The Craziest Year Ever in College Admission with Jeff Selingo

In this episode of the Self-Driven Child Podcast, we're discussing the ever-tumultuous world of college admissions with special guest Jeff Selingo, a seasoned expert and author who's spent over two decades exploring higher education. We’ll dissect the complexities of the admissions process, the heightened stress it causes students and parents alike, and ponder the crucial question: can anything be done to alleviate this pressure? Join us as we navigate through Jeff’s latest insights and offer a fresh perspective on making the journey to college less daunting.

Episode Highlights:
[02:41] - Jeff shatters any illusions of an improved admissions scene.
[03:16] - Reflecting on the evolution of early decision strategies.
[04:49] - How large universities and early action plans are complicating the admissions narrative.
[06:19] - Unraveling the strategy game behind early admissions.
[09:04] - Discussing the broader implications of the admissions calendar shift.
[13:20] - Commercial dynamics of college admissions and the priority list of institutions.
[15:43] - The quest for diversity in admissions post-affirmative action.
[17:35] - Examining the emotional and mental toll of the admissions process.
[19:04] - How colleges desire for a vast applicant pool.
[21:56] - Encouraging students to broaden their college search.
[23:30] - Debunking the myth of the “perfect applicant”.
[26:05] - Exploring alternative narratives and pathways.
[26:59] - The contradiction of the college application.
[29:25] - Big fish, small pond.
[32:58] - The lottery winner’s pressure.
[37:38] - The cycle of the same few colleges.
[40:13] - Advice to kids in the search and application process.


Links & Resources:
•Jeff Selingo’s past guest episode on The Self Driven Child: Episode 4: Who Gets In and Why with Jeff Selingo
•Jeff Selingo’s Books: Dive deeper into the world of college admissions and student success with Jeff’s insightful publications. https://jeffselingo.com/
•Jeff Selingo’s New York Magazine Article: Inside the Craziest College-Admissions Season Ever
 
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If you have a high school aged student and would like to talk about putting a tutoring or college plan together, reach out to Ned's company, PrepMatters at www.prepmatters.com

Transcript

Jeff Selingo: 0:49

We sometimes forget what we really wanted out of the college search. This is why I like to keep a journal and what are your hopes for college? What do you like about high school? What don't you like about high school like write all that stuff down before you even start to visit colleges before you start making a college list? I think we jump into the college search too quickly by saying, OK, kids get in the car. We're going off to NYU this weekend. I think that's the wrong way to just jump into this. I always encourage people to start the process even earlier, just visiting schools that are near you to get a sense of what is a big public university. What's a small liberal arts college like what's an urban university like and then say, okay, I don't want big, I don't want small, I don't want urban, I don't want small liberal arts in a rural area, you start to think about what you really want out of the process before you buy that T shirt before you put that bumper sticker on the back of your car. Because then we start to get enamored with the brand name. And what that connotes to those people you tell that nap become so much more important.

Ned Johnson: 1:49

Welcome to the self driven Job Podcast. I'm your host, Ned Johnson, and co author with Dr. William structured of the books, the self driven child the science and sense of giving your kids more control over their lives. And what do you say, how to talk with kids to build motivation, stress tolerance, and a happy home? If college admissions is part of your life in any way, or even if you're just a casual observer of the process of applying to college in America today, you might be thinking, it gets worse every single year. And you wouldn't be wrong. Just how bad has it gotten? What is the current state of college admissions? And what if anything, can we do to make it better? Ooh, big questions, which is why I'm delighted to have as our guest today, Jeff ceylinco, to talk about his latest article inside the craziest college admissions season ever. I'm Nick Johnson, and this is the self driven child podcast. A few words about Jeff. Jeff Slingo has written about higher education for more than two decades and is a New York Times bestselling author of three books. His latest who gets in and why a year inside college admissions was something we talked about on a past podcast, a regular contributor to the Atlantic. Jeff is a special advisor for innovation and Professor of Practice at Arizona State University. He also co host the podcast future you and like me lives in Washington DC with his family. So welcome, Jeff. It's great to be here. It's great to be with you. So let's jump into this college admissions. Apparently they fixed everything up. And now it's smooth sailing and low stress. Do I have that about right?

Jeff Selingo: 3:30

Well, they haven't fixed it. And it's not smooth sailing, and it's even more stressful than ever before. So you have a completely wrong. Okay.

