Dream School: Finding the College That’s Right For You | Jeff Selingo (Dad of 2, Author)

[00:00:00] Jeff Selingo: Dream to me is a slightly different, in this case
[00:00:02] Jeff Selingo: There's not a single school, there's not even a single category of schools. It doesn't mean it's like the Ivy League or the SEC I want to go to a Big 10 school. That's my dream. It's more about. your fit
[00:00:14] Adam Fishman: Welcome to Startup Dad, the podcast where we dive deep into the lives of dads who are also leaders in the world of startups and business. I'm your host, Adam Fishman. In today's episode, I'm joined by writer, bestselling author, and college admissions expert Jeff Selingo. He has written about colleges and universities for more than two and a half decades, and is a New York Times bestselling author of three books.
[00:00:43] Adam Fishman: His fourth book just released this week is called Dream School: Finding the College That's Right for You, and it's based on over two years of research and surveying across 3,500 parents. In addition to being a regular contributor to the Atlantic, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, he's also an advisor to the president at Arizona State University.
[00:01:04] Adam Fishman: Writes a biweekly newsletter called Next and Co-Host the Future U podcast. He's a husband and the father of two, almost college bound kids. Today we talked about the Guardian Knot of Modern Day College admissions and decisionmaking process. He has covered in his four books, the Moneyball Approach to College Selection for Families, the surprising aspects of his research for Dream School and how families can identify their own dream schools.
[00:01:34] Adam Fishman: Why brand name colleges aren't the end all be all for students. We ended with a robust discussion on the future outlook for college admissions, the role of AI in higher education, and what has to change with a high cost of college degrees. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to Startup Dad on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple.
[00:01:55] Adam Fishman: Welcome Jeff Selingo to Startup Dad, Jeff, it is my absolute pleasure to have you on the show today.
[00:02:02] Jeff Selingo: It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
[00:02:04] Adam Fishman: I'm really excited to talk to you about the Gordian Knot that is the modern day college admissions and decision making process. You are, an expert on this. You've written three books on the topic and just published your fourth book, which is called Dream School: Finding the College That's Right for You.
[00:02:22] Adam Fishman: And I wanted to jump in and just ask you about some of your inspiration for this book. what led you to write Dream School after the previous three books that you've published?
[00:02:31] Jeff Selingo: So I have worked in and around higher ed for, for more than 25 years, and we seem to think that there's only. 30 or 40 colleges out there and, and when I wrote my last book, Who Gets In and Why? So many people would come up to me after events or they would write to me and they would say, but what if we don't want to go to, you know, one of these big. Public universities or these Ivy League institutions or the places that we hear about all the time, what are we looking for in a good college? How can we tell you know, these schools of hundreds and thousands of them, couple thousand in the US overall. You know, how can we tell if there are a good college?
[00:03:11] Jeff Selingo: And that's really what I wanted to do with Dream School. there were two, two big. Opportunities I felt like I had with this book one was to kind of widen that perspective that we had on colleges so that we stopped just talking about the same 25 schools all the time. The second piece then was once we did that, once we shifted that mindset, once we expanded that aperture on college, it was then to tell people, or explain to people or bring people along in this journey, bring readers along in this journey. What are we looking for in a good college? And that's really the second half of the book really focuses on those aspects of what makes for a good school.
[00:03:50] Adam Fishman: Awesome. And your, your last book, who gets In and why was really told more from the college perspective itself, like how do they select, and this one is much more about how do you as the parent, as the family. Figure out what's, which one's right for you. I think for my audience, that is a much more, pertinent question than how the colleges select.
[00:04:13] Adam Fishman: before we go too deep on Dream School and college admissions. I wanted to start actually with one, uh, interesting aspect of your background that I find. Most fascinating and that is, you know, for you and I read this about you and your, your bio, despite having college and higher education as the thing you've been focused on for decades, your work, your writing, your advising, consulting work, you didn't have that focus growing up.
[00:04:39] Adam Fishman: So how did you develop a passion for this area?
