You've Gotta Love It - Phillips Academy

WHAT’S UP?
What’s up in the college counseling
office?
What’s up is an interesting combination
of pursuing some new initiatives
and maintaining the mission
and philosophy that have guided the
academy’s college counseling efforts
for years. Those include helping students
identify their strengths, weaknesses,
interests and tastes and
providing them with information
about a range of schools to determine
where they will be most comfortable
and successful.
6
College Counseling
Director
John Anderson
The Student
as
Centerpiece
Among high school students, particularly among
those in the top-level boarding and day schools,
there are few topics more stressful than college admissions.
The process, which looms large in the 11th and 12th grades, can at its worst seem to represent almost a
referendum on a student’s value, achievement and future potential. Since coming to Andover two years ago,
Director of College Counseling John Anderson has worked with his five colleagues to shepherd Andover students
through this emotional and exciting developmental step. Here, he speaks with Andover Bulletin editor Theresa
Pease about some of the challenges he faces.
How do you measure success in
this arena?
It’s not easy to prove quantitatively
that we have accomplished our mission
each year. We rely more on
anecdotal evidence to help us figure
out whether we are doing our job
well. If students feel they made a
good match, that is one way to measure
success. What I can say is that
every student who applied to colleges
in 2004 got into at least one school
where he or she would be likely to
succeed, and so far we’ve heard no
complaints about the college choices.
Does the ambition level of PA
students and their parents make
this particularly challenging here?
When I interviewed for this job, one
comment I heard over and over was,
“Watch out for the Andover parents.
They are a tough group.” They
are ambitious for their children, I
was told, and sometimes try to be
helpful to the point where they take
the process over. What’s more, if
they are unhappy with the process,
they always make that known.
I decided early on that, instead
of wishing they would just go away