Ned Johnson: 3:38

All right. Well, good, you know, glad to be there multiple choice. So a few years ago, James Fallows wrote a new college chaos for The Atlantic, if I recall, it was 2005. And about all the forces that made the whole process crazy making was frothy and frustrating and stressful. But curiously, not just for kids and their loving parents, but for school administrators. Is that in our admissions, folks? Where are we now? 18 years later? Well,

Jeff Selingo: 4:07

looking back on that article, you're like, wow, those were like the easy days. And, you know, he talked, he wrote a lot about early decision. You know, schools have only leaned into early decision starting in 2008, around the Great Recession, when they really wanted to make sure that a big portion of their class was kind of in place. And then they never never let the pedal up from there. In fact, they just push the gas even more on early decision. And that's particularly among the most selective colleges. And then less selective colleges further downstream said, Wait a second, we're losing students now to early decision at these more selective colleges. So we need to get into the early decision game, which they did. And probably the most interesting stat and then New York magazine piece to me, one of the more interesting stats is that the number of applications now filed with the common app before November 1, almost equals are getting a lot closer, I should say, to those files by January 1. In other words, the entire admissions process now has been moved to the first two months of senior year, September and October, rather than the first couple of months of senior year through January. And that's both early decision and what more and more colleges are doing especially big public universities adding an early action, because students want to get an answer and because they're getting so many more applications now. Colleges, Universities just need more time and you can't add more time at the back end. And so you have to add more time on the front end and they're encouraging students to do early action as a result.

Ned Johnson: 5:39

One of the things that I think we saw is that people are applying early but they're not always hearing early in that big colleges get those applications early, but then they ticket to regular decision. Right? Yeah, I mean,

Jeff Selingo: 5:52

you actually apply early thinking you're gonna get a decision early, and the decision you get is no decision. So what's mostly happening at these schools that have gone EA and in a big way, and big Publix, like, a GA or a Clemson or big privates, like the University of Southern California, is that they are not denying outright, they might deny a very few number of them, they might not accept very many. But what they're doing is saying you're deferred until regular decision, which is incredibly frustrating. If you're a student who has said, Well, I just want an early decision, and you get no decision. And yeah, kick to regular decision, which by the way, they're getting even more applications and regular,

Ned Johnson: 6:32

right? Yeah, I was gonna say for folks who may not fully understand that if your kids aren't, aren't here yet. If folks apply early decision, they hear they know where they're going. That's it. And it for folks who play early action, right, they can know that they're in but still go shopping elsewhere. I suppose the challenge is for kids, unlike were at UVA, where they cut them loose, say, Hey, you're not dead, you're not coming to you, they and when I can put my attention elsewhere. Say I'm still pining for a university Georgia or what have you. And I'm waiting, I'm waiting. I'm waiting. I couldn't apply early decision someplace else less. I missed that opportunity here later. Right? Exactly.

Jeff Selingo: 7:09

And so it becomes like this giant strategy game to try to figure it out. And I've been really asking people on both sides what's happening, especially with early action, because again, it's not a binding decision. And what's happening on on one side is that students want to have answers from what I can tell, right? They like having that immediate feedback. And when other students are getting accepted places because they had rolling admissions. Right. So you admit you you send in an application, you might find out two weeks later, or you're getting early decisions in December, and you're sitting there as a senior and you don't have any decisions? You're like, oh, what's gonna happen? Right? So you have more students now applying early action, because they just want an answer. Meanwhile, colleges, universities, see early action also as a competitive advantage, again, even though it's not binding, they're getting kids into the system, perhaps as a yes. And they're able to try to work on them over a couple of months to try to yield them. What's interesting to me, Ned, though, is that the whole calendar now has just moved up into early fall of senior year. And you know what that does, then that moves the entire college search much more into the summer, much more into the spring of junior year, even the fall of junior year, and pretty soon, you've taken away half of high school with the college search.

Ned Johnson: 8:31

And so it's a really great point, you know, certainly I understand for kids and for their parents to know, earlier in the process, rather than later in the process. I'm in whoo hoo. Now we can all enjoy the Christmas and winter holidays, and I don't have to be on tenterhooks all the way to the end of senior year, you can just enjoy your kid and without that unpredictability. So from a brain perspective, hey, that's lovely. On the flip side of it, a such a big part of the college admissions process is I suppose more so of adolescence is kids trying to figure out well, two things. One, they're their brains developing. And so for kids, it's more so for boys, because we of course, lag, as we do, you know, in terms of brain development, making decisions with a little bit more maturity under the hood, probably a good thing. And then also a such a big part of adolescence is trying to figure out who am I and who do I want to be? And well, I mean, certainly what I washed with with my kids, who they were by the fall of their senior year was pretty different than who they were in fall of their junior year. And if this process, I don't know where I want to go, but I know I have to apply early someplace means I have the wedding date on the 27th of June. I don't know who it is, but I've been going to a lot of social gatherings. I mean, it seems suboptimal from a stress perspective,

Jeff Selingo: 9:54

no doubt about it, right, a month to them is like a year to us. And so they are they're changing drastically. I also think that we're taking away to even one particularly interesting and fun and developmental year in high school where they're kind of focused on what's next, instead of what's here. That's the part that bothers me, right? Like High School. For me. I know and for a lot of people really should be kind of a maturing process in that and you're now starting to really focus them on on what's next. And it's interesting, because there's around this time of year, you see all of these threads and different parent groups and Facebook groups and things like that. And it's like, Do you regret your ED decision now? Right, so you probably got your EDI decision and you're deciding where to apply by November 1. You got a decision in December and if you got in, you're all in. You're done. Right. So December, you've made that decision now As forward to march, everybody else has started to make their college decision. And now you're starting to see these kids and families, to your point, like a lot has changed over three months. And that's the problem with a system that I think is really designed for the colleges and not for the students. Can

Ned Johnson: 11:07

we sit on that for a moment? I'd love for you to talk a little bit. And you unpack that a little bit more. Why do colleges want this system this way?

