Season 7: Episode 1 Transcript
Getting Started: Plan Your Work, Work Your Plan
Lee Coffin:
From Hanover, New Hampshire, I'm Lee Coffin, Dartmouth's vice president and dean of admissions and financial aid, and this is the season premiere of Admissions Beat.
Hello everyone. To continuing listeners, welcome back for season seven, and to people who have just found us, hello. Thanks for listening. We hope you subscribe as we reset our storytelling and bring ourselves back to the beginning. So early February, there are two primary audiences dancing around the college admissions space. We have seniors who've applied. Decisions are starting to come in. They're in a bit of a wait-and-see space as we make our way to the candidates' reply date on May 1st. And for juniors in high school, the college class of 2030—parents, I hope that made you gulp—this is the beginning. This is where you pick up the baton and say, I'm now making my way through the next 18 months in an intentional path from home to college. So season seven rewinds to the beginning and we will start our episode map with advice to help you get going. And for seniors, helpful tips to get you to the finish line. When we come back, we will welcome my recurring co-host, Jack Steinberg as we kick off this latest edition of Admissions Beat. Be right back.
Jack Steinberg, hello.
Jacques Steinberg:
Hello Lee.
Lee Coffin:
For those who are meeting Jack for the first time, he is a former reporter and editor at the New York Times. I like to give him credit as the founder of the admission beat in the early two thousands where he was covering all things college admission and really put this storyline in the mainstream media for the first time, in my estimation. He is the author of The Gatekeepers and The College Conversation, which he wrote with Eric Furda, my former colleague, dean of admissions at Penn. He's a dad of two recent college students himself and he is an all-around nerd in this space of college admissions. So Jack, always fun to kick off a season with you guiding me through this premiere.
Jacques Steinberg:
I'm thrilled to be here and excited for our new class of students and parents, high school juniors, while still, as you say, making sure that our high school seniors and their families know that we're not quite done with them yet.
Lee Coffin:
We're not done with them yet. For the seniors, just as you're listening, there are always things for you to grab and learn. Your real next task comes in April after regular decision is released and you have to roll up your sleeves and make a decision. But juniors, you should be listening very keenly because the story is now yours.
Jacques Steinberg:
Yeah, I feel like this is our virtual college night. If this were a college office at a high school, this would be our equivalent, the Admissions Beat equivalent of the college night where we'll sort of give you a preview of the season ahead and the journey ahead for all of you, particularly juniors.
So Lee, for those who've listened to the Admissions Beat and those who are new, you talk a fair amount about the noise and the importance of sort of tuning out the noise and not getting overwhelmed by the noise. And I can imagine what it's like to be a student or parent, particularly those of you who are juniors about to embark on this process and your families, and I feel like in channeling you that your first piece of advice would be careful to not get swallowed up by the noise as you embark on this path to college.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. I live in a noisy space and this has been true for my whole career. So in the ongoing story of college admission, it's a journey that invites a lot of opinions. Students worry about outcomes, people give them advice, some of it good, some of it well-intentioned, some of it unsubstantiated. And so noise is an organic part of college admission and part of your skill set is to figure out what source do you listen to. Always is your guidance counselor. I would immodestly say this podcast. But you're learning how to sift through information and determine what's right for your understanding of the space.
And your role right now is to control what you can control. You're going to explore, you're going to investigate different options for yourself to see what feels right. Later, you're going to start to sketch out your story and introduce yourself to the places you would like to attend. That's all on you.
Jack Steinberg:
Also, Lee, you have taught me and other listeners of the podcast that it's really important to take a breath, take in a deep breath, exhale, repeat. It sounds pollyannish. It really works and there will be many points, listeners, when you're on the journey on this path where that breath will be very helpful.
So with that, let's move to the timeless part of this process, which is imagining our virtual college night Admissions Beat college office. Lee, imagining a family that's just getting started, let's imagine they have not even met with their college counselor at the high school yet, but we hope that will happen soon. There's a desire expressed to go to college. How do you start?
