Dr. Pamela Ellis: Navigating the College Admissions Journey

Guy Kawasaki:
I'm Guy Kawasaki, and this is Remarkable People. We are on a mission to make you remarkable. And helping me today is Pamela Ellis. She's an education trailblazer who empowers students to achieve their college dreams. As the founder of Compass College Advisory, Pamela has helped over 500 students gain acceptance to their top choice colleges, and those students have earned over thirty-five million dollars in scholarships.
Pamela overcame her own challenges to become the first in her family to graduate high school and college. Her mother finished eighth grade and her father tenth grade. Yet, Pamela earned degrees from Stanford, Dartmouth and Stanford School of Education. Her life's work is motivated by her family's story and her own journey as a first generation student. Pamela is the author of, What to Know Before They Go: College Edition. She is a leading voice on preparing students for college success. Through her popular, “Keep C.A.L.M. for Moms” show, she provides guidance with grace and ease.
Pamela Ellis exemplifies the power of education to transform lives by empowering students to pursue their dreams. She helps create a more just and equitable society. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People, and now here is the remarkable Pamela Ellis. Is college necessary anymore? And by that I want to get really specific and I'll give you a little back channel story. A lot of, shall I say, white billionaires are saying, "College isn't necessary. You can take this course at Google University, blah, blah, blah, and you get a job," and all that.
On the other hand, we've interviewed quite a few people who come from very homeless background, crack addict parents, lives in the projects, and they have a completely different story that if you don't have a college education because of how people view them, they're stuck. And so college education is a ticket out of that situation that white people don't have to get out of it. So with all that background, what's your take on this? Is college necessary?
Pamela Ellis:
It is for what you shared earlier in terms of, for particular people with backgrounds that are less privileged, and really seeking to go beyond and reach that next level, it is necessary, and I was one of those people. I grew up in a project and if it wasn't for a teacher recommending me a program for gifted students, I don't know where I would be today because my parents hadn't gone to college and didn't know what that was like.
My mother actually was a sharecropper and she finished eighth grade and my dad finished tenth grade, and so they had no idea of college, and me actually pursuing college, that wasn't even a thought. And so for people who come from a more humble background, yes indeed, and perhaps, entrepreneurship would be the next way, but I do believe that it is still necessary, especially for people of color, people from less privileged backgrounds.
Guy Kawasaki:
Typically, the person saying college isn't necessary anymore is a white male billionaire. Just random sample, right?
Pamela Ellis:
Yes, a very random sample.
Guy Kawasaki:
You're in the business of helping people find the right school. I got that right, right?
Pamela Ellis:
Yes, that's right.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. So what exactly does a match mean?
Pamela Ellis:
Oh, wow. That's a great question and I'm glad you started there. A match is really about those colleges where that student is most likely to thrive and complete in four years. And there are dozens of colleges that can support them with doing that, but those are the matches that we are making. And sometimes students can't just go and look at a top ten list to determine that match. It's a bit more comprehensive than that, and it always starts with the student in terms of who they are. And so we have five factors that we look at in terms of who that student is and then applying that to the colleges to make a match, but it's really where they will have the best chance of thriving and completing in four years.
Guy Kawasaki:
And what are those five parameters?
Pamela Ellis:
The first factor is academic, and what is it that student is interested in learning and how do they learn, and what type of support academically for them to be successful. So that would be the academic fit. The second factor is social, and social is really about what are those ways that they make friends and really thinking about that aspect of their experience. So do they make friends through a sport? Do they make friends through particular types of clubs? What are those social interests?
The third factor of fit is financial. Colleges do want it to be affordable and there are aspects of affordability that can support that student with being successful in college, and so we look at the financial factor. The fourth factor of fit is vocational. What it is that child is interested in doing after college. Sometimes they know, sometimes they don't, but there are colleges that can support them either way.
And then the fifth factor of fit is cultural, however that student may be different from the majority of students on that campus, whatever campus it is. And when you look at it in terms of the colleges for that cultural fit, they want a place where they can be celebrated and not tolerated, and so those are the five factors. And so we always start with the student in terms of applying them and then lay that against the colleges that are out there.
Guy Kawasaki:
And do you ever have come to Jesus conversations where you say to the student, "Oh honey, you don't want to go to the University of, I don't know, Alabama.”
