Undermatching: Why Qualified Students Don’t Apply to Selective Colleges

Jonathan Hughes: [00:00:00] How common is this phenomenon of undermatching?

Cicily Shaw: Yeah, it's pretty common. I actually have some statistics. Georgetown University, their Center on Education and Workforce says that about 86,000 students, specifically from low-income families, are products of undermatching. It's pretty big.

Jonathan Hughes: Hi everyone and welcome to the MEFA Podcast. My name is Jonathan Hughes and you just heard from our guest on the show today, Cicily Shaw. She's been a friend of ours at MEFA for a long time and I'm really excited to have her on the show. She just completed her dissertation on Undermatching and she's going to tell us all about it.

I really enjoyed this conversation because I learned a lot from it. This is one of these shows where we talk about an important, far reaching topic that affects a lot of students that is not [00:01:00] really widely understood.

So if you want to understand better what's involved with matching students to the right colleges and careers, why it sometimes works and why it sometimes doesn't, take a listen. Let's let our guest introduce herself.

Cicily Shaw: Okay, so my name is Cicely Shaw.

I am the Director of College Counseling at Thayer Academy, which is located in Braintree, Massachusetts. The topic we're going to talk about today is really close to my heart. I am a first gen college student myself, so I'm really excited to be here.

Jonathan Hughes: Let's talk about that then, before we get into it, because the other thing I often ask people is, what has your educational journey been and what has brought you to this point in your career?

Cicily Shaw: Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, I'm first gen to college, which means my parents did not attend college, or obtain a degree. It's funny when I always share this story with people. I went [00:02:00] to Brockton High School and ended up going to Stone Hill College for my undergrad.

It was my unfortunate experience in the beginning with my school counselor, that almost didn't have me end up at Stonehill because of the way that I was counseled. Stonehill was a top choice for me. I thought I was a good student academically, taking the right courses. But again, when you're first gen, you don't have a lot to go after, right?

You’re just taking your courses. You're thinking you're doing fine. You're trying to get the best grades that you can, and you have aspirations to go to college. I was told by my counselor that I would not get into Stonehill. So I believed her, being first gen. I was like, you know what?

As long as I get to college, I'm fine. And I ended up applying. And I went to school a long time ago where we applied to maybe two or three schools. We didn't apply to 20. I ended up only applying to one other school and about halfway through the process, the director of the program ended up calling me into his office [00:03:00] and asked me about my college journey and what schools I was looking at.

And I told him the one school I was looking at. And he questioned and said I thought you were interested in Stonehill because they had invited several students in my junior year to come to campus. I told him, I said, yeah, actually it was my top choice, but I was told by my counselor that I wasn't going to get in.

He basically said, I'm going to take your file. I think you should apply. He introduced me to the Dean of Admission at the time and the rest is history. I ended up getting in, I ended up getting a full scholarship to go to Stonehill.

Jonathan Hughes: Wow.

Cicily Shaw: So it's funny because when I got to college, I said, gosh, if I ever worked in a high school setting, which I said I never would.

But if I ever worked in a high school setting, I would never do what my counselor did to me. I understand about being realistic, but I really did, I thought that I had the credentials to be successful. And because I had taken the word of my [00:04:00] counselor, unfortunately, it was negative.

I almost didn't apply. So that's how it started my educational journey. So I went to Stonehill, graduated in four years. While I was on campus, I did everything from orientation leader, tour guide, resident assistant, all student affairs related positions on campus, student government.

When I graduated, I was a healthcare major. I graduated and got my first job and wasn't really excited about my first job. I remember talking to a mentor who then said what is it that you want to do? And we talked through some of my aspirations and goals. I wanted to really work with individuals face to face.

He had encouraged me to look into college admission. I had worked in healthcare for about three months. And then I got my first job in college admission at Lesley University. And that's how I started working in college admission. As I started going through my career, I started realizing that a lot of students [00:05:00] were in the same position that I was in.

I didn't know the name for it. And as I started to do more research, that's where the term, and I understood the term to be under matching came from, understanding I was almost a product of that, so it really fueled my passion for creating access and helping students access college and making sure that they have a well-rounded list of schools that they could look at.

Jonathan Hughes: So was this something that led you to working in a high school?

Cicily Shaw: Yeah, so working in college admissions is great. It's a lot of travel. I had ended up getting married and I just, the travel was intense. I was like, oh my gosh, I'm gone for eight weeks, so I really wanted to still do the work that I was doing with students on a more personal level, working with them, from the front lines versus they're pretty polished once they get to the admission process.

I really wanted to work with students individually. You make friends when you're in admission. And I had made so many school counselor friends. I [00:06:00] remember sharing some thoughts with a few of them and they were like, oh my gosh, yes, you should totally move to the other side of the desk.