Lee Coffin:
It is timeless, Jack, and as you were teeing up the question, I was reminded that this is my 36th year as a college admission officer and my 31st as a dean. I shared that not to say I'm old, but to say I've done this many, many times and as it starts again, as a new group of students steps forward and says, "Okay, where do I begin?" The answer is always the same. You start in a discovery period that begins as soon as today or it could be a month from today, and it continues through the start of your senior year of high school. And what happens over those weeks and months is your investigation of options. You have to start with what I often call the existential selfie. Look at yourself and say, who am I? What are my aspirations? What makes me tick? Where am I happy and what environments do I do my best work? What subjects stimulate me? And the answers to all those questions and many, many more start to frame the list.
And so before you have a list, you have to ask yourself some of those questions because just going by names you know is not going to give you a list that is as fulsome as if you say, I know I need a space where there are a lot of people around me. So it sounds like you're in a bigger community then, or maybe a city. You know want to study journalism, so now you're in a big place, maybe in a city with a school of journalism and the names that come onto the list will be places that have those very rough outlines.
Jacques Steinberg:
Yeah, it's almost counterintuitive. I want to pick up on your question of who am I? We tend to think of the college search as let's hit the road, look at colleges, come up with a list. You are suggesting, as am I, that that search starts internally, that that discovery process you mentioned begins with you.
Lee Coffin:
Because if it doesn't begin with you the question of fit, which is the word I use every episode of every season, you are ultimately looking for the best fit and you can't answer that question until you start with you. And not to be selfish, but to really understand your priorities and the places you explore should be places that touch some of those priorities. Or you may be still thinking these things through, in which case say, okay, I don't know, small versus big, I don't know if I feel comfortable on a campus like Dartmouth's in the woods. I don't know if I want to major in theater or political science. You don't have to know those things right now, but you're exploring and you're testing these instincts and you're going to have reactions. And to parents, your job is to watch the reactions.
Jacques Steinberg:
And also to the extent. parents and students. that you want to have a conversation asking each other these questions, comparing notes. Lee mentioned that I wrote a book called The College Conversation with Eric Furda, the former dean of admission at the University of Pennsylvania. Eric likes to talk about the five I's. The letter I, as you look within. Identity, who am I? Intellect, how important is it to be at a place that's going to challenge you intellectually? Ideas, what sorts of ideas do you have and how might you sort of road test them, explore them, build on them in college? Interests, what he interested in and does that place have that offering? And inspiration, what inspires you and where might you find that?
And so the question of who am I can sound big. Some of those prompts, whether you want to ask yourself, students, that in a journal, have a friend ask you those questions, have a parent ask you those questions, another adult, those sorts of things can be important. Those answers are going to be really helpful when you get to the point of writing your college essay because those are some of the sorts of things that admissions officers want to know from you. But for now, this is a conversation with yourself.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, I love that Eric uses the five I's, and at the risk of making this in the episode of Sesame Street, I often talk about the five P's. So my P's are program, place, people, price, and prestige, which is the naughty P, which often taunts people into some missteps. But program, place, people, the fundamentals of discovery, price, something we can come back to, but you really have to understand, can I afford this? I would say these five Is and these five P's, PI, PI, PI, PI, if you want to spell something, are really good markers for this discovery phase.
Jacques Steinberg:
All right, I'm going to, at the risk of a Sesame Street, I got to do one more. If Eric were here with us, he would talk about the four C's.
Lee Coffin:
Oh gosh, there's C's too.
Jacques Steinberg:
And the C's are the attributes of the college. I is for you, pronoun, C is for college. And these really overlap with the ones you just said. Culture, as you look at colleges, what sort of culture are you looking for? As you'll learn, as you start to dive in on your due diligence that the cultures of places can be really different. Community, are you looking for a community that is supportive, that is competitive, that's inclusive? These are good sort of rubrics to use as you check out colleges. Curriculum, which aligns with Lee's P of program. And then this one I got to give credit to Eric, conclusions. What happens when you leave that college? What's the track record of that college in terms of graduates going to graduate school, getting a job, being in a career that they want to be in? And it's a fair question at this moment of college pricing being what it is to ask what happens at the end of that experience, where does it lead?
