Interview with Tom Fanning, Case Western Reserve University Senior Associate Director of Admissions

We had the privilege of having Tom Fanning, Case Western Reserve University Senior Associate Director of Admissions, join us in a webinar Q&A a few weeks ago to talk about the upcoming changes to admissions and the unique challenges of higher education in the years ahead. 

Elton Lin: Welcome everybody to the next installment of our ILUMIN webinar. We again have the great opportunity to have another admissions professional come on with us, and let’s give it just a couple more seconds to let everybody roll in. It’s that time of the evening, you know…  

Thomas Fanning: And a beautiful evening it is by the way!

Elton Lin: That's good to hear. Not toasty out there?

Thomas Fanning: 75 and sunny all day, and it almost starts to feel like fall right now!

Elton Lin: Oh wow, that's perhaps the best advertisement for Cleveland!

Thomas Fanning: Exactly

Elton Lin: All right, so let's get started. I’m excited to have Thomas Fanning come on and join us. He’s a senior associate director of admissions at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio – and to be frank with you it is certainly one of my favorite schools. It has a ton of resources, especially for students who are engineering students or pre-med, and just a really outstanding institution.

But I’m excited again to have Thomas Fanning come on with us and share a little bit more about Case Western, in addition to what the admissions process will look like for this coming fall. Tons of changes. Tons! And I’m happy to discuss all those things with Tom today. So, Tom, if you don't mind, let's get started with some questions. Could you share a little bit about your role at Case Western Reserve, and perhaps how you got into admissions?

Thomas Fanning: Wonderful, Elton. Thank you very much for the invitation to be here tonight. As was stated, my name is Tom Fanning, Senior Associate Director of Admissions at Case Western Reserve. This is year thirty-four in college admissions for me. I've spent some time here. And when you talk to admission reps, you'll find that many of us worked at different institutions in the course of our career trajectory. I worked at another institution for about thirty years, where I was a director of admissions.

As for how I got into it… you know, there's no undergrad degree in admissions counseling! So, many of us come from all different backgrounds. I actually have a degree in political science and a master's in educational psychology. But how did I get into it with a political science degree? At the year I graduated there were no openings for political scientists, so I was looking for job opportunities.

And I absolutely loved my college experience. So the opportunity to go to the administrative side, to recruit for the schools that I worked for, was a wonderful opportunity. I just fell in love with the profession. It’s a really optimistic profession – you're always looking forward, looking into the future, and you're talking to wonderful students and families about what they might become and what they might do, and all these ideas! It truly is an optimistic profession. I love being here, and doing this.

My role at Case Western Reserve is that not only do I recruit and handle a territory, but I’m also in charge of our Alumni Ambassador Program. We have about 1700 alumni ambassadors – graduates who live around the world – who help us in the recruitment process. I coordinate that group.

And I'm on the senior management team, so when policy decisions are made, I would be part of the team that would be involved in those discussions. It's a wonderful place to work. We spend most of our year talking to students and families about the possibility of whether or not we might be a great choice for their futures. Again the optimistic side.

We’d love everybody to come to our school, but only the right people who would love being there. So part of this is helping students go through a process of discernment to figure out what would be the best place for their futures.

Elton Lin: Got it. So there are a ton of changes happening this year, especially because of COVID-19, but before we get into specifics about what Case Western Reserve is doing for this coming fall, what have been some of the biggest changes that have happened at Case over the course of the past five or six months?

Thomas Fanning: With thirty-four years of experience in admissions, the biggest changes in my mind are the technological advances that allow the recruitment to be handled in a very personalized fashion, but all over the world and very specifically.

In March, just like all of you, I faced a world where you weren't in-person often in the learning environment. Within one week's time, our whole university flipped to an online delivery of education. And we learned a lot doing that. Now, in the fall, the situation hasn't changed all that dramatically – to the point where many of our students are going to be remote in this fall semester – not all but many. But we're pretty confident that we can do this well.

So that is the easy answer: the technological changes that allow this to happen. Thank goodness we have Zoom and Slate and WebEx, all the different possibilities to be able to connect with people around the world.

I'm sure it adds pressures and challenges, trying to figure out how to deliver a good, quality education, but, again, we're pretty confident that we can do this. Even when you look at the curriculum, it's constantly changing at most of our institutions. So change is the constant! It was accelerated this time, and COVID has changed a lot. But I think there's a lot of things we're going to learn, and a lot of good things are going to come out of this as well.

Elton Lin: Got it. Absolutely. So let's go into what Case Western Reserve is doing for this coming fall. I know that there has been a trend for a lot of universities to go entirely online, entirely remote. There are a lot of political issues with regards to how schools are opening or not opening. So would you tell us a little bit more about what Case is doing for this coming fall, and perhaps how they're approaching the problem?

Thomas Fanning: If you listen to our recruitment speeches at Case Western Reserve, we talk about building a community of scholars. You can talk about classroom learning as top-down, faculty to student: students passively sit and receive everything that comes from faculty. But when we really think deeply about our institution, the interactions, and the collaboration amongst and between students and administrators and faculty members are really important to us. So, as a university, we found it very important to try to do as much as we could safely in person.