[00:04:43] Jeff Selingo: So you're right. My, my mother didn't go to college. she worked as a teacher's assistant, without a college degree. She graduated from high school. My father was a high school music teacher, the first in his family to go to college. I had an older brother and sister, both of whom went to college, ended up going to medical school and law school. My parents just really thought highly of education and, and wanted us like, you know, the American dream wanted us to do better than they did and wanted us to do better than their parents did. and so I went off to Ithaca College in the fall of 1991, and one of the things that I became enamored with when I was at Ithaca was. I was on the student newspaper and reporting on the college itself as a student journalist, eventually became editor of that, but then junior year. between junior and senior year I came to Washington, DC where I now live and was an intern at US News and World Report working on its college guide, the college rankings.
[00:05:39] Jeff Selingo: So for the summer of 1994, I worked as an intern on those, on the college guide and on the rankings, and that's really when my eyes were opened up to this idea that colleges and industry, we tend to think of it as this emotional thing that we buy, but we clearly are buying a. Big product, a huge product in some ways, probably one of the most expensive things we're gonna buy in our lives. And that people needed better information about that decision, about where they were going, why they were going, what they were getting out of it. And that's really when this started. Spending that summer at US News and then a couple of years later ending up at the Chronicle of Higher Education. So you're right.
[00:06:22] Jeff Selingo: I mean, it's not something I grew up with. Obviously a, a love of education in a family of educators, but it was something that clearly I understood very early on that we needed to provide better information to parents and students. And that's what I hope I'm doing now.
[00:06:39] Adam Fishman: Awesome. Well, I'm super appreciative that you're doing this work because it's, uh. it's a lot for parents. and one of the things that I know is that this, this last year was I think the largest college applicant pool we've ever seen. It was like the largest graduating class of high school seniors we've ever had.
[00:06:58] Adam Fishman: what's driving that application, boom. Is, is it just the common application or the idea that you can click a button and apply to a million schools now?
[00:07:05] Jeff Selingo: So two things happened this year in particular. One was, The class of 2025 was the largest high school graduating class in the US for quite some time. We're actually now going to start to see a decline in the number of high school graduates. But what's interesting is that we've had booms and busts over the years of high school graduates. But it's not really a function of the number of high school graduates necessarily in terms of applications, in terms of enrollment, definitely. There's only so many students to enroll in college. The big difference now is that each individual student, instead of applying to two or three or four colleges. Are applying on average to seven or eight or nine. And so we've seen this huge explosion four times as many applications, today as there were in 2001. And most of those are coming from, you know, a small group of students who are applying to. Sometimes 12, 13, 14, 15 schools. The common app definitely plays a role in that, even though they deny they do, but they definitely play a role in that.
[00:08:10] Jeff Selingo: But second is that this, it almost feeds on itself. So when students start to hear that somebody didn't get into X College and they think, oh my God, that's a great student, how did they not get into, you know, UCLA or USC or uh, Michigan? I now start to fret about that. I start to be anxious about that. And so what do I do?
[00:08:32] Jeff Selingo: I apply to five more other colleges at the same time, and so that's what's really driving this is that one year's results then lead to the next year to do even more. That next year leads to another year to do even more, and we end up to where we are today.
[00:08:49] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Anxiety, fueling a boom and, and applications, at least. what you mentioned earlier is that college is a business. You're buying a product. The college is obviously selling a product. Do the colleges themselves play a role in this, in this boom. I mean, aside from, you know.
[00:09:05] Adam Fishman: producing some of that anxiety by not letting some very highly qualified students in. Is there other stuff that they're doing? Are they marketing? Are they like, getting in front of students more?
[00:09:16] Jeff Selingo: Well, there's no doubt about it that the marketing machine has turned way up on college admissions. I looked at that in my last book and who gets into why? The whole first chapter was a kind of a profile of Bill Royal who did direct marketing, Politicians back in the sixties and seventies, and then move that into higher education, uh, starting in the 1980s.
[00:09:38] Jeff Selingo: But then the other boom, and I trace this in the new book in Dream School, is our access to information and how quickly it travels now, so. Since I interned at US News and World Report, one big difference is that the government just collects a lot more data on higher ed. It puts that data out there. So that's one big change that has happened since I interned at US News. But the second big change is there's this thing called the internet. There are things called Reddit. You know, threads and Facebook groups and, uh, college confidential and everything else that's out there. And so now you have people trading information on all the data that they have around higher education.
