The Self-Driven Child
Helping parents raise kids with healthy motivation and resilience in facing life's challenges. Oh, and having more fun while doing it!
The Self-Driven Child
Dream School: Finding the College That's Right for You
In this episode of The Self-Driven Child Podcast, I sit down once again with my good friend and New York Times bestselling author Jeff Selingo. You probably know Jeff from his book Who Gets In and Why, which cracked open the mysterious college admissions process. But now, he’s back with a powerful new guide, Dream School: Finding the College That’s Right for You.
We explore the realities behind the college admissions frenzy—the pressures, the myths, and the real indicators of student success. Jeff and I dive deep into why so many students and families narrow their college lists too soon, how prestige bias and community pressure shape decision-making, and what really matters when it comes to finding the best college fit. Whether you're a parent, student, educator, or just curious about higher education, this episode is a roadmap to cutting through the noise and focusing on what will actually help kids thrive.
Episode Highlights:
[1:55] - Welcoming back Jeff Selingo and his new book Dream School
[3:41] - Unpacking the narrative arc from elite admissions to finding fit
[5:27] - Why students and parents fixate on prestige and how that narrows options
[7:40] - Grade inflation and the overconfidence trap
[10:44] - Why balanced college lists matter more than ever
[13:49] - Conformist bias and how schools like Archer are challenging the status quo
[16:38] - Misconceptions around adding more "backup" schools
[18:21] - Is college worth it? A nuanced look at ROI and student outcomes
[23:06] - Why regional job markets matter more than college name
[26:45] - The value of being a "big fish" at a smaller school
[30:56] - Faculty incentives, mentorship, and why engagement matters
[34:50] - Hands-on learning and mentors as keys to student success
[37:09] - How to spot signs of strong faculty engagement on campus visits
[41:23] - Belonging uncertainty and how it affects student retention
[45:47] - First-year programming that fosters connection and success
[46:59] - Extracurriculars as a path to discovery, not just admissions
[49:59] - Bringing joy back to the college search
[51:55] - Finite vs. infinite games and redefining what college is really about
Links & Resources:
· Jeff Selingo's new book: Dream School: Finding the College That’s Right for You
· College Scorecard: https://collegescorecard.ed.gov
· National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE): https://nsse.indiana.edu
· The Craziest Year Ever in College Admission with Jeff Selingo: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-craziest-year-ever-in-college-admission-with/id1676859533?i=1000650463806
· Who Gets In and Why with Jeff Selingo: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/who-gets-in-and-why-with-jeff-selingo/id1676859533?i=1000613195766
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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
Hey, folks, Ned here, like me, you want your kids, your students, honestly, all the young people you know, to thrive, and you know how much you can help. But like me, you probably also recognize that you fall short more than you like to, in part, because we tend to refer to old ways. We hear a great suggestion or learn a new approach, but to easily fall back into the same darn things that didn't work before, it isn't easy, which is why I'm really excited to share with you that Bill and I have a new book out this spring, the seven principles for raising a self driven child, a workbook. Our goal is to make it easier to put into practice more of the advice from our first two books, the self driven child and what do you say? Full of reflections and exercises to do yourself, with your partner and with your children, we want to help make the self driven child way your way, so that you can, more often than not, be as effective as you want to be with your kids in ways that we know you want to be if you get a chance order a copy bill, and I and your kids would be grateful.
Jeff Selingo:Got very involved in student affairs in college and helped in the office. I just had an office job one summer because I needed to stay in Ithaca. It was less about the office job, it was more about the conversations that I would have with her every every day here, between my freshman year and sophomore year of college, where somebody, by the way, treated me like an adult, had these conversations with me, gave me confidence, helped me navigate difficult situations. Somebody needs to help 1819, 20 year olds do that and finding those mentors, I didn't know. I didn't call her a mentor at that point, but years later, I realized, what would Sharon do in this case? How would she help me, lead me through this situation? And there's so many opportunities that I think students miss out on because they don't find those mentors in college.
Ned Johnson:Welcome to the self driven child podcast. I'm your host, Ned Johnson and co author with Dr William stick street 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 like you. I thought about college a lot before my kids finally made their way to the college admissions process and into college itself. Like you probably have a lot of questions about the ever shifting landscape, one person I've looked to for years is New York Times best selling author and higher education expert Jeff selingo. When I first spoke with Jeff on this podcast in 2023 his book who gets in and why was hot off the presses, it helped me and so many other people understand, if not exactly, make sense, of the college admissions process in 2024 Jeff was kind enough to turn to discuss a frankly harrowing piece he wrote for New York Magazine called inside the craziest college admissions season ever that could Be perennial, I think now he's written dream school, finding the college that's right for you. I see a narrative arc. Here is there. Let's find out. I'm Ned Johnson, and this is the self driven child podcast.
Jeff Selingo:Well, Hi Jeff, hey Ned. It's great to be back.
Ned Johnson:It's great to have you back. So, so narrative, arc, I kind of read that as, here's the plan, here's the way college works. Oh gosh, here's the nightmare, but, but we're going to save your biscuits. We have a we have a dream that can come out of what can otherwise feel like a nightmarish process in your head. Did these kind of things naturally evolve or or do you see them a through line here as well?
Jeff Selingo:Oh, there's definitely a through line here. Because after I wrote who gets in and why, I would go to high schools like you do, right? And talk to parents and students and counselors and everybody would say, Okay, we want to try this. We want to try to get into these highly elite schools. But maybe we don't in some cases, or if we do try and we won't get in, and we need a backup plan, or maybe we can't afford it, and so we need a backup plan. And so everybody loved who gets in and why, because they got to see inside the college admissions process. But then they said, Well, what if we don't want to play that game, or can't play that game? What? How do we make sense of what is a very broad and confusing set of institutions, colleges, universities out there for most Americans, right? Like when you think about just how many colleges and universities there are across the US to anybody, it would seem like choice overload, and it is. And so that's why I did dream school, to give them a sense of, how do we make sense of that broader landscape? A, to get them to even look at that broader landscape, and then B, once they are looking at that broader landscape, how do they make sense of it so the
Ned Johnson:broader landscape. And in your book, you talk about helping folks broaden their lens, their lens to sort of. To unpack that for folks a little bit. In many ways, college admissions is kind of kind of two spaces, one very narrow choices, and too many people trying to get through crowd, through this one door, and then, to your point, hundreds, if not 1000s of other places that people don't know enough about. How Narrow is the lens, and how did it get that way for those among us who are like headed for jonesing for what is Akil Bello, call it highly rejective colleges?
