As a college admissions counselor, I think “The Crush” sums up the way most people feel about the college admissions process and the college experience itself. High school students fall into a deep infatuation with a potential future alma mater, maybe even many, and work themselves into ulcerous, sleepless fits trying to find a way to get noticed and give them a chance. And then there’s the other kind of crush. The physical weight of it all. The pressure of expectations for yourself, your parents, your peers, the weight of the finances you might be asked to conjure up in order to appease your hungry crush, and the crush of information in the form of mailings to your house, stories in the media, tweets, op-eds, rumors, gossip, and outright bull. This podcast looks to explore these issues and more by talking to fascinating people who know more about it all than I do.
Ron Lieber recently completed writing a book called “The Price You Pay for College,” and if you’re interested enough in this stuff such that you’re listening to this, then you should read this book. He... The post Episode 44: Ron Lieber on the Price of College appeared first on The Crush.
In the United States, just 6% of college faculty members are Black. It’s a really tough career pathway for anyone, but as we’ll learn from my guest today, there are so many additional hurdles to... The post Episode 43: Prof. Marlene Daut on “Becoming Full Professor While Black” appeared first on The Crush.
Puerto Rico is subject to a number of unique barriers to accessing college whether they leave the island or stay. These barriers simply don’t exist for any other US state or territory and are a... The post Episode 42: Celeste Suris Rosselli and DJ Meehan on College Access in Puerto Rico appeared first on The Crush.
The coronavirus has forced some wildly unprecedented anxieties into an already extremely anxious space. Mindy Rose and Mark Moody of Shanghai American School have had to roll with the punches in a very unique college... The post Episode 41: Mindy Rose and Mark Moody of Shanghai American School appeared first on The Crush.
Jon Boeckenstedt is as fearless as he is smart as he is dedicated to Doing The Right Thing as a leader in the realm of college enrollment management. He’s one of these people that everyone... The post Episode 40! Oregon State University’s Jon Boeckenstedt appeared first on The Crush.
The humanities are in a tough spot these days, and the discipline of philosophy often ends up in the crosshairs as an exemplar of Undergrad Majors That Will Waste Your Time and Money. Good news... The post Episode 39: Dr. Philip Walsh on the Value of Philosophy appeared first on The Crush.
It’s fall! Which means this is the time of year when legions of college admissions counselors traverse the globe to find those eager minds to fill the seats in their classrooms. It is a whole... The post Episode 38: Sam Schreiber and I Review “Admission” appeared first on The Crush.
Dr. Andrew Moe is the Director of Admission at Swarthmore College and has been leading a national effort to focus the eyes of his colleagues more on students coming from rural communities. Andrew has been... The post Episode 37: Dr. Andrew Moe on College Access for Rural Students appeared first on The Crush.
In the summer of 2016, a Facebook group emerged to quickly become the primary space in which professionals on all sides of college admissions would gather to discuss the challenges and potential solutions to some... The post Episode 36: Marie Bigham of ACCEPT appeared first on The Crush.
Soon children everywhere will be saying goodbye to their parents and to their communities and the times and the places that made them into the adults they’re on their way to becoming in college. Dr.... The post Episode 35: Dr. Susan Matt on the History of Homesickness in America appeared first on The Crush.
If you pay attention to the world of college admissions, then you not only know this guy, chances are he’s helped you form your understanding of what goes on in said world. Eric Hoover has... The post Episode 34: Eric Hoover of the Chronicle of Higher Education appeared first on The Crush.
Professor Marybeth Gasman is the Director of the Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions and a professor of education. Soon she’s moving herself and her center to Rutgers University in New Jersey. In this country,... The post Episode 33: Professor Marybeth Gasman appeared first on The Crush.
This week it became known via a federal indictment that rich people used their wealth to break the law in a variety of appalling ways, all with a mind to skip the line and receive... The post Episode 32 ***
Temple University Economics Professor Doug Webber does some fascinating research on the impact of our academic choices in college. In a world plagued by a lust for prestige, how much does it really matter in... The post Episode 31 – Doug Webber 2: The Return of Doug Webber! appeared first on The Crush.