Our president asked the university to try and figure out how we can do this safely. And if you look into us a little bit further, you'll find that we're surrounded by three major hospitals, one of which is the Cleveland Clinic, and we have world-renowned infectious disease people on our campus and at the clinic. Using their advice, and CDC advice, we decided that we are going to open in-person, with all the safety measures that we need to do.

We just announced today that we're going to have fewer people on campus than we anticipated, because of the need to take double rooms and make them single rooms for safety reasons. And the faculty were asked to design their classes to be able to deliver both in-person and online instruction.

When that request from the president came down, we expected about sixty percent of our classes to be taught with some in-person component, where forty percent were going to be taught completely remote or online. Again, given recent developments, those percentages may change a little bit, because our international students, if they're not in the U.S. now, we expect they won't be able to get to into the U.S.

So, basically, a hybrid version of delivering instructional materials is what we're doing. And as I mentioned earlier, we're pretty confident that we can do this well. We just had to do it on a dime in the spring semester and we had been planning for this.

For the clinical portions of some people’s study, like the nurses, the pre-professional students, and some of the hands-on research that needs to happen, we've devised ways safely to do that on campus, so that will continue. But it's been a full-time job since the middle of March – to figure out how to do this well.

Our students are due to start moving back in two weeks, the students who can make it. And we will have all kinds of safety measures in place. And those who are going to be remote, they chose classes that were completely remote from the offerings in the catalog. We'll see what happens, and we'll see what tomorrow brings, but we're poised to move forward here.

Elton Lin: Indeed. Just as a summary, sixty percent in person, forty percent online. You're bringing on freshmen and seniors and international students, and perhaps a few others. But for those students who are invited back, you're giving them the option to attend in-person classes, or online.

Thomas Fanning: Correct.

Elton Lin: And you're also employing all these safety measures with regards to making sure that students are safely distanced, and making sure that everyone is safe on campus?

Thomas Fanning: Yeah. We're pretty confident. We’re always concerned, and there are safety risks, but we've taken the best advice and had some of the best experts in the world help us to devise our plan.

Elton Lin: Got it. Fantastic. So why don't we shift gears a little bit and talk a little bit about the admissions process. I always feel like what we've really enjoyed having so many different admissions officers come in and give people an inside look into what happens when the application actually arrives on your proverbial desk – or perhaps your proverbial computer right now! Could you tell us a little bit about what the application process looks like once applications are received on your end?

Thomas Fanning: I will. Pressing question there, because the common application just went live, and on Monday we were getting calls asking if we received the application yet! I applaud the people who were ready to go, but we haven't downloaded any of the applications yet. But there was a group that came in on the first day. And some people do ask this, so I feel compelled to answer: no, we're not judging when they come in, as long as you meet the deadlines!

Elton Lin: So August first is not better than November?

Thomas Fanning: No! August first makes all of us think, “Oh my goodness, is it time to to read them again?” Which is the fun part of this job. But if people are submitting on August first, I have an inkling that they're contacting their high school college counseling offices, saying, “You need to send the transcripts right away!” when they probably know they don't really need to do that right away as long as the deadlines are met.

So here’s the process at Case Western Reserve. The first the first thing students have to figure out is what program plan they're going to use to apply. There are five different program plans with different deadline dates. We have early action, which is non-restrictive, and that has a November first deadline. We also have an early decision deadline date of November first, if early decision is your path. We have something called the Pre-professional Scholars Program, which is a conditional guarantee admit program to our medical school and our dental school. For the students selected for those programs, they have to complete the pre-professional program as an undergrad, but they know that they have a guaranteed admit scenario at our med school or dental school if they have a minimum GPA. But that is a different deadline date – it's a December one, because the med school and the dental school admissions committees are involved in making those decisions so the timetable is somewhat different. Then we have an ED2 and a regular decision deadline that is January fifteenth. Students need to figure out which program works best for them, and the timetable differs slightly. So, basically, applications are read within the groupings of the program plan that they've chosen through which to apply.

And then, inevitably, a discussion about admissions tends to be a discussion about a number. “What's my GPA?” and “What number do I need to get in?”

Elton Lin: Do you have a specific answer to that question, like exactly what GPA or what test score number they need to get in?

Thomas Fanning: I actually don't. Although if you go to the website, you can find a profile. But the reason I don't have an answer is because we do not line people up by their numbers and draw a line, where anybody above it is in and everybody below it is not. That's not really the way this works.

You'll hear the term “holistic admission” thrown out there; in essence, that means that everything you send to us is going to be part of our discussion about who might be the best fit for our institution. There are four pillars to admission at any school you're going to look at.

The first pillar is, can the student do the work? That means, do they have the right preparation and have they done reasonably well in the classroom? Our faculty member would presume that they have. The second pillar is not can you do the work, but will you do the work? So how motivated are you? Trends are important. So we might be less concerned about your freshman year and more concerned about your junior year. Have you figured things out?

