Thacher Magazine - Spring/Summer 2023

“In my time at Thacher, I have been grateful for the colleagues in my office and other schools. It is a close-knit community that is incredibly supportive and collaborative.

Director of College Counseling Maria Morales-Kent is not new to Thacher. She arrived in the fall of 1997, after working in the admission offices of the University of Pennsylvania and Occidental College. However, working in the always-evolving world of college counseling means she breathes new life into the program each year as she helps students find the right fit for their personal and educational growth beyond Thacher. In her more than 30-year career in this profession, Maria has been a speaker and panelist at various conferences for the National and Western Associations of Admission Counseling, has served on the faculty of the Hampton Summer Institute for Admissions, a training and mentoring program for new admission officers, and co-founded two non-profit organizations: College Marketplace, created to provide college counseling for students in Los Angeles public schools and ACCIS, the Association of College Counselors in Independent Schools, a professional organization supporting the work of colleagues across the country. Maria has also served on the Advisory Council for the National Merit Scholarship Foundation, Colorado College, and most recently the University of Chicago. Today she is also a member of the Association of Black Admissions and Financial Aid Officers of the Ivy League and Sister Schools.

Last year she was joined by Associate Director of College Counseling Czarina Hutchins, a former admission officer at Providence College and Columbia University. Czarina earned a BA from Franklin & Marshall College in History and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and an MA from Teachers College, Columbia University in Sociology and Education with a concentration in Education Policy. A native of Oakland, CA and a boarding school graduate herself, Czarina was an A Better Chance Scholar at the Pomfret School in Connecticut.

During her time in college admission, Czarina was a member of the National and Northeast Associations for College Admission Counseling, the New England Consortium Bridging Access to College, and is currently a member of the Association of Black Admissions and Financial Aid Officers of the Ivy League and Sister Schools. Czarina is excited to help students find the best fit that meets their educational and personal needs. She is also thrilled to bring her lifelong passion for basketball to her duties coaching Girls’ JV Basketball.

We sat down with two members of Thacher’s college counseling team to learn more about them, their approach to their work, and their advice for students and parents as they navigate the sometimes daunting, but always exciting college admissions process.

Q. How/when did you know that college counseling work was the right career for you?

Czarina: I followed the typical college tour guide to college admissions officer to college counselor pipeline. I was a Pell Grant student, which means I had high financial need, and at Franklin & Marshall College, tour guide was the highest paying job. But I liked the work involved and explored how to do that as a professional. After graduating, I started immediately at Providence College in their undergraduate admissions office before moving to Columbia a few years later.

What I realized is that I liked helping students through the process, including the moments when I had to counsel a student away from Providence or Columbia because it just didn't feel like it was a good fit for them. The pandemic really solidified for me that I missed working more directly with students—visiting high schools, having kids on campus for admitted student days. I finally came to the realization during my last year at Columbia that even if things returned to “normal,” I wouldn't have the in-depth relationships with students that I was actually craving. When you're in admissions, you become close with applicants because you meet them at their high school and then you fall in love with them through their application and then you see them again on admitted student day. But as soon as they’re first-year students, they move on, and they're gone.

So I figured, let's go to college counseling! And I just love boarding schools.

Maria: My story is very similar to Czarina’s—I'm a first-generation student; my mother was a housekeeper, and never went beyond the third grade. So for me, college was quite transformational in every sense of the word. However, I never saw myself in this line of work until I was very lucky to meet my very first mentor when I enrolled at Occidental College. At the time he was the Director of Residential Life, but by my sophomore year, he was the Director of Admission and asked me to tour a group of college counselors who were visiting Oxy. I did it and I liked it, and a year later he offered me an internship in the office.This ultimately led to me working as an admission officer for the University of Pennsylvania. I stayed at Penn for seven years, the last three of which were spent running their Western Regional Office in California. A few years later I returned to Occidental, covering the Central Coast territory, which included Thacher. When an opening became available to lead the College Counseling Office, I was excited by the opportunity and haven’t looked back.

Q. What is your overarching philosophy or approach when it comes to college counseling?

Czarina: My goal this year was to make sure that every student felt like the process was their own. They feel so much pressure from their friends and parents that sometimes they start to feel like the process is no longer theirs. Especially for those students who have often felt othered in the world, I try to make sure that they feel comfortable in this process, which for some can feel very new and confusing.

Maria: I want our students to feel empowered by the fact that I am very transparent with them about how the process works and how the colleges structure it to suit their own institutional pressures and needs. Over the years, I’ve seen many students attach their identity to either where they're applying or where they get in, and I try to help them see that neither the process nor the outcome is an assessment of who they are as human beings. What you do with the opportunities you are given is what truly defines you.

I also work to help them through the many challenging decisions that they need to make along the way, while hopefully launching them into young adulthood with a set of skills and abilities to manage the world in college and beyond. I hope that when they leave Thacher and find themselves managing other large complex projects, they will use what they learned with us here.

