College Parent Central Podcast
You don’t stop parenting the day you drop your student off to college on Move-in Day. Your role simply changes. (Actually, it’s not simple at all, but it changes.) You’re a parent for life. Join Lynn Abrahams and Vicki Nelson, higher education professionals and former college parents, as they explore the topics that can help you be a more effective and supportive parent to your college bound student. Whether you already have a child in college, college is still a year or more away, or your student is about to step out, start now to gather the information that empowers you to be an effective college success coach to your student.
College Parent Central Podcast
#135 The Truth About College Admission
Vicki and Elizabeth were excited in the episode to welcome college admission experts Rick Clark and Brennan Barnard to talk about their book, “The Truth About College Admission: A Family Guide to Getting In and Staying Together.” This book cuts through the noise, misinformation, and unhealthy pressure surrounding college admissions. While acknowledging the admission system system isn't perfectly "fair," Rick and Brennan believe understanding it empowers families to navigate it wisely. We were especially impressed by the focus on practical wisdom for preserving relationships, fostering healthy communication, and maintaining perspective throughout one of life's major transitions. Join us to discover why the truth about college admission might be the most liberating thing your entire family needs to hear.
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Welcome to the College Parent Central podcast. Whether your child is just beginning the college admission process or is already in college, this podcast is for you. You'll find food for thought and information about college and about navigating that delicate balance of guidance, involvement and knowing when to get out of the way. Join your hosts as they share support and a celebration of the amazing experience of having a child in college.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the College Parent Central podcast. This is the podcast where we talk about all sorts of things that have to do with parenting a college student parenting a student who is getting ready to go to college, thinking about college, and sometimes even students who have just graduated from college. My name is Vicki Nelson and I am a professor of communication, and I am also, perhaps more importantly, the mom of three daughters who have gone on to college and come out the other side. So I come to this topic both as a professional in the world of higher education and as a mom, and I am here today with one of my co-hosts, Elizabeth Hamblett, and I am going to allow her to introduce herself and to introduce two very exciting guests that we have joining us today.
Speaker 3:I am so excited about our guest today, Vicki, I have been following the work of Rick Clark and Brennan Barnard for a number of years.
Speaker 3:They are out there doing what they can too and I'm holding this up for the video Me too tell everybody the truth about college admission and make sure that families stay together while their students get in.
Speaker 3:So they have been kind enough to have me on their excellent podcast of the same name, and so it's just my honor and delight to be able to host them now on the one you let me co-host every once in a while. So for those who are new to me and the podcast, I'm Elizabeth Hamblett. I am the author of Seven Steps to College Success A Pathway for Students with Disabilities, and I first connected with Rick when I was seeking admissions directors at colleges to talk to me about the college admission process and answer some questions for students with disabilities, and he is just as kind and generous a person as you can imagine. And then I got to meet Brennan and appreciate their work together. So with that, I'm going to ask Brennan because I'm an English major who likes alphabetical order to start by introducing himself and his work, and then we'll ask Rick to do that.
Speaker 4:Great Thanks. Thanks for having us. So I'm Brennan Barnard. I'm the Director of College Counseling for Khan Lab School, which is an in-person mastery-based school founded by Sal Khan of Khan Academy and it's out in Mountain View. I live in New Hampshire, I work remotely and it's out in Mountain View, I live in New Hampshire, I work remotely and I also do some work with the Making Caring Common project at Harvard Grad School of Education and also with the College Guidance Network and a bunch of other random stuff.
Speaker 5:Great and my name is Rick Clark. I am the Executive Director for Strategic Student Access at Georgia Tech. I've been at Georgia Tech now for over 20 years. Most of that was in undergraduate admission. As you mentioned, elizabeth, my new role is focused on the future of enrollment at Georgia Tech, specifically as it relates to return on investment and economic mobility for students return on investment and economic mobility for students. But in terms of my work beyond Georgia Tech, I founded the Georgia Tech Admission Blog, which still continues. It's never about us, it's always kind of the broader ecosystem of higher ed and the admission and enrollment landscape.