The third piece is, what do you bring to the institution? And frankly, many times is the most important piece. Because you can look at profiles of schools, and you probably have a pretty good understanding of where your numbers might be competitive, in the middle fifty percent ranges and things like that, or even talking to your great college counselors and the people you work with, they could probably give you some sense of how competitive you might be. So most of us don't get applications from people who aren't even in the ballpark. The bigger issue might be, what do you bring to the university?

And then the last piece, the fourth pillar, is there a good fit? This is a two-way street. Are we the right place for you, and are you the right student for us? So it's building upon that third pillar. And, you know, there’s the classic case of if a school needs another bass player, of it it wants to hit all fifty states and you're South Dakota, right. Does that do it for you? And the tough thing is that those last two things are pretty unpredictable!

And so, when we review an application, we're looking at all of those things. If I were to say that anybody below a 3.2 GPA – a 3.1 just doesn't do it… Well, you can't even talk about grades without looking at the classes that have been taken. We'd be more concerned about the curriculum. If people wanted to go into the STEM areas, we'd be more concerned with the math and science preparation, than if you struggle a little bit in AP U.S. history.

So everything is in the context within which it's delivered. As far as the process goes at Case Western Reserve, we're looking for people who are going to be intellectually curious and extremely competent in the classroom. So we judge the strength of the curriculum.

Also, it's a residential campus, and I mentioned earlier that it's very important to us to build a community. And it's a research institution. Sometimes research sounds like everybody goes to their corner and pounds away at their keyboards to try and beat somebody else out on some discovery, but research is collaborative. You're working in groups. And if research questions were answerable by one person, they would be easy, but you need creative minds coming together on some of the vexing problems that people are trying to overcome in a research institution.

So we're looking for people who engage with their community in high school, because that suggests to us that you'd engage with our community at Case Western Reserve. And then another thing we actually have a rating for is how much does that student love school?

Elton Lin: How much does that student love school? 

Thomas Fanning: Yeah.

Elton Lin: Tell me more, Tom!

Thomas Fanning: Do you love school? And that's different than “How many points do I need to get an A in this class?” As opposed to, say, we read a recommendation for a student that says, “This student was so intrigued by this one project that we did, that they went way above and beyond what what was required of them, and in fact we still talk about that project today.”

So you get my point here: are you checking boxes or are you completely enthralled by that one piece of academia, or those multiple pieces? Are you intellectually curious about something, and does it show?

And we find evidence to that. Admittedly, there's probably guesswork on our side, but it's evidence-driven. We're looking for evidence in an application, for these kinds of traits. We’re also looking for people who would engage our community, and it's a very diverse community. We're drawing people from around the world. So people who are open to meeting others, people who are open to learning about other cultural traditions… when we see evidence of that, we're intrigued, because we think they might be a great citizen on our campus. And I'm not talking about citizen with U.S status; I'm talking about somebody who's actively engaged with all the different people on our campus.

So, if you hear my excitement in my voice, it's all about who these students are when they're applying, as opposed to what's their number. And again, I mentioned this earlier, but frankly most of our applicants will do well in college. They're spectacular students. But the challenge, when you have a lot of applications and more you than you, frankly, have room for, is finding the right students who would love being at your place.

And I do have one editorial opinion here. I didn't mention this in my bio, but I have four kids, three of whom are through college now within the last three years, and then I have one still in college. So I've been a parent in this process, and as a fine helicopter parent I've been able to look at all the emails and all the pamphlets that come into our home. They all look the same. It's always a sunny day, everybody's good-looking, everybody's smiling and happy to be there, right? It's always a mix of races and cultures.

But we are all different. We have different personalities. And admissions people are going to be experts on the personality of their institution. We know who we're looking for. Although it's tough to put in writing, or tough to say it, when reviewing applications, a lot of times we just know the student might be great at our institution. And that usually ends up in an offer of admission.

But all those things have to come together – all four pillars.

Elton Lin: Just to recap, it's basically how a student is performing academically in core classes that in particular relate to their major. You're looking for students who are active in their community. You're looking for students who are intellectually curious and love school; they don't let know you know whether they love the building, but they love learning. That's what it is that you're looking for, right? And you're also looking for students who have a desire to want to interact with people who are different, from different cultures, different backgrounds. And these are actually measured in the application process to some degree is that correct?

Thomas Fanning: There are rubrics behind these things that help us help us try and compare what we have. And, again, it's not perfection. And the absence of something doesn't mean there's a bad scenario. But in an application, we're looking for evidence of these things.

So that's why we ask for what we ask for. And this might go to a very practical matter, because we, the faculty, have voted on this and decided that we are test-optional for the fall of ‘21. And we're going to revisit this, but we told the faculty that we're pretty confident that we can still find the right students without an SAT or ACT score. Now it's test-optional.

For students who might have taken the test, are proud of their scores, and think that lends evidence to their academic credentials, we will certainly look at that. But – just like we hadn't in the past, and still don't – require subject tests or AP scores, our stance has always been that if you have taken these tests and have done well, and you think that lends evidence to the academic qualifications in your prowess, certainly send them.

Elton Lin: This is a question that comes up with a lot of students – and parents too: it's one of those, “You're going test-optional but are you really going test-optional?” Maybe there's a thought on the admissions office’s side that if you didn't send in the score then perhaps you didn't score as well. Is there any of that going on?