Nike and Oregon – the state as well as its flagship university – go way back, and their relationship became a template for underfunded state universities all over the country. Josh Hunt takes a deep... The post Episode 30! Josh Hunt on “The University of Nike” appeared first on The Crush.
Emmi Harward is the Executive Director of the Association of College Counselors in Independent Schools (ACCIS), and it’s her job to keep her finger on the pulse of the college counseling profession so she can... The post Episode 29: Emmi Harward of ACCIS appeared first on The Crush.
The Coalition for Access, Affordability, and Success emerged 3 years ago to provide an alternative application platform for, at first, 32 colleges, and now over 150 of them. Executive Director Annie Reznik is helping this... The post Episode 28: Annie Reznik on the Coalition Application appeared first on The Crush.
Reach Higher is former First Lady Michelle Obama’s college access initiative, operating under the leadership of my guest this episode, Eric Waldo. He’s hard at work countering the systematic efforts to dismantle the education policies... The post Episode 27: Eric Waldo of Reach Higher appeared first on The Crush.
6 million people attend community colleges in this country, and yet we somehow don’t tend to consider it as “college.” Bart Grachan earns his keep doing everything he can to help students succeed at LaGuardia... The post Episode 26: Bart Grachan on Community Colleges appeared first on The Crush.
It’s a company with a loyal following to rival almost any brand, and everyone in college admissions is buying it. Slate is the technology of choice that admissions offices use to read applications and manage every... The post Episode 25: Alexander Clark, CEO and Founder of Technolutions/Slate appeared first on The Crush.
Stanley Nelson has been making movies for a long time, and his latest film – airing Monday, February 19th on PBS – called “Tell Them We Are Rising” is the first of its kind... The post Episode 24: Stanley Nelson on HBCUs and His New Film “Tell Them We Are Rising” appeared first on The Crush.
Professor Nathan Grawe of Carleton College developed a demographic model which says that ’round about 2030 this country is going to lose a giant share of its population of college-going age. How will this... The post Episode 23: Prof. Nathan Grawe on the Changing Demographics of America’s College Bound appeared first on The Crush.
Chronicle of Higher Education reporter Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez visited the island of Puerto Rico to see how people were recovering at its most important institution of higher education, the University of Puerto Rico. Her story –... The post Episode 22: Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez on the University of Puerto Rico appeared first on The Crush.
The Mastery Transcript Consortium (MTC) is a group of over 150 private schools that have coalesced around an idea that our current model of grading students is not only outdated, but harmful to their development.... The post Episode 21: Scott Looney on the Mastery Transcript appeared first on The Crush.
Akil Bello is a friend of mine who is also one of these odd sorts who concerns himself in life with all things Standardized Test. Following up from Episode 4 where I pledge to... The post Episode 20: Akil Bello Helps me Register for the SAT appeared first on The Crush.
So we have literally all of humanity’s knowledge at our fingertips thanks to the Internet, and Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) are making it easier to get more education to more people for free. Dr.... The post Episode 19: Dr. Andrew Ho on the Reach of MOOCs appeared first on The Crush.
New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo recently championed and passed the nation’s first plan to offer free college tuition to state residents attending state public colleges called “The Excelsior Scholarship.” Free always sounds good, but does it... The post Episode 18: Prof. Doug Webber on NY’s “Excelsior” Scholarship appeared first on The Crush.
Right now, college applicants are anxiously waiting to hear back from the colleges they applied to, while legions of admissions counselors read their applications and those of anywhere from hundreds to thousands of their fellow applicants. That’s... The post Episode 17: Dr. Michael Bastedo on the Bias of Admissions Counselors appeared first on The Crush.
I needed to go back to something that I think Oregon State Representative Lew Frederick is uniquely qualified to talk about and something that’s been on my mind almost every day since about the 2nd... The post Episode 16.2: Lew Frederick on the Question “Is Donald Trump Racist?” appeared first on The Crush.
As a candidate running unopposed for the State Senate of Oregon from a Portland district, Lew Frederick stands to be one of the most if not the most influential black politicians in the state of... The post Episode 16: Rep. Lew Frederick on Race, Politics, and Education appeared first on The Crush.
