building as a memorial to them and to their great design instincts and artistry. but a building as a place that's going to help people develop relationships and create community. And so, like, while I think she could have woven that in earlier, it was also fun to see that at the end and to have it, like, spark that thought in my brain that, like, yay, like, these are the people we want being architects, the people who are thinking beyond a building as, you know, prize. Ethan Sawyer (40:06) Right or like, you know the structure but it's like yeah, it's a space for belonging, you know, or hopefully belonging I'm curious for your take on this. I was teaching a course last week and one of the counselors said Do you ever see essays going away? Because there's some talk about maybe more colleges will bring interviews or they don't video interviews into the process I'm just curious to hear your take on that Hillary Dickman (40:13) Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's such a good question. I've been asked that question a few times recently also. And I can say from an institutional perspective, it's not a conversation that we're having in our office right now, or at least not one that I've heard anyone discussing. At the same time, having seen the changes in writing over the last three years, I can also see why people are asking, right? And I could imagine... a situation where we could do better at getting to know the student with, in a more authentic way, with fewer sort of inputs coming in from outside, right? Whether that is less AI or, I mean, you think about it also with like the amount of test prep that students do and all of these things that kind of come in to like shape a student through the college process. So I do see some value in moving toward more interview-based kind of application process. And also when students love to write and when, even when they don't love to write, but when they're willing to do the hard work of writing and you can come up with a piece that's as beautiful as maybe a third of the essays that we get are. Like, it's such a joy to get to read about a student and to give them the opportunity to really think through how they want to communicate who they are rather than having to do it off the cuff. So I don't see it changing next year or the year after eventually, maybe yes, but not in the very short term. Ethan Sawyer (42:26) Do you think it's changed at all how much of a difference maker it makes in the application? I guess there's an obvious question before that where it's like, well, for folks who may not know, how much of a difference does it make in the application? And do you think that's changed? Hillary Dickman (42:43) That's a great question. I think it really depends on the individual application, right? Like, the essay can sort of be the thing that tips a student into the admit category. It's really the thing that keeps them out because usually if your essay is poorly written, then also your grades aren't great and you don't have a lot on your activities page and all of those other things. But a really well-written essay can help a student who's on the bubble. So it's not that it makes the same amount of difference for every student. It's really that it depends on kind of where they are in the pool and what the rest of their application looks like. And I haven't seen that change in our process, even as we know that there's more AI being used. I think one of the interesting things is sometimes you can tell when a student is just not very good at using AI, they're not very good at writing. prompts, they haven't sort of done their homework on getting to know themselves in order to put the right inputs into AI, or they're in a rush. I see that more in the supplement. It does feel like the supplement is the piece that students leave until the last minute. And they're like, shoot, I gotta turn this thing in by midnight on November 1st. So like after they get home from trick or treating on Halloween, they're like, gosh, I gotta write this supplemental essay. and either they just don't do a very good job on it or they run it through AI and we get essentially the same answer for everyone. I don't see that as much with the personal statement. It seems like kids are more dedicated to putting time into the personal statement. Ethan Sawyer (44:22) Hillary, there's the state of college admission report that came out that the National Association of College Admission Counselors put together, which we'll link to in the show notes. But I want to bring it up on my screen here and share with you and say, does this reflect what you see? In other words, what sort of is valued by admission officers in Colorado College? It's got, for instance, at the top grades and strength of curriculum. And then next, we've got this thing called positive character attributes. And then we've got essays, students interest in attending, and then we've got counselor teacher recommendations, and underneath that extracurriculars, ranking, test scores, these kinds of things. Does this sort of reflect what you see and what you all look at? Hillary Dickman (45:06) Yeah, it seems pretty accurate to me. I think one of the things that's interesting is that the essay and the counselor recommendation and the teacher recommendations are where we find the positive character attributes, right? So the positive character attributes is listed higher than all of those, but we wouldn't know those without all the other parts of the application, which I think is really interesting. But those character attributes are what end up in my notes. When I'm just taking quick notes, I will often try to identify what the student values and what is great about that student's character. And I will write those as I'm reading an application so that I can refer to them later and remember what it is about this student who stood out and why they stood out. But yeah, I mean, this list looks really... It looks like the water that I swim in right now for sure. And you know, things can bounce around depending on the student, right? Sometimes the teacher recommendation ends up being a lot more important because maybe their GPA isn't fantastic. And we want to know that even when the student is getting a B or a C that they're working really hard in that class and asking questions. And they're the kind of student who actually reads the comments that a teacher leaves on an essay or on an exam. and then changes in response to those comments. Like those are things that we need to know if a student is sort of on the bubble academically. So overall, yeah, and also different from student to student. Ethan Sawyer (46:43) What do you love about your job? Hillary Dickman (46:45) Ethan, are you trying to make me cry? Getting to know the students is for sure my favorite part of my job. And sometimes that starts during fall travel or during spring travel when I meet students on the road. Sometimes it starts when I read their application for the first time, and then I might get an email from their counselor who's filling in a gap or advocating for them. I love that part of it. I really love when I get to meet students. sort of before they start the application process and I can help them feel less anxiety about the process that like, there are 3000 schools in America, 3000-ish, right? Whatever the number is. And a lot of them are gonna be an amazing place to end up and you're gonna end up somewhere great and you're gonna do something great with it and you're gonna graduate. and you're going to have a great life. And it's really not dependent on the one school that you feel like right now is the only place that you can go. There are a lot of amazing places. And being able to talk through what our application process is like and that the numbers that you see, like our admit rate right now, I think is 26 % overall, right? If you look at all of our admission rounds or application rounds. That 26 % can feel daunting, but when you kind of look through the sorts of students who we're admitting and what our application process is, it's actually a lot more gentle than the 26 % that you see in the numbers. And the overall admit rate to college is much higher than that, right? It's a much more gentle number. So that opportunity to like chat with a student, chat with their parents, tell them you don't need to take 25 AP classes in high school. Like, take some, but don't take all of them. You don't need to invent a way to get to Mars. You just need to be like doing something that you love and enjoying time with your friends and your family and your neighbors and your community. Making it a human process is the most fun part of my job. Ethan Sawyer (49:12) I'm so glad you're doing this work. I'm so glad for your advocacy of students. Thanks for hanging out with me here. Hillary Dickman (49:20) Thank you. Same to you. I'm really glad you're doing this work. We really love your materials. We really love the ways that you help students grow through your process because we want to bring in whole, fully human students who know themselves and care about the people around them. And I think you do a great job of helping students find that in themselves. Ethan Sawyer (49:41) Thanks for saying that. I appreciate you. Hillary Dickman (49:46) I appreciate you too, Ethan. Ethan Sawyer (49:52) Thanks friends as ever for listening. You'll find the show notes at collegeessayguy.com slash podcast, including the text of the essay that we read. And if you're interested in more from us, you can sign up for anything at collegeessayguy.com. We'll share with you our latest resources, upcoming free live events, and lots more. Thanks y'all and stay curious.