Pamela Ellis:
I do. It depends on that student, and part of my role is to help them with making that evaluation and understanding it. So I may have a student who says they're interested in a college because of the location, but once they really start to learn about it and see some other things about it. No, that's really not a fit. And one of the things that I do in terms of helping them with that is rather than just saying it out, Guy, because especially teens, they may have a little bit of a backlash.
Guy Kawasaki:
Not like us.
Pamela Ellis:
I know, not like us at all. And so rather than just saying it outright, I will say, "How about you research that college? I want you to research it first." And they use the same framework for researching all the colleges so that they can compare apples to apples. So I ask them to research it first, and once they research it the way I outline it for them, they usually come to that conclusion without me saying it.
Guy Kawasaki:
And do you think a site like, I don't know how you pronounce it, but it's S-C-O-I-R where you put in your parameters and it says, "These are the colleges that might be good for you." Do those sites work or they're too simplistic?
Pamela Ellis:
You know something? They don't work as effectively because oftentimes the parameters that students are inputting are superficial. And if you are living in the Midwest and you're working on your applications in the fall, of course, you're looking at Florida, you know what I mean? It's like you're looking at all the warm places and that doesn't make sense. But a lot of times that's the way teens come up with their list. It's the location, it's where their friends are going. Sometimes it's just where their parents say they're going to go because of the tuition.
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, you brought up the “F” word, so I'm going to go down that path here. Today, would you be talking to students and saying, "Wow, in Florida they're not going to have a good Black History program, your reproductive rights are going to be limited and blah, blah, blah." Would you downplay Florida or Texas today, or is that too simplistic?
Pamela Ellis:
I wouldn't because it really depends on that student. Perhaps, they have a legacy consideration at a college in Florida or Texas. There's some family, any host of reasons. Perhaps, there's a program there that is a great fit for them. And it's all of those other factors that still make it an amazing place where they can thrive, however it happens to be located in a state that has politics that they may not agree with.
And I wouldn't arbitrarily take it off their list. And for every student, I always say at the end of the day, you want to revisit that school once you know you've been admitted. Do the admitted student visit, and that's going to tell you everything you need to know in that visit. And so I don't want to shortchange their list because of that, because there could still be reasons that it's a great fit for them.
Guy Kawasaki:
So you're dealing with these seventeen, eighteen year olds, and I can't even remember when I was seventeen or eighteen, but I'm pretty sure that I wasn't thinking very clearly or long term.
Pamela Ellis:
Right.
Guy Kawasaki:
And so this person says, "Yeah, I love surfing. I want to be in the sun, I need to be close to the ocean, blah, blah, blah. And I think I won a small class because my high school had a big class." What do they truly know at that point?
Pamela Ellis:
In some cases, it's not a whole lot, and that's where we have a process in place to help them with having the right tools to make better decisions about it. So just like I mentioned earlier in terms of just having a way for them to research colleges and learn about them, and providing that structure in our program helps them to make decisions better. And the truth of the matter is that yes, they may be seventeen or eighteen, but they also have parents who sometimes may be involved in it.
And when they're going on their campus visits, their parents go along with them, and I give parents questions to ask and they're just asking the same questions at every college. And that helps them to also provide a perspective for their teen and still allowing their teen to own the process because that's so important that the teen owns it. And I don't ever want parents to be so involved that they take that away from them because that's when it is going to be a lot more tarnished and they can't make decisions as effectively. But we give them all the tools to really help them with making a good decision even at that age.
Guy Kawasaki:
Listen, I'm a parent of four kids, and three of them are in college, or two graduated, one is in college, one is applying right now. And I don't know how the hell you navigate between the kid and the parent because, oh my god, I've met some parents.
Pamela Ellis:
Yeah, there's a lot of dynamics there, and it gets really personal and especially when you're getting into the essay writing. Every year I'm saying to parents, "You've got to trust the process, and even though at times you want to interfere, you want to write that essay for them, every college admissions officer is going to know that you wrote it."
And the other thing about it is I share with parents, "If you write it, it's going to really break the trust that your teen has in you, and you don't want to do that senior year. Life is too short. They'll soon be gone off to college, and you just don't want to taint that relationship and damage it in that way." And it's a lot to manage sometimes because with each client comes three different relationships, and if there are any family dynamics that are happening, I see it all.
Guy Kawasaki:
I couldn't do your job. Let me ask you something. I have been, I swear on about thirty college tours, East Coast, West Coast, you name it, from Providence to Honolulu. And we're all on this path to get this perfect or good match. But I've got to tell you, and I hope some college admissions directors are listening to this, I swear to God, every college tour is the same. Everybody says, "This is an institution that I really love being here, and the classes are reasonably sized, they're great access to professors. It's a very diverse student population."