Lee Coffin:
I love this game. We're playing this alphabet soup because the P's and the C's really do sync up and I wrote them down and drew little arrows. Program is curriculum, in part, people and place are culture and community. I would add a fifth C to Eric's list, which is cost, which is, I love the elegance of this. And conclusion is a really important part of this too, where college is a stepping stone to something that comes next. It's an experience but it also prepares you for what comes next.
Jacques Steinberg:
And I think, Lee, this is probably a good time in the life of a family to have a conversation about the cost of college before things get going too far down the line. Parents, how much have you saved for college that you're willing to spend on college? What's your tolerance for taking out loans? How important is it that students take on some responsibility for paying for at least part of their education? What are the differences between things like merit aid and need-based aid and the cost of various colleges?
Lee Coffin:
For those of you thinking, oh wow, it seems it's so early to think about price and cost. It's the perfect moment to do that homework. And parents, every college is required by law to have a net price calculator on our website. It invites you to plug in some of your personal data, have your income tax form handy, it gives you a projection of what your family contribution might be. It's not a definitive answer, it's not the financial aid office saying, here's your financial aid package, but it gives you some sense of this place seems to cost a lot of money. How much of that might we have to contribute? And what it does in this early moment, if the cold hard truth of that arithmetic is that figure seems like a stretch, then your discovery might shift towards some state options that are more reasonably in your budget than places that might be pushing you to make some family decisions that are uncomfortable or that are options where merit will be an option.
I have a family friend who's a senior in high school and they just went through the search and he calls me uncle, so I'll call him my nephew, ended up getting a couple of merit awards from places that surprised him and that became part of their conversation. But they knew at the beginning that those types of institutions needed to be ones he explored so that the decision later was informed by all the right evidence. But this is the way to start is get on the table all the key pieces.
Another one that parents and children need to start with is distance. That's a D. I don't want to start a whole 'nother letter, but how close or far is the campus from home? And kids will often say, "As far away as I can go." Parents might say, "I don't want you that far away." But this is also part of this discovery is you live in New Jersey and you think I'm going to California. What's that like to go back and forth a few times a year? Or you're an international student and you're trying to imagine leaving India to come to New England. It's a really long journey and what does it mean for you and for your family and the time in between being together? And those are all poignant topics to start to ponder.
Jacques Steinberg:
When you talk about uncomfortable and sort of difficult conversations, parents, this may be the first time coming back to this question of financial aid for a moment that you talk to your child about your income and not only your savings but how much you make in your job and what other expenses look like. As Lee said, is sort of best to get that out on the table early, as uncomfortable as it is.
Lee Coffin:
And related to that, Jack, is to the parents, you may be able to afford it and you choose not to, which is valid. You may discover that the price of a college is within your feasible means, but you choose to not sacrifice other things. I had a dad say to me a few years ago, "I don't want to sell our vacation home or stop taking my family on trips." I said, "And that's a hundred percent something you should be pondering." The college can't give you extra financial aid for you to have that lifestyle, but it's valid for you as a family to think about what kind of sacrifice are we willing to make for this education.
Jacques Steinberg:
And as you ask institutions, as you go about the search, whether they offer merit aid, aid based on sometimes grades and test scores, achievement, need-based aid and what the thresholds are for that. As I mentioned earlier, the colleges themselves can be great resources to explain these concepts to you. The folks who work in college financial aid offices are incredibly busy, arguably as busy as they've ever been. And yet they will help you. They will answer a factual question, they will explain something to you, which is probably a good time to talk, Lee, about your counselor. Depending on your high school, your counselor may have a caseload of several dozen students or they may have several hundred students and they may have quite a bit of time to help you and not so much. But what's your advice, Lee, on those initial conversations with the counselor and sort of exhausting that person's knowledge about this process?
