Season 1: Episode 9 Transcript
The College Conversation With Jacques Steinberg
Lee Coffin:
Dateline. A campus near you. Read all about it. Press releases, articles, blogs, newsfeeds, rankings, books, tweets, posts, podcasts. The head spins and swims in admissions updates. News, spin, lists, commentary, gossip. So much buzz, too much info. So many opinions. I'm here to help. When the beat is loud, I'll turn down the volume. I'm Lee Coffin, Dartmouth's Dean of Admissions. Welcome to the Admissions Beat: the pod for news, conversation and advice on all things college admissions.
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Admissions Beat. Charlotte and I are excited to be back at the mic after a couple of weeks of break. Hi, Charlotte. Nice to see you again. Happy new year.
Charlotte Albright:
Thank you. And happy new year to you.
Lee Coffin:
And as we come into January, all things admissions are at high octane volume. The deadlines have passed. It feels like every time I click on the internet, there's another story about something. And so the Admissions Beat, as we move through the next few weeks, is going to have a lot of topics to cover. But as we reopen our series for another eight-episode arc, we are starting with a book club installment. It's something I've wanted to do since we launched. And today's guest is Jacques Steinberg, the author of the recent book, The College Conversation, which he wrote with my friend and former colleague Eric Furda, the former dean of the University of Pennsylvania. Jacques, welcome to the Admissions Beat, it's nice to have you with us today.
Jacques Steinberg:
Oh, it's so great to be with you both.
Lee Coffin:
I hope you smile as I say this, but I always think of you as one of the founding fathers of the admissions beat, when I go back to the early moments of my career as a dean in the early to mid '90s, you were writing at The New York Times, as one of the national education correspondents and as a senior editor. And then you wrote your groundbreaking book, The Gatekeepers. It came out in 2002, I think. A behind the scenes look at Wesleyan and its admission process, as told through the eyes of applicants and the admission officers who reviewed them for Wesleyan. And when I read that book, didn't know you, but I remember thinking, "He gets it." This is a really authentic, accurate peak into the work we do in college admissions.
And then you launched The Choice, a blog via The New York Times, where you guided students, parents, and interested parties through the ups and downs of selective college admissions in particular. And then you left the Times and went to Say Yes to Education, a nonprofit serving urban school districts to help partner with them to get kids into college and served on the board of directors for the National Association of College Admission Counselors. And now you wrote The College Conversation with Eric. So I look at that vita and I think, "Wow." You are the guy and I'm so happy to have you here with us today to both talk about the book and to reflect on your journey as a journalist and as a member broadly of the admission infrastructure over the last 30 years.
So I guess my first question, as we start, is what prompted you to write The College Conversation? You call it a meditation for parents. What was the genesis of the book?
Jacques Steinberg:
Yeah. Well, I thank you. And thanks for that kind introduction. I mean, if there's one thread that runs through all of the work you described, I think it's a genuine curiosity from the perspective of applicant. And now at the stage of my life, as a parent, as to how you all do what you do and make the decisions you do. And of course, that started with something you didn't mention, which was when I myself applied to Dartmouth college and was accepted and attended back in the day. And always that wondering of why one of your predecessors chose to admit me? I applied from a public high school in Massachusetts, where half the kids did not go on to four year college, where nobody had applied to Dartmouth and gotten in, in years before I did and the last person who did so was a quarterback. And I was no quarterback.
And so that curiosity has never left me. And you and Eric Furda, the co-author of The College Conversation, have been among the many important teachers that I've had about this work. And so this latest book— it's The College Conversation— and the subtitle is, A Practical Companion for Parents to Guide Their Children Along the Path to Higher Education. And this was frankly, an idea of Eric's, your former colleague, and as you say, the former Dean of Admission of the University of Pennsylvania, saying, "Can we put at our heads together and imagine what it's like to be a parent, helping a child navigate this process and sort of share what we know that we think could be helpful in much the same spirit of this podcast, frankly?"