Jeff Selingo:Yeah, I think there's two things that are happening simultaneously Ned and both of them have data to back them up in the book. Let's first start with our communities. So I did a survey of 3000 plus parents for the book, I asked them how important prestige was to them. 16% said it's very important to me. 27% said it was important to their kids. But then this is really where it got interesting. 61% said it was important to their community. So it was all about that signaling impact of the highly selective colleges that we could put on you know, that sticker on the car and the Instagram post on our high schools that our kid is going to one of these highly rejected places. So I think that is happening in parallel with so I worked with niche.com niche is, you know, one of these multiple admissions platforms that students use to put colleges that they're interested in on a list. They have about half, roughly half of high school, college going students are on niche. So I asked them, could you analyze how that list that colleges are built, or I'm sorry that students are building on niche. How does it change when a student goes through high school, as they go through high school? So niche was able to track this essentially, starting, you know, first year of high school through sophomore, junior, senior year. What's really interesting is that students actually start their list pretty wide and broad. They actually look at a variety of colleges, but then it narrows as it should, as they get into senior year. But it really narrows among the top schools in senior year. And why is that? I think two things are happening that gives parents and students a kind of overconfidence that they can make the reach schools. One is they get the test scores. So they finally get their test scores in junior year and they say, Oh, hey, I got a 1500 on the SAT, or whatever it is, or I even got a 1400 I now, you know, I can now, I could drop those schools that are quote unquote lower in the rankings from my list. Also Junior grades. We know are critically important to college admissions, and they're getting these junior grades and they because we know what's happening with grades across the country, they start that, combined with the test score, starts to give them an overconfidence.
Ned Johnson:Why don't you explain to people really quickly who may not know, who only swim in their own little pond and don't know the landscape of I assume you're going to say grade inflation,
Jeff Selingo:great inflation, right? We have great inflation, where everybody is getting a high grade. So it's really hard to differentiate students. Colleges see this. But even in high schools, you see this. So you come home at the end of your junior year. And you look at this list that you put on niche.com and suddenly you're saying, Well, why do I need these, like 10 schools here that are lower in the rankings, that are easier to get into? I don't need them anymore, because I now have this, what I think is a great S, A, T score, and what I really think are great grades. But by the way, everyone else has those too. And suddenly now you have this kind of overconfidence bias, kind of leaking into your college search, and everyone else is doing the same thing, and so everyone else is trying to get through that narrow door. So I think those two things combined, the kind of the community piece of this, as well as what's happening and what we found with the niche data, I think those two things combined are coming together
Ned Johnson:before we get you have some in your book, you have a lot of really good tools that folks can use to sort of get under the hood a little bit more when they're looking at colleges. But before we do that, is there a way that people can relatively easily, you know, kind of course correct on that overconfidence bias, and I'm thinking about like UCLA last year, I guess, had more people apply to it than any of the school in the country, north of 100,000 folks, right? And typically, when they look at who's the average kid at a school, it's the 25th to 75th percentile. And if I recall correctly, the 75th percentile of student who was admitted there had an unweighted GPA of 4.0 so perfect A's Not, not, not with bonus points from APS, whatever unweighted. But the 25th percentile, you know, scraping the bottom of it as it were, had a 3.93 which is what, like one A minus or something. And so, to your point, if everyone's getting an A, and obviously, test, you know, test blind in in California, but still, then everyone's getting into 1500 if I'm a kid who's worked really hard to get those grades and those and those and those scores, how do I know that I'm still not I mean, I guess I'm still credible, right?
Jeff Selingo:You don't know, and I think you're credible to apply. But the key. Is you then need to have the balanced list. And so what's happening, though, is you're not a lock, but what's happening is that overconfidence bias makes you take those other schools off the list, those more accessible schools off the list, and instead of doing that, you should keep them on there, because that is what creates your balance list, instead of adding more reach schools, which is end up what ends up happening at the end of junior year, and so you're stuck with a list now that has all reached schools, and none of those schools that you, by the way, were interested enough to put them on your list six months ago. So what changed the and what I can tell in my reporting is the only thing that changed was suddenly now you think, Hey, I could get into UCLA or Harvard or whatever. And that's why you suddenly add any adding all these reach schools
Ned Johnson:well, and I'll ask in your first book, who gets in and why. You also talked about this social phenomenon whereby, you know, I junior year Ned, would be make my list, and I'd float a school to kind of crowd source it in the same way that I think, hey, so and so is kind of cute, don't you think, and if I met with, ooh, why or where's that school, I would cross it off my list, right? Jonathan Haidt in the in his blockbuster book the anxious generation talks about conformist bias and prestige bias, and we kind of evaluate our choices based on what other people particularly what other people are doing, particularly what prestigious people are doing. I presume that's still a phenomenon, not just with kids, but with parents as well. Yeah, oh,
Jeff Selingo:there's definitely. And again, this goes back to you feel the social pressure to conform with what everyone else is doing. I think this is a little bit about, hey, my kids are applying to these schools, and so I have to apply to these schools, and we see this, by the way, in the data on, you know, I talked about niche earlier, but you have things like score and Naviance, which are the guidance programs, or software that's used in most American high schools. And there's data that shows because they produce these really cool scatter plots so a student could go into their guidance office or go into their score profile and they could see, oh, a student from this high school with this GPA and this S, a t score got into these schools, was rejected. Here was wait listed there, and now that you're able to put yourself on that scatter plot to see how you might do, well, what that ends up happening is it actually helps that conformist bias you were just talking about, where now I'm actually going to only apply to those schools that others in my high school apply to, and that is a huge problem. And in fact, I mentioned in the book a counselor out at the archer school girls in LA who has and I know he's not the only one who does this activity, but every year he has his senior class or his incoming senior class, his junior class, research schools, and he tells them you cannot put any school on your list that students from the school went to last year. So it gives them the list of every school that students in that high school went to. Can't look at any of those colleges. And then you have to come back to me with a presentation about schools that are not, you know, not on our on our radar, essentially. And it's really interesting. And when they make that presentation, by the way, they do not list the name of the school up front. So they don't say, hey, the University of Maryland. And then they talk about the University of Maryland for two minutes. They talk about the college for two minutes, and then people are like, Oh, wow, they're getting really excited. That sounds really cool. And then they reveal the name, and then, as he said, you'll see sometimes the faces drop, especially with parents. Oh, really, that sounded like a great school until you told me the name. And by the way, that just goes back to this idea of prestige, right? Like, how do we think? It's not about fit, it's about how this is going to appear to other people in our community.