Speaker 5:And then also, brennan and I partnered, as you said, on writing the book, and then we continue to do the podcast. Our overall goal and what brings us together really is just this idea of bringing perspective and trying to reassure families that the most important thing is each other and that in the vast majority of cases. You know you can't control a lot of this, but it really does work out and being close and listening to one another is way more important than some bumper sticker. So we have that in common, even though our work day to day varies and we kind of come at it from different perspectives. I think that's what also makes it strong yeah.
Speaker 2:So you've already addressed a little bit one of my questions, which was going to be you know why write a book for families and you've talked about that. But I'm curious one of the things you have in the book which is so interesting is this family check-in at the end of every chapter. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about why you decided to put that in and what that does for us as families.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'll start and then, Rick, you can add on.
Speaker 4:I mean I think we really wanted to. I mean, you know, we had written a bunch of chapters about different aspects of the admission experience and we really wanted families to come together to process it and have conversations. And a lot of what we talk about in the book is having conversations early and often about not just college admission and not just this idea of getting in, but this idea of how can this be a collaborative experience and something that brings you together as a family. I mean, some of my my best memories of times with my mom is no longer living and my dad are are are the college journey right Like going to visit colleges and just that, that process, that time of life where you're kind of discovering yourself, and, and parents play an important role in that. And so we really wanted not just folks to just kind of read the chapter and and and take away on on their own what they would, but for families to come together and talk about it families come together and talk about it.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and I mean, like you alluded to, vicki, the end of each chapter.
Speaker 5:We try to facilitate some conversations and just prompt people to either read something additional or reflect back on what they just read and give them some rails to run on, because I think oftentimes, you know, we either make assumptions about where the you know student or the parents are in terms of communication, or even while we might have our best intention, I mean the benefit that Brennan and I get is we get this is cyclical and it repeats itself time and time again. So for both of us, from different perspectives, watching it repeat itself 20 plus times, you know we can get out in front of that and use what we've learned and what we've observed families do really well or horribly in an unhealthy way, and facilitate better, more healthy conversations. And you know, I really firmly believe that 40 is greater than four and that in a lot of cases people focus so much on the next four years, but we should be focused on the next 40 years of relationship together, and that's really what this is about.
Speaker 2:That's really an interesting idea, and I think so often parents forget that some of the advice that we're giving them all of us in this world does come from seeing it over, year after year after year after year. And you do learn a lot and can share from that. That's great.
Speaker 3:And Rick, you've also in part answered my next, one part of my next question, which is about the title, which I think is really important. So you've answered the question about why you talked about staying together to a certain extent. But I think too and I you know, the conversation you had with Sasha Timi of University of Indiana recently and she's a very kind person too was so interesting to me and a reiteration of some of those ideas about having these frank conversations about. You know what can the family manage? You know financially and you know how do the parents see students. So can you talk a little bit, both of you, about, like, what you see families doing? That sort of isn't working to stay them together, help them stay together where they should be going with that, brennan you want to start.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of times families fail to have conversations about kind of expectations. And we talk about the wedges at the beginning of the book, excuse me, of time and communication and so often there are certain expectations or certain approaches to this experience that families have and they're not talking about them and it kind of festers. And then you know it might not come out until later in the, you know, the fall of senior year when things are getting a little stressful and applications are happening, and then it's too late to have these conversations. Or they're waiting to have financial conversations until April of the senior year when all the packages are back, and then it's too late. And so we're trying to get families to talk proactively about relationships and expectations and limitations and any conditions they might have on the admission experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and you know. Again back to, I guess, vicki, as you particularly called out, the end of every chapter to just sort of continue to level set, you know, and walking people through what they can expect and you know understandably why this, you know, from a student side and from a family side is a little stressful and acknowledging that. But once we kind of help get that out on the table, it's really logical. I mean fundamentally and we start with this in chapter one like parents and families surrounding students, they love their kids and that gets lost in the nagging or it gets lost in the pressure and it manifests itself in different ways. But fundamentally, I think the reason why and Brennan and I start a lot of our talks where we'll ask, you know, college admission, what comes to mind, and almost inevitably, no matter what state or country you're in, one of the number one answers on the board is stress and parents say that in particular and it's like well, why, why, why is it stressful? And you know, you think about it's like I've got two teenagers in my house now. It's like it's the turning of a page of a family dynamic and relationship and change of course brings stress to any human and you love your kids. And then also, you know, we know it's going to be an expensive proposition as well, and and fundamentally and Brendan called out two of the wedges Another one is just ego.