[00:10:18] Jeff Selingo: So much different than 1994. When I interned at US News and World Report, we literally had to call colleges up to get much of this information. They
[00:10:26] Jeff Selingo: had to fill out surveys for US news, and then, by the way, US News and a couple of other players were. They printed these guidebooks that you then go, would go buy in a bookstore.
[00:10:35] Jeff Selingo: 'cause you didn't even have Amazon then, but you didn't have this thing called the internet where all this information was there and freely trade it. People giving advice. So I think a lot of the frenzy, a lot of the anxiety is really coming about 'cause of this information marketplace that we have developed.
[00:10:54] Adam Fishman: Yeah. in my town, there is been this sort of surge, it's probably related to the application, boom. There's been this surge in high priced college admission counselors, people who are hiring these coaches and spending tens of thousands of dollars for them. I'm, I've heard tell of. People spending 30 grand per kid and they start working with your kids in like eighth grade before they're even in high school and even thinking about college.
[00:11:23] Adam Fishman: So most families don't have those resources or the privilege to invest in that. maybe you talk about this in your book, what, what ordinary families can do to level the playing field for, for their kids if they can't spend $30,000 on a college coach.
[00:11:39] Jeff Selingo: the information marketplace that I was talking about earlier on the internet has also democratized college admissions in a way that didn't exist, 20 or 30 years ago. on one hand, it has increased the frenzy around college admissions, and maybe made it a little confusing or maybe a lot confusing. It also has given us information at our fingertips about colleges and universities where you could gain a lot of the knowledge that, counselors might have. Both high school counselors and college counselors. Obviously they're the experts. They spend a their entire day doing this. I get it. and so they're really good resources if you could afford them or if you have great counselors at your high school, but you can't supplement that, you can add to that. Maybe not exactly replace it through Reddit threads, Facebook groups. It takes time. And I think Adam, that's the biggest issue is that you know, you're a parent, you're working, you might have multiple kids, you have a lot going on, and it is an incredibly confusing marketplace that you need to spend time learning and that requires. Deep reading. It requires spending time online, asking questions, participating in webinars, listening to podcasts, all that stuff. And I think that most parents just don't have that time. They want to press that easy button, which of course, unfortunately it doesn't exist for this. And that is where I think then they turn, if they can afford it. Independent counselors, that's where they hope they have a great high school counselor who can kind of fill in that gap.
[00:13:12] Adam Fishman: Yeah. So they're sort of supplanting that time with money or using that to buy them the, the time or the shortcut,
[00:13:19] Jeff Selingo: in any many ways it's no, no different than, you know, somebody hiring somebody to clean their house, cut
[00:13:24] Jeff Selingo: their grass, things like that.
[00:13:25] Jeff Selingo: That's essentially what they're doing. And I'm not, by the way, uh. I'll probably hear from a lot of, independent counsels who are listening to this podcast. I'm not comparing them to somebody who cleans your house or cut your grass. I am just saying that people they hire experts
[00:13:40] Jeff Selingo: or somebody else to do the work when they either don't have the time or don't have the expertise.
[00:13:45] Adam Fishman: Yeah. And it makes a ton of sense. and hopefully that those folks listening to this don't, uh, don't flock to Twitter or social media to harangue you for, for that. I know that's not the comparison you're making. but there is a comparison. I, you have made, which I, you know, I'm a big sports fan.
[00:14:01] Adam Fishman: One of my favorite books and movies is Moneyball. which is all about how you apply data to find undervalued baseball players. And this is a thing that's like exploded in sports, right? everybody's got quantitative people on staff now trying to find under underutilized, undervalued, uh, players with, with skills.
[00:14:20] Adam Fishman: And you have suggested that families can take this approach in their school search. So can you explain that a little bit more to me? How do, how do people take the Moneyball approach to figuring out their school choice?
[00:14:31] Jeff Selingo: So I think one of the things, and I talk about this in the new book, is looking at value versus prestige versus money. What's interesting to me is that for families who could afford it. College has always been kind of this prestige game that they played. Just like Moneyball, you went for the most famous top pick, right?