Thomas Fanning: You have to trust me; I don't know how I can prove this to you, but…

Elton Lin: Tom, can I trust you? Is it really test-optional?

Thomas Fanning: Remember, I'm a parent of students who've gone through this process, and the vice president of enrollment at CWRU has a son who just went through this process, and his wife, by the way, is also the director of college counseling at a local independent school in Cleveland. Yes, we are truly test-optional. And there's no hidden agenda here. We want to be fair and we want to be proud of the job that we do. Admissions people aren't entering the profession to get rich. We do this because we love what we do.

So I know, again, I can't prove it, but, at least at Case Western Reserve, we are truly test-optional. There's no separate rule for scholarship consideration, or for any specialized departments on campus. It’s optional for everybody.

Elton Lin: Including the B.S./M.D. program?

Thomas Fanning: Correct.

Elton Lin: Oh wow. Okay. So, invariably there are people in the audience whose kids are considering the B.S./M.D. program. So I think this is where, in light of the difficulty of getting a test reservation for this coming year, I think that they're probably very reassured by that. 

Thomas Fanning: One of the benefits of that pre-professional scholars program, frankly, is that med students do not have to take the MCAT.

Elton Lin: Yeah, that's huge.

Thomas Fanning: It seems nobody wants to take the MCAT.

Elton Lin:  Yeah, that's definitely not preferred by most students, that's for sure. And there are not that many B.S./M.D. programs. There are other pre-med track programs, where you do need to take the MCAT still, but there perhaps is a lower threshold.

Thomas Fanning: Yes. The students can major in anything they want, which is always the case in pre-professional programs at Case Western Reserve, so we do have humanities majors and social scientists who are going to med school. But the requirement is that you take the pre-med curricular classes, and that you have a minimum GPA in those classes. If you do that, then you have a spot in our medical school at Case Western Reserve.

Elton Lin: Fantastic. So, test-optional is one of those changes, but, generally speaking, how might the admissions review change for this coming cycle? Are there any other major changes?

Thomas Fanning: One of the major changes likely to occur, especially in the early rounds, is that – like some of the other selective schools around the country – Case Western Reserve used something called committee-based evaluation, or CBE. In a typical world, there are two of us in the same office, looking at the same file together, with one review ballot to complete – which means that we are discussing every piece of the rubric because you have to make sure that you have some agreement amongst the readers. So every rating is decided upon by a team of two reading that application.

Now let me step back a second. Because when I was talking about the nice weather in Cleveland right now… Once in a while we have these beautiful snowfalls! So, last year, there were one or two days where we weren't in the office, where we actually used Zoom or WebEx, and actually did committee-based evaluation like this, where technology allows us to share screens and look at everything. So my guess is that with the early action round and the ED1 rounds, we may very well be using Zoom to be doing this, but the idea or the underlying notion is still that you have multiple people reading a file to make sure we get accurate readings and accurate ratings, and that will continue.

Now the biggest piece that’s missing is test scores, but I'm here to tell you that that was a relatively small piece in all the things that get rated. And, actually, you don't even need to rate test scores. You can line them up if you wanted to. And one more point about test scores: so much of the review of test scores, many times, was about the sub-scores.

I alluded to this earlier when we were talking about curriculum, that for those heading into the STEM areas, we probably need to see a strong math and science background in high school. Well, for those STEM students we might very well have been looking more at the math score on the ACT, or the quantitative score on the SAT, and being less concerned about reading and writing or the English scores. Where it might be vice-versa if you want to study history or creative writing or music or dance, where we might not be all that concerned about the scores at all, and we might be looking more at a portfolio of work that you've done in high school, and maybe even outside of the classroom. That's not meant to say it's not important, but there's a different level of importance based on the direction we think you're heading.

Elton Lin: Got it. So, essentially, depending on the major that you're declaring on your application, you’re looking for specific things. And what you're saying is that the overall process doesn't really change. Every application still gets a double read, and you're still looking for particular things that relate to which major students are applying into. Essentially, what you're saying is that by and large the process isn't changing.

Thomas Fanning: If we're taking a deep dive, I also want to say that, after that initial review with the committee-based evaluation, we do go to a committee that pulls the applicant pools from given high schools, and we look at them to see if everything there makes sense. Because you might have multiple readers on different applications, and so we would need to make sure everything makes sense. We have processes in place to make sure, with the high volume of reading that we do, that we were being appropriate and we're being accurate in our review. But yes, I would argue that our process we expect to stay very similar, even though it might be technologically enhanced this year!

Elton Lin: Got it. And one of my other favorite questions with regards to the application process for admission reps is what type of essays do you like reading, and what type of essays do you not like reading? 

Thomas Fanning: Let me preface all this by saying that we know, as a student, that essay is probably the most daunting thing you'll face. At least it was for my kids! You’ve talk about your whole life in 650 words, right?

Elton Lin: Your whole life.

Thomas Fanning: Exactly. Distill your life into 650 words. So the essays I enjoy most are those that are open. Admissions people think we have an authenticity gauge. If I read something that sounds like the student about whom I'm learning through the course of the application, and it's a good writing sample – not necessarily a Pulitzer prize winner, but a good writing sample that seems authentic – those are the ones I like best.