Speaker 5:I mean, you know there's all those things get wrapped up into this money change, ego, I mean, and that, of course, is going to breed some anxiety. And so I think, starting by just acknowledging like hey, you know, there are definitely going to be some rocky times, you know here, but nothing that's insurmountable If we can level this and sort of ground this in where it starts. And that's insurmountable If we can level this and sort of ground this in where it starts. And that is, I care for you, I want the best for you, I really want to understand you, and that's what we're trying to draw out and facilitate.
Speaker 3:And is that also what led to the workbook? Because not only have these guys done two editions of their book, but they have also done a workbook.
Speaker 4:I mean, is this a way to kind of make sure that whatever they've read, they kind of follow up on these families. Yeah, exactly, and we were. You know, after the book was out for a year or two, we were hearing more and more from both families but also counselors, saying you know, there's so much great stuff here. We'd love to have some kind of like really practical ways to use this book and our courses and at school and our families, like what are some activities and things like that we can do? And so that's really what led us to build out the workbook.
Speaker 3:So I want to go back also to the beginning part of the title of your podcast and your book the Truth About College Admissions. So talk to us a little bit about why that was an important thing to put in. What is the truth? That's not getting around, or what are people telling each other? That you're hearing Speaking of sickle?
Speaker 4:Well, it's more about the, the, the misinformation Right and there's so much noise out there about college admission. I mean, we we do, we do presentations all over the country and go to high schools and go to communities and and talk with families and talk with students, students and it is amazing just to hear kind of the misconceptions, the myths, the falsehoods about college admission that folks are getting honestly from things like Reddit and College Confidential and Discord and you know their neighbor or you know whoever it is.
Speaker 5:And we wanted to kind of recenter on the truth and you know we don't pretend to have all the truths but we did want to focus folks on kind of what really matters and and try to try to kind of cut through the noise a bit as someone who works on the higher ed side, you know colleges in general in our country right now are under the microscope or sort of in the crosshairs, a little bit about not being as transparent or not being as clear as perhaps we should or could be, and I would say that's actually even elevated a little bit for admission. You know that really deservedly. A lot of my colleagues around the country get criticism for really not being terribly transparent about what's happening and you know, I think that we set out to, as Bren said, maybe not be able to cover everything, but just to be as honest as possible and explain. Okay, look, fundamentally, college admission is not fair. It was never built to be fair. It's about accomplishing right.
Speaker 5:It's about accomplishing a certain mission and you know, at the end of the day college admission, another thing. When we ask people about this, they say things like college admission what comes to mind, it's a black box, you know, it's the Hunger Games, it's all these other things, and I think for us, what we want to say is listen, it's actually quite simple. Admission comes down to two things Supply and demand right, how many seats do you have and how many applications are you receiving and institutional priorities. What are you trying to accomplish? And that is it. And we should just be unapologetic and honest about the fact that.
Speaker 5:You know what, if you're Georgia Tech, as an example, and you're a public institution, it is going to be easier to get in from Georgia than from anywhere else. That is simply the truth and that is logical. Also, it is not not fair, necessarily, but it makes sense because we're a public in the state, receiving dollars from the state, and we're trying to accomplish something in particular which is a certain composition, right, and I think the more that we can just try to say like these are the. This is the honest landscape. You may not like it, but this is reality. We're going to gain confidence and I think also give confidence because at least people then know how to navigate the reality of what you know college admission and enrollment might look like.