And so it was a desire to act on curiosity with news you can use. We're realists and we're not Pollyannas. We know there's a certain degree of anxiety that's always going to be present in this. There are many aspects of this process that are within the control of a young person in terms of, where they choose to apply and how they make their case. But of course, there are many other things that are outside their control, including how you and your colleagues make your decisions. That being said, is it possible with information to bring a little bit more calm and perspective and reflection to this process in the spirit of a guided meditation? Eric and I felt that there was a way to do that. And it's one of the objectives of the book to try to calm it down.
Lee Coffin:
Charlotte, when you picked up the book, what were your thoughts as you started to look at it and read it?
Charlotte Albright:
Well, the first thing I saw was the title. No surprise there. "A Practical Companion for Parents to Guide Their Children." And honestly, Jacques, I thought back to my own application process in the late '60s. So that's dating me. I went to Bennington College from '68 to '72. And back then, I don't remember a lot of parents helping us. I really don't, unless I was unique in that sense. I applied to one college. It never occurred to me to apply to more than one college. I wrote an essay in green italic ink. The college was, at that point, the most expensive college in the country. And I'd like to say that it cost $4,000 for tuition and room and board. That made it the most expensive and yet ... and we didn't have a lot of money… and yet, I didn't have any help and neither did Lee really. I know that.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah.
Charlotte Albright:
So what's happened in the meantime that parents would even get this involved? Is it because the application process is just too daunting for a kid? Or is it because we have helicopter parents? I mean, what's happened to make parents like you step into the fray and need a book?
Jacques Steinberg:
Yeah, I think it's all the above. I think parenting has evolved. I know Lee that you're first-gen. My father was a physician from Brooklyn. My mom was a nurse from new Brunswick, Canada. This was completely alien to her. And at the time I think her feeling was, in the spirit of what you're saying, Charlotte. "I'm sure you got this." I think there's more parents now, looking at that landscape, as you describe it. Looking at things like expense and potential for debt, return on investment. And also just the evolving nature of parenting wanting to be more of a support. But Eric Furda, my co-author, and I said to each other often, "What could we arm a first-generation parent with, a parent who had never been through this process first hand, so they could be of support to their child?"
Another thing I'll throw into the mix Charlotte, is college counselor caseloads in high schools. When you've got schools, where there's hundreds of students, young people in a high school counselor's caseload, which might not have been the case in your day and mine and Lee's. I think that oftentimes parents do have to step in. By the way, I don't know that we ever use the expression "helicopter parenting" in the book. And we did so intentionally because we do think there's a role for parents, as sort of negotiators using these boundaries and guidelines that Lee references.
Charlotte Albright:
The other thing that strikes me, having now been a parent whose kids went to college is that, nowadays we are bombarded with media. Not just the fine books that you've been writing, not just the really clear narrative studies of a college like Wesleyan, which is so readable, but we're also bombarded with media that is really, I think sometimes obsessed with numbers, with rankings, with test scores. And I would say that as a parent in 2021, a guide would be necessary just to navigate through all that because there's a lot of misinformation out there. Right?
Jacques Steinberg:
Absolutely. And it's overwhelming and yes, to be a young person in 2022, to be a parent in 2022, it's overwhelming. And we hoped that The College Conversation is certainly not the last resource you would want to turn to, but we did sort of intend it as perhaps a way to wade in and get oriented as a start.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. It reads like a primer, that you're laying out, here are basically the chapters of a college search and the five key themes you should be focused on. Each one, what you should be processing as kind of move forward. And I think Charlotte's right, that there's a lot of information and I rewind to the beginning of my career in the '90s. I often think, "Wow, it was quieter." There might be a story in the newspaper, but it wasn't coming at us, at me as an admission officer, quite so steadily around, whether it was a blog or social media or the constant updates for Twitters. And I think we're just in a different media universe. It's been a long time since I've done a public presentation, but when I've been able to be in a room with parents, they're nervous and I see it.