Tied closely to all this is my commitment to be equally transparent with parents about this process, how it has changed from when they applied, and the critical role they play in their child’s experience. As a parent in this process, what you do matters as much as what you say when you respond to something your child shares. Most times we don’t even realize it. But our children have come to know us well. So for them, a particular look in your eye or a tone in your voice when they share the highs and lows in this process creates meaning regarding what they are experiencing. For example, if they share happy news about getting into a school, your authentic joy, validation, and encouragement makes a difference.

Q. In your opinion, what is it about the Thacher experience that prepares our students for life after Thacher— in college, career, and beyond?

Czarina: In my last year at Columbia, because I was reviewing the applications from the Central Coast, I got to read Thacher applications, and I was blown away. What really spoke to me when I was reviewing applicants was the way that students were able to build resiliency here. Students had to demonstrate an ability to experience a challenge and either weather it or, if they faltered in that moment, bounce back. What was evident in Thacher students, was whether it was academically or on a horse or camping, all of those challenges showed their ability to face something that they were uncomfortable with, deal with it, and move forward.

What has also become really clear to me here is the role that honor, fairness, kindness, and truth play in the lives of these kids. Until you actually see it, you don't really believe that students are upholding these pillars, but I’ve seen it this year in the way that students are either showing their kindness or trying to do the honorable thing, even when the honorable thing isn't the easy thing to do. Those are the moments when I know that, even if they can’t do laundry, at least if they have a challenging moment, they will still do the honorable or the kind thing.

Maria: Having spent many years reading applications from Thacher and other boarding schools in my time at Penn and at Oxy, the thing that I always loved about the students here was and still is their authenticity and integrity. The other thing that I love about our graduates is that so many are deeply involved in their communities. They're starting their own projects; they're looking at how they can make a difference. For me, in addition to the intellectual strengths we nurture here, they are also learning to live for the greater good. I think that we do instill these in them in ways that we sometimes don't realize until they've graduated.

Q. How have you seen the college admission landscape change in the last five to 10 years?

Maria: When I started admissions work in 1984 at Penn, the university, like so many other schools, was looking to the west for students because high school graduates were projected to decrease on the East Coast. So admission to schools like Penn was much easier. Since then, as a result of innovation and technology around the process, admission to most schools is much tougher than ever. At the core of this shift is colleges and universities adopting a business model driven by all the pressures of a consumer market and developing your brand. More recently, colleges are managing those economic pressures with social ones around issues of access and equity. What does this mean for Thacher and other schools like us? It means that although our level of access to these institutions may have shifted, the skills and abilities they learn here, along with the relationships our students nurture here, will still carry them far. And I hope students and parents continue to recognize the value of that.

Czarina: I survived being an admissions officer at Columbia during the pandemic when we went from 40,000 to 60,000 applications in the fall of 2020. We were understaffed and had a hiring and salary freeze. That was just the state of higher ed at that time. Suddenly, you had a bunch of young people who believed deeply in the work they were doing, but started to feel overwhelmed (and in the Zoom environment) by an admission process that had become so much more transactional.

The push and pull that college admissions is struggling with right now is wanting to morally and ethically open up their doors wider, but then still feeling the economic constraints that come with running a university. And I think that's why we see so many small colleges closing.

Q. What advice do you give to families beginning this journey?

Maria: Based on my own experience with two Thacher graduates, I say this to parents: the best places are truly the ones where your child is stretched and affirmed…stretched and affirmed. When they're stretched, they are learning, growing, finding their way. But the moments of affirmation and acknowledgement of what they achieved are equally important to their confidence to step further into the space where they're going to be stretched again.

If you are at a school where you constantly feel pressured and carry thoughts like ’I can't believe I got in here; I’ve got to be in the library every day or I’m going to fall behind; I’ve got to study really, really hard for the next step,’ the lack of affirmation will ultimately deplete you. So the goal should not be getting into the hardest school. Instead it should be getting into the school that will be a great match so that you blossom and emerge into a more complete self ready to step into adulthood. That’s the cool part of going to college, right?

Q. Do you have a moment, maybe at graduation or a reunion, where you feel like, “We did it!”?

Maria: I describe the job of college counseling as similar to a party planner who organizes a great event, but who may not actually attend. Each winter, my office initiates a 12-month party planning effort with our juniors, and just when their party is about to start with the culminating events of senior year in late winter, we are already planning another party. It used to be that you could enjoy the results of your work in December with the release of all Early Decision and Early Action applications, but today, given their preoccupation with yield, colleges have many more processes and news arriving throughout the winter and spring. Of course, graduation is a wonderful time for us as we witness the success of our seniors as they travel beyond Thacher.

Q. Anything else you’d like to add?

Maria: In my time at Thacher, I have been very grateful for the colleagues in my office and other schools. It is a close knit community that is incredibly supportive and collaborative. I'm also grateful for Thacher’s faculty who step up and write letters of recommendation for our students each year; they are so patient, supportive, and understanding of what our students are managing. I also want to give a shout out to the more recent additions to Thacher's community. In our profession, we have a favorite line: “it is not where you go but what you do when you get there.” Our current faculty serve as a real example of the diversity of many wonderful colleges and universities worldwide.

Finally, I want to thank the wonderful parents in our community for their trust in our experience and expertise, and their approach to this process with their children first and foremost in mind.