Jeff Selingo: 11:13

Colleges have always been businesses. But I think the competition for students is so intense, right now more than ever before, because there's just fewer 18 year olds particularly. And there's a lot of colleges out there, you have a worldwide market, which you didn't have 30 years ago, you have a much more of a national market that you didn't have 30 years ago. And so it's much more of a business. And in fact, just today, I was talking to a VP for enrollment. And he was just talking about all the different things that he's balancing. Right. So he wants to increase his diverse socio economic diversity, right? Well, that's very expensive to get at a private college, for example, to try to get students who are on Pell Grants, so their families are making $45,000 or less a year, and at the same time they've over enrolled in the pandemic. And so there's all of these different things that they're constantly balancing. It really is a business, right? You're operating a business with customers that are paying a lot of money every year. So your interest is in making your class and doing it within budget. Meaning how much money are you going to spend? Actually, that is number one. And number two, in your priority? Did I make my class? And did I do it at the right price? Everything else about the students and their concerns and their worries and who they are falls down below those top two things.

Ned Johnson: 12:40

Wow. And if I may, from what I understand from from reading so much of your work, that's not uniform in that there. You talk about buyers and sellers, right? The ecologist who can do whatever they darn well, please. And then everyone else is, you know, we got we got to be in the black. Right, right.

Jeff Selingo: 12:57

And then so among the sellers, so the top like 50 colleges and universities? Yes. Do they worry as much about does Harvard really worry about how much they're going to spend on their freshman class? And no, right? Because they have $50 billion in the bank. Right? So so they worry less about that they do worry about the the composition. But that doesn't really change the system at all right? Because they're still getting inundated with all these applications. So they still have to sort through all of them. And so well, they're number one. And number two priority is not as it's not as focused on money, it is focused on okay, we need this many athletes, right? And this many students who are going to be in the debate team and things like that. So there are other priorities rather than the health and welfare of the student, the applicant is pretty low on their priority list, like be damned in some ways. And it's it's kind of a shame. I mean, it really is I mean, I'm not you know, I, I know a lot of admissions Dean's Asians officers, and they're terrific people. I'm not, I'm not saying that they're not. But the applicants that they're reading are not real people to them, they're their paper. And so they're not worried as much about their their health and well being as they probably should be, in my opinion,

Ned Johnson: 14:11

even for his top 50 universities that everyone covets on there, you know, the bumper sticker. Even for those universities, the top priority, they still feel driven to have as many people apply as possible so that they can have the best possible choice that they want for putting together the composition of the glass. And

Jeff Selingo: 14:30

that's even more true than ever before, as I pointed out in this New York piece, because of the end of affirmative action in June, when the Supreme Court struck down the use of race in college admissions, college admissions officers and Dean's now at these top schools they don't know, basically every day during the mission season, how the composition of their classes coming together, but from a race and ethnicity standpoint. And so what they need is the biggest chunk of students as they could find a top and you know, if you think about this as a funnel, and at the top of the funnel, you want to get as many students in there as possible, because that's how you're going to ensure as much diversity at the bottom as possible, perhaps I mean, might be making decisions, obviously, throughout that you don't know what impact that's really having on race and ethnicity. But at the very least, you want as many applicants at the top, there's even less incentive now than there was a year ago to have fewer applications because fewer applications could potentially mean less diversity. Now

Ned Johnson: 15:29

what I want to put a point on this because when I first read that, that inside my brain kind of went one and some people might read that as we need to have eight gazillion applicants in order to find enough qualified people have this or that background. And I don't think that's what folks are saying or what you're saying but because the enrollments boundaries are such a big deal. The kids who we think might be from wherever they're from, you know, from this or that stay in this or that ethnic group. They're amazing. But we don't know whether they're actually going to land at our school because you mentioned that even Duke, I mean, with a 95% rejection rate 5% admission rate only has a 60% yield. So the class of they think they have they've got, you know, I get who checks all the boxes they want, you know, it was lower income, who's an underrepresented minority that they're looking for? who studies this, she's got all the grades got all the scores, they've got him lined up, they don't need 15 more of him, except that, if at the last minute, he's decides to go to Northwestern, rather than do they need someone else to kind of fill that

Jeff Selingo: 16:29

spot? Yeah. Yeah, they need a deep bench.