Ned Johnson:I've often thought about the college admissions process through the kind of lens of dating, and it's sort of like you Paint me a Picture, you know, or I fall in love with this person. I mean, they're, they're they're funny, and they're kind, and they're smart and they're interesting, and they're really cute and and all these things, all these attributes, but they're only 117 on the list, so obviously I need to be jonesing for someone who is allegedly hotter on the list,
Jeff Selingo:and that's really what this is about, is going to play and Ned, I mentioned earlier about these Instagram posts. I mean, I know students who told me they didn't want to post, you know, these high schools, they're not usually sponsored by the High School, although sometimes they are. Seniors are posting where they're going to college at the end of the year, or even during the year. And I've talked to students who say, Yeah, I'm not quite sure I'm going to post this. I don't know if I want to post where I'm going. They're kind of embarrassed by it, and I'm like, what puts you over the line? That's the thing I'm always wondering, like, why you would post this school, but not that school. And that's really what I'm trying to do with dream school is, hey, if you're looking at Carnegie Mellon. Gym, which is a highly selective place that's heavy in STEM How about these other dream schools that are more accessible, excellent, by the way. And let me name three of them. I named 75 schools in the book. But like Case Western Stevens, Institute of Technology in New Jersey, the University of Delaware, which has a really good engineering a program, right? There's, there are, there's three schools more accessible, have good outcomes, by the way, for their students in STEM but they're the only, the only problem they have, I guess, is they're not Carnegie Mellon in terms of name, that's the only
Ned Johnson:big, yeah, I have a professional colleague who's been a college counselor for decades, and one of the wisest people I know in education, and she threw at me the the coined the term college cousins. So it's like, yes, that's a great idea. You know exactly what you know. What do you like about this? I love your point about mud Stevens and Carnegie Mellon of what are the things that draw you to this place? Should drive to other places, and so don't take those reach goals off your list. But, you know, maybe buy a little insurance so,
Jeff Selingo:and that's the thing, it's this, to me, is really around having a balanced list. And what's clearly happening is, at some point in the college search process, they probably have a balanced list, and then something changes their mind to say, Hey, I should have more reach schools. Or they know they need a backup plan. What's also interesting Ned, in the data and in the reporting for the book, is, oh, yeah, I need a backup plan. But I'm just going to add more schools of the same kind to my list. So I'm just going to add more selective schools to the list, which really doesn't bounce, yeah,
Ned Johnson:I love it. It's sort of like, well, you know that school only accepts, you know, 4% of the people who who had but so if I apply to 25 schools like that, I'm 100% guaranteed to get in somewhere people. That's not how math,
Jeff Selingo:that's not math works. By the way, they have a 4% acceptance rate. So maybe I'll apply to this place as a 10% you know, that's that's expanding my vision
Ned Johnson:here. So there are, of course, all sorts of really great books out there about college and college admissions. Because one, there are a lot of great places, and there are a lot to say about this. One thing I really like about your book, and I hope I'm reading this right, is for any family. I mean, there are some folks who can just stroke a check for$100,000 for college every year for however many kids they have, but for most humans, that's not that's not the truth. And so it's this really tricky balance of where's the school you really want to go to, where's the school that financially makes sense for you and your family and other commitments in graduate school and life after education. And so it strikes me that the book is about the value of college and the values that you want in a college. And I'm going to start if you end the book with talking about, you know, kind of many ways, the tools of ROI around college, but I'd love to start there and end with talking about the values that people bring to the decision making process to begin with. There's been a lot of chatter, you know, Peter Thiel on down for last few years about, is college even worth it, right? You know, how significant is an elite college? Should we even be doing this? And just so, you know, people don't stop listening. What's, what's the thumbnail sketch on, you know, on that question, Is college worth it?