Speaker 4:And there's. You know, even the most intelligent people, when they get into this experience, lose perspective really quickly. And also, like Rick was saying, I mean there tends to be a lot of happy talk in college admission you know from. I mean it is sales in a lot of ways and I mean that's something I think anybody who's read anything Rick has written or heard him speak has written or heard him speak. I mean, like he is one of the folks on the mission side who is really transparent and and is willing to kind of, and he has the support of his institution and, um to to really just be honest about, uh, the realities of this, uh, this process.
Speaker 2:So as long as we're talking about, you know, the fairness and the process of students in admissions, you talk in your book about the admissions funnel and I think for any of us who are in higher education you know, we know what that means, but I'm not sure everybody does so could you, could you explain a little bit about how that works?
Speaker 5:Yeah, I'm happy to take a crack at it. You know, this is how admission directors or VPs from enrollment think. They always think through the funnel and the idea being at the very top, you have, theoretically, all possible students out there. We won't even just see high school grads, because you could be thinking about adult learners and transfer students and others, but there's this top of the funnel that is very big prospective students. And then, of course, you go down the funnel to those who actually show interest in your institution, by either raising their hand to say please communicate with me, or, if you want to go a little further down the funnel, by saying I'm applying. And then, of your applicants, you narrow it further to say here are those that either are qualified to be here or do the work, or they're competitive or compelling within our applicant pool. I think depending on how many people you have applying dictates the nuance within admission right.
Speaker 5:Working down from there, we have what we, as the inside baseball wonky jargon, talk call yield, which is, you know, for Georgia Tech.
Speaker 5:Just to use an example, for every 10 admission offers we put out to Georgians, about seven of them will say yes, and so that is yield and that's the group that deposit.
Speaker 5:They say I've been admitted to other schools but I'm picking you, I'm putting down my money to come. And then you have the summer where people break up with each other and things fall apart and they get cold feet and other things happen and we call that melt, which means that of those deposited still none of them show up. And then you have day one and that is they're actually there and they enroll, and so you kind of work down the funnel and you know, we think about the funnel being all the things we care about, you know, trying to develop and build diverse pipelines of talent from our state, from our region, from around the country, from abroad for certain majors. Whatever you're trying to accomplish, you try to build the top of the funnel so that, as it works down, you end up ultimately with the type of class, the shape of class that you were asked to produce by a president or a board or whomever it might be.
Speaker 4:And I think students and families are well advised to kind of think of the funnel in their own way, right, like they might have you know, 50 schools. They begin researching kind of on the larger scale and then you know, it narrows and narrows as they kind of refine their criteria and what they're interested in, and maybe they go visit 10 to 20 or do online visits with 10 to 20. And then that narrows down and they get to you know 10 or so that they're applying to, and that narrows down and then they get the ones they've been admitted to and and finally, you know, at the end of the funnel it's the one school they choose to enroll. And so I think that kind of mirrors, that funnel mirrors what they're looking at on the college side.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm in New England and we just had sugaring season and it makes me think of, you know, all the sap, all those buckets of sap that just boil and boil and boil and get down to the syrup that you want. So, from from both perspectives, from the school and from from the student, hopefully you get down to that really sweet spot at the end and it takes cold nights and warm days.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 3:So, brendan, you talked about students having their own funnel and I love that because I think you and Rick too have talked. You know, speak to students in ways to talk to them about the things that are in their control and the choices that they can make, and I think to your point. It does feel very much and I think, rick was I just reading a post of yours about like things didn't happen to you in the admissions process.
Speaker 5:Can you talk?