The ones that are fine, but don't inspire me, are those that are cliché. I read the first line, and I know where it's going. And it actually goes there! It could be a fine writing sample, which will make it a great, neutral piece, but in my mind I have a little bit of an empty feeling, thinking, “You missed an opportunity to be you!”

And, honestly, I don't know if we're perfect on our authenticity gauge, but if I read something that sounds like everything else I've read about the student, then I'm intrigued. It's a challenging exercise in the application process, but it's also an opportunity for students to tell us something that we don't know about you. Basically, if you're distilled down into 650 words, you're also distilled into about twenty screenshots, which is the Common Application. Is that really you?

Sometimes people find a challenge here to come up with the Pulitzer prize winner, or the most pithy or the most humorous. But, frankly, if your nature isn't the center of attention and the most humorous in your class, you probably shouldn't try and do that. Think about something that we don't know about you, and let us know that about yourself. Because if it seems staged, then we'll say, “Okay, great, fine writing sample, but, again, missed opportunity to say whoever you are.”

My kids all right wrote about things that were relatively commonplace, but they all had interesting takes on the common things that happened to them. I knew them well, and I loved their essays, because they were so them! I hoped the readers on their on their applications thought the same thing. And they all went to great schools; they went to schools that they really wanted to attend. Obviously they were offered admission at those places. 

Elton Lin: So what you're saying on the essays is that you would love to hear something that's not already communicated on the rest of the application. There's a sense of, “Tell me something interesting and something different about yourself.” The cliché topics, where it's sort of predictable, are going the safe route, but what you want to hear is a little bit about personality.

I've always felt like, with regards to essays, oftentimes the best essays are when students take some really small moment in their lives and then get really granular with the small moments. So what do you think about that?

Thomas Fanning: I think detail is great. If it's too general, then it could be anybody's essay. So detail is great.

I've heard people say this before, and in your profession you've probably heard it too, but it's a drafting process. You need to do a good job, and make a good writing sample, but you write it, you set it aside, come back to it, read it again… And then think, “Can anybody write this or could only I write this?” If only you could write it, then maybe it works.

But I might want to revise a little bit here: if the cliche scenario was really important to you, then certainly use it! I don't want to tell people what to write. But I would rather have you write about something that's important to you than something that you think I want to hear. Because it would seem to me that over fifty percent of the people that write essays for us – and this is obviously not a scientific number. But with so many, we think, “Is this really what you think or does it sound great for what you think I want to hear?”

And again, that goes back to how admissions people gain this belief that we can figure out what's authentic and what's real, sure. But if there's other evidence in the application, then that makes sense. If recommendations talk about you and this bears it out, that's great. Or activities you've been involved in.

And now I’m thinking that one of the challenges people have is on the activities section; maybe we'll talk a little bit more about this. But you have ten slots on the common application to talk about activities you've been involved in, and I think you have 150 characters to tell us about it. So, sometimes, I think really good essays have given us a greater explanation about how deep your involvement in some of these activities. It might have been because sometimes 150 characters doesn't do that justice! But depth is going to be important to us.

We're trying to figure out, what are your curiosities? What are your interests? It doesn't have to be something that you think we would want to hear, but if you're interested in something really obscure or something we know nothing about, we might be really intrigued by that. We might think, “Wow, wouldn't that be interesting at our school?” Becoming interesting is part of the goal here, too

Elton Lin: I want to hearken back to something you said. It's not a precise number on the fifty percent, but what I hear you saying is that there are a large percentage of essays where you feel like they're trying to write to try to appeal to you. And what you're trying to say is, “Don't write to try to appeal to me, because if you do, it almost comes off as a bit disingenuous. But if you just write something that is true to you and be proud of the micro interests or passions that you have, tell us about it!” And it may be something where it adds a bit of diversity to the campus community, and maybe something that you might be really interested in.

Thomas Fanning: I think that is a perfect, concise version of what I just said. It sounds good!

Elton Lin: And then also – though I'm sure there are no parents tempted to do this, who are attending this webinar right now – but, when you read an essay, do you have a sense of, “Oh, a parent wrote this essay.” Do you ever get that sense?

Thomas Fanning: We do get that sense, sometimes, and we'd rather not have that be the case! But, frankly, if you go through a drafting process, you have high school teachers as a part of your English class that will edit or review or give you feedback. In fact, I do it too. I give feedback all the time in different panels that I'm on. And that's fine. Feedback is fine! It's part of a good writing and drafting process.

But, ultimately, we want it to be you. And I do laugh, since the Common App is live now, we're just waiting for the first call – and we get them every year – where the parent calls and says, “I'm filling out this form for my son or daughter, and what do you want for this question?” I think, “Well, I'll give you the answer, but you really don't want to do that!”

Elton Lin: The answer is you want students to complete the process, write the essays, and really take ownership of their application process.

Thomas Fanning: Indeed.

Elton Lin: Terrific. Let me continue on with some more questions. Why don't we talk a little bit about financial aid? I know this is unique, and I haven't asked all the admissions officers who've been on our platform, but tell me a little bit about the financial aid process, and what parents perhaps need to know in preparation for this fall.