So to slow things down, I made the decision to move to the other side.

Jonathan Hughes: And how's it been?

Cicily Shaw: Been good. I've been doing it for 22 years now.

Jonathan Hughes: Wow.

Cicily Shaw: Yeah.

Jonathan Hughes: To get to what we talked about earlier and what the process that you were almost a product of it, which is under matching, I understand that you just completed your dissertation on it.

First of all, congratulations.

Cicily Shaw: Thank you.

Jonathan Hughes: What was the process to say, oh, I could study under matching and do my dissertation on that.

Cicily Shaw: Yeah. I went to Northeastern. It was a three-year program, so pretty intense to get through a doctoral program in three years. Yeah, the way Northeastern does it's called dissertation and practice.

So you actually come in knowing what your research topic is going to be. And you actually have to write on it in your application. So your writing samples need to be focused on that to some degree. Obviously they're going to help you, as you go through the program. But, [00:07:00] yeah, it's funny.

I had been dragging my feet a little bit on going for a doctoral degree. I knew that I was passionate about access and I was passionate about first gen low income students. Students of color getting access to college. I just wasn't sure what my topic would be. So as I started to research programs, then I started to narrow down a little bit more, on under matching was when I actually started researching. I started understanding the terminology behind it. And I was like, huh. And then realizing there's not a lot of research out there about under matching. So if I could contribute to research in some kind of way.

Jonathan Hughes: And we've talked about it. But is there a textbook definition of undermatching that we haven't spelled out?

Cicily Shaw: Yeah, so undermatching, I wouldn't say textbook. There's a lot of educators and researchers out there who have, it's all relatively the same, but it's when students are academically qualified, who are academically qualified, don't apply to schools, [00:08:00] that they're academically qualified for.

Think of the term undermatch. They're not matching with schools that they academically are qualified for, could get in, and could be very successful at. And there are a lot of factors to why a student might undermatch. Not all bad. Sometimes it's family and just decisions that a family has to make.

But there's research out there that just talks about not having access to the proper information can also cause families and students to undermatch.

Jonathan Hughes: So what did you explore in your dissertation then?

Cicily Shaw: Yeah, so my focus, and it's funny because I'm so happy and thankful for my chair, because my topic was so broad, right?

And she's you got to get through your research. I ended up narrowing it down and I focused on the resources that school counselors have and how either having those resources, access to those resources, or not having access to those resources could, affect where students are placed, right?

I actually focused my research on the school [00:09:00] counselor and how they interacted with students and families. And what were some of those factors that may have hindered their interaction with families.

Jonathan Hughes: And what might some of those be?

Cicily Shaw: Yeah, right now the American School Counselor Association recommends that the counselor to student ratio is 250 to 1.

So 250 students to 1 counselor. I think, I should have this statistic. Massachusetts is close to that. But there are states where it's 700 students to one counselor. So one common theme that I saw in my research was that counselors are just overloaded. They have way too many students, large caseloads.

Also, the understanding of what a school counselor does and who a school counselor is in the community is a little bit. A lot of superintendents and principals don't fully understand the role of the school counselor. Therefore, school counselors get assigned all these additional tasks so that they can't [00:10:00] then focus on being a school counselor.

They have lunch duty, late duty, after school reset, like whatever type of duties that they need folks for. They're putting school counselors in those spaces where then they don't have the opportunity or the time to actually meet with students because they're filled with duties. Those are two main themes, major themes that came out.

A lot of the school counselors that I interviewed did talk about just the lack of knowledge of leadership principals, not, principals have so much on their plates already, but not fully understanding, what the role of the school counselor is, mental health obviously taking precedent over their caseload and what they're doing in their day to day jobs.

Jonathan Hughes: How common, by the way, is this phenomenon of undermatching?

Cicily Shaw: Yeah, it's pretty common. Georgetown University, their Center on Education and Workforce says that about 86,000 students, specifically from low-income families, are products of undermatching. It's pretty [00:11:00] common.

There was a study done, it was a while ago, it's like on a national average, 40% of students under match. It’s pretty prevalent.

Jonathan Hughes: Wow, that is surprisingly high.

Cicily Shaw: It's very high.

Jonathan Hughes: And are there certain groups of students who are more likely to be undermatched?

Cicily Shaw: Yeah, so typically low-income, first gen, and students of color tend to be, while undermatching affects all students, but that particular, those three populations tend to be the main populations that are affected by undermatching.

Jonathan Hughes: Is there something to alert the student that they may, that their interactions with their counselors, they may be being undermatched? And what should they do about that?

Cicily Shaw: Yeah, it depends on what school system they're in. If they're in a public school system, private charter, homeschool, depends on the student.