The last time I did an in-person talk it was in San Francisco, early February 2020. And a mom came up to me, as walked in and she said, "Are you the featured speaker?" And I said, "Yeah." And she said, "I'm terrified of you." And I said, "Why are you ... " And she said, "Because you represent this process that feels so make or break." And I thought, "Ooh." I said, "I'm going to do what I can to help you see this with more clarity and less worry." And at the end, she said, "You did that." And I said, "Yeah, this is not a sinister plot, this is a process that is competitive and the class sizes haven't really grown." And so I think some of what the media is picking up and that the parents are then channeling, is this idea that supply and demand. There's just a finite number of seats in the places, where a lot of people want to enroll and a lot of different people applying for those seats.
Jacques Steinberg:
Yeah. And also, we have more than a dozen exercises in the book, as you saw, for parents to do with their children or adults to do with young people their mentoring. In part to put in perspective what you just said, it's a big universe. And yes, there is high demand and low supply at a relative handful of places, but there's high supply and relatively low demand at many, many, hundreds of places. If you choose to sort of be open to that and we provide some guidance on how young people and families can educate themselves about that bigger universe.
Lee Coffin:
So as a former journalist on this beat, do you see journalists as maybe a bit complicit in what you just described? A lot of the stories always focus on "The 50," that the hardest to get into. You watch a movie and more often than not the name on a student's sweatshirt starts with an "H" or you hear references to the Ivies, but I've always wondered, does it reinforce the narrative that those places in the spotlight are the ones you must attain? And I've had students say to me, "If I don't get in, I have failed." I said, "No, you have not failed." You had a line in the introduction to the book. It said, "The quest for admission has become an end unto itself."
Jacques Steinberg:
I am, as I said earlier, a Dartmouth alum. I'm an alum of one of these highly selective, brand name institutions. The reader, the listener, is going to have to factor that into what they think of my advice. Also, I say in the introduction to the book, as a journalist, I was often complicit in focusing a little too often on the names of those places that we all recognize. Those four dozen or so, that turn away far more than they accept and now turn away more than ever. But I'd like to think in the spirit of lessons learned, that I've learned, what a big university is, and that there are all kinds of metrics for assessing colleges beyond that brand name.
There are all sorts of studies that show that that bachelor's degree in particular can be an economic driver and a driver of social mobility, but not necessarily that bachelor's degree from that institution we've all thought of. And so my hope is that, by my learning that it's a big world, and there's lots of different ways to evaluate colleges. That I can through the book, share those metrics along with a little bit of mea culpa on my part and being human. We're wired as a society to gravitate toward that brand name, whether it's a college or a car or an appliance.
Charlotte Albright:
So you started, Jacques. by saying that you're driven by curiosity, of course. And that also you're a parent. So that makes me curious about whether in the process of writing this book with Eric, you did research. Did you discover things that parents should do that you didn't do right? I mean, did this book teach you anything that looking back you should have done?
Jacques Steinberg:
Yeah. I mean, there were definitely things that ... Again in the spirit of lessons learned, we're all human. We all make mistakes as parents. I absolutely made mistakes through this process as parents, as any parent would. And sure, I learned things that I had thought of that when I was going through this with my own children. Or sometimes there were things that I learned from my own children that are embedded in this book. And even though, my kids aren't named in the book and their own experiences, their own experiences, they're not mine. Boy, did they teach me a lot that other parents can benefit from.
Charlotte Albright:
I really like the nuts and bolts part. It relieves stress, I think, to have very practical steps that you can take through the year or through several years.