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, caseloads are a really important piece of this question, Jack. So I was at a large public high school where, didn't know it at the time, but my counselor ratio is 500 to one. So in my high school, my counselor didn't have a lot of bandwidth for me and so I've found other people in my orbit, teachers, neighbors, relatives who could help me think about this. Some of you are in schools where that's not true. And so earlier than later, go see this person, guidance counselor, a college counselor, a college advisor, they have lots of different names, introduce yourself and introduce your aspirations and seek their informed wisdom. And I say informed wisdom because they will give you tips that may not sync with what you think you know and it's their job to know and it's your job not to always resist the guidance you're getting when it doesn't line up with your own sense of things.
And to parents, I think this is particularly tricky where you might be remembering colleges 25 years ago and the landscape has shifted and if this is your first visit to college admissions circa 2020s, the pools are bigger, places are selective in ways they weren't a generation ago. The guidance counselors know that. And so getting into the room with the person at your school whose responsibility includes advising is smart. You can use them as often or as little as you need. Some of you are really independent, some of you will see a recurring mentor moment that is going to be helpful and at this moment, and always be honest, it's not time to be tiptoeing around topics. Let them know what they need to know to help you.
Jacques Steinberg:
And don't necessarily wait for that invitation to come in. If you haven't heard from your counselor by this point, nothing wrong with asking if you can come in and while being mindful of the fact that their date book may be crowded, but persistence and understanding can be helpful.
Lee, you mentioned the word "independent" and of course there are lots of resources that folks can seek out, almost an overwhelming number of resources, but I thought it would be helpful maybe for those of you who want to source up on your own some of the sources that Lee and I find helpful. So the first I would suggest is the Big Future website on the College Board site. Big Future can help you plug in the name of a college you've heard of and learn something about it. It can also enable you to search for things that are of interest to you. It's exhaustive. It comes from the college board, which is the purveyor of the SAT exam and the AP program, but it can be a great way to learn things about colleges. Also, in terms of guidebooks, there are so many. I hesitate to single out a few, but I do think the Fiske Guide to Colleges, which has been around a while, is a potentially interesting place to take a look.
Also a book called Colleges That Change Lives. This is 50 or so liberal arts colleges that, listeners, many of these colleges you may not have heard of. This book is particularly focused on what happens while you're at those colleges as a student. And this Eric Furda, a point about conclusions, what happens after you leave? And even if you wind up not applying to one of the colleges that change lives, I think it's an interesting framing in terms of sizing up a college, taking the measure of it, the metrics that are used in colleges that change lives. There is not a focus on who you are when you come in the door, what your SAT score is, what have you. It's more of what's going to happen while you're there and afterward. What do you think of those resources, Lee, and are there others that you recommend?
Lee Coffin:
I think those are great resources and the one tip I would add to all of this is be careful if you hear yourself saying these five words, "I've never heard of it." There are a lot of wonderful places that just aren't top of mind for you. It doesn't mean they're lacking in quality. And some places you've heard of, you may have heard of for reasons that don't sync up with who you are and what you want. So at the beginning, channeling the colleges that change lives where they're usually smaller and impactful, just be open to that. But I think I used the Big Futures with my nephews and nieces when they were going through the search. I found it really easy to use and really valuable to find places, whether it was by geography or by major or typing in academic credentials. And to say back to the family members I was helping, "You're in range."
I mean my friend's child that I helped last year, he got in everywhere he applied. He was a good student, not top of his class, but he mapped a realistic search and Big Futures helped populate a list at the beginning that ended up yielding the place he enrolled. So I think that's a really good resource.