Jeff Selingo:Yes, thank you. Okay, we can go on and on, but yes,
Ned Johnson:not any college at any price, is worth it, right? And that, I think, is something that's really important to note, and something you did such a lovely job of walking people through that. Can you just tell talk a little bit about that and maybe some of the tools that people can and should be using? Obviously, pick up your book and go go at this in detail, but in a bright and
Jeff Selingo:broad strokes. So let me, let me tell you two tools. One, unfortunately, is not really widely accessible, but I wrote about it in my in my book. So the first is, most students go to college to get a job. I'm often criticized because I focus too much on the jobs and earnings outcomes of college, but we know from basically every survey out there, most kids go to college to get a job. And I think most parents send their kids to college and spend a lot of money on college, so their kids get a job afterwards. So just let's look at that for a minute, and let's look at earnings and looking at the college scorecard, which is a publicly available database from the federal government, at least from for now, you could look up even by major, the earnings 510 years out of students who went to that college and even majored in something, as long as there's, you know, majored in math or English or whatever, as long as there's enough students coming out of that major. And what you see when you look at those, and I talked to parents who use this in the book, is there's a lot more overlap than we'd like to think between highly selective colleges and less selective colleges, particularly in certain majors, STEM majors, business majors, they kind of pay off no matter where you go, to be honest with you. But even in other majors, you see a lot more overlap. So that's the first thing I will tell parents and students and counselors to. Use is to really break down your list, look at these colleges and see how much of an earnings difference is there after college. Now I realize that's not the only purpose to go to for college, but again, most important thing the second one, and this was really fascinating to me, Ned in chapter six, I went to Nessie. So Nessie is the National Survey of Student Engagement out of Indiana University. They've been doing it for 20 years. They have 900 colleges and universities participate in a survey that's given to college freshmen on those campuses and college seniors. And everybody says, I just want my student to be engaged, right? I hear this from parents all the time. I don't want my students sitting in their dorm room playing video games. I don't want them to be a spectator to the sport of college. How are they going to be engaged? So I asked Nessie to they, unfortunately, this is the part where I don't love Nessie, because they don't release the results of these nine under colleges. They send them to the colleges. And you can ask, by the way, if your college participated in it, and do they release the results? But I asked them to just separate it by selectivity. So they have 900 colleges, and I sent them a list, and I said, Okay, break these 900 colleges down into five buckets, most selective, little bit less selective, even less selective, all the way down to we accept 80% or more of our students. And what we found was, first of all, satisfaction, highly satisfied across all five of those buckets, there's no difference in student satisfaction between the most selective and the least selective. That's a big deal. Which is a big deal, right? Big deal. But then we looked at things like, you know, Nessie type kinds tests, teases out higher order learning. Like, these are critical thinking skills. These are things that we think colleges should be teaching. And there was not a statistically significant difference between highly selective and less selective colleges. Yes, highly selective colleges did very well on that measure, but they weren't that different than less selective colleges. Here's a big one, student, faculty interaction, high, higher numbers at less selective colleges than at the most selective colleges. And to me, as somebody who's covered higher ed for 25 years, that does not surprise me. The problem with undergraduate education at these most selective universities, less so at the liberal arts colleges, but at these big universities, they care more about research. They care more about their graduate students. I'm sorry it's just true, not every faculty member, but unfortunately, too many faculty member members think that way. The only big difference Ned, where highly selective colleges just outran everybody else, internships and undergraduate research. So what's interesting about that is that I think that's largely a function of who goes to those colleges, mostly people who whose parents went to college, who have the wealth and and often the social connections to get their kids internships, who know that research is an important function at universities, and so as an undergraduate, you should try to work with a faculty member, because those things look great on a resume. Those are the only things that in this nesi survey that highly selective colleges did better.
Ned Johnson:Wow. One thing that's I'll sort of take that and go in a slightly different direction. One of the things you look at, you know, Gladwell, Malcolm Gladwell, this, a lot of this, was the elite institution cognitive disorder was looking at when, when students start in a given Major, the degree to which they persist in a major. Because you mentioned a little while ago that, you know some may we understand that some majors are more well compensated than others, so families are often not only in students as well, not only looking at the university, but what should they be studying and and and then the lifetime earnings, or at least five year earnings, on this, and you had a couple really good insights about how we need to be careful in understanding those, those earnings based on majors. And really, it's a it's a geographic game. I'd love for you to talk about that. And the second piece is, we'll go and talk a little bit about Gladwell on the Herbert Marc, if we can pick that up after there.
Jeff Selingo:Okay, so let's start with college is largely a regional game, with the exception of like Harvard and Yale and maybe Princeton and a few others, most employers hire within regions that the colleges are located in. And this makes sense for most part, employers are looking for local people rather than national people, for their for their hires, but more than that,
Ned Johnson:there's because, why, and this was really interesting to me, and why is that? I mean that that I had never thought about that
Jeff Selingo:Well, because they can't get people so they can't, you know, except if you're at a big national firm that has a million offices around the world and the country, you can't get people to move to some places, right? So I talked to the head of hiring at Lenovo, which is a big computer manufacturer in North Carolina. You know, I also talked to people at Raymond James right, big financial firm located in St Petersburg, Florida. And as they said, we can't get people to move here if they're on the west coast or the Northeast. So why am I going to go recruit at MIT? And by the way, they're probably also. Don't want, you know, California or New York or Boston salaries, and we can't afford to pay that here. So we're going to mostly look at and again, exceptions being, you know, the big, big Wall Street banks and a couple of others. But most people are not going to go work there. They're going to work at more regional employers, or they're going to work at Fortune 50 or fortune 500 companies that have regional offices. And so this is much more of a regional play than we care to think. We can't we think we have to go to the most selective college to get hired by the most selective employer, and that happens in a very narrow set of institutions.
Ned Johnson:And so also, because of that regional dynamic that the when, when folks look at the average salary coming out of, you know, highly selective place in New England that may reflect, not, frankly, the earning power of that job, but the housing cost in that area that they simply so
Jeff Selingo:Fordham, you know, Fordham University in New York is A great example of this. Their earnings outcomes are fan outcomes are fantastic. They are a dream school. They do well on many other measures as well. But the reason why is because most of their graduates stay in the tri state area and the New York area, and the salaries are higher. So of course, their earnings are
Ned Johnson:going to be higher. So you don't necessarily take that Fordham degree and go to South Florida and get and make the same make the same money
Jeff Selingo:Exactly, yes, and that actually, so while that helps a place like Fordham and hurts other institutions in other places where, you know, in the Midwest, for example, you know, de Paul's a bad example because it's in Chicago, but like, say, take a Marquette in Milwaukee, right, or a Creighton University in Omaha, right? Like both of, by the way, on the dream school list as well, but they will be working more regionally, and thus their salaries will be lower,
Ned Johnson:yeah. So let's talk a little bit about big fish, small pond. I mean this, I have known about that research for quite a while, and I find it so compelling, and it's well, once you want to explain that, people probably know this, but talk about what you what you learned and what you shared in the book.
