Don't Force It: How to Get into College without Losing Yourself in the Process

Don McMillan: Boarding Schools

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In today's episode, I sit down with Don McMillan, and we delve into the intricate world of boarding schools, the unique experiences they offer, and the comprehensive process of finding the right fit for students. Tune in to discover how boarding schools can shape a student's academic and personal growth, and learn about valuable resources for navigating this important decision!

Bio

Don brings over 30 years’ experience as a passionate educator to his work overseeing McMillan Education’s leadership team and the counselors working in traditional and international school and college planning. In close collaboration with his leadership team, Don enjoys staying out ahead of admission trends and continually enhancing the best guidance practices of the group by developing and delivering regular in-house supervision and professional development trainings. In addition to the leadership of his group of highly experienced educational counselors, Don is considered a leader in the field. Frequently quoted in national outlets like The New York Times and The Boston Globe, Don has spoken about trends in college admissions and boarding schools to audiences of educators at national conferences, independent school Boards of Trustees, and international schools on several continents, bringing to his presentations the same commitment to students that he brought to his years teaching and leading in independent school. Follow Don on LinkedIn.

Links and Resources:
McMillan Education Website
Owl Boarding School Guide

Access free resources and learn more about Sheila and her team at Signet Education at signeteducation.com or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheilaakbar/.

Don McMillan:

We put together in the owlboardingschools.com site, all the information from the boarding schools, and not just the data, like how many international kids, how many borders? What's the students of color ratio? Who's the head, who's the admissions person? But these kind of distinguishing features of each schools. You can also hop on the L boarding school guide and compare schools three at once.

Sheila Akbar:

Hi, folks, welcome back to the podcast, and thank you so much for joining us. Before we get into talking about my guest for today, wanted to give us a little August update where things stand. This summer feels a little calmer than last summer. Smack dab in the middle of last summer, we had this landmark Supreme Court decision about race conscious admissions, and it threw a lot of things into disarray, right? Of course, people were very upset about it, and a lot of colleges ended up changing their supplemental essay questions in response to that ruling, either in direct response to it, kind of quoting the ruling, or indirectly, asking students to talk about their lived experience or how they grew up, so that colleges can still understand that very significant part of their identity, even though the Supreme Court has blocked them from using information about demographics this Summer, we didn't have that. So that's great. We don't have a lot of colleges changing their questions in really significant ways, and students can continue writing their essays as planned without having to change tax or pivot all of a sudden. I'm still, though, very cognizant of the fact that you know this is a really hard process for students, and no matter when you begin writing your essays, you may still be feeling a little stuck. So I did want to highlight that next week, I'll be doing an episode just on supplemental essays so we can hopefully get you some traction and get things moving in that area. All right, on to today's guest. Today excited to welcome Don McMillan. He's been a friend of cygnis for a very long time, and our two companies work closely together to collaborate towards student success. McMillan education has been around for a long time, since 2009 and Don and his wife Sarah have created a really excellent team that works with students on both secondary and post secondary admissions, and oftentimes we collaborate, because we'll do the test prep for one of their students or one of their students needs a tutor or an executive function coach, they like to call Ms, and we are so privileged to be able to work with their students and enable some success there. But the reason I asked Don to join us today is because one of the things they do, I think, is really unique, and it's something that I don't know very much about, and that is independent and boarding school admissions. This is a really big part of their practice. And you know, frankly, I don't even know that much about boarding schools. So I asked Don to join us and talk to us about what that process looks like, what it's like to go to a boarding school, and how he and his team help families navigate that process. So if you have a younger child who is thinking about independent high schools, this is going to be a great discussion for you. But even if you have an older child, maybe an athlete who is thinking about a post graduate year, or some kind of a gap year between high school and college. You know, there'll be something in here for you, too. So let's take a listen. Don thank you so much for for joining me today.

Don McMillan:

My pleasure. Sheila, it's great to be on.

Sheila Akbar:

So we've known each other for many years now. I'm very impressed by your whole organization and what you do, but I'm hoping you can tell us. We can start by you telling us a little bit about what you do and the kind of genesis of McMillan Education.