Ned Johnson: 16:33

So hence the drive for more early decision, because they lock folks and they know who the roster is.

Jeff Selingo: 16:37

Yeah. Yeah. And this year, they didn't know that. Right. So they now know the race and ethnicity of their early decision students. Got it. Basically the common app when they send the applications to colleges, or they transmit them, I guess it really is, they hide that data, and then they release it after admissions is over. So once colleges say, Okay, we've admitted these students, the common app will then turn on and send that data on those students that they have, you know, how they've identified. So admissions officer, while they filled out that on the application, admissions officers are not seeing that data at all. They don't have that in their in their control. Thank

Ned Johnson: 17:14

you for clarifying that. For me. You mentioned that it seems that college admissions folks, well, they care about the health and welfare of their students, which because they're human beings, and these are children, that falls pretty far low down the the process and there was there's a line in, in your article, you basically say, you know that college presidents say they're worried about mental health on campuses, but they're also responsible for policies that make the application process more stressful and confusing than it has ever been before. There's a great researcher named Sonya Lupien, who says you can summarize what's stressful to human nervous system with the acronym of nuts. What makes us nuts, so n is novelty. U is unpredictability, T is threat, mostly a threat to ego, in essence, a low sense of control. And when I think about the college admissions process and reminded of it reading your terrific article, it feels like they hit that, like it's a quad factor, right? You know, your first time going through it, you're sure as heck don't know what's going to happen. Right? It's threatening to your ego was wet, your kid only gotten to such and such school, you know? And then of course, we your sense of control. I mean, now that we can't go full Rick singer on things anymore. I mean, holy cow, right? You're

Jeff Selingo: 18:25

totally out of control. I mean, and colleges, universities like to say, well, students do have some control in the process, in terms of what they're putting on that application, right, their high school transcript, their activities and things like that. But by the way, they're also doing all that stuff, because they think that colleges want it right. My own daughter is going through the high school course selection process right now. And how much of her brain is thinking to I want to take this class? Because I want to take it or do Am I taking this class because someday, a college admissions officer who I do not know, I don't know what day they're going to look at my application. But they may want that class. Like that, to me is the fundamental problem here that even when things are in our own control, as college admissions officers will always remind me around high school transcripts, it really isn't in their control, because students are making choices based on what they think colleges want.

Ned Johnson: 19:21

It feels a little bit like if I get in if I failed again. And it's because of me if I get in is because of them mean it, you know if I can do everything right? If I don't do anything, right, I definitely won't get in. I can do everything right and still not get in. Robert Sapolsky says the killer combination of stress is feeling responsible, but with a low sense controls, right? You make it I mean, a couple of lines in there. I loved when you said that. It's almost a gift of a PhD in game theory. No one can explain the process without it feeling like you're winning a lottery ticket.

Jeff Selingo: 19:55

Yeah. I mean, because so often, I mean, I even feel this way. Sometimes I'm invited to high schools, and I'm explaining the process the parents and and I realized after I say it, after I say what I saw and witnessed, right in the last book. I'm like, if I were sitting in the audience, I'd be like, I want my money back. I want more information, right? Like, that's all you're giving me? Because it sounds it sounds like just a bunch of like processes and words. And you still really don't know at the end of the day, like, what's the winning ticket? And so it does feel like a lottery at the end of the day. And people are, it's again, it's not that people are not sincere in trying to explain a holistic admissions process, but it's not clear. I'm a Special Advisor at Arizona State University and the president Michael Crow. I was with him a couple of weeks ago and he on his desk he has the 1950 likes Student Handbook from the University of California, at the University of California in 1950. They basically outlined exactly what you needed to do to get it, these are the courses you need to take, this is the average you need to have you're in, I think we're providing less clarity here in the US than ever before, especially with test optional. You know that out of the picture, because I think a test score used to tell people essentially where they stood the other day, the University of Georgia came out with its decisions. And they, they put together like a graphic about the admitted class, because the middle 50% of GPAs. And I don't have it in front of me, it was something like a 4.1 to a 4.21, or something like that. Middle 50%, meaning that there's 25% of the admitted class that has above that, above that.

