Philadelphia Seeks Salvation in Lessons from Model School

In little more than two years, the Philadelphia school district has stripped $400 million out of its annual budget, closed 30 schools, eliminated nearly 7,000 jobs, and lost more than 20,000 students.

The teetering city system, said Superintendent William R. Hite Jr., desperately needs "to show a win."

So Mr. Hite is placing a controversial bet: Although scores of schools opened here this month without regular guidance counselors, nurses, or basic supplies, the superintendent is pouring millions of dollars into expanding what he considers to be three of the city's most innovative schools. They include Science Leadership Academy, an acclaimed magnet high school at the forefront of the national effort to marry educational technology...

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Lessons for Parents of International Grad Students

Parents of prospective international students should involve their children in the graduate school selection process.

During my years serving in graduate enrollment and student services, I held office hours for students. There, I met with countless international students. Many were stressed, frightened and upset – a few to the point that they needed professional or medical assistance.

Academic struggles were the primary cause of their angst. Further questioning revealed that if word of their situation reached their parents, they would be in a great deal of trouble.

I've met with thousands of parents of prospective graduate students around the world during my career. What always amazed me was the consistently strong desire these parents had to see their children succeed. In many cases parents were making huge sacrifices so that their children could study abroad.

[Learn what to consider when applying to U.S. graduate schools.]

It was heartwarming to observe this, and to witness the strong ties between family members. But sometimes I found myself communicating with parents of applicants rather than the applicants themselves.

Parents often asked about the curriculum, admission requirements, career placement information and scholarship opportunities – questions typically asked by applicants. In some cases, they would even ask for an application fee waiver or reduced tuition for their son or daughter.

It is quite an adjustment for parents to have a son or daughter travel not only far away for graduate study, but also to another country – in some cases, without returning home for two years. This cannot be easy, yet many parents support and encourage their children to pursue their educational and career goals.

[Learn how graduate schools evaluate international applicants.]

But many international students have told me that their parents do not respond well to any sort of failure. Remember that any successful person has some detours along the way, and does not do everything perfectly.

Yet at times, some parents place overwhelming pressure on their children. While you want your child to succeed, placing too much pressure on him or her to do so could actually make things worse. Focus on success, not on perfection. Let your child be human.

Remember that sometimes the greatest learning opportunities come from mistakes and errors. If we are afraid of or forbid failure, we actually create a culture where it is more likely that failure will occur.

[Allay some common international grad school applicant concerns.]

Parents can help their students by encouraging them to find the best institution or program for them.

As a dean of admissions, it was frequently evident to me that students' parents had selected the institutions to which an international student was applying. The student had no input whatsoever.

When we would inquire, either through an essay or during an interview about why the applicant had chosen our program, students would often say that their parents had chosen their list of schools.

Some of these same students came to my office hours, indicating that they did not want to be enrolled at my institution in the first place.

In some of those situations where parents had selected the programs for their children, they almost always chose the highest ranking institutions in a particular field. Long-term success in life is rarely dependent on where one attended college or graduate school.

Work with your children, not apart from them. Give them the opportunity to be involved in the selection of the graduate program they believe would be the best match and where they would like to apply. Do not encourage an unhealthy and obsessive emphasis on rankings and prestige.

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The Choice Blog: Tip Sheet | A Family’s Lessons From the College Tour

Beth Kissileff

I never went on a college tour when I was a teenager. My parents wanted me to attend the college where my father was employed; it would have been tuition-free for me, and so they weren’t eager to encourage other explorations.

Before I left on a recent college trip with my daughter I had believed these college visits yet another unnecessary aspect of the lives of privileged children. I thought the college tour was yet another accoutrement without value in itself, but only as something to brag about.

However, while with my oldest child, Tova, on a four-day, six-campus jaunt, I came to appreciate that one can’t know what one wants until one sees it.

I love to browse physical stores. When a book’s title catches my eye, I peruse the table of contents and see who the author thanks in his acknowledgements. This, I then realize, is what I must read next.

The book wouldn’t have occurred to me at all until I saw it. When I am in a store, I can pick up an object, try on a piece of clothing to check the color, the feel of the fabric, and most importantly the fit.

That seems to be the most overused word in the college search process: fit. But the college tour, my daughter and I have found, is a helpful way to try the campus out for size.

This is our advice to parents and students embarking on the college tour.

If you only have time for either a tour or an info session, opt for the tour. The same material is generally covered and you don’t have to sit for an hour in an auditorium on a beautiful spring day.

There are things one learns on these tours that one might not realize ahead of time. One urban college did not guarantee housing for all four years. As a result, many of the students live in off-campus apartments and join sororities and fraternities, creating a sense of fragmentation on an already large campus. One campus had bicycles everywhere because it is so sprawled out that it isn’t really accessible just to walk.

Find a way to meet with a smaller group of students informally. For us, it was at the Hillel, the Jewish student center, but any type of interest group can be accessed.

E-mail students from your high school at this college or look online for the clubs or student groups that interest you and see if you can schedule time to speak with them on campus. Most students are excited about their school and eager to share with newbies. And if they don’t have good things to say or don’t have time for you, that should say something about the culture of the school.

This is the essence of the title of a recent book by a college admissions professional and parent, and the mantra of my daughter and her college guidance counselor.

I agree, I am not going to college. However, I am footing the bill and do have a say in this.

While each student’s experience is unique and a student is free to do as he or she chooses, the culture of a place has an influence, for positive or negative, encouraging some things, rewarding others.

One tour began with a visit to the stadium, while others barely mentioned big-time sports. At one campus, the norm is to switch majors two or three times; at another, the admissions representatives asked the students on tour what they would be studying and seemed to expect them to have an answer.

Here are some questions we asked during our visits:

On the classroom experience:

What is the percentage of classes that enroll more than 20 students?What percentage of classes are taught by tenured professors, non-tenured professors, and graduate student teaching assistants?Are professors happy and do they want to be there?Do students love their classes, or do they see them as a necessary evil to meet their requirements?What are the most common majors?If a student’s interests shift, will she still be able to study what she wants?What kind of academic and social support system is in place?How much opportunity is there for undergraduates to do research?

On the campus environment and surrounding areas:

How is the college connected to the city or town it is in?Do students interact with locals?How do students dress and act? Do they seem happy?What do students do on weekends?

When driving, our GPS battery ran out but we had printed out Mapquest directions and managed to arrive at our first tour on time.

Having a backup plan also applies to the college search: When applying to college, don’t think there is one place and only one where you will be happy. Go on the tour to think about the things you want in a college and apply to a variety of institutions that can give you those things.

Remember that college is a first step, not an endpoint. No matter who you are, or what you do in college, you will be starting from the beginning when you go to work. Have a sense of humor and humility about the whole process. This is only the first step in your career; what you do with it is up to you.

Beth Kissileff has taught at Carleton, Smith and Mount Holyoke Colleges, and the Universities of Minnesota and Pittsburgh. Ms. Kissileff’s daughter, Tova Perlman, contributed to this piece and is a graduating senior at The Ellis School in Pittsburgh. Ms. Perlman plans to attend Brandeis University after a gap year in Israel.

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