It's only $25,000.

It was 2006. I was in Singapore for less than 48 hours as part of a post-doc graduation trip to Africa. The idea of living in Canada had never occurred to me and I certainly didn’t have a Canadian American Express Platinum Card at the time. This is what I explained to “Steven” today when it was discovered that my card had been compromised and that $25,000 had been charged to it from a PayPal account in Singapore. “It’s only $25,000,” he noted casually.

I have to say that Steven at Amex was pretty nonplussed about the whole ordeal, especially given that it was Amex and not me who was going to have to fork over, or try and recover $25,000. They canceled my card number and are sending me a new one in 7-10 business days. In the meantime they will open an investigation and be in touch. Steven clearly did not share my alarm, concern, sense of urgency or righteous indignation. He managed it all with Canadian grace and calmness. It may be my only Canadian credit card but to Steven it may have been the 5th, 20th, or 50th time today he’s dealt with such an issue.

This got me thinking about applicant parents. We have hundreds of them a year. If we’re lucky, we have more than we have spaces. But, like my Canadian Amex card, they have only one child in the application process (usually). I would imagine if we are not careful or thoughtful that we, too, can come off as dismissive, nonchalant, reserved…dare I say, Canadian. We have seen it all and it takes a lot to get us riled up. We don’t share their anxiety.

I had dinner last week with one of the “big name” consultants who told me of calling two of the tenschools.org admissions offices to get an appointment for her client. One immediately told her what time and date was available. A chilly reception to say the least. The other asked if she knew what date would work best for her client. Now, this was better. Needless to say, she has a very different impression of these two schools’ admissions offices right now. So does her client.

When we (or our staff) pick up the phone or click open an email, are we Steven from Amex or are we who we used to be when we first got into this business? Unless we are yielding 100% of our offers of admission, never dip into our wait pool, and our classes reflect the perfect balance, diversity, mix, gender ratio, financial profile, and make-up our schools desire, maybe we need to remember that for each parent on the other end, they have only one child, no matter how many applicants we may have on our end. A little compassion wouldn’t kill us…and it’d go a long way.

Compassion: don’t leave home without it.