The Jigsaw Puzzle Season

Among the questions posed to me by ASSIST students and alumni, the most frequent by far is, "How did you select my school for me?"

The question is a fair, understandable and intriguing one. Fully fleshed out and completed with subtext, it might read, "From among 130-150 students from 12-15 countries that year, how did you select one of 80 schools for me to attend so that my particular interests, talents and personality were well served - and so that the trust my parents and I placed in you was faithfully executed?"

Several parts of the answer are straightforward. First, we take great care in selecting students who we believe have the skills, adaptability and curiosity to succeed. There is an ASSIST leader in each country we serve who helps us to understand each culture and connects us with the most promising scholars. By keeping the program at a manageable size, we can personalize to a great degree the careful selection of students in whom we have a high degree of confidence.

The other side of the equation is picking outstanding American independent schools. ASSIST staff and Board members make personal visits to each school that applies to become part of the ASSIST program. We want to meet our potential colleagues, see the campus, come to understand the academic and extracurricular programs, and share what will be required of one another. In future years, we continue to visit schools and students to keep abreast of changes on the campus. We are proud of the quality of the schools in our membership and are enthused by the tradition of retention that produces longstanding partnerships.

However, this only answers part of the question oposed above. We have great students; we have great schools: How does that produce great matches? The answer lies above in the title: The Jigsaw Puzzle Season.

In the fall and early winter of each year, schools reenroll with ASSIST for the following academic year, indicating how many full and partial scholarships will be offered, and designating the countries from which they wish to receive their scholars (this varies each year so that schools achieve diversity over time). As these requests are formalized, we are involved in a recruitment process that begins in September in Australia, continues in November in China and Vietnam, starts up again in January in Europe, and concludes with a second European trip that lands the interview team home in March.


As this dual process - school requests and the emerging applicant pool - begins to reach development, we constantly shift gears. How many scholarships are being offered to students in Germany and Moldova? How many scholarships are being offered to girls this year? How many scholarships are offered conditionally if partial scholarship students come from Spain? What percentage of the students offered partial scholarships will accept the offer? Why did I not take more math and statistics in university rather than focusing on British and American literature?
Over the course of this long season, we continue to make scholarship offers until, in the third or fourth week of March, we have achieved equilibrium: We have as many students offered and accepting scholarships as we have scholarships offered. Then the real fun begins - assembling a jigsaw puzzle, simultaneously, from two sides.

Anne Stanley, Vice President of ASSIST, takes the lead in student placement. We both learned this handcrafted method from Ken and Betsy Lindfors, who raised it to an art form. It starts with the folder of an individual scholar, which we read (yet again) and then ask the question: Where will this ASSIST student best fit and find the most success among our member schools? Is she better suited to a day or boarding school? Is he likely to succeed in a small or large school? I think school X is a great fit, but they do not offer Latin. School Y would work well, but they lack an orchestra so she can play violin.

As we assess each folder and think of what a school must offer to make that ASSIST experience an excellent one, we search through our school enrollment agreements and our catalogue of program information (all done electronically now, of course), and look for a school that has requested a Croatian, that offers Greek, that has an orchestra or a chamber music program, and where the student can swim on a team. Four schools meet our initial criteria, but one is in a city (bad match) and another is boarding (we see this student living with a family). Then, we factor in our own instinctive, anecdotal knowledge of each school, and from those two finalists emerges the school that fits best.

One student placed, 139 to go.

The jigsaw puzzle continues to assemble from each side —- filling school requests — while making a good placement for each student. Eventually, after a great deal of shifting and replacement and movement, the puzzle meets gracefully in the center, and each tile becomes part of the mosaic that becomes the ASSIST Class of 2006/07.

Of course, each match cannot be guaranteed to succeed perfectly, and even the best matches may not develop well owing to circumstances one cannot foresee. However, judging from student questionnaires received at the end of each year, the Lindfors Method works extremely well, and we have tinkered little with this winning formula.

So, when an alumnus asks what prompted us to choose Prestigious Academy for him three years ago, we remember that it was the best place for a left-handed, male, French-speaking debater to live with a family and take advantage of the art galleries in an nearby city while studying advanced Calculus. More often than not, the alumnus wisely shakes his head and says, "Yes, that felt just right."

Bob Stanley
President