I would go in the opposite direction, Jack. I think there are things to avoid. I think there are a lot of websites that are pitching themselves to you as experts. I don't want to name them, but I would avoid the rabbit hole. What I will name is social media is not the best place to find information. Later, it's a way of catching vibe and to see if you join an Instagram group and you're following a college you just visited, that's not what I'm talking about. But the places where people are offering you advice, Reddit, I will name one, is a place where lots of people go anonymously and answer questions. It could be information that's helpful, you don't know who's telling you, and I just hesitate to advise you to start there because it could close as many doors as it opens in a way that's not going to help you.
Jacques Steinberg:
Don't set aside, students and parents, your critical thinking skills when you see a declarative statement out about a particular institution and its reputation. Ask yourself if you agree or disagree or if you need more information. Ask yourself as Lee said, who's making that claim and what's it based on?
Another source I'll throw out are college fairs where in a very efficient way you can do your own due diligence and quite literally work your way around the country within the span of a high school cafeteria or a local arena in your town. And there's an organization that I'm affiliated with called the National Association for College Admission Counseling, NACAC. And NACAC puts on college fairs around the country. And you might look to see on the NACAC website whether there is a NACAC college fair near you and that can be a wonderful opportunity to do almost journalistic due diligence unfiltered. This is you asking questions directly of the colleges and listening to their answers.
Lee Coffin:
The good news is there's a lot of information out there. Parents might remember a time when you had to rely on what showed up in your mailbox. You take the SAT or the ACT and your mailbox inbox start to fill with promotional materials. That was true when I applied in 1980. It's still true. And that information is coming to you because the college wants you to know about them. You will not move through the next 18 months with a lack of information. Even if you just listen to this podcast every Tuesday, you're going to learn things that I hope clarify each step as you're moving through it. Know that you're not swimming upstream saying, "I have no idea where to start."
Jacques Steinberg:
So I'm conscious that there are many episodes of the Admissions Beat to come in season seven and today is more of an overview. But let's imagine a family first to apply to college and they're wondering a little bit about those 18 months that you've mentioned. Can you talk about some milestones in that process and when they happen, starting with college visits and your advice on when to get that going and how to space those out and when to have them concluded by?
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, so you do the existential selfie. That's the preamble. That creates a preliminary list. I say preliminary because you start to visit and places resonate and places fall flat and you don't always know which will happen as you're pulling in the parking lot. Those visits can happen as soon as now. A lot of places have February vacation or spring vacation and our admission office will fill up with high school juniors and their parents coming on their first college tours and info sessions. And the visit is usually those two pieces. You show up at the admission office, there'll be a presentation, usually by an admission officer, you'll have a campus tour and that's it. And it's a way of seeing place, hearing program, getting a sense of people. So those are the Ps shown up in the campus visit. And that continues through the summer and the fall. I mean there's really no deadline to finish your campus visits.
Jacques Steinberg:
So one thing I wanted to add about college visits, Lee, is sometimes it can be least intimidating to start local, to visit perhaps one local private college and one local in-state public college just to get a feel for walking around a campus and what you might find and then venture forth farther away. Another tip is to pace yourself. Don't schedule too many visits within a close proximity of each other. These places can start to blend together and also it can be exhausting. And for parents, one thing I learned, Lee mentioned that I have two children who've gone through this process, resist the temptation, parents, when you get back in the car with your child or back on the bus or back on the plane to ask the question, "What did you think?" A fair question for you as a parent. There might be a good time to ask it later, but at that moment where you have just come off campus and there's information overload or maybe lots of emotion, sometimes a little bit of quiet can be more constructive and more healing than a question like, "What'd you think?"
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, "What'd you think" goes up with, "I've never heard of it."
Jacques Steinberg:
Yes.
Lee Coffin:
These phrases you want to resist. And what I've heard parents tell me over the years is, "When I start to opine, they start to shut down." And the advice, hard to follow, is to just let it organically simmer. And when the time is right, you'll learn the reaction. And sometimes you need some distance from the campus. There's an immediate, "I love it." You get to the fifth stop on the trip and you realize, I don't even remember the first stop. And so things have a way of shifting even on one trip. Discovery, some visits. You are planning your senior year, so you're going to pick courses that will become your senior year schedule. That's important. You're finishing your junior year with as much oomph as you could muster because it's the last year on your transcript that's final.