Speaker 3:a little bit about that post yeah.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I wrote a blog where, basically, this idea of you know things aren't happening to you, they're happening for you and if you can think about it that way, you know it just really changes the whole paradigm, right. You know, just really changes the whole paradigm, right? So take what a lot of students feel like is a huge ego hit and something that they struggle with a little bit being deferred, right, or being waitlisted. You can look at that as gosh, like I got deferred and they don't want me and now I've got to do all these other things and I'm going to have to wait longer and all of this. That is a way to you know, approach being deferred. Conversely, you can look at that as, hey, I'm being given an opportunity here to tell them more about myself. They're asking me to send my fall grades, they're asking me to write an additional supplementary essay and I get a little bit more time to consider, like, is this the school I want to go to? What are my other choices and options? And be really intentional about, you know, my senior year and everything that's kind of moving from there.
Speaker 5:Frankly, I would say the same thing about being denied. You know, all right, that hurts. Sure, you know we need to understand that you wanted something and that door is closing. Or you know, all right, that hurts. Sure, you know we need to understand that you wanted something and that door is closing, or you know it has closed, but to me that is not a dead end. That is just. That's a speed bump on the journey.
Speaker 5:Right, and you know, time and time again, when you talk to students at any college campus and certainly college graduates they look back and talk about how thankful they are for the door being closed or how thankful they are that they, like at Georgia Tech, we have some students start in the summer. We tell them listen, fall's not an option, you need to start in summer. Almost all those students call and say but do I really have to? I was going to go to Italy or I was going to do this. Whatever, you talk to kids at the end of the summer or the end of their fall, after coming summer and then having fall, and they all say how thankful they are that that was. You know, in the end, the experience they had. It did not happen to them, it happened for them and I really think that you know there's many of these type of ways that we can look at what's going on in the college admission experience and say, really, if you embrace it and Brennan and I talk this a lot college admission, I believe, when done right, is in a lot of ways a guidepost and sort of a bit of a manual for how you should also approach your college in general, your college experience and really life beyond college too, if you can flip that from this happened to me to this happened for me to have that perspective and that confidence that carries you through what is inevitably going to be some disappointments in college, some reroutes in college, some doors closed in college and life as well.
Speaker 5:So, really, college admission I think you know Brennan talks a lot about this Like it's not something that's just like a rite of passage or something that you have to do, like actually a privilege, is something you get to do that has bearing way beyond just this little small time or period in your high school career. It's preparation for life and certainly for college.
Speaker 4:Right, it's just an important way to reframe it. I mean, I think you know, as especially as students are starting out their college search, if they can, if they can reframe it in that kind of I get to do this, not I have to do this, it it. It changes it from like, ok, I need to endure the college process. Right, I need to get through, I need to, like, survive it. It's this, this whole myth about, about, like, how miserable it has to be and it's really a chance. It's a time of opportunity and it's a time to explore and to dream and to think big. And, yes, there's details and there's. You know, it can be selective if you're looking at a certain group of schools, but there's so much opportunity tied up in this experience and so, yeah, we're all about reframing that. Well, and I feel like one of the things you've done in this experience, and so, yeah, we're all about reframing that.
Speaker 3:Well, and I feel like one of the things you've done in this book that maybe is meant to bring not quite levity but a little bit of like stress relief, is starting each chapter with a quote, often from a song. So it feels like a very deliberate choice you made. First of all, I suspected it was Brennan's idea.
Speaker 4:Actually, it was Rick's idea.
Speaker 3:Oh okay, so why do that? What was the idea behind that? Because I do feel like a lot of what you talk about is trying to make this process just seem more pleasant and less onerous. Is that part of the idea?
Speaker 5:That's certainly part of the idea. I mean no question about it, and you know a lot of my. I mean Brendan writes for Forbes and you know a lot of other outlets. I most of my writing honestly had been a blog, very casual and lots of life parallels to the college admission experience, whether they like it or not. I talk a lot about my family and things that are happening, because I think that if you draw parallels whether it be a song quote or just life around us and observations of life around us, it shows that you know what.