[00:14:54] Jeff Selingo: Or you went for the most famous free agent out there and you just signed them. Right? I'm a big fan of the New York Yankees. This was like exactly what the Yankees did during the 1980s, right?
[00:15:03] Jeff Selingo: Whoever the biggest free agent out there, they just signed. But did they fit in with the team? what are their, you know, deeper stats now that we know about baseball players?
[00:15:13] Jeff Selingo: In fact, the difference now is that even for families who can afford it, how do you balance prestige versus value and money? And what do I mean by value and money? I think there are two things. Families should be looking at. One is ROI. So how much am I gonna spend on this degree and what am I gonna get out of it?
[00:15:31] Jeff Selingo: And there's a great tool called the College Scorecard, which looks at how much money you're gonna make with that degree from that institution. You could compare institutions by major and start to really understand, okay, they're expecting me to pay full price here. This other institution has given me financial aid. And by the way, at the end of the day, I'm gonna make. Perhaps the same amount of money no matter where I get that degree. So that's one way to assess value. The second way is through merit aid. In the last book I talked about the buyers and sellers. The buyers are the vast majority of institutions that have to give out financial aid in order to attract students.
[00:16:09] Jeff Selingo: Now, when I tell parents this, they're like, well, what do you mean financial aid? You know, I don't know if I'm gonna qualify for aid. And I'm like, it has nothing to do with need-based aid. That's a whole separate pot of money. There's a pot of money at most colleges and universities called Merit Aid. It's essentially a discount.
[00:16:24] Jeff Selingo: It's essentially a coupon to get you in the door. And this kind of blows parents away who are really not kind of in college day to day. And the value there that you're looking for is how far up the pecking order of higher ed can I go and still get the money I need? And so it's a balancing act between those two things and that to me. Is how you Moneyball this process is how can I get the best degree with the best ROI at the same time, how can I get that prestige but also get some money? And so tuition's not as much as it is in most places.
[00:17:01] Adam Fishman: I think about this from the, in the lens of business KPIs, performance indicators, metrics. You talked about this from an ROI perspective. Are there any other key metrics that parents and students should look at to identify colleges that are really great opportunities but are often overlooked?
[00:17:18] Jeff Selingo: So I definitely think you'd wanna look at those outcome, uh, measures you want to look at. Uh, graduation rates and retention rates. Now at the very top colleges, they're gonna have fantastic graduation rates
[00:17:29] Jeff Selingo: and fantastic retention rates. But what you often miss are those metrics at, less, uh, selective, uh, colleges.
[00:17:36] Jeff Selingo: So you definitely wanna look at that. I'm more interested in the professors, who are the professors, you know, not necessarily how many full-time professors that they are, but what's the ratio between undergraduate and graduate? If you're looking for a baccalaureate degree, a bachelor's degree, how much of this institution is really focused on the undergraduate experience?
[00:18:00] Jeff Selingo: That's what I really want to know. So you're gonna be looking at. Class size, you're gonna be looking at faculty size. When you get to go to that campus, you're gonna find out are those professors who show up in their office hours when they say they're going to be. I like to go to classes when I'm on campus 'cause I want to see what is that professor doing before and after class.
[00:18:21] Jeff Selingo: Do they come early? Do they spend time with students? Do they spend time afterwards with students as they're leaving class? Those are less money ballish, but they are definitely metrics that you should be looking at and studying. When you have a chance to go to campus.
[00:18:35] Adam Fishman: and in some of those cases those are even, you know, not quantitative, they're more qualitative, they're more like observations that you can make in studying the school, which I think is really interesting. A couple more questions on the application process, and then I want to go really deep into Dream School.
[00:18:49] Adam Fishman: a lot of, seniors that I've talked to and babysitters, things like that, are talking about applying early decision or early action, and that was something that I thought about when I was going to college, but it, it didn't seem like that prevalent, it was kind of pretty rare. And so I wanted to ask about early decision, early action.
[00:19:10] Adam Fishman: what is that and is it worth it for a family to, to be doing that if it means early commitment to something?