Nobody says, "Oh, the classes are too big. The food sucks, I can never get to the professor." I don't want you to think I'm going whole hog against the college tours, but every college tour they show, "Oh, this is our brand new theater, and this is our brand new science building," and it's about the buildings and stuff. Talk me down from my diatribe against college tours.
Pamela Ellis:
They're still valuable, and I have visited over 500 of them.
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh my God.
Pamela Ellis:
Yes, there are those similarities that you see and hear, and one of the things is still keeping it focused on your child and what is a fit for them. And I make sure that the student has some way to evaluate the college for themselves, and there are questions you can ask to really get beyond the optics of the buildings and the fact that it's such a beautiful campus and the weather is great on this day.
The other thing too, Guy, is I recommend that the parent does a different tour than the student if there are enough people there. And you'll be amazed at how depending on the tour guide that you have, you're going to hear something different than your child would, and I saw it all the time with my own kids because I would do those tours with them as well.
And my oldest was visiting this college, and when he finished the tour, we were talking about just what his thoughts were and he was just like, "It just doesn't seem like it's for me, it's more for engineers and I'm not majoring in Engineering." That's because his tour guide was an engineer. I was on a tour with someone who was doing ultimate frisbee, which is what he did. They were also in international relations. They had a totally different experience. And so when I finished the tour, I'm thinking, "This is a great place for him and I hope he applies." But he was not thinking that way at all and he ended up not applying.
Guy Kawasaki:
Wait, so what do you tell kids to ask on the college tour?
Pamela Ellis:
Oh my goodness. Depending on that student, it's things like asking about their major interests, asking about faculty, how accessible the faculty is, and really learning about what the freshmen experience is like, because that's really in so many ways a make or break year in terms of them transitioning, and so those are some of the questions. Really asking about what people do on the weekends, finding out about that and looking around the surrounding area to get a sense for what there is to do.
Do they need a car if they're in that area? And I really look at just where that student is coming from. If you're in the Bay Area and you go to visit a college in Colorado, in Iowa, almost anywhere else, it's going to be a different type of setting altogether. And if you're used to being in Santa Cruz access to the ocean, you're going to feel like every place else is landlocked even if it's in Chicago, that's not an ocean, that's a lake. It's just thinking about what is it going to be like to be there? And especially thinking about that transition in freshman year.
And the other thing I always advise my students to do is to ask questions of a random student, so not a student that's a tour guide because sometimes tour guides are paid or maybe tour guides have a script that they're reading from because they say, "Oh, we'll talk about that when we get to this building," because their script says that, "When you're in front of this building, you talk about this, when you go through the cafeteria, you talk about that."
So I just say, "Ask a random student," someone who is not paid by the admissions office, they haven't volunteered, but stop them when you see them in the student union and ask them some questions because they're going to tell you the truth. Find out what happened freshman year with their roommate situation. You ask those kind of questions, what is the food really like? And especially if they're not local, if they're from another state, finding out, "What did you do over Thanksgiving break?"
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah, okay. And these US news and Forbes and all these rankings, are they net negative? Do they cause more problems than they solve?
Pamela Ellis:
Sometimes they do cause more problems just because for many students they use that as their guide to where they will apply. And the same for parents is, "If this college isn't on this list, you're not going to apply." And when that's the case for a family, let's say, that's first generation, it may not help to put so much reliance on that. And I shouldn't just say first generation, but any. And I will just share a brief story with you, Guy.
When I was getting ready to go to college, my family was like, "You're going where, what? Where is that?" And I was a little bit excited because I had found out about this college in a book, and I thought they're ranked, that's where I'm going to go. And in the spring, I'm telling people where I'm going to go. They're just like, "Is that in Connecticut? Where is that?"
And this was back in the 1980s. And then my mother is like, "I really want you to stay home." I grew up in Memphis and she's just like, "You can get a car, you can work. You don't need to go that far away from home." And we took a Greyhound bus all the way out to California, and we get there and she's just like, "Okay, this is nice."
And when she got ready to leave, she gave me seventy dollars and I thought, "Man, this is good money. This is going to last me the whole school year." And then I get to the bookstore the next day and my books were 350 dollars for the first quarter. And a week or two later, my mother calls me and she was like, "Baby, I was telling the doctor where you are in college. And he said, that's a good school." And I thought, "Okay," but that's how it was. And I was not encouraged to go that far because no one had heard of the school.