Thomas Fanning: I didn't mention in my initial introduction, but in my career I have done financial aid awarding. So I've actually been on the processing side as a part of my directorship at my other institution.

The first thing is – and you already know this – that these are pretty daunting costs. But the business of a college or university is all about the students. You're trying to fill the class with people who are going to take full advantage of your institution. And that's why most of us have really robust financial aid programs, and maybe even merit scholarship programs – to try and make us a possibility for people that might find us out of range financially.

At Case Western Reserve, we are one of the schools in the country – and there are a number of them – that will guarantee to families that we will meet the full demonstrated need. Demonstrated need being the amount above what family resources can bear, based on some forms that they would have to fill out. So our cost minus what the family resources can bear equals the demonstrated need.

Now most schools in this country can't commit to meet everybody's demonstrated need. Which means they're going to give you as much as they can in aid to make it possible that you enroll, but sometimes there's a gap. At Case Western Reserve – and there are others out there – we’ve committed to meet one hundred percent of that difference.

In the U.S. there is a form called the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), and federal aid is tied to that. And, many times, state aid is tied to that. So for any U.S. citizen or permanent resident, we ask for the FAFSA form. But then, we have institutional aid for international students as well.

If every student's applying for need by state, they would fill out the CSS profile, which is a College Board product that gives us some indication of what the family's resources can bear. So those two forms give us some indication of what that number is. By filling out those forms, most colleges are going to be able to offer aid, ostensibly to try and make it possible that anyone can attend regardless of their family's financial situation. Because, again, if a student’s done so well in high school, and is qualified at these institutions, and has all these traits and all this curiosity, any college is going to try and make it possible they can enroll.

Now, there's a lot more detail there, and I'm probably going to leave that for a later time, but in theory we can make it possible that anybody can attend our institution, right? Guaranteeing to meet one hundred percent of the demonstrated need.

Now, Case Western Reserve is a top-twenty research institution, and we know that the students looking at us are also looking at some of the best schools in the world. So to compete for that group's interest, we use merit scholarship money. About a third of our offers of admission go out the door every year with some merit scholarship that is offered regardless of your family's financial situation. And the range last year in merit offers was between ten thousand dollars and thirty thousand dollars per year, as long as you stay in good academic standing for those four years in undergraduate school.

So it's about a third of our offers of admission. The ratings that I alluded to in our admissions process will dictate what that offer might be, if there is an offer, and you would get it in your acceptance package. So if you're applying in a non-binding way – early action PPSP or regular action – you would have that in hand to make your decision by May first.

And you would also have to trust me on this, but if your rating was such that you were meritorious in our evaluation, we offer merit money in the ED1 and ED2 rounds as well.

Elton Lin: Got it. 

Thomas Fanning: We've done it in the past! You'd have to trust me that we wouldn't cut the merit money short. But our view is, if based on the ratings relative to our applicant pool, you would be in merit range, we're willing to use our funds to attract you to the institution. And we need to keep you at the institution. You're not just trying to fill a freshman class, you're trying to recruit and enroll graduates. And, frankly, many of our students are not going to be finished with their college education with a bachelor's degree. So, if this is one way we can attract students who look into the future and say, “I'm going to med school,” or , “I'm going to this PhD program,” – if this is one way we could help to attract them, we do it. 

Elton Lin: What I hear you saying is that, number one, Case Western Reserve does meet one hundred percent of a family’s demonstrated financial need via the FAFSA. And then, secondly, the school is committed to being generous with merit-based scholarships. And I’ll attest to that – that a lot of our students who have applied to Case Western from our pool of students have gotten merit-based scholarships.

And certainly some of our students have ended up attending because the offer was so generous. In light of mounting financial requirements over the course of four years, being able to graduate with as little debt as possible, and also thinking about grad school – be it med school or business school or whatever – being able to manage those costs well over the course of four years is super important. I think this is where Case is doing an outstanding job, trying to really meet the needs of students and really make sure that they get through school.

So the last question, before we go to Q&A, is this. For somebody thinking about applying to Case Western Reserve, what are some things that you want to tell them with regards to their consideration of applying?

Thomas Fanning: If you haven't had a chance to explore Case Western Reserve, I'd invite you to the website. There's a lot of detail out there. But, in a nutshell, it's a research institution doing top tier research. Ninety-six different programs of study.

Historically, our name and our place in the marketplace probably came from the STEM fields. The engineering school is large. If you just think of our name, Case Western Reserve University, and if you don't know anything about it, it could almost sound like a military institution, with “reserve” in there. But it's actually the merger of two schools with long histories and traditions. The Case School of Applied Science, or Case Institute of Technology, and Western Reserve University, which was founded in 1826. It's a very old, traditional school with great history surrounding all the things that they've done over the years.

And there are ninety-six different programs of studies spread amongst our college of arts and sciences, our school of engineering, the Weatherhead School of Management, which is our business school, and the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing.