You should take the SAT or the ACT in this junior spring and perhaps some AP or IB tests as you get to the end of 11th grade, whether you're applying to a test optional or test required place, good idea to have some scores in your pocket to be able to include or not as required or as invited. We could talk about that in a minute. But that happens now. So you can take them again in the fall if you'd like to retest.
Jacques Steinberg:
And I can't emphasize enough the importance of taking the test. It doesn't mean if a school is optional, as you say, that you have to submit them, but if you don't have the scores and you haven't taken the test and a school you're interested in requires it, you've lost that optionality. So there's a big difference between taking the test, taking it again, as you say, and then actually submitting the score if the score is required or if it is optional.
Lee Coffin:
And as you take the test, that also produces the email in the mail. So taking the test, whether you use it or not, puts you on the radar of all these colleges and universities as a potential applicant. So that's a way of generating some recruitment that might surprise you. If you're a recruited athlete, most places follow an NCAA timeline, which is July 1st is when the coaches can start to introduce you to the admission officer. And you can have conversations now with athletic programs, coaches. Feedback starts in July. And then you get to August 1st, the common app and our supplements go live. And so you're not going to be able to start writing an essay or filling anything out until mid-summer. So just keep that on hold until you get to mid-summer, senior year starts.
And the question you need to start asking yourself is has one place broken out of the pack and seems to be where I imagine myself? If the answer is yes, you have an option of applying early, binding decision or early action non-binding. If the answer is no, that's called regular decision and those deadlines happen in January.
So as you move forward, the act of applying happens mid to late fall of the senior year. That'd be season eight for our listeners. And now you loop a year ahead and now we're in February, we're reading files. Nothing for you to do except make sure your mid-year grades come in strong, have an interview if those are options. And by late March you will have admission decisions. And then you swing into April, you explore your offers of admission, you make sure they're affordable with any financial aid, and by May 1st, 2026, you'll have chosen one place. So that's what's ahead of you.
Jacques Steinberg:
And as Lee mentioned, the Admissions Beat will be there with you every step of the way exploring each of those topics and more. This is an overview, this is not the last word on any of those subjects.
So Lee, we've given folks so much to think about and I'm conscious of time, but I thought we might end on one question that we haven't raised that's sort of implicit and kind of critical, and that's the question of, why college? So if a family were to ask you, "Hey, why college? Why not college?" What's the case you would make for college?
Lee Coffin:
So I answered this as the first in my family to go to college. For me, college was a huge investment in my future. It put me on a path I could not have ever traveled had I not earned my bachelor's degree and then gone on for a master's degree, and then the career that followed. College is more than just get a degree that leads to a job. College is a learning experience in and outside of the classroom. You're meeting people from lots of different backgrounds, especially when you wander onto a campus like the ones where I have worked where you're pulling people from lots of different places into a community and it's like a test kitchen to see how do all of these different people from backgrounds and places that are similar and different learn to be with one another in a tolerant inclusive way? That's valuable, I think. You can't really put a pinpoint in how valuable. It is existentially true. I mean, there are studies that look at earnings over a lifetime of people with a BA versus people without. And a BA creates a much different lifetime of earnings than not.
I mentioned college is an investment in my future. Financial aid is part of that. I have always thought of it as the mortgage I took on myself to get a degree. I majored in history. I remember my father being skeptical about that choice, didn't see it as practical. I often said to him later, I said, I think that degree has paid dividends in ways we could not have imagined. And it ended up at the time being the thing I found most exciting in terms of the curriculum. I learned how to think. I learned how to read. I learned how to read critically. I learned how to draw inferences. I learned to look for patterns. I'm describing the liberal arts because I think the liberal arts of the options are the ones that some families find fuzziest in terms of conclusion, to go back to Eric's C, and cost.