Guy Kawasaki:
Wait, what school is this that you're referring to?
Pamela Ellis:
Your alma mater, Stanford. Back then, no one knew that much about Stanford.
Guy Kawasaki:
Wait, you got into Stanford and your mother left you with seventy bucks?
Pamela Ellis:
Seventy bucks, and I thought that was good money because I didn't know that it would be that expensive, and I was just really not aware. But the point is just that people hadn't heard of that college back then, especially not where I lived. No one had really heard about it. And I feel like Stanford really didn't get on the map until, in some ways, late 1980s, early 1990s. People started to really know the brand, and you're seeing it on TV, the Super Bowl was played at the stadium, those kinds of things, but no.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. We have parallel lives. So I too went to Stanford.
Pamela Ellis:
Yes.
Guy Kawasaki:
And as I look back, I have no idea how I got in except I was in the class of 1972, and back then being Asian-American or Japanese-American, it meant I was an oppressed minority. So basically I got in because of affirmative action really. And you know how right now we take our kids, and they go to five schools on the East Coast, five in Southern California, we'd go on ten tours, I swear to God.
My college decision was I got into the University of Hawaii, I got into Occidental. I might've been president if I went to Occidental, and I got into Stanford. And I wanted to go to Occidental because I could have played football there, or at least I thought I could. The coach calls me and all that. And I say to my father, "I'm going to go to Occidental," and he says, "You're going to go to Occidental because you're going to play football.
If I'm paying all that money, you're going to Stanford or you're going to go to University of Hawaii for free." So guess what I picked? And I had never visited Stanford. I didn't go on a tour. I landed at San Francisco International Airport, I get in the van, the van takes you to your dorm at Stanford. And I said, "Holy shit, this is the promised land baby. I was born for this."
Pamela Ellis:
Yeah.
Guy Kawasaki:
I don't remember how much money they gave me, but it wasn't much north of seventy dollars, anyway.
Pamela Ellis:
And the thing about it is when we got to campus, when we drove up, because we had made a stop, met with my sister, drove to campus, we drove along Interstate 280, and when we exited at Page Mill Road, we took a right turn and we saw the cows, and that was where Hewlett-Packard offices were located, and I thought that was the campus.
And so we were just looking around and I had a little pit in my stomach because I'm thinking, "This doesn't really look like a place where I want to live for four years." And so we finally got turned around and found the campus, but it was really something to see. It was breathtaking, and I just had a lot of butterflies for sure, being there.
Guy Kawasaki:
What years were you there?
Pamela Ellis:
I was there 1984 to 1988, and then I went back in 2002.
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh, you're a baby.
Pamela Ellis:
Yeah.
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh, my God.
Pamela Ellis:
It was certainly different to be back there as a grad student, because when I went back in 2002, I had three kids and I was in the School of Education PhD program and lived in Escondido Village.
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh, you did?
Pamela Ellis:
Yeah. And I always thought grad students were creepy when I was an undergrad, and I became one of those creepy grad students going to events to get free meals.
Guy Kawasaki:
Enough reminiscing. So let's talk about the application process here. First of all, standardized testing. Standardized testing is going away more and more. And on one hand you say, "Okay, that's good. It skews towards people who can afford tutoring and all that." On the other hand, you could also make case that it's an equalizer. So what's your take on standardized testing?
Pamela Ellis:
It's not going away anytime soon. I think that SAT and ACT, so college board and ACT are big businesses. And on paper, yes, colleges say that they're tests optional, and I still see colleges that, in the last couple of years, have gone back to requiring test scores and some where students are still submitting their scores. And even though they're test optional, they look at the scores and they see, and it's hard to unsee the scores. And so test optional just means you don't have to send them in, but if you do, we'll look at them.
And what I think it does, it makes it more complex in terms of, it complicates whether or not you still take it. And if you do, whether or not you send the scores in. So it raises more questions than it answers now since 2020 when so many more colleges weren't test optional. But there were already about a thousand colleges that were test optional even prior to COVID, and so I just feel it makes it harder for families to really know what to do, but it's still there. It's not going away because those companies are big businesses and they're doing everything they can to keep it.