And what's surprising to many is that, for all of our history and accolades and engineering areas – and, by the way, biomedical engineering is the largest department at Case Western Reserve currently – and we have a lot of pre-professional offerings; but uh you can major in dance. You can major in music. You can major in philosophy and classics. We're a comprehensive school. And one of the interesting things that might make us distinct from some of the other schools our students might look at in the research realm is that, when you apply for admission to Case Western Reserve, you're applying to the university, and not to a school or department. So if you're admitted to Case Western Reserve, you can choose any major that you want.

There's one caveat to that. If you want to major in music, you have to provide a video audition for us. Because students who are studying music at Case Western Reserve are actually taking their music instrumental lessons at the Cleveland Institute of Music, a conservatory on our campus that's tied to the Cleveland Orchestra, which is housed in Severance Hall, on our campus right next to our library. And the Cleveland Orchestra is a world-renowned orchestra. So that's the one caveat to the open-door admit policy.

And, because of the flexibility in the curriculum and the fact that those barriers between all the colleges are broken down, it’s not uncommon to have students double majoring. It’s not uncommon to have a a science major double majoring in art or music, or a philosophy major that might think about medical school, or a business major who's taking STEM classes because they want to work for a tech company someday. We're built that way, and the students who love us, many of them will recognize that as an option. Over half of our students are double majoring, and the flexibility in the curriculum is something they cite as a really important piece.

Elton Lin: Are you also saying that, as an applicant, is it no more competitive to apply in as a computer science major than it might be a political science major?

Thomas Fanning: I'm not sure I would say it that way.

Elton Lin: Okay, I just wanted to make it clear!

Thomas Fanning: Well, this is one of the challenges in the admissions process. When I was talking about my four pillars of admission, one of the issues was, “What do you bring to the institution?” Literally, we could fill the whole school with biomedical engineering, but the accounting major is not going to be happy with that. So one of the important pieces here is balancing across the curriculum.

But there's a little bit of a house of cards built there, in that when you're applying for admission, you'll realize that on the Common App, or the coalition app, you can put two possible majors on there. You're not applying for a major when you're applying that way to our institution.

And if you do say STEM fields, we might be focused on your math and science preparation. But if you say something else, like English, then we might look at other things. Now, if you say English, but you're the head of FIRST Robotics, and you're taking Physics C, and you're in multi-variable calculus… Things have to connect.

Elton Lin: Your story needs to match up, basically.

Thomas Fanning: Of course. It's probably not right to say it doesn't matter what you're thinking of studying. Because, historically, in a lot of the STEM fields, we're going to have many more applicants in those areas. And, frankly, we do a lot of really aggressive recruiting in the humanities fields and the social science fields. Our Nobel laureates typically come from the STEM areas, although our latest Nobel laureate came from the business school.

But I think, historically, we know where we are in the marketplace. And we need a balance. We want to fill all departments, and we love people who have multiple interests that might want to cobble together areas that might not seem to fit, but might fit perfectly in your area of intrigue or your area of interest.

Elton Lin: Got it. So, as I invite Anthony to come back on with us to sort through some of the questions, I think what I hear is that, if you're an intellectually curious student, and you really love to learn, if you are interested in meeting and participating in a diverse community, and you want the flexibility to be able to perhaps pursue a double major, or pursue other interests in other areas, then Case Western could be a terrific fit.

In addition, I think there are a lot of people listening right now who are interested in the B.S./M.D. program. Certainly the B.S./M.D. program at Case is very special, and very competitive, in addition to a great opportunity for students to accelerate their medical training in order to arrive at being an M.D. sooner rather than later.

But thank you so much, Tom. I really appreciate your time. And if you’re listening in, go ahead and enter in whatever questions you have in the Q&A box. Anthony, what are some questions that we have going on?

Anthony Su: Yeah, Tom, one of the first questions that came in was definitely talking about medical, and also nursing fields. They wanted to know how would you review a nursing applicant, and what makes a strong nursing applicant?

Thomas Fanning: When we start releasing our admissions decisions, the most common questions are from potential nursing students who wonder if it's a direct admit scenario or if there's a separate process. But, like I said with everything except for the caveat of music, if you're offered admission, you simply declare nursing if you want to study nursing.

So the criteria… Again, I alluded to this earlier. We're attracting really strong students. We're not real worried that students can't compete academically. So the nursing school trusts us to make good decisions. And they continue to allow us to do that. So that's the way it works.

Our nursing has a distinctive place in the nursing schools around the country, in that our nurses start their clinical rotations three weeks into their first semester. Which is about a year earlier than many schools can do this. One of the reasons for that is we have three major research hospitals within walking distance of campus. University Hospital is right across the street from the admissions office, and then the Cleveland VA – which is the third-largest VA in the country – that's three blocks to the north of us. And then, two blocks to the west of us, is the start of twenty-five blocks of the Cleveland Clinic.

In fact, we built a brand new health education campus that opened last summer. It was a five hundred million dollar project, co-funded by Case Western Reserve and the Cleveland Clinic. And that houses our medical school, our dental school, and our nursing school. So the undergrad nurses are in that new facility, and they'll do rotations through all three of those institutions. Our nursing students will graduate with over 1300 clinical hours, which is far above licensure requirements.