[00:19:17] Jeff Selingo: So early action. Early decision. Definitely much bigger now than it was in, You know, 20 or 30 years ago, in fact, I trace in who gets in and why. Early decision, particularly after the 2008 recession exploded. And what happened then was that, recession hits in the fall of, of 2008. Most colleges, universities, in the beginning of their application process, and they were worried that they wouldn't be able to fill their class. The thing about early decision is you apply early. You apply usually by November 1st. You find out early, usually in December of your senior year. But then if you get in, you're committed to going.
[00:19:54] Jeff Selingo: So it's essentially a hundred percent yield rate. Yield rate, meaning the number of students who enroll, who are accepted, and now everybody essentially enrolls who's going to be accepted early decision. And what was interesting in 2008 is that colleges might have taken 25% of their class this way.
[00:20:10] Jeff Selingo: They ended up taking like half their class that year. This way, meaning half their class was set by December and. What happened the years after that, they didn't go back to 25%. They just kept leaning into early decision year after year, and so it just became a much bigger thing. Early action is similar, but it's not binding.
[00:20:30] Jeff Selingo: Now you might say, well then why does it matter? Because. Colleges, just like a business wants students in their funnel as long as they can. By applying early, it gets students kind of in their system. They could communicate with them. Often students know then they're in, hopefully, uh, into that. College colleges can then really try to yield to them, meaning. Convert them, in business speak. that's what early action does. And both of these have become much bigger in the last, particularly in the last decade. Now, should you do them. early action in many cases is a no-brainer. Uh, if you're interested in a college, it's nice to get that application out. The thing that you need to remember though, is that in early action you might get an acceptance, you might get a rejection, you might also get something called a deferral, meaning they're gonna defer you to regular decision. as a result, you might not get the answer you want Early decision. Is something completely different. I'm not a huge fan of it, but if you really know where you want to go, you want the search to be over, and money is not as big of an issue because remember, if you get an early decision, you're going, you don't have a chance to compare financial aid offers from multiple campuses. if that's kind of describes you, then go for it, but there's no reason that you have to go for it. A lot of students do because they feel like, well, this is my only shot to get into, you know, fill in the blank college.
[00:21:56] Adam Fishman: And you just mentioned this sort of nebulous deferral to like the regular decision. Time, you know, I heard a lot of seniors this year who got that, right? 'cause there's huge wave of early decision, early action, huge wave of deferrals, like those kind of move in lockstep. What do you advise students to do if they're deferred during early action?
[00:22:19] Jeff Selingo: Well, you wanna try to get a sense for how many students were deferred. Some students get deferred 'cause something's missing from their application, or they wanna see grades later on. But if most of the class, if most of the applicant pool was deferred, 80, 90%. Your chances of getting in are gonna be slimmer, that's for sure in regular decisions.
[00:22:39] Jeff Selingo: So if it's a place you want to go, continue to push forward and continue to tell them that you're interested. Send them notes. Go to activities that they're having. Follow 'em on social media. Show interest that you want to go, that's definite. but also have a plan B. Have a backup plan. the early decision deferral may turn into an acceptance.
[00:23:01] Jeff Selingo: It may not, and you just want to be ready if it doesn't, so that you have another alternative kind of sitting out there.
[00:23:07] Adam Fishman: my last question before we get really deep into Dream School is. like a lot of things and I talk to a lot of parents on this podcast about a whole bunch of different topics. it seems that parents have really inserted themselves into the process of college selection and, and decision making.
[00:23:25] Adam Fishman: I think when I was a applying for college, the, the insertion was basically. Are you interested in my alma mater, you know, from from my parents? And how much is this gonna cost? You know, those were like the two things. Now you've got parents like almost grooming their kids with extracurriculars and they're trying to make a more well-rounded student ear early on.
[00:23:50] Adam Fishman: But aside from all of that, what do you see and what do you tell parents? About what their role should be in the application and decision making process.