Ned Johnson: 21:41

So I mean, I guess that leads me to the question, if I could say I do these things, and then again, admissions. Why is that? And I mean, I think I know the answer. But why is that impossible for Duke to do and say, if you do you know, ABC and D, then then hey, come on over,

Jeff Selingo: 21:55

because they have way too many applicants who would meet all those things, and they don't have enough spaces for them. That's really what it comes down to. Right? They could set almost an impossible bar and say, Okay, you have to do these 50 things, and then you will get in I guess they could say that. Yeah, but then they also wouldn't be able to fill their athletic teams, they wouldn't be able to fill their orchestras, right, like, there's a lot of things they wouldn't be able to fill, because they set a bar that only a small selection of people that can meet and they may not be the people they actually want. Gotten,

Ned Johnson: 22:26

you talked about in your article about how a handful of years ago at Penn, they said and a third of our admitted students had done independent research. And then that was boiled down in the in the press for, you know, if you want to go to Penn and do independent research, and of course, a cottage industry probably popped up of providing, you know, internships for research or some such thing. That's

Jeff Selingo: 22:46

exactly what happened, right? It's like, this came up at NASDAQ National Association of College admissions counselors last September, and I moderated a panel there. And Whitney soul who's the Dean of Admissions at Penn was on my panel, and we were talking about transparency, admissions, like should happen and other colleges, universities put out more information about who does get accepted that it was the year that you didn't put out an acceptance rate. So they didn't tell. They didn't say that acceptance rate of 2% or 3%, they decided not to do that, they decided to give other attributes of the class and one of the attributes was like a third of accepted students did research in high school. And as she said, once you put information like that out, you have no idea how it's going to be used, or you can't control it. And it did develop a cottage industry, because I think, the anxiety of parents and students, what am I going to do with this information? Now? I need help, right? I need help finding research opportunities, well, who's going to do that somebody could come in, and I'll pay them and suddenly, I'll have a research opportunity. This is where I do see a balance between how much information should we give to parents and students about what it takes to get it, I'm a big fan of the most transparency you can have is better, right? Let give them the information and then they can make the decision. But I do see this other point of view, as Whitney pointed out, the more information we give them, the more it can be used in ways that we can't control. Hmm.

Ned Johnson: 24:14

I'll be anything you want me to be so long as you will take me to prom kinda. I mean, that's, that's

Jeff Selingo: 24:20

exactly what people are saying. John Beck instead, who is a long term observer of college admissions, who is the vice president for enrollment at Oregon State? As he says, you know, we're reading this whole thing, trying to get a sense of who is this kid and for some kids, it's, they're more than musicians, right? They're more of the athletes, they're more of the extracurricular kids, and doesn't mean that academics is not important because at these highly selective schools, it still is. But that's where they're, they're constantly balancing it, rather than tallying up points. Now, the transcripts still matters the most, again, you're not going to get in if you don't have a strong transcript. But the holistic admissions piece of this is that you're trying to say and there was a line Ned, when I was down at Emory for the book, there was an admissions officer there, Mark Budd, who also who would always say, What will this kid do when they come to Emory? Right? They try to that's the picture they're trying to picture like, what is what is Ned going to do when he shows up on campus? What are the classes he's going to take? What are the activities he's going to join? Where is he going to live? And what is he what what really drives them? That's the picture they're trying to form as they're reading this application.

Ned Johnson: 25:34

I love that I love that you know when I not a college counselor, but of course my day job I talk with a lot of kids and one of the things I say to them when they go into visit colleges get away from the admissions folks the lovely folks but but you know, go and sit at the you know, go and go and, you know, go in the cafeteria and Watch the people having lunch and you know that you want to try to figure out? Are there people on this campus? Who are kind of like you? Are the are these, you know, are these? Or is this your crew crowd? Or are they people who are like the kind of person you're trying to become? And I think that one of the things it's so painful about the college admissions process and standardized tests, and probably school generally is a little bit of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle that when you go to measure something, you affect its trajectory. And so where do you stop and take the picture? You know, where do you freeze the kid in the moment and say, This is who this kid is right now, as opposed to as you've just described? Who is this kid going to be? How is she going to contribute over the next next four years, and when I think back into how perfect kids feel they have to be in order to gain admissions. And I just steadfastly reject the idea that it's okay to think about high school as a four year audition for college as opposed to four years of young people developing themselves and trying to figure out who they are. So I love that idea. Dean

Jeff Selingo: 26:55

of Admissions at Duke really had an apt analogy there, because he said, you know, the NBA doesn't just draft and this is actually probably true of the NBA, the NFL that they don't just draft from the power five conferences are drafting everywhere based on potential because they think this draft pick at us, you know, Iona or wherever we are, right? Whatever, pick a pick small college can actually do well in the NBA. And he said that we're doing the same thing. We're we're not just going to the power high schools. We're saying we think these kids have potential at all these other high schools, and that's why we're going to take them. He said, sometimes the NBA gets it wrong. And sometimes we get it wrong. Right. They're, they're invaluable, too. And I think that's really interesting. But but it is this idea that potential is critical. And but then I think it brings up a inherent conflict in or inherent contradiction, I should say in admissions, is that we are trying to figure out the future. But we're basing it all on the past. So the entire application essentially, is the past everything this kid has done up until that point. But we're trying to in the admissions process, figure out where they're going from here. And that, to me is the inherent conflict here. So that's why I think students are contradiction, because I think that's where students have to, they're so focused on trying to make high school perfect, because they know all those artifacts, all the assets that they're going to come to the application with are critical. Like

Ned Johnson: 28:24

and also imagine how then a kid who is spurned by her first choice or a parent who's equally aggrieved, we'll then compare their seemingly more perfect child to another child who is, I don't know we'll call we'll call him a late bloomer for lack of a better description and saying, but but but Mike go back to the tallying up points and and we're, we've got a better spit Polish than that kids who were a little rough around the edges and struggle, struggled understand that, right?