Jacques Steinberg:
And again, it was Eric Furda, like Lee, he has been in my professional network for a long time. Honest to God, it's true that I was on a college tour with my son, my younger child. And I did one of the things you never should do on a college tour with your child. I answered my cell phone, while I was on a tour. And I still remember the look that my son gave me: "I can't believe you're answering your phone, as we're on a college tour." And I said to him later, I noticed on my phone that it was Eric Furda calling and that doesn't happen often. And I thought, "If Eric Furda is calling me on a weekend. It could be important." And what Eric said to me was, "We should write a book together." And I said, "Really, what would that book be about?" And he said, "We should write a guide for parents to try to sort of pool together what we've learned about this with the hope that might be helpful to them." And I said, "You won't believe this, I'm on a college tour now. So I can't talk about it, but let's chat."
And I was skeptical that the market was there for another book like this. As you all know, there's no shortage of resources for parents out there. Eric in his presentations to schools, he has his five C's and his five I's, which we can go over in a moment. And I really thought there was something special there. To your question about what might have been helpful to me with my kids: The C's are things you can use to evaluate particular colleges. The culture of that institution, the curriculum, the community, the conclusions. What happens when you graduate, and all important for some of us, the cost.
The I's are looking inward at you. Who are you? What's your identity? How important is intellectual life? What are your ideas? What are your interests and what inspires you? By working with a child, if they'll let you to sort of have them sort of sketch out some responses to some of those prompts or to work on their own, or to change them up. Maybe they have different Is and different C's, but regardless, there was nothing in there about brand name or selectivity. It's, who are you and what are you seeking out of this experience and where might that map in terms of the qualities of that institution? And I thought that was a really fresh framing that I would've benefited from and that other parents, as well.
Lee Coffin:
As I was reading The College Conversation and thinking about The Gatekeepers, your first book, 20 years ago, when your kids were little people, if they were born, I wondered, that look at the Wesleyan process was not one where you had the parent lens yourself. And then all these years later, you come back to this topic, having experienced tours and applications and decisions first-hand inside the Steinberg home. And I imagine it's humbling to be a journalist who covered it. And then to be a parent, who's saying, "Oh, here are the emotional currents that swirl around."
Jacques Steinberg:
I would say, it adds a level of empathy, empathy for the applicant going through the current process. Particularly, if they're interested in a place where there's going to be single-digit admission rate and also empathy for the parent, having to navigate all this, learn about it and try to figure out the most responsible way to pay for it.
Lee Coffin:
You have a sentence that jumped out at me. You said, "You're engaging your child in an extended conversation of about nothing less than the next chapter in their young lives." That's existential. So it's true. I mean, you framed it correctly and very insightfully, but when you look at it from that point of view, you can see why people are jumpy. It matters.
Jacques Steinberg:
We all want our children to have the best start on the path to adulthood and to have the best experience on that pathway between high school and whatever comes next in terms of career or advanced education. Yeah, we want to get it right, whatever that means as parents. And it's such a critical moment for them to sort of explore who they are, to the extent they're willing to ask those questions and what they hope to do with that young, adult life. So yeah, it's a crucial point of transition.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Your advice to parents to figure out,
What's the role my child wants me to play in this process?" is really important because some students want to be fully independent, and some want to be guided. Are you the protagonist in this story? Are you the antagonist, are you supposed to be the travel agent? Are you the logistic navigator? Are you the nag? Who's always saying, "Did you get things done when you were supposed to?" Are you a counselor? Are you someone who could kind of listen and say, almost as a therapist say, "I hear you saying, and is that what you really feel?" And I think each student has a different need. And for parents, I've had friends go through searches with multiple children and they say, "Wow. Child one and child two, and then three were completely different creatures, as they went through their respective college searches." The oldest child, the second child, the third child, they could be looking at the same college and have very different responses to it, or have very different things they need to be guided towards by a parent.