Jeff Selingo:Yeah, I mean, it's this is a lot about we all think, well, our students are at the top of their class at, you know, Beth does the Chevy Chase High School here in in suburban Maryland. They're going to go to MIT, and they will be at the top of their class. And the thing is that that's going to be a much bigger pond with a lot of people who are similarly qualified than you are, or even more qualified than you are. As I say in the book, there tends to be a lot more sharks in those places, right? There's a lot more competition. And you we see this, and some students tend to struggle in those in those situations where if they ended up in a smaller pond, but were the bigger fish in that meaning a smaller college, a less selective college, a college deeper in the rankings, but they were among the top in their class. You there's actually opportunities that are available to you that wouldn't be at a bigger school. And there's a mother in the book Ned who talks about going to Cornell, and you know, in the tour guides talking about all the great opportunities, and she's skeptical about it, because she said, I just came from a high school where they keep talking about all the opportunities that are available, that are really available to 10% of the class, if that. And so I'm skeptical when I go to these colleges and they're saying the same thing, that her daughter ended up going to SMU, was among the top students at SMU who then got all those opportunities, including a study abroad grant, an undergraduate research grant, by the way, help with postgraduate fellowships, who got this really great postgraduate fellowship that she ended up being on with students from highly selective colleges. I'm really thinking though of a woman that I met in the book, who's in chapter two of the book, who went to such a small liberal arts college that I know, but I couldn't name in the book because it's so small, and you would easily identify this student as a result. But as she said, I went there. I didn't really know what I wanted to major in, but the faculty really cared about me. Again, small pond. I got to know the president of the college. I got invited when big speakers came, including Amanda Knox. I got invited to go out to dinner with her. I got all these opportunities. And then when it was time to figure out what I wanted to do after graduation, I decided I wanted to go to law school. All the professors were really helping me with my applications, helping me figure that out. And she ends up at Harvard Law School, not just at Harvard, by the way, she ends up on the Harvard Law Review and and I asked her, as she thought about like, what are all those little things that happened when she was in college and Ned, as she was telling me her story, I really thought about my own story when I went to Ithaca College in upstate New York, a smaller pond. I wasn't a big fish, by the way, the other Hill, right? I wasn't a big fish when I went there, but I because I tended to be a late bloomer. But I remember each year during college getting more opportunities as I was able to prove myself in at highly selective places. Basically the entire class could qualify for that. And that's the thing that I think parents. Parents don't realize, and I didn't realize this as much before I wrote this book. Either, I always felt like you had a swim. You wanted to swim where most of the fish were swimming, to eat the fish. Analogy even more. But in some ways, you it's not a bad thing to be the lead fish, or among the leading fish. You don't want to be the only fish, yeah, but you know, because then you might fall back words, we're really going to torture this in a minute. But you got
Unknown:him hooked, Jeff, so I got him.
Jeff Selingo:But I think that's the thing, like, you don't have to go to these highly competitive places, because when you do, there is a little bit of hoarding mentality there among the students, there's, I heard this so often, Ned, oh, I, you know, among students who went to these highly selective places, I had to wait in line for class. I had a, you know, you had to try out for these clubs. You had to apply to these clubs. Like, everything was a competition.
Ned Johnson:Yeah, there's a great there was a great line. I think I figured it was New York magazine with the dean of faculty, maybe at Harvard, who said that that their students compete for everything extracurricularly, because there's no way to individualize to different. There's no way for them to differentiate themselves in the classroom. So they basically are cutthroat. I mean, you have to apply for joining the Social Action Committee, like, oh, we can only have so many people trying to fix things in our community. Like, holy cow. And then I think it's, is it? Is it the bet Beth, is this student you talk about, yes, and I wrote down the quote she said, where I saw my professors as people who believed it was part of their job to assess, to assist in my personal academic and career development. I mean, golly, you know, as a as a parent who has one kid who's just out of college and another one who's, you know, halfway through, I really want my kids to be someplace knowing that I'm not there with the other adults around him or her are interested in their personal academic and career development, because, you know, isn't that kind of what, where those are the ideal learning environments, and certainly we're paying for it.
Jeff Selingo:And then, just like in these schools, and just like in these schools deeper in the rankings Ned, it's not like you're going to find that like among every faculty member at these schools, just like at highly selective schools, there are faculty members who care. I get that, but, yeah, you're right. But at highly selective places, there's not only all this competition you were just talking about, but the faculty have different incentives.
Ned Johnson:Yeah, with the old knock about, you know, go to a small liberal arts school for undergrad and go to the elite, you know, research, not a bad
Jeff Selingo:piece of advice for graduate school. Not many people are following that because small liberal arts colleges are in trouble now in many
Ned Johnson:places. Yeah, some circling the drain, and some just more expensive than a lot of folks can pay for. You know, it my my writing partner, Bill sticks, who works with you know, a lot of kids who are very bright, but a lot of times for kids for whom school isn't always easy, and finding that right fit is is challenging, particularly if you've got what we describe as a 2e kid, right, who's super high IQ, but emotionally a little bit more sensitive. And he says the ideal learning environment, and you can probably apply this to sports and everything else in the world. He said, the ideal learning environment is a place where you feel challenged, but you don't feel threatened, because if you're not challenged, you're not learning, growing, developing, right? You want to be with people who are, at least some of whom are as your intellectual peers, but if you feel like you're threatened, oh, good, learning doesn't happen. There. You had a line in your book where you said, in these highly, highly selective places, by the way, Sonia Luther said that in highly selective colleges, undergrads are six to seven times more likely to develop anxiety or depression, which is problematic, but and unsurprising. And as you know, not at all in your book, that students become predators in order to survive less they become prey.
