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Priory Magazine Fall 2023
Connecting with Colleges
Priory’s exceptional College Counseling Program is uniquely multi-faceted
As she planned a trip to the East Coast a few months ago, Priory’s Director of College Counseling, Nikki Hostnik, thought it would be a nice idea to briefly check in with two Priory alumni now attending Yale University in Connecticut.
Brett Phelan ’18 is in his second year in a cell biology PhD program at the Ivy League school, and Sami Haddad ’21 is a Yale undergrad pursuing a double major – in economics as well as in statistics and data science.
She expected the conversation would take no more than 30 minutes. “I thought, ‘I’ll buy them a cup of coffee and it will be great,’” Hostnik recalls.
But upon arriving in New Haven and sitting down with the two alums, Hostnik found that Phelan and Haddad were as grateful for the opportunity to reconnect as she was.
Phelan, who graduated from Princeton University in 2022 and is now in the PhD program at Yale, fondly recalls, “Mrs. Hostnik helped me choose schools which fit my personality and academic interests, advocated for me during the application process, and helped me advocate for myself in essays, interviews, and email correspondence.”
Haddad’s memories are similarly positive. “Many schools can prepare a kid academically for college,” he says, “but not many schools have the people to shape the students into the best versions of themselves… Priory did both for me.”
Hostnik laughs as she remembers the New Haven get-together. “We had so much fun talking about Priory and St. Louis and their college experiences. I think two or three hours later I said, ‘I have to go! I have appointments!’”
“It was just wonderful to see them,” she says.
A Five-Year Series of Important Conversations
It’s no surprise that Priory’s College Counseling team is so positively connected with the school’s alumni. The detailed process of learning about each student and his family – their hopes and dreams, their wants and needs – begins early at Priory.
How early? When boys are in their eighthgrade year, the school offers a presentation for their parents to explain the college counseling timeline.
The following year, Hostnik and her College Counseling colleague, Susan Lutz, host a college kickoff night for freshmen and their parents. The focus on this evening is not about particular schools or the mechanics of college applications, she says. Rather, Hostnik and Lutz emphasize the life skills Priory seeks to cultivate in the young men
during the college selection process, as well as the important message that the College Counseling team “is here for you all four years” to help and support students and their families.
“We are mindful that this is probably the first major multi-tasking activity a student has that has a relatively big consequence,” Hostnik says. The College Counseling team guides the students through the process as they hone skills in four areas:
• Self-awareness, as they reflect on the “what” and the “why” of their college goals, and as they learn to articulate these goals.
• Tolerating uncertainty and learning how to handle failure – “because that will happen if you push yourself in this process,” Hostnik observes.
• Navigating complexity, staying ahead of multiple deadlines, organizing their applications, scheduling visits with college reps, etc.
• Communication, especially with their parents, the College Counseling team, and college admissions professionals.
During sophomore year, all students attend a weekly college counseling seminar.
“When I start that sophomore seminar every winter term, I look forward to working with a new set of students,” Hostnik says. “It’s the perfect time to get to know them on the classroom level. I’m really excited about every new class.”
In the seminar, “we start to peel back the curtain of everything college, being mindful not to stress the students out,” she says. “It’s an important process, but it can be fun, too!”
Washington University in St. Louis and Saint Louis University have hosted the sophomores for college visits, to give the students a sense of what a college tour feels like. Following the visits, Hostnik says, the class “debriefed on what they learned, and about how the students can guide the process when they eventually tour colleges with their parents.”
Last year, Hostnik welcomed representatives from three colleges and universities to lead a mock admissions workshop in which the sophomores were required to make admissions decisions – whom to admit, waitlist, or deny –based on the information contained in the madeup college applications they reviewed. The exercise helped the students understand that college admissions can be “a subjective, human process,” she says.
As juniors, “the students start meeting with us a lot,” Hostnik says. They begin test preparation and take their first official PSAT, ACT, and SAT. Then, with their parents, they attend a college kickoff meeting in December.
I’m so proud of them every year. They have worked hard, and each one of them is ready to take the great next steps to the exceptional life that he’s been building throughout his time at Priory.”
During junior year, both students and parents complete detailed surveys for the College Counseling team. The student survey asks questions like:
• “What colleges interest you right now –and why?”
• “What classes have inspired you?”
• “What are you excited about in this process and what are you nervous about?”
Among its questions, the parent survey asks:
• “What are your hopes and dreams for your son in this process?”
• “What is the role of financial aid for your family?”
• “What does success mean for you in this process for your son?”
The survey results guide important conversations with Hostnik or Lutz between January and April of the student’s junior year.
The individual family meetings “are something I take really, really seriously,” Hostnik says. Noting all family situations are unique, she emphasizes that Priory’s approach to college counseling “is not one-size-fits-all.”
Senior Year: It’s Getting Real
As senior year approaches, the pace of the college selection process quickens.
“The fall season is unavoidably intense,” Hostnik notes. “It’s a lot for the students to take on, so we take it on with them with the spirit that we’re all going to get through it together.”
Both Hostnik and Lutz have worked as admissions counselors at the collegiate level. Hostnik started at Priory in 2017 and was promoted to lead the College Counseling team in 2021. She says her own college-selection experience as a high school student helps motivate her in her current role.
“Thinking back, the experience I had when I was in high school was somewhat disappointing,” she recalls. “I didn’t get any personal attention. I was told by my counselor, ‘These are the schools that fit you,’ but nobody asked me what fit.”
Priory’s approach, Hostnik emphasizes, is student centric. “We have an open-door policy,” she says. “Students never need an appointment to meet with us.”
Outside of Priory, this year Hostnik serves as the immediate past president of the Missouri Association for College Admission Counseling (MOACAC), which supports both high school college counselors and college admissions professionals across the state.
As the organization’s president last year, she spearheaded the development of a program through which college counselors working in underfunded Missouri high schools could access grant funds for professional development. Hostnik says she’s grateful for the support Priory’s leadership gives to College Counseling, because she knows that not all counselors are so well supported. Helping “give back” to colleagues across the state was an important initiative for her.
In August, each rising Priory senior and his parents meet again with Hostnik or Lutz to revisit previous conversations and go over things that may have changed since their last meeting –based on learnings from summer college tours, new thinking from the student, and the like.
Susan Lutz (below) and Nikki Hostnik (above) working with students on their college essays.
Rising seniors have an option to participate in a summer workshop at Priory focused on college application essay writing. In the fall, they take a college counseling class with Hostnik and Lutz, during which they work to complete their college applications.
More than 100 college reps visit the Priory campus in September and October. “For the size of our school, it’s amazing,” Hostnik says.
“Schools from Boston College to Notre Dame to USC, all across the country, find a way to get here in the fall to meet with our students.”
“We work hard to cultivate and manage the relationships we have with college admissions reps,” she notes. “We are partners with them. We educate them on what Priory means –the special presence of the monks, the exceptional faculty and the rigor of the curriculum, the Medieval Arts Guild. We continue to remind them what’s so special about Priory.”
Priory seniors submit a total of around 600 college applications each year, with the school preferring to limit the number of applications to no more than eight per student. Hostnik notes that the national average for collegeapplications-per-student currently stands at 18 –but that Priory students and families tend to be fine with applying to about eight schools because “they feel we have created a list that balances risk, finances, hopes and dreams – and they can really do a good job of narrowing down their options.”
Finally, at graduation, Hostnik celebrates the hard work and success of the young men she sees in front of her.
“I’m so proud of them every year,” she says. “They have worked hard, and each one of them is ready to take the great next steps to the exceptional life that he’s been building throughout his time at Priory.”