One suggestion I always have for students is to try to look at the data that is available from your high school. So in my high school, we use different platforms where students can go in and actually see statistics of what [00:12:00] percentage of students are getting into certain types of schools, what were their GPAs, SAT scores, whatever, testing scores, so that they can see, okay, I have this GPA and this test score.

Not that it’s a guarantee, because it's never a guarantee for admission, but it gives students a sense of whether or not they're competitive for a specific school. I've met with so many students over my career that are superstars, and you start to recommend a few schools for them. And they're like, oh, okay, I don't know if I would get into that school, because they're not even thinking that they're that qualified.

And I'm like, You have a 4. 0 GPA. You should definitely look at this school, especially if they have the program that you want. I'm not a big supporter of just putting schools on the list because of name recognition.

They really do need to make sure they fit. So a way that students can find out, I think for the most part, counselors do a great job. It's just the resources, right? Depending on the school system, they don't have the time to invest the way that they should, [00:13:00] right? If the schools and districts could support them in the way that they need to.

But again, access to data from the school. So finding out what platforms the high school uses, whether it's like Score, which is an online platform, what are they using to track data for students who have gotten in and seeing if students can get access to that information. Also just talking to the admission officers.

So taking ownership over their own process is really important. The concept of a high school student talking to an admission officer can be a little daunting and scary. But really encouraging students to take ownership over that process and ask questions. Find out who your admission counselor is.

Let them know what your situation is. Share some of that information, like your grades and test scores, types of courses that you're taking, early on in the process as you're researching schools can really help students to see is this a good fit for me or not.

Jonathan Hughes: And then on the other side [00:14:00] of that, do you have any advice for counselors?

I know you mentioned there's not really much you can do about a heavy workload and things like that, but is there anything that they should be keeping in mind?

Cicily Shaw: Yeah, absolutely. There are different steps that counselors can take. One is really bringing the family on board. Because under matching isn't, I don't want to make it seem like, oh, it's the counselor that is the problem because it's not necessarily.

Sometimes it's family. Sometimes, the school that might be the best fit for a student might be further away from home and that student might have some responsibility at home and may feel like it might be challenging to leave their home. Or families might be nervous about their son or daughter or their child, going away to college.

So the early you can engage the family, the better a counselor is going to be off, having specialized programming for specific populations of students. So if you know that you have a large number of first gen students, maybe doing a special workshop for first gen [00:15:00] students just because they may not necessarily have the same resources or access that a student whose family has gone to college would have.

Community based organizations are amazing partners. So if a counselor is in a community or a school setting that they have 500 students, try to partner with some of those community based organizations that are focused solely on helping students access college. Print material, anything that they could put in print, creating small videos, anything that makes it accessible for students and families to understand the process, I would recommend.

Jonathan Hughes: People can have all sorts of ideas as to what makes one college a better college than another college to go to, and sometimes even just being more expensive may communicate that to a family incorrectly, but it may do that. How do we, I guess this goes back to your initial story of matching students up to colleges that they do fit with, if they're not sure.

Cicily Shaw: I think it's some self [00:16:00] exploration. A lot of times students just know colleges by the name or a friend that went there or sports. I'm just trying to think of all the different ways students come in contact with colleges, but they never stepped foot on a college campus.

I always tell my students, it's like a big no. You never want to attend a school without having stepped foot on campus. Visiting is really important. When that happens in the process, it really depends on the family and the availability and depending on where the college is located.

But there are a lot of ways that students can get a sense of what a campus might feel like. Doing virtual tours, talking to admission officers when they come to their high school for a visit, or if they're in town for a local college fair, seeing if they can contact current students, also asking their school counselor if there are students from their high school that go to the college that they're thinking about so that they can ask them questions because usually students who graduated from your high school can give you a sense of the type of community [00:17:00] in comparison to the high school community, right?

So the college community versus that high school community. One other little nugget, and hopefully colleges don't cringe when I say this, and a lot of families don't know this, there are schools that do fly in or bus in programs. So if finances sometimes can be a little more challenging to get to a school, it doesn't hurt to ask an admission office if they have a fly in or a bus in program.

Sometimes colleges may say, we do or no, we don't have a program, but we do reimburse up to a certain amount for a plane ticket, just for the student, typically not for the whole family. So I think just getting on a college campus, getting on those college websites. It's really important to get on the college website because that's where the most up to date information from the college is going to be is on their actual website. I think using things like College Board and other search tools are good to start with, but you always want to end up on that college website. You mentioned something about if it costs more, it probably is [00:18:00] better. Not necessarily always the case. We're finding schools now, I think, starting this year, north of $80,000 a year for tuition and room and board. Just because a college is $80,000 doesn't mean that it's going to be amazing, but it doesn't mean it's going to be bad either.