Jacques Steinberg:
Yeah. And one of the things we advocate in The College Conversation is negotiating those very parameters that you describe upfront as we embark on this. What's my role? What's your role? Where do you want me to be hands off? Where do you want me to be hands-on? Where do I want to be hands off? And can we articulate that upfront and hold each other accountable? Also, in terms of the dinner table, should we set aside one night a week, where we're going to talk about this and six nights when we're not? What are the ground rules in terms of younger siblings, other adults, or others living in the home, and whether we want to pull them into the conversation or whether we want this to be just us?
We offer those prompts. We encourage folks to have that conversation upfront and similarly, a whole upfront conversation about money and cost and cards on the table, in terms of resources and options and ground rules and boundaries on that too. We think that's a critical early conversation, as uncomfortable as it is.
Lee Coffin:
No, it's really good and timely advice, as the high school juniors are teed up to start their search. I think giving people a toolkit to say, "Here's how you start, and here are the rules." You don't need to say yes at the beginning. I often pull juniors back a bit and say, "You're not enrolling anywhere yet. You're just exploring and seeing what feels right. A name might sound appealing. And then the reality of that place might not sing to you and letting go of what you always imagined was true." And realizing, "Oh, I really respond to this." Whatever this is. And that aha, I think is really important, as it starts in January and moves through the summer and even into the fall of the senior year. But that beginning part is not the time to say, "I have a fixed agenda."
And I think pay parents are sometimes caught in that, where they've got expectations of here's the outcome. We have to explore it before you buy. When you bought a house, you had to see lots of different properties before one of them emerged.
Charlotte Albright:
So Jacques, this book is really rich in detail, and we can't do justice to all the details, so people should just go get it. But there are two points in this process that I think are the most vexing for parents and you treat them well. So maybe you can kind of give us a spoiler alert on those two moments. One moment is, frankly, what do you do, if the student doesn't engage, doesn't meet the deadlines? And you don't want to just take over and you don't want to be the nag. That's one question. And the second question is, how do you manage the disappointment that might come, if they don't get the school that they think they want? So those are the biggest turning points I think for a parent that I would assume are the most challenging. They were for me. What's the advice there?
Jacques Steinberg:
So our advice on deadlines, is to try to figure out together early what they are and find some way to record them, whether it's in a spreadsheet, on a legal pad, in a communal calendar. And yes, we hope that the parent is not in that role of a nag, but what is going to be our protocols, if I notice a deadline as a parent, that's getting close and you haven't responded to it? And then also, making clear that ... Look, email is the preferred platform and can you commit as a young person to be checking your email on a regular basis and making sure that you're not missing these things? If you do, that can be a deal breaker. There's lots of times in your life where deadlines are soft. It strikes me Lee, that more often than not, this process is a process that really values and respects its deadlines.
Lee Coffin:
Jacques, that that point about checking email is so practical and so often overlooked. The students aren't gravitating towards email as their platform and with engagement. They're texting a lot and we send out emails saying, "We need your midyear grades. It's time to have your interview. This piece is missing." And students, when they missed those follow-ups from the college, sometimes miss the chance to be admitted. Parents have often said to me, "Why didn't you reach out to me?" And the message to a parent is, this is your child's process. This is in high school, where all of the information flows to you as mom and dad. It flows to child as the one with agency. And when they enroll the grade reports also go to the student.
But for a parent, there is a role during the applying phase, or even the scheduling visits phase, where again, not in the nag space, but to be mindful of, things are going into an inbox that might not be checked. It seems so silly and small. The point you make is a really good one.
Charlotte Albright:
Let's say you've met all the deadlines. You've done everything that the college asks you to do. You've written a stellar essay and you still don't get in. What does the parents say at that point?
Jacques Steinberg:
Yeah. This is where that empathy comes in. Easy for me to say, I know. But believe me, it doesn't feel so easy even as I say it. There is going to be disappointment in life and not everything is going to go the way you hoped it would go. It hurts. And I want to respect those emotions and know that I can't wave them away. That I as an adult, who's got a few more miles on the odometer than you, know that in time you will have perspective. But I realize that now is not that time. There is some disappointment baked in, hopefully your list was balanced enough in terms of the selectivity of the places you applied to, that you've got some options. Hopefully, that some of those places that you were most likely to get into, you did get into, and that you had applied there because you could see yourself there to the extent that's possible.