Jeff Selingo:Yeah, yes, and that's exactly what happens, because they the competition, just the temperatures turned way up on the competition, and that's what we see. And some students could thrive in that environment. But by the way, I'm not quite sure I want to thrive at that right, where everything's a competition, not just for grades, but the clubs and then the internships and the jobs, and probably I would imagine that extends to your social life as well. Oh, I would
Ned Johnson:think so. I would think so. So let me pivot a little bit away from money and more towards values. And you talk about some of the research out of Gallup, for instance, what are the things that we know that has been demonstrated that really contribute to an ideal, you know, if not dream school, but a really good college experience that helps kids really not just learn, but also and grow, but really thrive and have a successful college experience.
Jeff Selingo:So there are a couple of things that come through, two big ones in particular. One is hands on learning, so that can include a project that lasts more. More than a semester, that could be an internship, that could be a co op, that could be a really working for the school newspaper, yeah, working for the student newspaper, or something like that. And then second, are mentors, and that could be, by the way, faculty members, that could be staff members, that could be others. And I think ned to my own college experience, and I had both of those things. First, as you said, I worked on the student newspaper, eventually becoming editor. It was a very intensive experience that, by the way, then allowed me to work for the local newspaper, a gannetto newspaper in Ithaca, even before I graduated, ended up at the Arizona Republic right after that. So it was a great learning experience. But the mentors are even more critical to me, and it was not just faculty members, two of my greatest mentors in college. One was the advisor to the student newspaper. The other was director, Assistant Director of Student Affairs. I got very involved in student affairs in college and helped in the office. I just had an office job one summer because I needed to stay in Ithaca and I needed a job, and she offered me a job, working in the office. But it was, it was less about the office job, it was more about the conversations that I would have with her every every day here, between my freshman year and sophomore year of college, where somebody, by the way, treated me like an adult, had these conversations with me, gave me confidence, helped me navigate difficult situations, somebody needs to help 1819, 20 year olds do that and finding those mentors. I didn't know. I didn't call her a mentor at that point, but years later, I realized, what would Sharon do? That was her name, Sharon Paul cello. What would Sharon do in this case? How would she help me, lead me through this situation? And there's so many opportunities that I think students miss out on because they don't find those mentors in college.
Ned Johnson:What are some, some things that students and their parents can look for at colleges to know that this is a place where we're likely I mean, there's no guarantee. I mean, one of your there's no guarantee. Expert, you know, no college is everything to all people, but what are things that folks can be looking for are signals that this is a kind of place that's going to make the mentorship more more likely to happen than not?
Jeff Selingo:Great, great question. And so two things in particular. One is, again, as I said earlier, faculty are a mentor. They're not the only mentors, but you're going to spend most of your time with faculty member is on a college campus, and they're going to be your kind of first point of contact, you know, the first couple days you get there. So you really want to look for faculty that, you know, show up to office hours. So if you're on a tour, I always recommend people, if they can walk into the academic buildings, walk down the hallway with faculty offices, see if they're in their offices for office hours, if they're listed on their door, see if they're even approachable, even as a prospective student. I also say, you know if you're seeing classes, this is why you should always go to college campuses during the academic year. If you can look in our faculty members lingering after class. Are they coming early? Are they talking to students? So that's number one on faculty. Second, ask current students. I always will ask students whether they're first year, second year, third year, because answers change. Tell me about the people you've met here. Don't ask. Don't use the word mentor, just like I as an undergraduate didn't really understand what that meant. Just talk to them about who they have relationships with, who did they talk to? By the way, peers, upper class peers, could also be mentors. First year students talking to juniors or being in clubs with juniors, help them through that journey. So it doesn't just have to be adults in the room, but find out who they're connected with. Who do they talk with when they have a problem? Who do they go see? Start to see patterns that way. I think if you could get good answers to those two questions around faculty and around who they have connections with. That really helps you understand if that is a place that kind of develops this mentoring relationship.
Ned Johnson:I think there was a high point, though. I'm not sure, but someone college admissions person was telling me that, and I think was that university that it had a policy of making lunch for faculty in the in the cafeteria was like$1.95 or something ridiculous, where so they would eat with the students, right? You know, when you think about that, I mean, how much you know, if the professors there, it easy, kind of just strike up a conversation over a plate of rigatoni, particularly if a kid is a little anxious than it is to, you know, have the temerity to tiptoe into office hours as a
Jeff Selingo:first year student? No, and that's true. I mean, office hours are a little intimidating to most first year students. I know it was for me. I tell the story in the book about how I was asked to go into office hours for my macro economics professor the first semester freshman year, and I thought I did something wrong, because, you know, faculty members never really talked like that in high school. And so, yes, that is and so again, what are the ways of so some a lot of schools have put first year experiences into place. FYE. These are often called, and these First Year Experiences create these mini. Cohorts within the first year class where they get to know a faculty member in a small way. So they might have it's essentially been often described as homeroom for college, where you get to know a professor who might also, by the way, be your advisor. Now that's more common at smaller schools. You don't necessarily have them at all larger schools, but Michigan State, pretty large public university, they have neighborhoods that they call them, and they're really focused on the residential piece of those neighborhoods. So they have living, learning communities, they have housing, they have dining halls, all within a smaller neighborhood to make the big place feel small. I love it. So those are just kind of some of the things you should be looking for.
Ned Johnson:Yeah, you know because you mentioned in dream school, the work of Gregory Walton and Jeffrey Cohen and I. And I'd first seen this in Paul tufts book, The years that matter most, the idea of belonging, uncertainty and how so many students who don't persist in college. Sometimes it's finances, sometimes they're not ready, but sometimes they just they don't, you know, imposter syndrome and everything else. They don't find their people. They don't feel like they belong, right? They don't feel like they belong. And I nearly dropped your book when you when you noted that 25% of students don't return to college after the first year, and not just to the college that they were attending, they don't return to college after all.