Guy Kawasaki:
But in a sense, you answered the question because you're saying that it's not going away because it's big businesses. You're not saying it's not going away because they're useful and valuable. To me it's bullshit. Just because it's a big business it doesn't mean that's why it should remain.
Pamela Ellis:
Yes, that's for sure. And I think that it can be helpful in some cases.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay.
Pamela Ellis:
Because if a student hasn't done well in their Math class, for example, and they can show that their Math score on a test is a bit higher than you would think based on their grade, that can tell them something. So they can be helpful in that way, and they're not as valuable in terms of really predicting how well a student is going to perform academically in college, for what it's worth.
Guy Kawasaki:
And what about in my junior year summer, I went to Nicaragua and built a church and I spent two weeks in Nepal and all that. These are the activities of rich white people going to Third World countries in order to write a great essay. Do admissions committees think that's all bullshit and just ignore that now?
Pamela Ellis:
I don't think they give as much credit to it as you would think they do. And what I advise students to do is do what they enjoy doing, do those things they care about, but not doing something for the sake of a college application.
Guy Kawasaki:
Now, let's go to the Supreme Court.
Pamela Ellis:
Okay.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. So first explain, what the hell did they decide a few months back? What was that?
Pamela Ellis:
That was a decision to say that you cannot consider race, and that's the way I see it, as simple as that. But the interpretation of it, I think is going to be where we really see things happen because I feel like colleges are still going to do things in a way that benefits them. And so even with that decision being rendered, they have their own lawyers who are figuring out, how do we still bring in the students that we want to bring in?
Guy Kawasaki:
What I don't understand is how can you say you want a diverse student body and be told it's illegal to consider race? Those two things are in conflict. How do you wrap your mind around that?
Pamela Ellis:
I think that it's unclear for families in terms of what to do. And the way to go about it is to still apply to those colleges that are a fit, still continue to do the things that you would normally be doing anyway. And I think at the end of the day, colleges are still in some cases going to be diverse regardless of that. I just think that it just sends such a strong signal from the court that they could even say something like that, "Don't consider it, diversity is important."
Guy Kawasaki:
Listen, I would be a hypocrite. There is no doubt in my mind that because I was Japanese-American, I got into Stanford, none at all. So I cannot now say, "Okay, now that I've arrived, you don't need to consider race." Like Clarence Thomas would be flying on Southwest Airlines eating peanuts because he's a public defender, if it wasn't for affirmative action, right?
Pamela Ellis:
Yeah.
Guy Kawasaki:
So now I just don't know how to understand this. To me, and I don't know if my Asian American friends and family are going to agree with this, but my perspective is back in the 1970s, it was a penalty to be Japanese-American and affirmative action helped right that wrong. But now it's not a problem to be Japanese-American, so our time has passed and now we should pass on this benefit to other people who need help. But that does not seem to be a popular way of looking at things.
Pamela Ellis:
Right. I'm just pausing in terms of thinking about how does that apply to me as a black woman and living in underserved community? Is it that I could not have gone to the colleges that I attended, the universities, if not for my color? And I'm hard-pressed to think that was the only way that I got in, and it doesn't mean that couldn't have played a role in part.
The issue that I have is the belief that any time a person of color is admitted that it had to be because of that. And I know that throughout high school I worked really hard, and I was student body president and all these other things. And even through college, I did well enough to get into an MBA program and worked with a lot of companies in Silicon Valley, and I don't think it was just because I was an African-American woman.
And while that may at times play a role, I still believe that for many people of color, they do have what it takes to get there. And I don't think it benefits Stanford or any of the other elite institutions to only bring in people because of their race and they not be able to finish. And I just feel like the fact that you did finish, it's not like you got there and couldn't make it, that it wasn't solely that. Because there were hundreds of other kids in your city in Honolulu at the same time that applied and didn't get admitted. You're still part of what was back then that 10 percent that did, so that's where I stand with it. It may not be the most popular thing to say, but that's where I am with it. And I think that people of color still do have the intellect, the study skills, everything else that supports students with being successful in those institutions, they have to have that too, and it can't be on race alone.
Guy Kawasaki:
I would say that I think intellectual ability and talent is distributed normally, randomly, but opportunity is not normal and random, so that's what affirmative action should change. Because in my social media, I post a lot of stuff in social media, and I swear every time there's a story like sixteen year old black girl from Memphis, Tennessee is accepted to fifty colleges, I promote that.
Pamela Ellis:
You do?