Speaker 5:This is not in isolation and this is not something you're actually ill-equipped or unfamiliar with. This is actually seen in regular life all the time and if we can draw that in again, I mean, and to be honest with you, with parents, almost every panel I'm on or program I go to some parent, whether it be in public or afterwards, will ask what's my role Like, how am I supposed to, how do I do this? Well, and it's, of course, coming from a great place. You know they really want to know and and I really truly believe that parents you know who, who love their kids, the biggest gift that they can really provide is perspective, because they're not going to have all the answers. The way they went through the college admission process back in the 1900s is very different than now and there's all kinds of things that are changing even on an annual basis, right, that college counselors like Brennan are trying to keep up with. So they're not going to have all the answers, but what they can tell is how.
Speaker 5:You know. You know our neighbor, like our neighbor, didn't go right to college. He went into the military and then he ended up, you know, coming in after that to get his degree. Or you know Aunt Sally, like she was so heartbroken when she didn't get into her first choice. She thought the world had ended. And in the end, you know how much she loves her alma mater. You would never have known that, right. And I think that that type of perspective and that type of you know life beyond college admission, drawing it in so that the song idea is just to say, hey, yes, some levity, some enjoyment, some just like casualness about this, but also, yeah, just this is not something you are unfamiliar with or ill-equipped to handle. Yeah, just this is not something you are unfamiliar with or ill-equipped to handle.
Speaker 4:And you know we often share this Mark Twain quote when we do presentations. That Rick kind of shared with me. But it was when I was 17, my father was so stupid I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just seven years.
Speaker 3:That's great. Well, you know, rick spoke to parents' role in the process and one of the things that I love in the book is you encourage parents to go from the first person plural we you know to my student, the royal we.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the royal, we, the royal, we. And you know you ask your guests at the start of every interview to talk about their college experience and you know I reminisced about doing that on a typewriter. And to Rick's point, things have really changed in the decades since those of us who went to college went. But even since then, and I would say you know, in the last two years and your book came out, what kinds of changes do families need to be thinking about? And Brennan, especially as somebody who's helping students, you know, think about where they want to go. What kinds of you know? What is your advice? Has it changed based on a lot of things that have happened? You know, think about where they want to go. What kinds of you know. What is your advice? Has it changed based on a lot of things that have happened?
Speaker 4:changed on a lot of things that have happened. This also changed. I mean, I've seen it. I have two children in college and I've seen it with my own kids, you know. And college is just.
Speaker 4:I think if we can get beyond this I mean rick talks about that like the next four years versus the next 40 years but I think we can get beyond this idea of the like this linear journey, right, this like OK, four years you go to one college, you graduate. I mean that's ideal for a lot of families and but for a lot of people in this country that's not how it works. Yeah, my son, for example, started as a February freshman and, you know, didn't start right in the fall and it was the best thing that ever happened to him. He worked on a organic farm for the fall and made money and had had a break from school and started, started college in such a different mindset, just ready to learn and excited.
Speaker 4:My daughter went to college wasn't the right fit. She's transferring, you know, like it's just, it's not. It's not the zero sum game, it's not this like perfect pathway and I think colleges more and more have all kinds of different options and we see credentialing kind of becoming a bigger thing, and we see people starting at community colleges more and transferring, and Georgia Tech has some great pathways programs, for example, and I mean like there's semesters abroad to start college and things like that. There are just so many different pathways and so I think if folks can kind of lay to rest some of their the ways they used to think about a college education and think about it more as this kind of journey, I think that's a lot of what's changing.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I would echo that.
Speaker 2:Do you have any thoughts about how we get that message out to parents? How do we help families not think so much straight line?
Speaker 4:I think it's more and more storytelling.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, I think they just need to hear the stories, because when they can hear and that's why we to your point, elizabeth, that's why we ask that question when we do our podcast interviews because if I think it'd be interesting for us to go back and just like string them all together for an episode, play them all, because very rarely is it.