Don McMillan:

Sure, yeah, I'll start with kind of the boarding school lens. And I went off to boarding school when I was just a little shy 14 year old kid, and was a little lost and clueless for a while, but I ran into who's now my best friend, Sarah, who's also my wife, who runs practice with me, and we became friends and went off to college together, and eventually started teaching at boarding schools. And we now work with kids who are looking for boarding schools. So I can't guarantee everybody's gonna find their spouse, but I can say I was really inspired by the mentors, the role models that I had, both in the classroom and also as coaches and in the dorm at boarding schools. And we have a group of about 20 of us based in Boston, because there's so many schools. We also do college planning, and a lot of kids have. We work with a boarding school or independent day schools in the Boston area, kind of stick with us for college planning, but the common denominator is all of us spent many, many years working in local independent schools, and that's kind of our DNA.

Sheila Akbar:

Tell us a little bit about the experience of boarding school, because I think most people who don't have a family member or some direct experience with boarding school, may have some maybe outdated ideas of what boarding school life is really like. So bring us at the speed on

Don McMillan:

Yeah. I mean, I think you know, the myth is kind of it's a military school, or kids are being sent away and to boarding school. And I think for us, we see it as a real gift for kids to be able to get that experience. The obvious enrichment is in the classroom where, when I was teaching, in my case, English and French, I'd have 10 or 11 kids in the class who I also was coaching football and ice hockey and tennis to, and they're living in my house and with my wife and kids and dog, and so the impact I think I was able to have as a teacher was much more, maybe, as a kind of role model, much more holistic. So I think that sense of community is huge. I saw that as a faculty member, I saw that as a student. My teachers and coaches are kind of people that I turn to as you're going through adolescence. The coolest part I think of boarding schools, the friends you made, not only my way, Sarah, but my other best friend is my 10th grade roommate, Eric. And we are tight. We see her all the time, even more than my college roommates. So the boarding schools really give that sense of community. Now there's a ton of different ones, and that's kind of the hard part. Do you go? You know you're wearing a coat and tie? Are you wearing ripped jeans? Is it calling Mr. So and So, or is it first name Don so there's all different shapes and sizes, but I think the common piece is that sense of campus community

Sheila Akbar:

That's really helpful. And you're getting into the very next thing that I think we should talk about is like, how do you decide, how do you even understand the landscape, the variety that's out there, and how do families really start thinking about, you know, what's the best fit for our family? What's the best fit for my student? You know, these kids are so young when they're thinking about leaving home. You know, I'm sure a lot of parents are like, well, we don't really know what kind of kid they are yet. So how do we choose where to send them for school?

Don McMillan:

Yeah, the range of age even earlier today, I spoke to a fourth grader looking for boarding that's as young as it gets. That's unusual. And I talked to an 18 year old who's doing what's called a post graduate year, like a bridge year between high school and college, but the majority are either looking at junior boarding, which is the specialized group of seventh, eighth and ninth grade boarding, or they're looking at nine through 12. So essentially, when we kind of size up a school, there's really two parts of the puzzle. There's the kid who, as you know, in your work as an educator, is evolving and changing and growing and not going linearly. So what we do is leverage our background as lifelong educators and teachers who can really assess and figure out a kit by looking at records and neuropsychological tests, or maybe tests that they've taken with you guys, standardized test baselines. And then, of course, spending time with the child, and we've got that piece. But then your question about the school and making those puzzle pieces fit is we do a couple of things. First, we lean on the experience we had directly attending and working in these schools. But those schools change every year. Today, I learned about a new head of school coming and two new admissions directors, so the schools will often come pay us a visit in Boston to say, hey, here's what's new. We just held a reception earlier for about 40 different schools to wanted to say, here's what's going on. We go to conferences. We present with industry leaders. I'm doing one coming up about standardized testing, and if it's coming back, and if it isn't, how are kids assessed? So we have this sort of networking. We have them visit us. And then the most important thing I would say for us to assess how schools are changing, we hit the road constantly, just like we do for college campuses across the country. We're visiting boarding schools and the independent day schools in the Boston area. The boarding schools tend to be concentrated in the northeast New England, slash Mid Atlantic, but we're also sending kids out to California and Texas, and even a few to boarding schools in the UK and Switzerland. So bottom line is, we size the kid up. We know the factors of the schools, and we kind of help make that match.

Sheila Akbar:

And you mentioned there are a couple of different we. Types of schools that focus on different grades. But what's the typical timeline for a family who's maybe looking at boarding school for their ninth grader?