And the truth is college is transformational. I've gave you the story of a first-gen person who popped into a very different orbit. I think for people who are third, fourth, eighth-generation college, it's equally palpably transformative. Maybe doesn't move your social needle as much. Does it mean the value of that journey is not tangible in ways that I think all of us who have earned a degree would not say, yep.
I think that the trick right now in the workspace is there are a lot of careers that don't require a degree. I still don't really know how someone becomes an influencer, but I know it's a role that's there. I don't know it'll be a role that's still there 10, 20 years from now. Maybe it will be, I don't know.
Jacques Steinberg:
Yeah, I would encourage listeners to ask that question proactively. To not assume it. And to the extent, students, you feel strongly about it or parents, you feel strongly about it, I think it's important to articulate it to each other and don't necessarily assume that you can't marry the practical and the critical thinking. It may well be possible to have a bit of both. Do know that employers value critical thinking, the sorts of experiences that you have at a liberal arts college. And if you want to go deeper on the subject, I believe, Lee, it was in season five that we had experts on from the Lumina Foundation and Georgetown University and we devoted an entire episode to why college. And it might be a helpful listen to those as they embark on this process. As a reminder of why you're going to expend this time and expense.
And for those who are new to the Admissions Beat, whether it's on the Dartmouth admissions website or the pod platform of your choosing, you should be able to go back in time and find episodes from previous seasons. And I think the Why College episode might be an interesting listen at this stage.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, I agree. That was one of those episodes that surprised me when we recorded it, that it had as much meat to it in a way that wasn't just what I just said. Like, "Oh yes, you should go to college because it's wonderful." I'm the dean of admissions, I'm supposed to say that, but having just said that, my godson tried college, wasn't the right place for him and has been very happy working as an assistant manager at the supermarket and created a nice life for himself. He said to me, "Does it seem weird that the godson of a dean of admissions didn't go to college?" I said, "Nope. You're happy."
Jacques Steinberg:
And as families, as you ask yourself this question, why college, the answer may come, "not now." Or maybe a pause, maybe starting at community college, maybe learning a trade. So that question may not yield, yes college or at least yes right now. But I think it's a question that's too often not asked.
So we've given folks lots to think about. Lee, I'm conscious of how that must feel. We started on a note of lots of distraction and activity and noise, and then we provided quite a crash course in the next 18 months. What note do you want to sort of bring this conversation to a close on?
Lee Coffin:
So to the juniors and their supporters who are just starting, welcome. We'll be back every Tuesday morning for a new pod on specific topics, many of which we touched on. My goal in doing the pod since it launched in 2020 is to bring my experience as a college admission officer in a selective space. And I just want truth in advertising. It's where I've worked, it's what I know, it's what this pod is about. I try and be authentic to that selective college lane and to say, let me help you make sense of what is maybe the more congested part of college admission so that you can move forward with the reassurance that it's doable. This is not a pod about how to get into Dartmouth. It's sponsored by Dartmouth. It is an active admissions citizenship that I'm doing it. My guests will be pulled from lots of different spaces around my professional network.
I am always thinking about what I didn't know when I was in 11th and 12th grade and what would've helped me have more clarity about the path I was on. So that's my promise. If you like this idea, please subscribe. As Jack mentioned, we're on Spotify and Apple, and if you like us, leave a comment so that others can follow.
Next week we will be back with an episode called Junior Kickoff. I do these all around the country every year for 11th graders and parents. So we're going to recreate one next week to give you a step-by-step primer on how to get going. And after that, we go where we go.
So for now, this is Lee Coffin from Dartmouth College. Thank you for listening. Admissions Beat is produced and edited by Charlotte Albright, with editorial direction and promotion by Jacques Steinberg. Technical assistance from Sara Morin, and scheduling support from Peg Chase.