Guy Kawasaki:
Because I want people to know, you've got to look beyond race. It ain't about race anymore. Talent is distributed randomly and equally, it's not by race.
Pamela Ellis:
Very true.
Guy Kawasaki:
Let's suppose that lightning strikes and Stanford calls you up and says, "You know what? We love your work as you're helping people to find matches, et cetera, and we want to make you Dean of Admissions." Let's say now, Pamela, you're Dean of Admissions of Stanford. What do you tell your staff? The legacy students, we admit legacy students because we want to build community, charge them full rate so that therefore we can have underprivileged people get sponsored or subsidized by them, and tests are optional and essays, we've got to look beyond that, but you should understand that a lot of the essays are being gamed by ChatGPT. What does a Dean of Admissions tell his or her staff anymore?
Pamela Ellis:
Oh my goodness. I think they tell them to just read and to really use their intuition and know that no one person makes the decision, and that everyone in that admissions office works as a team. Because if it's left to just one person to make the decision, it is really a hard job, but when it comes to operating as a team, that's when they can make those tough decisions because they're getting a lot more applications now that just should not apply.
Guy Kawasaki:
Should not apply?
Pamela Ellis:
So there's a lot of noise in those applications.
Guy Kawasaki:
Why is that?
Pamela Ellis:
Because they have a test optional policy, and so you have a lot of kids who say, "You know something, I bet I can get into Stanford now because they're not going to see my test score."
Guy Kawasaki:
But is that necessarily bad?
Pamela Ellis:
I think it really is taxing on the admissions offices. And what I share with my students is that, "I want you to apply to those places that are right for you. Applying to random places for the sake of applying because you don't have to send in a test score or you don't need to write an essay for it, that hurts those students who really want to be there and that school is a good fit for them, and they're likely to actually go to that school."
Because we look at the schools that have less than 25 percent admissions rate, that's only 4 percent of them. There's so many other great colleges out there that admit a whole lot more students, and there's just too much randomness sometimes in the application process, students get nervous about where they'll be admitted and they just start applying, and it hurts those who really do want to go to that college.
Guy Kawasaki:
Fair. Let's talk about legacy. There is an argument to be made that legacy is serving your customer. It's loyalty, it's all the good stuff. On the other hand, you could say there are not a lot of legacy kids coming out of the projects, so it's unfair to them. And then someone else would say, "Yeah, but we're admitting all these legacy people who are paying full bolt so we can offer financial assistance to the few people we are accepting from the projects." It's not as black and white as some people might make it that all legacy admissions is bad. So what's your take on legacy?
Pamela Ellis:
Yeah, it's not all bad. And I have to tell you, Guy, you're asking these questions and I'm thinking, "My son just graduated from Stanford." You're pushing my buttons here with some of your questions.
Guy Kawasaki:
Is that good or bad?
Pamela Ellis:
He worked really hard. He worked really hard, and I don't think it was purely the fact that I graduated from there that he was a legacy, that he was admitted. I think that legacies still do play a role across the board in terms of what they bring to the university. And all of them I think pretty much have caps on it because I know that a lot of Stanford alums, kids have applied and didn't get admitted.
Guy Kawasaki:
I'm one and proud of it. I knew I should have given a building.
Pamela Ellis:
Yeah. And there's always these questions every year where alums are saying, "Should I donate some money?" And I'm thinking, "If you haven't been already doing it, I don't know if that's going to make a difference," because they have so many that apply and they probably take still somewhere under 5 percent, is my guess. And my oldest didn't get admitted, and the thing about it is when I looked at it in hindsight, I just thought it really wasn't a good fit for him.
And what he does now, he ended up going to Georgetown and he was in their School of Foreign Studies. He's still working for Georgetown today. It was a great experience for him. And my daughter didn't even apply to Stanford, but my younger son did, and he was admitted and he had a great experience. He had a great experience. And so I just feel kids do end up in the right place for them.
Guy Kawasaki:
There's that. But I also have a theory that, of all the factors that determine one's happiness and success in life, I would not say going to the right college is necessarily the most important. There are so many other factors from whether it was that, or one professor that just turned the light on for you, that could have been at a state school.
Pamela Ellis:
It could have been, and the thing about it though, so much about where you end up does have this domino effect, if you will, in terms of shaping the trajectory. And there were people that I met in college that certainly changed my life. I ended up becoming a linguist majoring in Linguistics, and it was because of the professor that I worked with and did research with, otherwise I wouldn't have done that.