Speaker 4:I went to this one school and you know it's like I started a local community college or I started this school, I probably would have been better off at this school. Or you know, like the journeys off at this school, or you know, like the journeys are just not linear and and you know, we even do a, a exercise that a lot of our talks, where we have students identify the CEO or president of different brands that they kind of like in their life. Like, okay, look up the, the um president of nike or whatever, whatever you know some brand or something in their lives, and just to see the, the breadth of institutions they attended, and just to understand, um, what the, the kind of landscape is for college admission is, I think, really powerful.
Speaker 5:I was using AI the other day to create some images and I don't know if you guys have, you know, tinkered around with this much, but for whatever reason, even if you put quotes with words right that you want to, let's say, put this word on a building or you want to put this word on a cloud or something, ai actually does a terrible job, um spelling things correctly, even if you quote it, and it's because of the way the algorithm is actually pulling in um, it seems so logical that you put in quotes of exactly what you would want said. Like coming up with the image seems harder than coming up with just like pushing the word onto the building. But anyway, I had the word college on this image and it spelled it literally with three L's. And I started thinking, vicki, to your question, like that's what we should start doing, is we should start spelling college with like three or four L's, because of what Brennan is saying about this idea of college is a big word, it's a much bigger word than we give it credit for, and people think, especially parents, like I showed up in August with my bags packed and four years later I left, and that's just not how it's working now and back to your question about the funnel.
Speaker 5:There's never been a better time than now to be a good student.
Speaker 5:There are so many options out there that the funnel actually in many ways has been shrinking.
Speaker 5:You know we all go into the whole demographic cliff thing or geopolitical, you know relationships abroad, but like there are real threats to the top of the funnel, not to mention like the challenges to the value of college and return on investment, all of that, if you are a good student who's just like walking into the rooms you can walk into every day and taking care of your business, being a good student in the classroom and having an impact on the community, you're more bigger.
Speaker 5:You know your challenge is actually to be closing doors to all of the choices and options you have and I think that that's one of the things that we can continue and we do try to stress. Every time that we give a presentation, we ask you know, how many schools do you think admit less than 25 or 30? And the truth is that's such a small slice of American higher education. Most schools are admitting most students and the more we can collectively work together to tell that story that college is a big word and that you know good students have great options, then I think we're on the right track.
Speaker 2:And as we try to tell the stories and get parents to understand that, because they're very concerned about where their students are going to wind up, some families are relying a lot on consultants hiring admissions consultants and college consultants and I think we recognize that as much as you're trying to keep families focused on what really matters. There are many that are not quite there yet, and so hiring a consultant could preserve the family dynamic. But are there things that are there red flags? Are there things that parents might want to be careful of as they think about whether or not to hire a consultant or what consultant to hire?
Speaker 4:yeah, I mean, and I do consultancy work, I think there is I'm biased, but I think there is, you know, I think there is. I mean I'm biased, but I think there's a role for consultants. I mean, I think there is. Unfortunately, there are a lot of students in this country don't have access to counseling and support, and so I think there's a role and there's a role for pro bono counseling and there's a role for, you know, consultants to help families. I would say.
Speaker 4:I mean, if you're on social media and you've probably seen a lot of the consultants that prey on fear, and I would go running the other direction. Or I think, the consultants who have certain titles that are all about like top colleges or top tier or focused on one subset of colleges, like Ivy or Ivy this or Ivy that, or you know, whatever it might be. I think maybe that's fine for some people, but I think it does the opposite of what Rick and I were just talking about. It narrows it. There's only this one set of acceptable colleges and we somehow have the kind of secret sauce to get you in there, and it's just not what this experience, it's not what education is about. So so that would be my piece.
Speaker 2:So I I know we need to finish up. I want to. I want to keep talking for a long time because I think you know I want to hear what you have to say, but I think a lot of families do too. But we do have a time limit because everybody's busy. So I'd like to end by asking each one more question. I really liked that you sort of close your book with closing letters. You each write a letter to families, and it felt very personal and it summed up a lot of what you're saying. So what I'd like to do is give you each a quote from your letter and ask you why you ended with that and why that was your message. And I may have pulled something that wasn't at all what you wanted to talk about, but you're going to try. So, rick, let me start with you. And you just said control what you can control. Why is that your message?