Jeff Selingo: 28:55

It's when I think about my my own life, right, I show in my show my kids, my report cards from high school, which are not great, I will be honest with you. But it was enough to get into college in 1991. Probably there's some great inflation now too, so I probably would do better today,

Ned Johnson: 29:14

but in Chi, your writing abilities.

Jeff Selingo: 29:17

So but I really bloomed in college, I found who I am, I found my people. I you know, college was like a really transformative experience for me. And I just wasn't ready at any age, to have that transformative experience in high school. And I think that's true of many kids, especially boys. As you know, we've Tiempo and and so I do feel that there is it's hard to get over that bar, if you are one of those students, because how do I prove to an admissions officer that you take a chance on me, right, because I'm going to be I am going to be that late bloomer. And that's, I don't know what happens to those students. I don't know where they go. It's a it's a thing that I'm trying to figure out. Yeah.

Ned Johnson: 30:01

And I want to I want to dig in on this a little bit, because I talk to parents, of course, all the time. And a lot of times, they're kids who are, you know, your maybe your academic record didn't reflect your strongest possible academic output. And it may have been you because you're, you know, I don't know you're you're you're chasing girls, you're chasing news stories. You're doing journalism in high school? I don't know. Right, but your attention and your talents were taken elsewhere. So I had to I looked this up just the other day, kind of what the what the acceptance rate is at ethika Right. And because I'm like, I know this guy, Jeff, and he's as good as anyone at the work that he does Baba bonds. But here's and here's the here's the point, though, is, you talked about people who do they regret their early decision? Do you ever reflect on can you imagine how your life might have been different had you gone to another school unethical, right, if you got into

Jeff Selingo: 30:49

it Right, the other Hill,

Ned Johnson: 30:50

you know, the right, you know, would you you know, would you would you have had the opportunity to do the same things. And I asked this because if people don't know, there's a guy named Herbert Marsh, he's the one who put forward the idea of big fish, small pond. And some people will kill themselves to be in the biggest possible pond because they want to swim with the big boys, they want to be at Cornell, or whatever it happens to be. But other people do a whole lot better when they feel because you if nothing else, you have more opportunities at a school, that's 4000 people in a class and then 14,000 people in the class. Do you think about that from time to time?

Jeff Selingo: 31:22

I do. I mean, my wife sometimes would ask me when we first Matt, like, why did you transfer to Cornell is not that far away, right. And I never even thought about it because I had these incredible opportunities at Ethica. And I think that's, you know, this is the purpose of my next book, is to show that there are more than just 30 or 40, or 50 schools, that people can thrive in a lot of places, the elements of what makes a good college, which is really the purpose of this next book, are beyond what we think of as quality in the rankings, right? It is about, you know, belonging, and finding mentorships, right, and hands on experiences, these are all things I got it, even though it was not, you know, in the top 100 of national universities, regional college, that to me is much more important than a name brand. It also is around and it's interesting, because I'm spending a lot of time now talking to families who have made various choices, and sometimes its choices were forced on them in the coding process. They didn't get into their dream school, or they didn't get into their plan a so they, they had to go to plan B others had the chance at Plan A they took it and actually didn't like it. And and one of the things that I keep hearing over and over again, that and again, not taking away anything from these highly ranked schools. Yeah, but you go there. And now you're in a pond of, as you described earlier, a very competitive kids from all over the world just like you, and you can't you've kind of have to keep going right? And then it's about the next thing. And what's the next thing a job right? Rather than taking your time. And again, this is it's almost like high school over again, we're high school was a competition to get into the right college. Now College is a competition get the right job. When does it stop? Right, and so why don't. And so I think now and what I'm finding interesting in talking to some of the students and parents and families, they're deciding, this is where it stops, it stops in college, we're going to go to a college that we think is a very good college, and we're going to slow it down a little bit. We're going to have a nice balance between academics and social and hands on learning and work. And you know what, they're going to be fun, they're going to be fine. I

Ned Johnson: 33:36

have worked with the children of people of endless means many of them, you know, build billionaires, right? And you sit there and you think, well, some of these folks, some of them are great, some of the doing wonderful things with money, which you would hope, but some of them, they have everything in the world, except for peace and happiness. You know? Yeah, you're like, Okay,

Jeff Selingo: 33:57

again, in talking to the students, I don't want to tell you too much about the new book, because I hope that you'll have oh, I can't wait with the new book comes out. But people get there. And they realize, well, first of all, they they feel like they won this lottery ticket, and then you're talking about earlier get in. And so there's this pressure to go as a result, and then you get there and there's a pressure to stay, even if you don't like it, because there's one parent told me, you have to have a story about why you left.

