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"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." 

It’s perhaps a quote more famous than the controversial and scandal-ridden boxer who said it: Mike Tyson.

Everybody does have a plan until that one thing you need to happen doesn’t work out—that punch in the mouth. And in recent years, I’ve heard from so many students, parents, and counselors who have been punched in the mouth by the college admissions process: The kid who never really engaged in the college search. The acceptance that didn’t arrive as expected. The financial aid package that wasn’t quite enough. The bad fit where the teenager never found their crowd on campus.

And many families didn’t have a back-up plan, an option B. They didn’t know what to do next, or if they figured it out, there were regrets that the back-up plan wasn’t the initial approach right from the start.

If I’ve learned one thing when meeting with families and counselors since the release of Who Gets In and Why, it’s that higher ed in general—and the admissions process, specifically—is confusing and filled with so much uncertainty about where to go, getting in (at some campuses), and paying for it (at most campuses). Add to that the worries parents have about their kids coming out of the pandemic—their academic preparedness, their resilience. And then there is the ambiguity of the job market given AI. No wonder we all feel the need to put pressure on ourselves—and by extension our kids—to get it right.

We need a new playbook to navigate this uncertainty in going to college—and it’s one I hope to provide. The official news will come out in a few weeks: I recently signed a contract with my publisher, Simon & Schuster, to write a follow-up book to Who Gets In and Why.

The tentative title of the next book is Dream School: The College Admissions Playbook for the Rest of Us.

(Cue the e-mail responses! Figuring out the title to a book is an impossible task. The tentative title for my last book was “The Choice.” The “Who Gets In and Why” part was in the original subtitle. In this case, Option B was taken, and Plan B has, well, other meanings.)

If there was one criticism of my last book that I took to heart was that it focused heavily on highly selective colleges given where I embedded myself. This new book got its start on the road. In almost every talk I gave, parents would inevitably ask: you’re encouraging us to widen our lens beyond the top colleges, but what are we exactly looking for?

Then last March, when I asked for your feedback on a spinoff newsletter I planned to launch (more on that in a minute), I heard this from a father of triplets: “All the talk is about top tier schools,” he wrote. “Even when the discussion is not focused on Harvard, it’s about Bates. For most families, those are still top tier schools.” (By the way, if you’re that father with one of your kids at Clarkson, please reach out, because I’d like to talk further.)

This dad rightly pointed out that most middle-class families won’t qualify for much need-based aid, so they look for schools where they can get a decent discount on tuition—all while balancing prestige and outcomes. “It’s extremely hard to sift through the hundreds of mid-level schools to find ‘good’ ones that could meet each child’s needs,” this father wrote.

The basic blueprint for the book is complete.

I’ll be looking at the shifting higher ed landscape post-pandemic and what that has done to parental expectations. I’ll dig deeper into some subjects that received only passing reference in the last book, including the idea of “glue kids” and achievement vs. merit. I’ll outline how to locate your “dream schools”—those well beyond the top of the rankings. And I’ll explore the importance of finding purpose and belonging to your ultimate success.    

I’m still in the research phase of this book. I’ll be writing it next year, with the release likely coming sometime in late 2025. As a result, I’m delaying the launch of the spinoff of this newsletter—named TBD (that’s the actual name, not a placeholder)—until next year. There’s just too much work to do on the book.

And that’s where I could use your help.

I’ve heard from so many of you who have replied to the welcome message when you subscribed to this newsletter. Thank you. I read every single email, even if I can’t reply myself. Based on those stories, I might reach out in the coming months. I’m also working on a survey of parents and students that I’ll tell you more about in the coming months.

In the meantime, I’m headed to NACAC next week in Baltimore. If you’re a college counselor in high school or an independent counselor, I’m hosting a small meet-up on Thursday, September 21, 2023 at Noon. Complete this form if you’re interested in joining (and you’ll get details next week).

We won’t have room for everyone, but I look forward to connecting in other ways even if we can’t meet up in Baltimore.

🚨 Events

🖥️ The "Next Office Hour" next month will focus on will focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI).

• Thursday, October 5 at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT., we’ll examine how to use AI on the administrative side of colleges and improve student pathways through higher ed. Joining me will be:
  • Erica Wagner, Portland State University
  • Tim Renick, National Institute for Student Success at Georgia State
  • Mary Strain, a leader for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Services at Amazon Web Services

Register for free here (Support from Amazon Web Services)

🔗 Join me tomorrow, Thursday, September 14, at Noon ET/9 a.m. PT on LinkedIn Live where I'll be talking with Devorah Heitner, author of a new book, Growing Up in Public, about how to help tweens and teens navigate boundaries, identity, privacy, and reputation in their digital world.

• To join us, click ATTEND here or click +FOLLOW on my LinkedIn profile to be notified when we’re live (the conversation will also be archived).

Quotable

"I've never admitted anybody because they had a good test score, but I have admitted a lot of students because they've done well in the classroom." 

—Timothy Fields, associate dean of undergraduate admission at Emory University 

Background: Tim, along with Shereem Herndon-Brown his co-author of The Black Family's Guide to College Admissions, were guests of mine on a recent "Next Office Hour." His quote was in response to my question about when to submit test scores in a test-optional world. 

• If you're unsure whether to submit a score, Tim suggested asking an admission representative at the school "what percentage of admits for the incoming class did not submit any testing at all." He's seen some students who don't submit SAT/ACT scores, but do send in high scores on AP tests.  
• Also from Tim: "There are two types of information you share: required information and information that makes you look absolutely wonderful. If testing is not part of that, then please hold those scores back."

🖥️ Watch a recording of the entire "Next Office Hour" with Tim and Shereem here.

Supplements

🚗 The new out-of-state recruit. Want to know why so many New Yorkers go to the University of Alabama? Or why teenagers from the suburbs of DC, in the shadow of the University of Maryland, go a few states away to another Big 10 school? “I live in the suburbs outside of DC, and people talk about OSU [Ohio State University] as a destination school, which is really weird to me,” Julie J. Park, an associate professor of education at the University of Maryland, told Anne Helen Petersen in her newsletter about the giant game of trading out-of-state students happening among state flagships. (Culture Study)

🤖 5 signs about how AI will impact college teaching. AI is forcing higher education to ask some tough questions about what it does well. Among the questions The Chronicle’s Beth McMurtrie asks is what AI guidance and training will colleges provide instructors and will AI make some course obsolete? (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

📜 Who hires job candidates without degrees? The dropping of degree requirements for some jobs by the states of Pennsylvania and Virginia, as well as private employers like Delta, have generated a lot of headlines recently. But I always hoped that there would be follow-ups to see how many people were actually hired without degrees. Now we have some data from LinkedIn, which finds “the change in actual hires is far less dramatic than the change in job postings.” For example, “the technology, information, and media industry has only seen hires grow 3% faster — well short of the 240% faster growth rate of job posts without degree requirements.” (LinkedIn)

Until next time, Cheers — Jeff