Dr. Christina Warinner works at the University of Oklahoma’s Laboratories of Molecular Anthropology and Microbiome Research (LMAMR) and studies some incredibly cool and incredibly small things: the bacteria in the teeth of our ancient ancestors. She does this... The post Episode 15: Dr. Christina Warinner on 10,000 Year Old Teeth, Science Research, and Women in Academia appeared first on The Crush.
Maria Maisto is the Executive Director of the New Faculty Majority, an organization fighting to improve working conditions for adjunct and contingent faculty at American institutions of higher ed. The name grew out of the... The post Episode 14: Maria Maisto on the Struggle of Adjunct Faculty appeared first on The Crush.
Julie Lythcott-Haims, former Dean of Freshmen at Stanford and mother of two herself, has been on a world tour promoting her book How to Raise an Adult in an effort to help today’s parents to, well,... The post Episode 13: Julie Lythcott-Haims on Parenting the College-Bound appeared first on The Crush.
Rick Weissbourd and Lloyd Thacker are new partners trying to solve an entrenched problem: How can college admissions change to better encourage healthier student outcomes and to promote ethical engagement in their communities? Their “Turning... The post Episode 12: Lloyd Thacker and Rick Weissbourd on “Turning the Tide” appeared first on The Crush.
Dr. Denise Pope is a professor of education at Stanford and a founder of “Challenge Success,” an organization that “partners with schools and families to provide kids with the academic, social, and emotional skills needed to... The post Episode 11: Denise Pope on The Pressure to Succeed in High School appeared first on The Crush.
Jon Burdick is the VP of Enrollment and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at the University of Rochester. He was also my admissions counselor when I went to USC, and now he’s my boss. He’s... The post Episode 10.1: Jon Burdick on Money and College appeared first on The Crush.
Jon Burdick is the VP of Enrollment and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at the University of Rochester. He was also my admissions counselor when I went to USC, and now he’s my boss. He’s... The post Episode 10.2: Jon Burdick on Money and College appeared first on The Crush.
As a full-time anthropologist at Intel (recruited at a bar in Palo Alto off the faculty at Stanford), Genevieve Bell has a job that makes a lot of us go, “Wow…what’s that?” She sits at the intersection... The post Episode 09: Genevieve Bell, Intel’s Anthropologist appeared first on The Crush.
The weirdness created by a lack of obvious, consistent formula determining who gets into selective colleges makes it feel super secretive. Stephanie Shyu and her colleagues at AdmitSee think they’ve come up with a tool that can help... The post Episode 08: Stephanie Shyu, Co-Founder of AdmitSee appeared first on The Crush.
On March 30th, Ben Casselman blew up a Facebook group I’m a part of with about 10,000 members in it, all of them college admissions professionals in one way or another, high schcool, college, independent consultants,... The post Episode 07: Ben Casselman, Chief Economics Writer at fivethirtyeight.com appeared first on The Crush.
Students always talk about the “feel” of a college campus being that indescribable and critical deciding factor that influences their decision to apply and eventually to enroll at a college. Are colleges supposed to feel a... The post Episode 06: Nader Tehrani on the Look and Feel of College Campuses appeared first on The Crush.
The International Baccalaureate, or IB, is the hardest and most thorough preparation for college out there today. Not only is it out there, but it’s really out there as a global curriculum in almost 150 countries,... The post Episode 05: Dr. Siva Kumari, Director General of the IBO appeared first on The Crush.
Tests suck and they suck real bad. I know because I cried the day I got my SAT scores in the mail. BUT- we need them in our lives in the college admissions world…or do... The post Episode 04: Adam Ingersoll on Standardized Tests appeared first on The Crush.
Bob DeMars lived the dream of kids in streets and backyards everywhere when he played college football for the University of Southern California. He paid a heavy price, and entered into a fraternity he didn’t see coming.... The post Episode 03: Bob DeMars, Director of “The Business of Amateurs” appeared first on The Crush.
Emily Harris has an incredible job as the Jerusalem correspondent for National Public Radio. How do you get a job like that, and how do you prepare for it in college? (Hint: You kind of... The post Episode 02: Emily Harris, Jerusalem Correspondent for NPR appeared first on The Crush.
So what’s the point of college? Bill Deresiewicz wrote the book “Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life” which I’ve come to regard as one of the most... The post Episode 01: What’s the Point of College? With Bill Deresiewicz appeared first on The Crush.