Ned Johnson: 34:27

Why? Wow. Right?

Jeff Selingo: 34:28

Because you want it's like giving again, if we do the analogy of the lottery, why would you win the lottery and give the money back?

Ned Johnson: 34:36

I often think about this. And this is maybe wildly inappropriate, but it's hot with kids. It's like, yeah, so yeah, I was going with Jeff and he's so great. He's so fun. I really like him. But I I had to drop him. Well, I mean, he was number 14 list. I'm really I'm really a top 10 kind of person, right? And so he can imagine like, well, I've married this person who on paper is everything. It's just that we're not happening. We don't like each other for whatever reason, and no, no fault anywhere. But but you do have to stay because everybody else thinks it's the perfect. That could be better.

Jeff Selingo: 35:09

Could be better. It can be so much better. And especially if you have come to realize you don't like it, right? It's yeah, it's cutthroat. It's competitive. It's not people are not having fun. It's unbalanced. And I think that you're also not able to get the courses you want and find the mentors you need and things like that. I mean, college is an again, and maybe we've set a generation of students up for this because we've set high school up as this game to get into college. Yeah, you then get to college, and then it's another game that you have to navigate. Yeah,

Ned Johnson: 35:39

there was an article the undergrads described the cutthroat competition to get into this or that extracurricular activity because there was There were limited spaces. So even just doing the things, you know, there was competition to get in social service, you know, community service organizations, and your thinking you would think there the enough space and opportunity for people who want to contribute to the community that nope, only only the chosen few are allowed to contribute. To use the language you're talking about your second book seems like we could broaden that perspective.

Jeff Selingo: 36:16

We have to broaden that perspective. Because just if you play the numbers game, yeah, right now, you have to, as you noted, in that New York article, the number of applications to the most selective colleges and universities, those except under 25%, they basically jumped up to 2 million now, right? You have 2 million applications, trying to get into these colleges, most of which, you know, are their, you know, their class might be 1015 102,000 students. And there's just not enough space, right? So if we don't start to broaden that lens, you're just going to play this game, you'll you will never win, you will never win. And net, what is interesting to me, because as just like you, right, speak to a lot of parents and students and counselors all the time. Every year, it seems like we're retelling the story. Because you have a whole new group of parents and students who enter the process. Almost like there's collective amnesia about the previous year. Yeah, because maybe they didn't know anybody in the previous year. They didn't listen to anybody, or what I think more likely happens. Oh, it'll be different for my kid. Right? Don't get in. Right when the wind right, it's just I guess it's the same way again, not to use the overuse the lottery analogy, but yeah, I might as well apply to Duke never know.

Ned Johnson: 37:33

So let me because we're recording this right now in the middle of getting admissions decisions back from college isn't Zide, some movie deliriously happy, and hopefully everyone goes out for ice cream, and other people are going to be unhappy with that. And I think they should still go out for ice cream because kids have worked hard and put their best selves forward. There's also in addition to those folks who are going through this right now there is, as you just noted, a whole nother group behind them and a group behind them and a group behind them. There was a story and who gets in and why where you talked about a girl was doing some research on schools, and that she then came and floated that college to her friends. We

Jeff Selingo: 38:11

now live in a world where people share everything I don't remember, I don't remember, you know, applying to college back in 1991. And everybody, first of all, just talking about it incessantly, which I think happens a lot more now. And they're sharing on social media. And so what ends up happening is people end up talking about the same schools over and over again. And this is what this girl in the book did write she would carry around this moleskin notebook. And whenever she would hear people talking about schools, she would write it down and then kind of check it out. Or she would have schools and then she would kind of float them to other people. When a set of students applied to a set of schools, then the following year, the same set of students apply to a same set of schools following you, because all you see is that same ecosystem, we both live in Bethesda DC area, there's probably I don't know, 1000s and 1000s of restaurants in this area, we all go the same ones. Right? Constantly, right? And we and because we all talk about the same ones or we've trying right? And so it's just a self fulfilling prophecy, where we're just so focused on the small group of institutions. And all I'm asking, by the way in this new book, is to expand it just a little bit. Just a little bit, you don't even have to, you know, there's 1000s of colleges out there. I'm not telling you to think about 1000s of colleges. Could you think about another dozen or two? Maybe? Yeah,