I probably would've majored in something totally different if I had gone somewhere else. And those experiences that you have in those years of college, I think shape you for the rest of your life. And whether or not it's the right college may not play as big of a role, but the fact that you chose where you did is going to play a big role.
Guy Kawasaki:
One of the things that ironically Steve Jobs said in his commencement address to, of course, Stanford, you can only connect the dots looking backwards.
Pamela Ellis:
Right.
Guy Kawasaki:
So I didn't get accepted to Stanford Business School, at the time, that was a real slap in the face. But now as I look back, that door closed, it opened another door.
Pamela Ellis:
Exactly.
Guy Kawasaki:
So I went to UCLA and at UCLA, believe it or not, I met someone who recruited me to go into the jewelry manufacturing business where I learned to sell. And by learning to sell, I became an evangelist that was successful at Apple. God knows if I had gotten into Stanford Business School, maybe I would be some asshole at McKinsey, and my whole life would be different.
Pamela Ellis:
Totally. I know I was crushed when I didn't get into Stanford Business School as well.
Guy Kawasaki:
Best practices for parents and kids. What's the best practices navigating your way through this admission thing?
Pamela Ellis:
Do what makes sense in that grade year. Don't try to do ahead, and what I mean by that is in tenth grade year, really focus on assessments and really that child building their skills of self-advocacy and other life skills. Don't worry about visiting colleges that early.
And so that's one thing in terms of navigating, and I say secondly, let the child do what they enjoy doing and not focus on trying to do everything, and doing so much that they're constantly stressed and tired, but what are those things that interest them? Just do one or two things that are of interest, and that's going to save a lot of stress, worry, time, and frustration, and so those are the two things that I would add.
For the parents, let the child own the process. Don't do it for them. Even when you may get frustrated when you see that they aren't, "doing anything," still let them own the process. And if they fail at getting something in on time like for a summer program, let it happen as opposed to nagging them about not doing it. So if you give them those opportunities to fail earlier, then by the time they're applying to college, they will have learned that lesson because the college deadlines are less forgiving.
Guy Kawasaki:
Intellectually, I absolutely understand what you're saying, but I will tell you, there is such a temptation, like, "Okay, this is the last time we're going to help them," and once they get in college, "Okay, you're on your own." And I don't consider myself a tiger dad, don't get me wrong. I didn't have my kids start taking Physics and Calculus at age five and playing the violin. But what you've just said is a very difficult thing to let someone run the process.
Pamela Ellis:
Oh, I hear you. And that happened with me with my own kids. And so it was really hard because my oldest loved to procrastinate, and what he did was he applied to one early action school and he was done. He didn't do anything until December 15th when he found out he was deferred, and we had to cancel our holiday plans. We were going to go away for New Year's.
And he spent that last two weeks of December applying to all of the colleges, and he applied to maybe fifteen of them, and it cost us over 1,600 dollars in fees, application fees for everything, sending test scores, all of that. And I was just so livid. I was so angry at him because you've been knowing all this time, but he was a procrastinator, and I so much, Guy, wanted to step in. I really did.
And he just did not want to be bothered with the college process, and maybe it's because of what I don't know, but he did not want to be bothered with it. And in the spring when he did his revisits for admitted student day, he got into one of the colleges that he said he was definitely going to go to. It was top of his list.
He gets off the flight, he gets on a shuttle bus to take him to the campus, and he's all, "Yeah, this is where I'm going to go." So he was just doing the admitted student visit for the sake of it. Before he gets to campus, he sends me a text and he says, "Mommy, these are not my people." I'm like, "What?" He just was done. He just did not want to be bothered.
Guy Kawasaki:
On the shuttle, he decided this?
Pamela Ellis:
Yeah. He just thought, they were all kids that he could not see himself spending time with. And I'm just like, "Okay, the next visit you go on, that better be it," because we had only planned two of them. But he was just such a funny kid because he was a little bit passive-aggressive through the teen years. And I have to tell you this one last story.
Guy Kawasaki:
Keep going, Pamela. We got all day.
Pamela Ellis:
Through the years, I guess, I was a tiger mom in terms of having all of them play chess. So they either played chess, they played chess, and they did basketball. Those were the two things because I had three of them, and it's like no one drove but me. And so I'm like, "Okay, everybody's going to do the same thing," so he was doing chess all the way from five years on. And then because there was a great program out in Palo Alto for doing chess, starting in kindergarten.
