Sue Paton’s Legacy: Navigating college counseling with aplomb

Think of Sue Paton’s job, Director of College Counseling, as analogous to managing the New York Yankees. She has a perennially strong lineup—all-star students, crackerjack faculty, major league facilities, and die-hard fans (parents). Each admission season her goal is to help the senior class go as far, and reach as high, as possible. Like the Bronx Bombers, the Hopkins Hilltoppers have great expectations. Most Yankees managers don’t last a decade, much less three as Paton has. What’s more, college admissions have changed dramatically during her tenure—far more than America’s pastime has.

Today, roughly four in five Hopkins students score in the SAT range that makes them legitimate prospects for the nation’s most elite colleges. In days of yore, a head of school could secure a spot for such scholars with a phone call to their preferred Ivy. Times have changed, for sure. Even as Hopkins has become ever more diverse and accomplished academically, college admissions have become ever more competitive. To mix sports metaphors, there are no slam dunks anymore. Yale and Harvard routinely reject students with perfect test scores, including some who, in addition, volunteer at a soup kitchen and play the bassoon.

No one knows this better than Sue Paton, who has spent 30 of her 40 years in college counseling at Hopkins. “It’s a point of pride with colleges and universities today that they are on a treasure hunt to find the very best students from across the world,” she said. “They are not thinking, ‘We want to make sure we get some kids from Hotchkiss or Hopkins.’ That’s not the way it works anymore.”

Educating students and parents on how the college process works today is a big part of Sue Paton’s job. She is shepherding 51 seniors through the process this year, her last at Hopkins. None of them is aiming low—and with good reason: 33 of last spring’s graduates, nearly a quarter of the class, are now Ivy Leaguers. Another 18 are attending the “Little Ivies,” while the other destinations comprise a Who’s Who of higher education: Georgetown, Smith, Wellesley, MIT, Oberlin, Skidmore, Brandeis, etc.

This track record notwithstanding, each year Paton strives to convince students and parents alike to seek a Zen-like balance, to be both optimistic and pragmatic in developing their college list, a list that students and parents sometimes don’t agree on. Her calm, battletested wisdom prevails most often, and she is adept at navigating the Scylla of family dynamics and Charybdis of redundant over-reach. She owes her success rate to attributes she holds in common with globetrotting diplomats and candidates for canonization. There always will be a few unhappy campers. Ask any college counselor: it comes with the territory.

Sue Paton is retiring at the top of her game. She is a legend not only at Hopkins, where she has worked with five heads of school since 1987, but also among her secondary school peers and contacts in college admission offices nationwide.

“Sue was a prize to work with, and she is considered a prize by other people in the field, including the directors of admissions at the top colleges,” said Tim Napier, who was Deputy Director of College Counseling at Hopkins from 1996 to 2008. “Places like Yale, Harvard, and Williams really respect Sue and her opinion. It was amazing to watch her work with colleges to help them understand how strong a school Hopkins is, how wonderful the kids are. When she spoke, people would sit up and listen. She knows how to support a student; she really knows her stuff.”

Napier’s perspective on his friend predates Hopkins, when he worked as a college counselor for Choate and a prestigious consulting firm, as well as stints in the admissions departments of Connecticut College and Williams. “Before I came to Hopkins, when I needed help or advice on an issue, I would always call Sue first,” he said, adding, “I know others who did the same.” Of their time together in New Haven, Napier recalls fondly the sound of Paton’s laugh, which periodically would waft down the corridor from her office.

When Barbara Riley joined the Hopkins faculty in 1996, the quality that impressed her the most about Paton was her affable kindness: “Sue was wonderfully welcoming and supportive. She is very intuitive about people—that’s one of her gifts. She can meet people where they are, ascertain pretty quickly how she can support them and guide them. She helped me by making it seem as if it were the most natural thing in the world to be a new teacher at a school like Hopkins. She kind of scooped me up and brought me into the life of the faculty.”

When they first met with Sue Paton, Isabel and Rodion Rathbone, like virtually all parents, were anxious about the future for their two children, Taryn ’04 and Dan ’10. “All I knew going in was it was a big deal and everyone got into a dither,” Isabel recalled. “There were hundreds and hundreds of colleges and I had no idea how one settled on where to apply. Sue was just so careful and gentle and reassuring. It was all straightforward information she was giving us, but the tone and the care with which she said it made me feel good. She was able to narrow things down for us.”

Michael and Emily Sargent couldn’t agree more. “Sue has just a soothing and confidence-building way about her,” Michael said. “Her advice was spot on, as I look back on where Katie ’16 was accepted and which schools were reaches. Sue made sure that Georgetown knew how serious Katie was about going there.”

Sue Paton didn’t always meet with anxious parents in a well-appointed, sun-lit, second-floor office with a view of a flagstone courtyard. For a while she was ensconced in what she described as a “gloomy” cubicle in a New Jersey strip mall working for a private counseling firm. “My very first job was at Bennett College in Millbrook, New York,” she recalled, adding with a wry smile. “I was in the admissions office during the year of the school’s demise.”

When she first came to Hopkins, her department was located on the first floor of Baldwin Hall, in a space she described as “two cement closets.” It wouldn’t be seemly today: her department has become doubly important. It is now critical in convincing parents to send their children to Hopkins in the first place. They do so, after all, expecting a great outcome.

Sue Paton will leave Hopkins with fond memories of her Hopkins family. She has great expectations for her quasi-retirement. She plans to help a friend who is starting up a business, do more yoga and exercise, and have more time to spend with friends, family and her husband, John, whom she met at Hopkins.

“I was single when I came here and everyone was trying to fix me up,” she recalled. “This friend of mine told me about the parent of a seventh grader, so he came to see me about his son, which was a little bogus because his son didn’t need college counseling just yet. And everyone in the administration building knew he was coming to meet me. They were all peeking out of their doors watching as John Paton walked down the hallway.” Sue and John recently celebrated their 25th anniversary, another successful match.