Don McMillan:

So typically the very beginning of eighth grade, or sometimes the end of seventh grade, let's say in the fall, September ish, we would get a chance to meet and understand the goals of the family and the student, identify and leverage kind of strengths, but look at some areas of weakness, and then say, Okay, here's a broad list of schools that kind of fit you. And we start with first, what we call the Horizontal List. Like, do you want all boys, all girls? Do you want co Ed? Do you want big, small? Do you want it near a city or an ocean, a mountain? Do you want saint in front of it or not? And from that broad list of schools in September or October, we would winnow it down, and then the first step would be to say, here's exactly what we think about the schools, and we do that two ways. We share data. We have a boarding school Guide, which is free and open to schools and to families. It's owl boarding schools and owlboardingschools.com. Will say, here's a percentage of borders, which is important, because you want, often, most of the kids to be boarders. So there's stuff to do in the weekends. There's actually people who just organize weekend activities, which is a fun job. And then, in addition to the data on the boarding school guide, we know, kind of the culture and the vibe of the school, you know, is it progressive? Is it conservative? Is it a Harkness discussion table? Is it more lecture oriented? So we're getting the list solidified, kind of, September, October, November. And you go, we might say, go to an open house, virtual or in person. We'll introduce families to schools and say, you know, we think Sheila is gonna be a good match, because she's, you know, she's really good at STEM, right? A little help with English. She's good musician. You know, not the jockey is whatever your school kind of fits that. So that's fall. Then typically also in the fall, we are preparing kids for interviews, and they want to just be themselves, just, you know, just if they're goofy, fine. If they're introverted, fine. But here's some questions to expect. Here are some questions for you to bring, and we'll debrief with the school, and the kid will get feedback from both sets the school and the family after visits, we would have a standardized test, most likely that they've tried a sample, like a mock test to see where they are, because just like we're seeing in the college world tests are coming back, but there are some test optional, quite a few options. So that's kind of a fall thing, or maybe you started in the summer. Then the next two steps are around Thanksgiving, filling out the applications, which are like college ones. There's essays, there's extra supplemental questions. Why are you applying to, you know, st grotto, sex, or whatever the school is, and you finish the applications around the end of December or early January, then you have to sit and wait. And I'll tell you, as a parent, my kids were able to go to boarding school and benefit from these things that we talking about. I was talking about, kind of the role models and the coaches and the community, for two months you're waiting, and it seems like a year. As a parent, we're actually very active in communicating with the schools at that time and having phone calls with our former colleagues and seeing how the families are feeling about things, how the schools are feeling with them. Then march 10 is the big day. You've got all your decisions, and usually we kind of design it, so it's tough to run the table. You won't get shut out. But you know, you've kind of got reach, like we do with college, reach, target and likely schools. So maybe you apply to 678, you get into four, you don't get into two, you get wait listed or two others. And March 10 to April 10, you do revisit days, and then on April 10 you're done, you choose a school, unless you're on a wait list, and that can drag on into the spring. So that's kind of the sequence, fall visits, late fall, kind of application interviews, winter Wait, then March 10, April 10, decide where you're going to go.

Sheila Akbar:

That's very helpful. And it's, you know, kind of parallel to the college process, right? You know, building the list and then filing the applications, and then the waiting is similarly hard. So that's that's interesting to hear. One of the things that I would love to hear more about is that relationship you have with the schools, because that is very different from the college process. It is you know, maybe your high school college counselor might be sharing some information on a phone call with an admissions officer at a college you're applying to, but it's very rare for a private counselor. Or to be in direct contact with the school, advocating for a student. So tell me a little bit about that in in the world of boarding school admissions,

Don McMillan:

Yeah, no, I agree with you that for college scene, you know, I think you and I, we've all seen maybe even a healthy move since varsity blues of college admissions officers not interacting, obviously, with parents or even school counselors or private consultants. It's like the kid needs to go forward. So to be clear, when we're talking to a school, we're doing that because we have a 70 year relationship doing this, which predates me. So they, you know, no one trusts us for finding mission appropriate kids. We're certainly not getting in or pushing it's introducing following up, updating over the course of the winter, like there's a new report, or they retook the SSAT, or they're also going to look at Europe or California or some different place, you know, keeping them informed. And because we have, as I say, presented with them and work with them, and we have sort of a collegial relationship, I would say, and we are able to kind of follow through with that conversation, and they find it very helpful, because they're putting a lot of time into assessing children they're interested about. You know, is this family really going to move all away or send their kid this far away to go to our school? So we're kind of like matchmakers, and we as independent Educational Consultants. We're engaged and hired by families, not schools, so we're totally neutral in terms of, you know, our relationship with the schools,

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, and that must give the families you work with so much comfort, because you're, you know, hearing direct from the source. It's not just the data that you know everybody else can access, but you really do know the schools, and you know the people there, and you can share that kind of information about the family, about the student, that would help the school, but also help the family understand where the where the best fit is, and what, what they can expect from from each school?