But just knowing you can't sort of wave away the pain and disappointment as a parent. But also knowing that you're going to make ultimately the best decision you can as a child. And as a family, with the options you have front of you and what you know about yourself, but that there is an opportunity for a do-over, and that's the transfer process. And we spend more than a little time in the book of talking about the transfer process. It's something we hadn't seen a lot written about. And we think it's very, very relevant to more than a few young people and their families.
Lee Coffin:
One of the things I've noticed over the years is, the parents of children who are applying today often graduated from high school in the late '80s and the early '90s. And if they went to college, they were remembering an admission process in the '80s, early '90s that was really profoundly different than the one we navigate today. In volume, in access and its global dimension, and its competitiveness. But I find a lot of parents who are returning to this admission topic for the first time in 25 or 30 years are often surprised by the way the landscape shifted from when they were high school seniors. And that's just an important reminder that colleges evolve. A place from 1989, or 1994 might not be the same place you remember.
Use Dartmouth as an example. In the '80s, early '90s, 8,000 to 10,000 applications for a class of 1,150. The last two cycles were at 28,000. And so that volume proposition triggers the selectivity and the selectivity is what makes this complicated. It's that parental updating that needs to happen. That the world, as we know it today is not what you knew when you were a high school senior.
Jacques Steinberg:
Yeah. I talked about how we intended The College Conversation in part for parents who had never been through this process. We also say upfront, it's intended for parents who went through this process themselves and in all likelihood, well over two decades ago and what a huge moment as you articulate for change in higher ed. And in this process and being open as a parent to what you don't know and that your information might be out of date, and there's a lot to catch up on. We had that parent in mind as well as we wrote this.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, yeah. That's important. If you aren't paying attention to this and you have that Rip Van Winkle moment, where you wake up. Look how different everything is now. I think about it all the time as I kind of look back at my career and think like, "Wow, the things I did in the '90s are so different than the things I do today and the way I behave as an admission officer." And that's informed the way the work has shifted as well. Jacques, the other thing I wanted to just poke around a little bit, is you had this really interesting comment about advice to parents of younger students. So 9th graders and 10th graders who are kind of looking ahead, starting to map out high school as the preamble to college. And I wrote a note in the margin. I said, "High school is its own experience, not just the preamble to the college admission process."
Jacques Steinberg:
Yeah. I'm glad that point resonated. It was really important to us. Again, easy for us to say. Try new things, have fun, have downtime, engage in your classes for the sheer joy of that experience of learning. That all sounds great for us as adults, but it happens to be good advice and we even back it up even further. Hey, if you're a parent reading this book, The College Conversation and your child's in eighth grade, I hope you're not especially focused on this process right now, but seeing this less, as an audition and frankly, an opportunity, Lee, to impress people like you. What might catch the attention of the Dean of Admission at Dartmouth in the four years I'm at this high school or fill in the blank college? And more as an end in and of itself, with the payoff being, that you'll learn more about you and what you're passionate about and what lights a fire for you.
When the time does come to sit down and write that essay or ask for that teacher recommendation or think about what kind of institution you might go to, to exercise this curiosity and passion. It will be informed by your having been present in the moment in middle school and high school.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, totally true. You see it when you read files. You never know what topic is going to be the one that makes me smile. I mean, I read one the other day, it was about ice cream. It was delicious. It was a really great little essay about ice cream. I think people hearing that might be surprised that, that was an effective topic of an essay. It was, I'm not going to tell you how it was written, but it was ... This student used ice cream as a way of sharing his identity and his tastes and it was great. And I hadn't seen it done before. That's not something he had to engineer, that was just an authentic, personal, happy moment that someone thought to share.
