Dr. Virginia Gavris, DMD, MPH Interview
(January 31, 2008)

Dr. Gavris is a graduate from Tufts University and Harvard University. She holds a Masters degree from Harvard University’s School of Public Health. She works with Admissions Committees at schools in the New England area screening and interviewing applicants. She has a dental practice in Newton, Massachusetts and lectures nationally and internationally on the field.

How do you touch the admissions process?

On a number of levels, I read essays, interview candidates and it’s my job to come up with that “something else.” As one school said, ”We know the grades and scores.” So, I have to dig deeper.

Let me start with the interview then. What advice would you give on the interview process?

Well, don’t come to the table with your grades and scores. The interview isn’t going to go very well. An interview is supposed to last no more than 20-30 minutes. Applicants should be able to talk about why they want to go to the school and what they intend to bring. They should be able to talk about themselves, the school and be somewhat comfortable. When I say, “So, tell me a little bit about yourself.” I don’t want to hear, “I am one of four kids.” All of that is on the application. Sometimes it is really hard to get a kid to open up. I’ll say, “Why did you decide to go to boarding school?” and the answer is, “Someone recommended it.” Then I’ll say, “Must have been tough leaving your friends” and they said, “Well, I didn’t have a lot of friends.” The ball dies every time on the other end of the court. It’s hard for me to get some of these students to open up about themselves.

What about kids being socially comfortable? Are you looking for that?

In the wake of Virginia Tech, yes. Even MIT has had trouble. You want to think that the kid is going to be comfortable at a school and be able to adjust to a roommate and new classes. None of these schools want kids to leave. It’s hard, though, because I very often will see kids that are developmentally too young for college.

Do kids do things that bother you?

Sure, when they don’t get back to me. I set up most of my interviews through e-mail. Sometimes, I have to e-mail two and three times! On the third time, I will say, “Do you or do you not want to be interviewed?” Many times it’s a reflection of the parents who are the same way.

Sounds pretty disrespectful and not very grateful …

It is. I will often offer to do this or that for them. And, the response I get is, “Well … I don’t know ….” Not, “Thank you. That would be great!” They haven’t been taught the social skills, and in many ways, everything has been handed to them. Parents want to give their kids everything, even if they have to work three jobs to do it.

Why is this?

I don’t know. Nobody wants to say, “No.” We want to give them the car; we want to give them the plasma; we want to let them drink if they aren’t allowed to and let their girl friends sleep over when they are fifteen. Just like in grammar school, everybody wins the junior league, everybody gets a trophy and sometimes it seems nobody gets less than an “A” these days; more in the public schools, but true in some of the privates too. At Nobels there are many more honors; at Middlesex less so. How can it be an honor of distinction if 85% of the class has distinction? Then, the first time they get rejected, is when they don’t get into college and they are shocked. We’ve had an increase in suicides around here. Maybe it’s less the pressure and more when the expectation for success meets with rejection and there is no cumulative experience to cushion the blow.

Back to the admissions process, how important is the essay?

As I said the schools are looking for that “something else.” They’re looking for the passion in the child. That comes through in an essay and generally the kids will talk about their essay in the interview. The application has become more important than ever today particularly with the Common Application. Harvard has 27,000 applicants for this year (2008) and they will take 1100 – 1200. When you think about this, you realize they have to go through the applicants immediately and put one fourth of them to the side just based on scores and grades. The only hesitation is with minority situations. These never get pushed to the side. Some Common Application schools offer an optional essay. My advice is to do it. At Tufts they took a much greater percentage of kids that did the essay, but only one in five did it. It helps the schools develop that composite picture they are looking for; and maybe it communicates an overachiever, or that you really want to go there.

About that “something else,” should I deduce that you are putting your child at a disadvantage if you are not opening doors to see what interests them?

I would have to say that in this climate you are. The tides will change after the baby boomers and the numbers will go down, so it will become less important then. But it’s more than that. There’s a lot of talk about over programmed kids who are driven from soccer, to tutoring to dance, to fencing, with no down time. That may be true in the extreme, but as kids get older they will not do the things that don’t interest them, but having the afternoon to fill is also not a good thing for a teenager. The private schools can keep the kids busy from 8:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. The public schools cannot. Some kids don’t have a lot going on after 1:30 in the afternoon. If you think it is more time for them to study, this is not the case. I think they get in more trouble. Also, this is just the beginning of setting yourself apart. My son applied for a summer internship where there were 400 applicants. It doesn’t end with college.