Jeff Selingo:Yikes. No, the belonging uncertainty is a and I, you know, I think this word belonging seems soft to some parents, but how do colleges foster that? Because, and I think what ends up happening and I talk, and this is, you know, proven in the research that you just cited, it's because we think that everyone else feels like they belong and they don't either, right? And so there's been all these experiments that colleges have conducted to just show incoming students, you know, you're not alone here. You feel seen. And again, I talk about my own college experience, where I walk in and, you know, I can't quite find my people in the residence hall. I can't quite find my people in classes, because I think they have it. I think they know it. I just feel like, wow, they they're just so much better than I am. But by the way, many students felt the same way. I just didn't know it. And if I knew it, as we know from this research, if I know that other students are feeling the same way I'm feeling, I might be more vulnerable, and again, I might put myself out there a little bit more and meet some of these students.
Ned Johnson:Yeah, made me think a little bit about Jess Leahy in her book The addiction inoculation, she talks about a university where, in this case, drinking, where you know slightly under half of college students drink, but when you survey people, almost everyone feels that almost everyone else is drinking right? And of course, that then affects their affects their behavior. Oh, pluralistic ignorance was, was the term of, I'm just the lens that I'm seeing things through is just wrong. And so you know young Jeff selingo thinks that everyone else has got his act together and is pulling great grades and he's got it all figured out, and everyone else is looking at Jeff and going, how does he got wrong? Well, and that
Jeff Selingo:belonging uncertainty hits extreme. This is one thing that I you know, I found this research through Paul Tough originally, but one of the things I didn't understand is that it's heightened in periods of intense transition, yep, in life. And what is bigger? What is a bigger transition in life than going from high school to college? Yeah?
Ned Johnson:Yeah. And that's some of you. You talk a little bit about David Yeager and his work, you know, at UT, Austin, and of course, a wonderful book 10 to 25 and how colleges have been able to put together some really simple but well designed programming, almost sort of priming students to anticipate that they're going to have those doubts and so to notice them when they pop up and say, Oh yeah, that was that thing that Jeff told me I was going to experience. And so it's not unsettling, because it's not unsurprising, and
Jeff Selingo:it is simple in many ways, right? Student Success, which has been a buzzword in higher ed now for 20 plus years. When you ask parents, when I go back to that survey of 3000 plus parents, and I ask them, what defines a good school, it's not about prestige. It is about student success. That's what they want. They just want their kids to thrive when they get there. And is it simple to put in place programs to help every student succeed? No, not every student. But there are these small, little, intentional pieces of programming that you can do, especially that first year, to help students, kind of build the scaffolding. And David Yeager talks about this in his book too, building the scaffolding around students that over time, you take it down when they're seniors, to help them launch into college. And that's into life. And I think that's what's missing. From a lot of colleges, and we don't know what to look for. This is the problem during the college search. I always ask parents, or I always suggest to parents, look for intentional first year programming. Many of these things are called First Year Experiences. They could include residence hall programming. They could include small cohort based courses where you're with the same students for especially that first semester, where you have a professor who's also your advisor, so you're focused, you know, you're at least spending time with that person I talk about. You know, Denison and Furman are two the dream schools that have this in place. By the way, both of those presidents, who are terrific, were influenced by the work of Gallup that talked about these, like, kind of high impact practices that are allowing students to thrive,
Ned Johnson:hmm, so even when you're at the, you know, we'll go back to the small pond. You know, you are at a university that feels like it's an ocean, but you they have purposefully constructed, you know, harbors where you feel like you're in a small pond with a smaller school and Ned. You know,
Jeff Selingo:we know how this works, because there's something on every college campus that works this way, is athletics, especially at, you know, a little bit beyond division one, but even at Division One, division one or I mean, athletics in general, it's a team, it's a team sport. Smaller cohort has a coach, usually your mentor, right? It works in much of these same ways. I've always wanted to figure out, how do we apply the learnings of athletics across the curriculum, across the extracurricular activities? Now, the arts work in a lot of the same ways, right? I was an arty kid growing up, and I was in the band and I was in the musical, and it creates those small groups. You know, in college, the newspaper did that. But this is the problem in sports is kind of built in. You're on the team. You know, usually you're recruited into the team going into college. For most students, though, they kind of have to, like they have to find their way to finding these things on camp. And that's a little unfortunate, so that
Ned Johnson:that sort of speaks broadly to something else you talked in the book about just the real value of extracurricular activities, not simply for I mean, it's interesting because I think in high school, oh, you know, I think we've sort of trained a lot of young people to think about extracurricular activities as things to Do to gain admissions to college, rather than things that have value just by themselves, right? And then to learn what you like and don't like, yeah,
Jeff Selingo:try things on. I mean, this is the problem, I think, with extracurricular activities, including sports and most K through 12 schools and in communities, is that you have to kind of pick something you have to, like, specialize in it. You have to do it year round and or you just have to kind of collect these coins to put on your college resume. I think a lot of this, especially in high school and college, is about trying things on, see what fits and what doesn't fit, and that leads you to what you want to do for, you know, the next part of your life. And that's what's unfortunate about seeing activities, especially in high school, as a list baking exercise.
Ned Johnson:No, I think that's right. You know, I've, like everyone else, have, you know, read and been fascinated by Jonathan heights, the anxious generation, and he makes the point that, you know, we replaced a play based childhood with a phone based childhood, which lot of strong evidence for that, I think one could credibly submit that long before then, we had replaced a play based childhood with a performance based childhood. I was talking with kids. Actually, I podcast with kids from BCC, whom you mentioned, and one student said, we think of every moment of our day through the lens of how would a college admissions person think about how we spend our time? And a second said, we don't do anything for fun, but only for does it help us get into college? And that's pretty dreary way to spend four years of adolescent brain development. And I'm hopeful that people get into, either find or make their dream school that they look at their time outside of the classroom, as well as inside the classroom, is something that's about them, and not just, you know, for the next hoop or hurdle they think they have to surmount.