Ned Johnson: 39:29

so my point for all of us is, is to reserve our judgments to ourselves. And be curious will tell me about I don't know anything about that school? You know, what, what drew you to that and you know, and act ignorant because we probably are, and show curiosity. And for me, that's one way to help broaden the scope. Because when people are anxious when any of us are anxious, we get what's called perceptual narrowing. And we can we look at the exact just the way that describe the same schools, the same restaurants, the same potential spouses, we can all very the same person. So we should probably help and we can convey that message whether your grandparent or teacher or or you know, our friend, hey, what tell me about this girl, what's cool about it for you,

Jeff Selingo: 40:11

one of the counselors I interviewed at a school for this new book, talks about their counseling program a little bit their college counseling program, and, and they have juniors research colleges that are outside of I think it's top 30 or 40 or 50, or something like that. And they have to present they have to go out and do research on them. And they have to present it at their initial meeting with their parents. And he was telling me that there will inevitably be a parent will say, No, why are you even looking at the school? Oftentimes one of those schools one of the three, they have to research three of them. One of the schools ends up on their list, because they have to go in not being able to look at the school. that everyone else is looking at. And I just think it's really interesting because you're opening up people's eyes to something that they that they don't know. I

Ned Johnson: 40:56

love it. My daughter is at a school called Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont, which you may know, which I had never heard of in my life. And that's why why Champlain, they had this program they have such and such about, there were like two main things that she knew she wanted to study. And she said, and the other and there were like, 11 schools in the country who had this particular thing. And she said the other schools have, like 20,000 people, and I don't want to go to school with 20,000 people. Well, Jeff, let me leave it with this. For people who are listening to this right now. What advice would you give to kids and teens who are just hearing right now? And what advice would you give to parents and students who are a year or two below on a takeaway for anyone who's involved in this process? So we get better, happier outcomes?

Jeff Selingo: 41:41

So if you're in the middle of the process right now, just kind of think back when you first started this, and what were your goals? What do you want to get out of this? Because I think that we sometimes forget, by the time we started, maybe we started this process, beginning of junior year, like what we really wanted out of the college search. And I think it may be too late to do this, because maybe you didn't write it down. But I this is why I like to keep your journal Yeah, find out like what were you hoping to get out of this? And just remind yourself in these couple of weeks as you're trying to make some decisions about what to do. And then the advice for people just starting this process is, is that first of all, write down what you want to get out of this process? First, what are your hopes for college? What do you like about high school? What don't you like about high school, like, write all that stuff down before you even start to visit colleges before you start making a college? List? I think we jump into the college search too quickly by saying we're going to, right Okay, kids get in the car, we're going off to NYU this week. Everyone's gone down to Clemson. And we're going to Boston right, Spring Break time now. Right? Everyone's doing the spring break trips, where they're going to visit colleges. I think that's the wrong way to just jump into this. I think you have started slow, I always encourage people to start the process even earlier, just visiting schools that are near you to get a sense of what is a big public university. What's a small liberal arts college? What's an urban university like, right, and for most people where they live, you probably could get to one of those types of colleges pretty easily. And then say, okay, I don't want big, I don't want small, I don't want urban, I don't want small liberal arts in a rural area, you start to think about what you really want out of the process before you buy that T shirt before you put that bumper sticker on the back of your car. Because then we start to get enamored with the brand name. Yeah, and I think we get blinded by that name. And what that connotes to those people you tell, then that becomes so much more important.

Ned Johnson: 43:40

I love it. I love it. So for everyone going through this process, I wish you as broad a perspective as possible. As Jeff noted, I hope you have deep and insightful conversations with their kids about what matters to them. I'm confident what matters to you? Is them and their happiness. And a focus, as Jeff pointed out on why do they enter this process? What are their values, the very choose will because if you want to get a good education and the things that matter to you can find that if you look for it, you can find it in almost any college in the country. So I hope you guys have enjoyed the process for those of you who are hanging on right now. We're rooting for all of you and one way or the other. It's almost summer. Thanks a million. Jeff. I'm so grateful for the work that you do. And we'll be sure to win your second one your fourth fifth book, what is it for this will be my fourth book for the book. I should remind people really look at the book before this most reason before who gets in why the book was, um, this may be hard for you to believe there is life after college and man, for all of you going there is life after the college admissions process. So we're almost there.

Jeff Selingo: 44:50

Thank you, Ned. It was great to be with you.

Ned Johnson: 44:54

Hey, folks, Ned here. Over the past 25 years I've talked with 1000s of parents of high school students, parents who care deeply about their kids education and how they deal with stress and the pressure to succeed. But these parents need to work with the team they trust won't just pile on more pressure to achieve better grades and scores. This is why I started prep matters in 1997 to create a different kind of experience for test preparation, tutoring in college admissions planning. This podcast and my books reflect our company's philosophy and approach to helping students. If you have a high school student and would like to talk about putting in place a plan, please get in touch with us visit our website at prep matters.com or call 301-951-0350. That's 301-951-0350 Thanks