[00:24:01] Jeff Selingo: So parents are there as a guide, but I remind parents this is not their college search. They definitely have to set up guide rails. they have to nudge a little bit. Uh, the guide rails are important obviously for finances. They have to nudge to make sure students are making their deadline. they have to be there to discuss. And question, uh, to get a sense of what their child is thinking, and perhaps give them advice. But there's a fine line between advice and telling them what to do, and I think that's the part that parents. Sometimes miss or oftentimes miss, where they feel like, well, I didn't spend all this time, money, and effort on raising you for you to go to this college that my friends won't be impressed with when I tell them where you're going to college. And, and that is the main reason I wrote Dream School, is to try to give parents permission to think more broadly about what. Makes for a good college because if we don't do that, we are gonna be kind of stuck in this doom loop of parents feeling like they failed because their kids are not going to Stanford or Yale or you know, whatever.
[00:25:14] Adam Fishman: Alright, well let's talk more about Dream School. Tell me about the research process for Dream School. This was, this was a quite impressive undertaking.
[00:25:21] Jeff Selingo: Thank you. so unlike who gets in and why, which I was mostly centered in college and university admissions offices, the three that I profiled in, who gets in and why. This was mostly spending time with parents, students, families. High school counselors, independent counselors, to try to understand not only what has changed about the college admissions process since the pandemic, which a lot has, but also to understand kind of how they're choosing schools and why, because then I wanted to take that process of, of how they choose schools to really understand, is that the right way to choose schools? Are they looking at the right factors? Are they looking at how this college starts them off? I'm a very big fan of first year experiences. Are they looking at how this college helps them find their sense of belonging so that they find their people when they get to college? Is this college helping them give them the skill sets that they need? To succeed in the marketplace. And then, and this is increasingly true in the last couple of years as we've seen some colleges go outta business. Is this a college as the financial wherewithal to support them as students? So not, less interesting. Will this college go outta business? Some will. I'm not really worried about the vast majority of colleges, but some will. I'm more worried that the colleges are gonna kind of underinvest in things that are absolutely critical for students to succeed.
[00:26:56] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Is there anything in this process, uh, of surveying all these parents and families that was surprising or changed your previous perspective on things?
[00:27:08] Jeff Selingo: let me mention three things. One, just kind of confirmed what I already knew. College is about the job. It's about getting the job. We've known this from a big survey that UCLA does of college freshmen, going all the way back to 2008. The number one reason to go to college is a job.
[00:27:22] Jeff Selingo: Same thing the parents told us. It's all about the job. But two other things surprised me. In the survey, we did a survey of more than 3000 parents for this book. One was about prestige. So I ask parents, you know, is prestige important to you? 16% said yes. and then 27% said it was important to their kids, 16% important to them.
[00:27:43] Jeff Selingo: 27% said it was important to their kids. 61% though said it was important to other people in their community, and this is where I think in our most vulnerable, honest moments that I heard from parents. I don't really care about prestige. My kid doesn't care about prestige, but there's so much pressure in this community to go to certain places and what will their friends think?
[00:28:05] Jeff Selingo: What will my friends think? Right? Like all that. Is really caught up in this idea of what means success in America. and this is again, why I really want to create this permission structure to say, let go of that. It's okay. And then the other final thing that surprised me was about value and willingness to pay.
[00:28:26] Jeff Selingo: So even among parents in my survey, who could afford to pay full price. Increasingly questioning whether that's worth it. And what we're starting to see, as I point out in the book, we're starting to see 'em skip over a whole group of colleges that 10, 15 years ago they would've paid full price for. And now saying, not worth it, I'll pay full price for Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, you name the top 15 tools.
[00:28:52] Jeff Selingo: But after that, I'm gonna look for money. And even if that means skipping over. Number 20 in the rankings, number 25 in the rankings. I'm okay with that. I'm going to, save some money.
[00:29:04] Adam Fishman: college, about the job. Prestige,
[00:29:07] Adam Fishman: not for me, but it is for other people, which is a common thing in a lot of different surveys. and not about prestige, but about a lot of different factors. And then this value and willingness to pay this. These are really interesting shifts. Based on this, in your conversations, do you think, do you think these are the right things for parents to be worried about?
[00:29:27] Adam Fishman: Would you advise them to think differently or, you know, what's your opinion on this?