Charlotte Albright:
So Lee, I'm glad you brought up the essay because I was looking back at New York Times articles, knowing that I was going to speak to Jacques and wanting to know, what are people writing now that he's not writing for them anymore so much? And one article in last May, talked about ... The headline is, the persistent grip of social class on college admissions. Noting that even though test are optional, essays are now counting for more and that some families can afford to get help, to get their kids some help to write those essays. And that strikes me as interesting. I looked for it in your book and you talk about that. Should you go out and get extra help?
You, coming from an organization that was all about college access, Say Yes, is all about having a better route to college, a more equitable route to college. What do you think about this fact, that some families can afford professional assistance? And does that make the playing field less even, or if they buy your book, are they going to be all set?
Jacques Steinberg:
Yeah. Look, there are certain realities to this process in terms of resource giving you a leg up, going to test-optional admission. It starts to chip away a little bit at one of the ways that that money can buy you a leg up. But in terms of that essay, the hope is that young people and families will get the message. And Lee, check me on this. More than anything else, you want to hear an authentic voice of a 17-year-old or an 18-year-old. You having read thousands of these essays Lee, are probably pretty good at telling when that narrative has been massaged by a 40 or 50-year-old voice. Do you want to pay to have someone in their 40's or 50's sort of run that essay through their computer? I defer to parents on that, but we're here Charlotte, you and I, talking to a target audience, who so wants to hear that authentic 17 or 18—year-old unvarnished voice. I have a second point I want to make, but I want to pause Lee, for you as the target audience.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. I'm nodding, as you said all that. As a reader, you can't always catch it, when something has been overly edited and buffed, but that's not the purpose. I'm not looking for a slick piece of writing, as I read the essay. It needs to be well written. Writing is a core quality of a successful applicant and student at all the places where I've worked, but the content. What are you sharing, as something to learn about you? How are you introducing yourself to the college, through your writing? That's what matters. And I don't know what I don't know. So how you answer the questions helps me know you and your choice of question. How you're explaining yourself, that makes an impression and ones that are overly formulated don't resonate in quite the same way. They read similarly to so many other people who've followed that same playbook. Do I learn a lot? Not always. And that's a missed opportunity.
Jacques Steinberg:
Now, I want to provide my "but." Every writer benefits from another set of eyes and ears on their work. If you are a parent and you want to, for lack of a better word, sort of subcontract that editing role, as long as the boundaries and guardrails are clear. I don't want you to write this for my child, but certainly you have a distance from my child that I don't have. I'm too into it. And they might benefit from your eyes and ears and suggested edits on their work. But let's say, to the original question about the leg up that money can bring in this process. Every child has in their life somebody who can be those eyes in the ears. An English, or a social studies teacher, the college counselor, a friend, somebody at a religious institution. Somebody who you trust to read your writing and give you feedback. And it may be the parent as well, as long as everybody understands that ultimately the final edit is the applicants.
Lee Coffin:
As you kind of watch the admission beat, what do you think in the contemporary media space is overlook or overplayed? What do you wish was covered a bit more and what's distracting?
Jacques Steinberg:
Yeah. As Charlotte has pointed out, there's just so many more sources and the challenge, and whatever your interest is. Do you want to look at this, as if it's the Major League Baseball standings and following the machinations that those teams that have winning records, however you want to define that? Whether in sports or whether as measured by selectivity or other things. Is there advice you're looking in the spirit of news you can use as a parent? Is it financial aid resource? There's never been arguably more information available. Our challenge, as parents, as young people, as consumers is trying to decide what's credible and also sort of sort out what's just overwhelming. And that does require some sort of careful parsing.