Don McMillan:

Yeah, or it might be the school might say, Hey, you know, with this boy who's applying for 10th grade, would he repeat ninth grade? Because we think he might need an extra year, or there's just more availability there too. So we're able to kind of get those little nuances.

Sheila Akbar:

And you mentioned this, but a lot of these boarding schools have students who are not boarding they're day students. Maybe they live locally, and then they'll they'll commute into school, just like you know, anybody else does to a high school. I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about that, the experience of day student at a boarding school, or just day schools in general.

Don McMillan:

Yeah, the day school, day student at a boarding school, is awesome. In fact, that a couple of boarding schools that my wife, Sarah and I taught at we didn't know till maybe Halloween, that certain kids were day students, because they would hang around after sports. We'd have a sit down dinner together. I had an environmental club. They'd be in the club at 730 like, you're still on campus. Oh, Mom's coming. You don't live here, so that's kind of a cool way to do it, because what you get as a day student is exposure to a much more diverse community. These boarding schools have kids from all over the country, around the world, typically around a 15 to 20% international population, and when it's done well, it's blended among a lot of different countries. So it's really cool. The tricky part with the day student is it's often at many schools more selective. There's simply fewer spots that said we'll have some families looking at both day schools in the Boston area and boarding schools. The day school scene. A couple things to keep in mind, we need more of them, they're just not enough. So the demand is really high, and especially since covid When, oh my gosh, these schools are great. Secondly, for students that need moderate to maybe more extreme learning support, that's a boarding school thing in general, especially for older kids, because you have access to the teachers. 24/7, I'd have kids getting help with their English paper. You know, 10 o'clock at night they come in and watching ESPN with my wife, and, you know, having pizza, and you just not to mention learning centers. So the day school scene is a little more restricted for younger kids. There's, there's different options. Like, your basic decision for day is, do you go kindergarten through 12? Okay, you could be there the whole way. Some schools, like Milton Academy, everything's all together. One footprint, Buckingham, brown and Nichols. There's different campuses. There's an advantage for some students to look. K through six or K through eight, you're kind of the big fish when you're in sixth, seventh, eight, then there's some schools that are seven through 12. So the day piece is kind of a different thing. And sometimes families will do it with the boarding as well.

Sheila Akbar:

I guess short answer is, it's complicated. It's more puzzle pieces to fit together.

Don McMillan:

Yeah, and just, I'm sure, when you work with students, you you start at point A, you get to point B, and there's so many changes. So we'll have a lot of families come in like, we're only looking at day schools. Okay, great, we'll start with that, but then they realize, oh, wow, they're a handful of day schools or but there's dozens of boarding schools. They're not that far and, okay, maybe we'll mix them the two. And then I'll often say, has your son or daughter been to summer camp? And sometimes they haven't, and maybe they try it, but often, oh yeah, how was camp? They loved it. They met friends from all over like, Okay, well, boarding schools like summer camp, there's counselors, there's student leaders, you just add a lot of homework, and sometimes that gets them there.

Sheila Akbar:

Summer camp plus homework, that's great. Now I've heard you talk about this before when we've you know gone out for dinner or drinks before that, your relationship you felt with your kids actually got stronger when they went away to boarding school. And I feel like, as a parent of a young child, that would be the thing that I'm like, How do I let them go? You know, they're so young, yeah, so talk, talk to us about that.

Don McMillan:

Yeah, that's the paradox, that you get closer to your kid when they go to boarding school. Well, you have less time with them, yeah, but it's quality time. And I've heard this from so many parents, and experienced it myself 15 years ago, where once I was not kind of the homework cop or the social media overseer that it was Dad time and when they're home, it was fun, it was neat. Or I go to a game on a Wednesday afternoon. You could never book me on a Wednesday afternoon. Whether it was JV third varsity, I'm going to that game and it was, you know, sometimes it's in a radius of two hours that seems to be reasonable. So for me, it was an hour 40. I'd hop in the car, catch the game, and then it's like, Hey, Dad, could we go and have some pizza and I'll bring some buddies, and buddies come over in the weekend. So the quality time is huge. Plus, it's so intense when you're at boarding school, just in terms of the schedule, because the typical day is you're having breakfast as a community again, like, like summer camp, you're going to classes to like two you go to sports or activities or music or dance, from two to five, five to six, you're kind of getting ready for dinner. You have dinner together. Then there's study hall in the evening, which is really magical. There's this collective like at 715 or 730 whenever it begins after the first rookie, two kids are just going in their rooms, opening up their computers, and they're getting it done. They're in this habit. They do it because their roommate does it. Then they've studied it till 930 then they go play ping pong or run around and wrestle or whatever, till like 1030 brush your teeth, go to bed, lights out at 11, and you kind of cycle through it so that schedule is set. And because it's so intense, the vacations are mammoth. There's, you know, three weeks in December, summers, June, July and August. So, yeah, the parent, child piece. It's hard. I mean, I was one of my sons was 18 when he went away and it was closed. I was like, this is hard. And we're working with families who are sending their kids, you know, we've took families from over 65 countries, and they're sending their kids 1000s of miles. So I guess, to wrap that question up, the thing we're assessing so that parents do feel equality time, the most important part of the school, match, in particular for boarding school, is the vibe and the campus culture, the academics. Yes, they're important, but that's a little bit easier than kind of that sense of safety, community, the kind of nurturing piece, which is really the hallmark of a good boarding school

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, when you're describing that, I was reflecting that it's a place that every student I've ever worked with who was at a boarding school has a real sense of culture and values. And I think that because it's, you know, them living on a campus, that culture piece, which I think includes the kind of academic discipline, the community, the sense of, okay, now it's time to all do this thing. We're all gonna go do community service. We're all gonna, you know, get our work done. We're all gonna have a meal together. We're all gonna go home and spend quality time with our families. You know, all of that is really baked into the structure of the school. And so it's no longer an individual family having to decide, what are those things and then try, you know, by. Hook or crook to implement them or establish them with their kids, right? We're still working on just sitting down at dinner together, but it's something that they learn, because their peers are also doing it. And it's just the it's the culture of the school, which I think is pretty special.

Don McMillan:

Yeah, and sometimes the peers doing so much different, like I had a ice hockey player once, and he joined the acapella group. I'm like, good for you. What was it about that? Well, my roommates in it, and I just decided, and I've never done it before, I loved it. Or you will often hear like, you know, Mrs. Dempsey, my teacher, the chemistry teacher I love, is she's running a club. And I'm, I went to the Republican club, even though I'm a Democrat, because I wanted to be with Miss Dempsey. And we watched the debates, and it was great. And so that's the cool part of that community feeling,

Sheila Akbar:

yeah, that's great. That's great. Well, you mentioned the owl boarding guide. I wonder if you could go back and tell us what that is. And you know how you how you hope people will use it?

Don McMillan:

Yeah. So four years ago, when covid hit, we were worried about our friends in the boarding school industry. They reached out to us and said, kind of help. And we're like, okay, but we need to be fair with everybody. So we put together a series of webinars. We did it geographically. So we first did Connecticut, I think it was, and then the New Hampshire boarding schools reached out, okay, if everybody gets involved. And then California reached out to us. We did this series of webinars, and all of a sudden we had data from about 120 schools. And we're like, what do we do with this? And there's so many college guides, right? The Fisk guy, the Peterson's guide, there's no, like, non biased boarding school guide. There's some pay to play ones. You know, number one school in Vermont, because they bought an ad, so we put together in the owlboardingschools.com site, all the information from the boarding schools, and not just the data, like, how many international kids, how many boarders? What's the students of color ratio? Who's the head, who's the admissions person? But these kind of distinguishing features of each schools. You can also hop on the L boarding school guide and compare schools three at once to get a sense of size. We have dress code, you know, formal? Is it informal? You can get a map and location. So it just kept growing and growing. We kind of created a monster, like I said, we don't charge schools, we don't start families, we also don't rank or put like, the most elusive statistic is sort of acceptance percentage which colleges can go, but it can figure out, but it's very elusive for schools, so it's kind of just an objective guide to boarding schools.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, I remember when you released it, I was just, you know, floored at how useful it is, because it is really hard to get information in one place about, you know, the Independent School landscape. So listeners, I'll link that in the show notes, and you should definitely check it out if that's something that that you're, you're curious about. Well, Don, I think that's a great place to leave it. Thank you so much for your time tonight. And you know, I look forward to having many more conversations like this with you.

Don McMillan:

Appreciate it. Sheila, you've been great to work with over the years, and nice to collaborate with you again. And thanks for talking through it.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, of course. All right, thanks, folks. You can learn more about Don at McMillaneducation.com and the owl boarding guide is accessible from that website as well. Check the show notes for the links and can't wait to see you next time, take care you.