Speaker 5:Yeah Well, first of all, with Johns Hopkins and publishing this, they farmed it out for an audio book. I guess this is like a standard contract. And so I've heard people say, oh, I listened to your book, you know, and I I've told every one of them that we asked to find if you want to do that. But, like, can we just read our letters? You know, even if you had the same person do the rest of the book, like we would love to do our letters because it is personal, you know, it is personal and no-transcript happens in that room. They end up getting documentaries made about them and Netflix they go to jail, you know. But you can control your living room, right, you can control your classroom and how you show up in your living room, how you show up in your classroom. And back to that point about when we asked the question, college admission, what comes to mind? And people say stress some of that because it feels unwieldy and it feels like things they don't know or things they can't control. But you know what, what Brennan and I like and this is my, this is my take on it there's 25% at the very beginning of this that you fully control. And that is where do I want to apply? You know nobody is making you apply to certain colleges and so you get to choose of all these amazing places. Where do I want to apply? All right, that's fully in your control.
Speaker 5:There's 25% there that is not in your control. How much? You know? How much money do they give you to come and do you get in? Sure, that's true. But if you came up with a good list of places, a balanced list of places, you know that were some predictable and some less predictable. You're going to have options and that's where we get right. We get to this point where you get to choose where you go. You've gotten into three or five of the 10 or 11 you applied to and now you get to pick. You get to choose based on affordability and match and all those things, and that, if you stopped there, that would be 67%. That'd be two thirds, which is pretty good. I think most of us would love two thirds of control of our day. But during the pandemic, I picked everybody up eight extra percentage points to go from 67 to 75% by teaching a class at Georgia Tech. It's a freshman seminar class and I saw kids show up in very different ways.
Speaker 5:Some of them showed up in fall of 2020, just pissed off that. This is my college experience. We're wearing masks, we're social, distanced. Only 57% of the campus is here like this is college. And then you had these other students showing up, same classroom and they're like this is amazing, you know, like I'm out of the basement and there's other kids my age here and they're just like all in fully going to embrace and take advantage of the place. They ended up right and, who knows, in that same classroom there were some that didn't get into their first choice or couldn't afford one of the places they went, but when they showed up where they showed up, they were fully engaged and that's 75% control of the college admission experience.
Speaker 5:And think about that. You got to choose where you applied, you got to pick where you went and you showed up with this mentality of going to fully embrace it. Like, in my opinion, that is winning, that is success, more than a certain bumper sticker, more than anything else, and so when you reframe it that way, you go from stress to wait. Okay, that actually sounds pretty good.
Speaker 2:It does. Yes, all right, just Brennan, I want to give you one and then we'll let you go. Brennan, you said this experience is about relationships, communication and choice communication breaking down just in society and in families.
Speaker 4:And we see what happens when we don't nurture relationships and don't have dialogue around things.
Speaker 4:And you know, I think relationships within the family, but just also kind of writ large, are so important to overall success. As we talk about success and kind of just general happiness and contentness in life, and you know, you see the loneliness epidemic and I mean everything, it all comes back to relationships and how we treat each other and how we engage with each other and and that leads to choice. When you can nurture those relationships and when you can communicate well with other people, then you it comes. I mean, it goes hand in hand with what Rick's talking about, with control, right, like, if you um, can, um, uh, just build on those and, um, nurture those pieces, then you'll have choices. You'll have choices and and life is about choice and college is about choice. And when you limit it to oh I, you know, this one school is, this is the only choice I have, or this one experience is the only choice I have, it's just it shuts things down. So it's all about relationships.
Speaker 2:I think that that's a wonderful place to end this conversation, since we can't keep going and we're going to put some information in the show notes about your book and about how people can follow up if they need to follow up. But we're so grateful to you two for being here and sharing what you have and thank you so, so much.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me. I enjoyed it, thank you.