Jeff Selingo:It's, you know, I think when you tell me that story Ned, my my oldest daughter is a year round swimmer, and we went to a a meet outside of the DC area. And I'm looking around the stands where the students swimmers are sitting between events, and there was just like they were either looking at their phone, maybe some of them were reading, but they were just they didn't look like they were having fun. And I'm like, this is like, the best time of life, right? Like, Ryan should be sitting with your friends. You should be, like, out and about, like you had to sit there in between events. Why can't you just go out for a walk if you wanted to? We're just, we've, as you said, we've turned everything into a performance. But even when you're off, you have to be on.
Ned Johnson:Mm. Hmm, yep. Or at least your head is engaged in
Jeff Selingo:that, or your head's engaged in it. What am I gonna do next? We just have really sucked the joy. And in many ways, this has also sucked the joy out of the college search, yeah, when I first started writing this book, I framed it in a way, you know, by agent as well as Gail Ross, and when I first put in the great mentor to a lot of us, a great mentor to a lot of us. And when I first put together my proposal for this part of it was, how do we bring the fun and enjoyment back to the college search process? Because for many families, when I asked them, How do they react to the college search process, anxiety, worry, every word, word. And so a lot of that's because we've made everything in life a race to that line, which, by the way, is not the finish line as No, no, no, it's just yet another race that starts as soon as you get to college.
Ned Johnson:I was thinking when I was reading in dream school about your context out there at the archer school, I learned that I mean, and this is for people that know it's, it's an independent school, and outside of LA in California, it's
Jeff Selingo:incredibly active, incredibly privileged. Yeah, it's a privilege, but, yes, but great school.
Ned Johnson:But one of their, one of their mantras or vision statements, is raising joyful girls because they're already, I mean, academic and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but like, let's have them be a little bit of have a little more joy, which I think is delightful. Like to end with this we find ourselves and our young people we care about so often rushing for the next deadline, the next goal, you know, and it's always the next and the next, the next. And you share in your book some insights by I guess, a theologian, James Carse, share that with us. I think it's a beautiful note for us to be thinking, not just about for the college admissions process, but for us as parents and as educators, how we might be framing our thinking around the young people in our care.
Jeff Selingo:I saw a lecture from him years ago. He's now passed away, but he talks about life as having finite and infinite games. And I sometimes think that we focus on the finite game of getting into college, and we lose sight of the infinite game of life after that. And that, to me, is so often in my conversations that I do feel like, let's put this finite game aside, and really we're playing the infinite game here. What's the long game that we're playing and and unfortunately, I think that we are too focused on the short term
Ned Johnson:at the very end of the book. I mean, there are many parts of this wonderful book that we have not covered, but, but you and I both live in spaces that are more of the sort of the panicking classes. You call them, people who are more undone by privilege than by by obstacles. But you write, and I think this is important to important point to share in higher education, the real threats to the American Dream aren't rejection letters from Harvard and Yale. They're the barriers, mostly systemic, that keep talented teenagers and adults from reaping the benefits of any college at all,
Jeff Selingo:another infinite game that we lose sight of, yeah, that we feel like, oh my god, if my kid doesn't get into Harvard, the world is over. And to be honest with you, most of the people who will be reading dream school it you know, their life is going to be fine if they don't get into one selective school over a non selective school. And by the way, as I said earlier, they actually might get a better education. They will get, I think, a better education at many of these places. And so let's, again, keep our sights on the larger game here and what we really need for a sustainable and thriving society.
Ned Johnson:I love it. Would you be kind enough to read the last line, last paragraph from your book? I think it's just a lovely I love the way you express this, and it's a great note to end on.
Jeff Selingo:And this is the last line of the book. When you find a place where you can grow, challenge yourself and build meaningful connections, that college will become your dream school. And I think this is a point that I try to make throughout the book. Dream school is not a single place. It's not a single school, it's not a single type of place. I want to get into the Ivy League. It's about what your dream is, and we really have to stop connecting that to other people's dreams. Your uncle at Thanksgiving who has an opinion on everything, right? You're maybe, perhaps it's even your college counselor. It's definitely your parents, yeah, it's definitely your neighbors and other people. It's what is your dream school.
Ned Johnson:Beautifully said, Jeff, it's a wonderful book, and I really appreciate you coming back to join me again and more so for putting so much wisdom into this book. It's going to help a lot of folks.
Jeff Selingo:Thank you, Ned, and thank you for all that you do for our kids as well.
Ned Johnson:I'm Ned Johnson, and this is a self driven child podcast. Here are some things I hope you take away. 120, 5% To first year college students do not return to college, any college so fit matters. Being consistently bored is a disaster, persistently overwhelmed, a nightmare. Finding a place where you feel challenged but not threatened, that's the dream for school. Two, when Jeff asked parents what defines a good school, it wasn't about prestige, it was about student success. That's what they wanted. They just wanted their kids to thrive when they got there, just like you do. Three, how do we bring fun and enjoyment back to the college search process? That's what Jeff asked. My answer, buy, read and apply this book, dream school, finding the college that's right for you. I'm Ned Johnson, and this is the self driven child podcast. Hey, folks. Over the past 25 years, I've talked to countless parents of high school age students who care deeply about their kids' education and how they deal with stress and the pressure to succeed. It can help parents to work with a team they trust won't just pile on more pressure to achieve better scores and grades. That's why I founded prep matters in 1997 to create a different kind of experience for test preparation and academic tutoring. This podcast and my books with my friend Bill stixfruit reflect our company philosophy and approach to helping students. If you have a high school age student and would like to talk about putting a plan together, please get in touch with us. Visit our website at prep matters.com or while your kids may only text, you might want to actually talk with a person, if so, you can reach us at 301-951-0350
Unknown:you.