And then, about that pre-professional scholars program – just for your audience, or for our audience here… This past year we had approximately 2500 applicants. We have 60 interview slots, and then we have 20 slots for medical. Now, if you look at our graduates every year, we send roughly 120 to 140 students to med school every year. Out of our undergrad graduates, only 20 of them could be PPSP.

It's a sought-after program, and these are some of the best applicants we've seen. So students who don't get an offer of an interview, or an offer of one of those slots, if they want to be reviewed in the regular admissions round, they are reviewed then. Many of them have enrolled at Case Western Reserve.

Even though we recognize that some people like us only for that program, we get that. And if we don't like them for that program, they don't like us anymore. We understand. But it's a strong pre-professional environment, and, being surrounded by those three hospitals, is many times an attraction.

One last thing about our pre-professional scholars program: the issue there tends not to be with academic qualifications. It tends to be the very important question, how does one know as a senior in high school that they absolutely want to be a doctor? Have they had any clinical experiences or shadowing experiences? How do they know they want to be a doctor? And also, have they developed the empathy, and the worldliness, to be a deliverer of patient care – which is different than being a researcher in the lab making world-shaking discoveries and finding the vaccine for COVID. Those are two separate talents and skill sets.

So if somebody decides they want to be in the pre-professional scholars program when they check that box on our application, there are two supplemental essays. That's the only point, by the way, where we have supplementals. Those supplementals ask specifically, how do you know you want to be a doctor? And tell us why. The way somebody writes about that – their reasoning why they want to be a doctor – tends to be some of the most important pieces.

Elton Lin: I think what you're saying here is that, like especially with regards to how selective the B.S./M.D. program is, you really need to be clear: has that student really determined – even for themselves – that they really want to be a doctor. So this is where you're certainly looking at their resume, at the things that they've done outside of school, in addition to also being academically viable – getting A's in AP classes, etcetera. But they have to have demonstrated clearly that M.D. is the way that they're going to be going. Is that right?

Thomas Fanning: That tends to be the differentiator. And one additional thing, if you talk to the interviewers for PPSP – and I co-interviewed with the medical school admissions team. Not only “How do you know you want to be a doctor?” but the second piece is, “What are your interests beyond the classroom?” They want to know how you relieve stress? What do you do for fun? And part of that is, what kind of person are you? And, again, have you developed the empathy and the communication skills, and the coping skills to deliver patient care? Which is, in fact, what people are studying to do.

Elton Lin: Got it. Well, I want to make sure we’re respectful of time, so, Anthony, what are some of the other questions we’ve got going on?

Anthony Su: Yeah, I'll just ask one more. Of course, we've talked about the nursing program. I think people also really wanted to hear more about the engineering program as well. This student was saying that he got a B in BC Calculus but, that said, he's really involved in aerospace club, and all these other engineering programs he has access to at school. He's wondering how that would really affect him in his application.

Thomas Fanning: The first and most important thing is that the student did BC Calculus, or any Calculus. It's very important that people understand everything is within context. In other words, what school did the student come from? What kind of things are they involved in?

There are a ton of B’s in our incoming class. We love B’s! 

Elton Lin: Really? You love B’s? I'm going to quote you on that, Tom.

Thomas Fanning: Let me let me pose this: how did grading work at the school? Do they give percentage grades. Is 90 to 100 an A, but did the student have an 89 and it turned into a B?

And is that B better than taking pre-Calc and getting an A? Or taking the class called “Calculus,” but you had the opportunity to take AB or BC? That student who was building prototypes in their robotics club, who's involved in the rocketry team, who taught themselves Java – let's say – well, I'm not worried about that B.

Now, if you start getting lower than that, we start worrying. Have you mastered that area? And that could actually be the difference between, “How many points do I need to get this A?” versus otherwise. If we had a recommendation from the teacher who gave that B, which said, this student isn't in there looking for extra credit all the time; this student is too busy looking ahead at this project that they're doing, that's applying what the student has learned. Well, that's exactly what we talk about in our admissions committees

Elton Lin: So what you're saying is that you're trying to understand the context of the student. It's not so much that getting two B's in calculus BC is going to risk their entire application. You're trying to understand a bigger narrative, even perhaps the type of classes that the student had access to when he was at high school. What were they involved in? And it looks like this particular student is involved in individual research and other STEM areas, specifically aerospace. So the overwhelming narrative of that student's application could still be certainly clear enough to warrant that that student would be successful at Case?

Thomas Fanning: Absolutely.

Elton Lin: All right, terrific. Any last questions, Anthony?

Anthony Su: I think we can call that for today.

Elton Lin: All right. Tom, thank you so much. Really appreciate your time, and thank you for coming on! Thank you so much, Tom. Thanks, Anthony. Really appreciate everyone's time.

And if you would like to set up a consultation with us and talk more specifically about your student’s case, we'll include the email in the chat box, and look forward to hearing from you soon. Thanks again, Tom. Appreciate it. 

Thomas Fanning: My pleasure. Thank you.

Elton Lin: All right. Thank you, Tom.

Thomas Fanning: Good luck, everybody. 

Elton Lin: All right, take care. Bye.