No matter what your interest is in this subject, somebody is covering it. Whether it's a mainstream news organization, an education niche publication, a blogger, a podcaster. Common sense is not the worst sort of compass through this. And just sort of sifting out and deciding, what are those sources you're going to pay attention to? And just knowing you can't consume it all and you don't have to consume it all. And ultimately, if something doesn't ring true to you, trust your gut on that.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. I get texts and emails saying, "Have you seen this?" I'm like, "Yes, I've seen it a dozen times" Often, what they're gravitating to is a story that has a sensational buzz to it. And I said, "But there's nuance here. The story isn't giving you the depth and the thoughtfulness that went into the way the decisions were made. It's just giving you the highlight reel of X percent got in or how many applications did all of us get this year? What does that mean for selectivity?" And I say, "You can't control it. Don't pay attention to it. Tell your story in your own voice, as compellingly as you can." As you say, in the discovery and then assessing your options. No, what's right for you, isn't right for your neighbor or even your brother."
It's like each of us has a moment of choice, which is, I think why you called the blog The Choice. How do you get to that moment and say, "This is my choice." I think being true to yourself is the hardest part. It's just easy to get caught up in the peer group. I have had a lot of students say, "Everybody's applying early, so I have to apply early." I say, "No, you don't. If you're not ready, don't do it. You have the agency to follow your compass." As you just said.
Charlotte Albright:
The other kind of harsh reality, I think about education reporting, is that, newspapers in the last couple of decades have really taken a hit. And a lot of them are operating on a shoestring and they've eliminated their education desks. They've eliminated it as a beat. That explains why some of the stories are not, as well researched or as deeply sourced. But the good news is that, there are more books. I mean, there are a record number of books being published and people have been reading a lot during COVID. So when people like Jacques sort of walk out of a newsroom and start to become an author, to me, that's a bright light. That's a good sign. If I were to say something to parents out there, I would say, clear some time to read a book because chances are, that's going to be a narrative approach to this topic, as opposed to just a quick hit of numbers laid in headlines.
Jacques Steinberg:
There's no question that local news coverage has been cut back radically and the education beat often suffers, as you say, Charlotte. There is a wonderful organization called the Education Writers Association, the EWA. And for listeners who are interested, that's a great hub to find really strong education writers and writing around the country. But where local coverage has receded, oftentimes national coverage has filled the gap. Not only at mainstream publications, like my former employer, The New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post, but also at the Hechinger Report, a fine education publication. That's all they do. Inside Higher Ed, Education Week, The Chronicle of Higher Education. And then some gold-plated parent websites, like Grown and Flown. Local resources have receded. Oftentimes, others with credible information have filled the gap.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Well, you have filled the gap over and over and over again, Jacques. Both on the podcast, but more importantly in your work as a journalist and in the books you write. And for those of you who are intrigued by The College Conversation: A Practical Companion for Parents to Guide Their Children Along a Path to Higher Education, The Wall Street Journal in their review said, "A family new to the process will be glad for the book's detailed timeline and instructions for essay writing, test-taking and applying for financial aid. Recognizing the value of a range of options, the authors discuss the wisdom of starting at a community college, entering the military first, or if the freshman year isn't working out, transferring from one college to another. Such discussions are rare and thus particularly welcome."
So The Wall Street Journal is giving you a high five and my friend Marcia Hunt, who is the director of college counseling at Pine Crest School in Florida and a former president of our national association said, "Eric Furda and Jacques Steinberg are giants in the field of college admission. So it isn't surprising that they have created one of the best books I've read on navigating the college admission process." So cheers, and nicely done as always, Jacques, and thanks for joining us on the Admission Beat and for your continued work on helping navigate college admission for parents and kids and admission officers like me, who enjoy reading what you write. And gleaning wisdom from it, as well. So thanks, Jacques. Happy New Year.
Jacques Steinberg:
Thanks. I'm a fan of the podcast and its various offshoots and thrilled to be a part of it.
Lee Coffin:
So thanks to Jacques and Charlotte for another engaging conversation on the Admission Beat. We'll be back next week. Until then, happy new year everyone and stay safe and healthy.