So even when we moved to Ohio, we would drive over an hour one way every Sunday just for them to meet with their chess coach. So all these years we're doing chess and doing tournaments all around the Midwest. And Guy, when he started working on his common application essay, what do you think he wrote about?
Guy Kawasaki:
Not chess.
Pamela Ellis:
He hates chess, that was his essay about how much he hated it. And I was just like, "Okay." And then fast-forward his freshman year of college, I started getting these email receipts from Uber and I'm thinking, "What is this?" And at the time, I didn't even really know Uber and what that was because it was new. And so I'm getting these email receipts and I'm thinking, "Twenty-five dollars. What is twenty-five dollars on a Saturday?" It turns out that he was going across town to coach middle school girls in chess. I'm just like, "Yeah, you loved it," but just a funny kid.
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh my God. Maybe I should interview your kids.
Pamela Ellis:
I know, right. You should.
Guy Kawasaki:
"Listen, your mom told me this. Is that bullshit or what?"
Pamela Ellis:
Yeah, you should. They are really interesting kids. So he works for Georgetown because they're creating a School of the Environment, and his area of focus is around water justice, and he's working with them on the curriculum and teaching there. So it worked out well.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. That's all that matters. And of course, looking backwards, you're saying, "Oh yeah, we forced him to do chess so that he would've a great essay about how he hates chess." You had the plan, Pamela.
Pamela Ellis:
That's the way we planned it.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. My very last question and you may think it's facetious, but I'm telling you, I believe, what would happen if colleges would have the admissions plan that, "Everybody apply, and we're just going to admit whatever number is necessary so that after the people who don't accept, you still have the right freshmen class," whatever that number is.
Because not everybody goes to where they're accepted. We're going to accept 5,000 students totally at random, just random. You get a number, we admit you. I would make the case, I bet you if they did that, twenty years from now, they would say, "We can't tell the difference between the random class and the class that we handpicked."
Pamela Ellis:
I believe that. And as you were just stating what the situation would be, I was thinking, "Gosh, that would be awesome for a college to try, but which college would be willing to take that risk?"
Guy Kawasaki:
Not New College, that's for sure.
Pamela Ellis:
Not New College. But I think it could actually work. And the thing about it, I think that could have been done before you had enrollment managers who handle the budget.
Guy Kawasaki:
Wait, what's an enrollment manager who handles the budget?
Pamela Ellis:
Oh, they're the people who oversee admissions and financial aid, and so there's a budget for who you admit like how many people can come in and pay and get scholarships. What percentage do you need to be full pay in order to meet that budget? And when you mix all those things together, then that's what then affects your ability to do something as transformational and as a random admissions.
Guy Kawasaki:
In a perfect world, somebody, not that this would ever happen, but let's say a hypothetical college in Palo Alto, California wakes up one day and says, "We have a forty billion dollar endowment. We have more money than God. We never need to have money again and fundraising again. We have all our buildings built, so now our admissions policy is random." What a world that would be, huh?
Pamela Ellis:
What a world. I would love to see that happen, if just one college could try it out.
Guy Kawasaki:
If I'm ever a billionaire, I'm going to start that college. Don't hold your breath. I'm going to call it Ellis University.
Pamela Ellis:
One of my Stanford classmates suggested that I start a university and call it Ellis University and I thought, "Yeah, I don't know if that's my mission in life."
Guy Kawasaki:
I'm going to go by the domain right now.
Pamela Ellis:
“.edu”.
Guy Kawasaki:
If you're a college aged person or parent of a college aged person, I'm willing to bet you found this episode extremely valuable. That's Pamela Ellis for you. I'm Guy Kawasaki, this is Remarkable People. My thanks to the Remarkable People team. First, Madisun Nuismer, the drop-in surfing queen of Santa Cruz. Tessa Nuismer, prepares me for all of these interviews. Jeff Sieh and Shannon Hernandez, they make these interviews sound so great, and the rest of the team who help us in so many different ways. That would be Luis Magaña, Alexis Nishimura and Fallon Yates. That's the Remarkable People Team that wants to make you remarkable and enable you to make a difference.
Speaking of being remarkable and making a difference, please check out our book, our being. Madisun and I, we wrote a book called Think Remarkable. It combines what we've learned from over 200 remarkable guests on this podcast as well as our own careers. I promise you, it will help you make a difference in this world and be remarkable. Until next time, Mahalo and aloha.