And just because a college is $20,000 doesn't mean that's the best fit either. So this is where that research comes in. So my encouragement to families is to start early, going to those college fairs, asking those questions. Oftentimes at college fairs, there's individuals that are there that can help answer questions and help you navigate the fair.

So if you're a first time fair attendee, and you're like, I don't even know where to begin. There usually is someone on site that can help students navigate and just figure out how they should start and what questions they should ask colleges, not getting so caught up in a school that you're leaving that school with $100,000, $150,000 in debt just [00:19:00] to say you went to that school.

There are over 4,000 colleges and universities, right? So there are a ton of options. But I also don't want students to not look at schools because of the sticker price. I think you have to have a nice, healthy, variety of colleges on your list.

So schools that maybe have that $80,000 sticker price because they have the program, because you've checked their stats, they're graduating students in four to six years, students are getting jobs. It's really important. I say when I'm meeting with students, I tell them they need to dig deeper in their research.

And what I mean by that is not just looking at the surface. Oh, they have a great athletic program. Oh, the residence halls are beautiful. Oh, it's near the water. That's pretty superficial. But start to dig a little deeper. Okay. This is my major. What percentage of students in my major graduate? And then what percentage of those students are getting jobs? Are they going on to grad school?

So what's like the return on investment? I know [00:20:00] some people cringe with that statement, but it's important, right? It is an investment, and you want to make sure that it's not just, I'm going to this school because of the name, but they don't have any of the things that I want.

And students in that program don’t even end up graduating in that program. They start out, but they don't finish. Those are all the things that you, families want to be asking, and students should be looking at.

Jonathan Hughes: I want to bring it back before we go to your research. In your dissertation, what do you think was the main thing that you learned, or the most salient thing that you learned in the course of your dissertation?

Cicily Shaw: Yeah, it's interesting because when I started, I wanted to focus on the student and the student experience. And, through many conversations with my chair, she was like, have you considered looking at it through the lens of the school counselor, which I mean, I'm a school counselor, but I work at a private school.

All of my experience has been in private education. And my focus really was on public and rural. Those were the two communities that I [00:21:00] focused on with school counselors, even though I knew the information. Because you have friends who are school counselors when you actually do the research and you're crunching numbers and coding you're like, whoa, and you're seeing the themes coming off the page.

It's really, how do we support public school counselors so that they can get that story out? How do we help superintendents and school boards, right? So those in leadership really understand the need right to readjust caseloads to readjust job expectations, really helping school counselors to focus on their job and not on these other tasks.

That was one thing, like I said earlier, but one thing that came out really loudly in my research was that school counselors are tasked with so many different things that by the end of the day, they're like, okay, I want to meet with students, but I can't. I can't meet with every single [00:22:00] student because it's impossible to. I'm trying to balance all of these other tasks that have nothing to do with my job.

Jonathan Hughes: Is there anything that you'd like to say before we go?

Cicily Shaw: I think just encouraging students to look at, I know MEFA does some really great webinars and has some great resources, but really for students, for families, anyone listening to this, to look at the resources, trusted resources, right?

MEFA is definitely one. Going on College Board, it's a trusted resource. There's,NACAC, which is the National Association for College Admission Counseling. Some really great resources for families to get a sense of what should I be doing? When should I be doing it? As far as the college process is concerned.

And also, for students who may be first gen, who may be low income, who may be questioning if they're going to get into college or not, to not sell themselves short. You're in high school. If you're doing well, you're taking the courses you need to take, you're focused in your classes, you have a good [00:23:00] relationship with your teachers. I think the sky's the limit, and I really want to encourage students to reach for the stars really, honestly.

Jonathan Hughes: And anything for counselors?

Cicily Shaw: Anything for counselors. I think, educate yourself. And I'm not saying counselors aren't educated, but just as much as you can get involved in professional development.

If you can get out of the building to do professional development, really try to do that. Anytime you can get into a community with other counselors, it will only strengthen your professional career, right? Because you're going to be hearing from other folks that are doing your work, but in different ways.

So that would be my one piece of advice is, get out there, get involved in professional development so that when you're doing your job, you can serve your students to the best of your ability.

Jonathan Hughes: It's always a pleasure to talk to you, Cicely.

Cicily Shaw: Great. Thank you so much.

Jonathan Hughes: All [00:24:00] right. Thank you so much, Cicely. I really enjoyed that. And folks, if you liked what you heard today and you want to know more from us on planning, saving, and paying for college and career readiness, then follow the show, and you can find us wherever you find your podcasts. And please remember to review us.

It does help us to keep doing what we're doing and getting the show out to folks like you. I want to thank our producer, Shaun Connelly. I want to thank AJ Yee, Lisa Rooney, Lauren Danz, and Meredith Clement for their assistance in getting the show posted. Once again, my name is Jonathan Hughes and this has been The MEFA Podcast. Thank you.