Well, what do you do when your child takes up something and then loses interest in it, but you know it will give them an edge?

That’s not a clean answer. I think you have to say to your child, here is the real world and explain to them logically what that means. The same way you would if they were buying a prom dress … here are the guidelines. On the other hand, I have kids that come through here wanting a lab job, telling me they want to work in cancer research and I say, “If it is something you are really passionate about great, but if you are doing it for your application, it never works out.” You and I both know that a teenager is not going to be getting out of bed unless they are really motivated to do something. And it can’t be because they are responding to their parents who are saying, “You must, you must, you must.” “Something else” is a broad spectrum from editing a school newspaper, which most people think colleges look to as a demonstration of leadership. It’s not, they have newspapers too and it means you may work on them as much as they need a drum major if they have a marching band or a star quarterback for their hockey team. There are kids that use their community service work as their defining passion. But sometimes, you look and you see that in 10th or 11th grade they have dropped everything to do some community service. I think the schools are turning the tables on that approach, realizing the students just did it so they could look good.

What about these essay coaches? Is it an advantage? Where is the line?

It depends on your child. It can be an asset and I hate to say this because I think that it’s unfair to a student who can’t spend the money. (Some of these coaches though do pro bono work.) Where is it helpful? Well the essay is supposed to give someone a voice. So a coach can say, go over it again and pull out more about who you are. Too many times I have read the essay where, for example, a student says I grew up with a wheelchair bound neighbor, but you couldn’t see who the child was through it. It just looked contrived. Where’s the line? It can be obvious when someone other than the student does the essay particularly when you get this highly refined document and nothing else about the student is highly refined.

I know a woman who wrote her sons essay, and he got into Bowdoin. Do you think the message for this kid is, “I’m not good enough?”

I don’t think so, I think when you get into a top school and your mother helped you, I think the message is, “That worked!” And, we wonder why these kids have difficulty adjusting to adult life. You can bet that wasn’t the first time this mother wrote something for her son. She was probably doing the book reports too.

Isn’t that cheating?

Look, my son wrestled his senior year. He played a man who had PGed for two years. He was twenty-one. My son was 17. Is that cheating? Maybe not technically, but it’s not fair.

All schools seem to ask, why do you want to go here? How important is that?

When I was at the information session at Brown the woman said, “Don’t tell us you want to go to Brown because you want to go to a great school in New England; you love Providence; it is the right size and has the courses you want to take.” I sat there and thought, well what would you say? She was a friend, so I asked her afterward and she said they were looking for something more finite – answers like, “I know the Geology Professor’s work.”

So, it has to be a pretty personal connection?

Yes, but to me I think it is more bull shit because you then make your kid go look up these professors and see what they do. Seventeen and eighteen years old are doing a lot of homework, socializing with girls and boys and in many respects are just keeping their heads above water, and now they are supposed to go researching all this detail for the ten schools they are applying too?

How about these letters of reference from influential people? Do they make a difference?

No

And, if you are very good at a sport, but not being proactively recruited, can you still play this card?

Sure. You have to market yourself to the coaches though. If you are in a solitary sport, like golf, squash or tennis, your statistics are going to stand for themselves. In many cases, these coaches need to meet an academic index, which means if you have good scores and not top ten percentile in your sport, you can contribute on the academic end, play on the team and allow the coach to take someone who is outstanding at the game, but doesn’t have the high scores. The Williams coach said to us, “I have three ‘picks’. One has to be above 1200.” (This was when the SAT’s were on a 1600 scale.) Grades didn’t seem to matter. If a coach asks you to apply, don’t put all your eggs in this basket. They still may not have the clout in admissions to deliver on their implied promise for acceptance. Unless you get signed in Junior year, meaning you sign a contract saying you are going there, or a letter of intent, it’s not over until you get the acceptance letter.

Is there a benefit to going early – Early Decision, Early Action – if the schools offer it?

I would say so, because the schools are still very interested in yield. It’s selectivity. They want to be able to say, we had 10,000 applicants, we took 3,000 and we filled our class with 1,500, a 50% yield. The Ivy’s can say their yield is 60, 70 or 90%. Schools want a desirable statistic. The University of Pennsylvania said a few years ago that they were going to take 500-600 Early Decision candidates, which are binding. Then they knew that the next 500 were less worry. Yield is very important. No one wants to ask five people to the prom to get their date.

Any final words of advice for parents?

Don’t be the one raising your hand in the information sessions. You’re not going to school there.