[00:29:32] Jeff Selingo: I don't think we necessarily need to think about prestige as much as we do and worry about it because we see from other results in the book that people are getting hired at all different kinds of companies no matter where they went to college. So college matters.
[00:29:47] Jeff Selingo: As I say in the book, if everybody gets a lottery ticket walking outta college. You get a second lottery ticket, for, you know, for going to a more prestigious college. your chances are not twice as much, but they're definitely a little bit better if you go to prestigious college.
[00:30:00] Jeff Selingo: So we should worry a little bit about prestigious, but I think we spend too much time on it. The job is an interesting one to me, Adam, because. I feel like we have put so much focus on the job and the payment that comes after college because college has become so expensive that it then results in students deciding on a major from high school that they're not really sure of.
[00:30:24] Jeff Selingo: But, oh, it must pay. I'm gonna go into finance 'cause it pays a lot of money. I'm gonna major in engineering. I'm okay at it. I don't love it, but it pays a lot of money. And then they get there. They may not even like it, but they kind of grind it out and then they get into a career that they don't love as a result. what I hope in all of this is that we would have more exploration and that is the part where if college is all about the job, I get it. I understand why. I feel like it diminishes the parts of college. Help students develop into full, you know, blown human beings, help them discover new ideas, help them discover new careers. and that part I think is, is missing when we focus on the job.
[00:31:12] Adam Fishman: Yeah. For me, college, I resonate a lot with what you just said. Tried to be an engineer in college and I lasted one semester and I had a bit of an existential crisis and decided I hated it. I did something else. Thankfully I went to a school that had diversity of option and I didn't go to like Harvey Mud or MIT or something where that was my only, my only option.
[00:31:35] Adam Fishman: I think that's really fascinating. Then the other thing is, you know, independence. I think best thing that college taught me in addition to academic stuff was how to. Live and survive and thrive on my own. and so that, that was really, that's an overlooked aspect of, of going to college too, I think.
[00:31:51] Adam Fishman: I wanted to talk, about your definition of a dream school. So we talked about fit. Obviously that's important. how do you define dream school and then how can, how can families, what are some other ways that families can figure out if that college offers that type of dream school environment
[00:32:08] Jeff Selingo: So I think this is really important because when people see the title, they think, oh my God, you're kind of playing into this. You know, mentality around that. There's a single school for, you know, our, perfect dream school that you want to go to. Dream to me is a slightly different, in this case
[00:32:24] Jeff Selingo: There's not a single school, there's not even a single category of schools. It doesn't mean it's like the Ivy League or the SECI want to go to a Big 10 school. That's my dream. It's more about. your fit finding your right fit. Where are places where you're gonna learn for how you like to learn, where you're going to thrive, where you're gonna find your people? Like that to me is how you define a dream school. It's less about prestige, it's less about where everyone else is going, and it's more about finding that right fit for what you need and being comfortable with that. Because that's the piece where I think people kind of get enamored with brand names because they think I have to go to one of those in order to succeed.
[00:33:09] Jeff Selingo: And I have a ton of examples throughout the book and data throughout the book that shows that's not the case.
[00:33:14] Adam Fishman: What are some more of those underappreciated factors that really. Determine fit, and maybe families overlook some of these things. You mentioned a few earlier around, presence of professor and you know, are they there earlier? Are they, do they stay late? And you know, how often do you see them and things like that.
[00:33:33] Adam Fishman: But are there, there other things,
[00:33:35] Jeff Selingo: mentorship in general is, is critically important. professors are important piece of that process because, those are the people you're gonna spend most of your time with, especially early on, a school that provides scaffolding, early on. Uh, so I'm a very big fan of the freshman year experience where they are putting you in smaller cohorts. they have additional advisors spending time with you, is critically important. third is around skills. What skills are you gonna learn and how are you gonna learn them?
[00:34:06] Jeff Selingo: It's not just about the course catalog and the curriculum that you're gonna follow for your major, but are you learning. Specific skills, whether it's project management, maybe you're learning, you know, Salesforce, something that you can actually take with you and showcase to a potential employer that you've learned this specific skill, data visualization, you know, throwing out a bunch of other data analytics, whatever it might be. fourth is around the internship and experiential learning. It doesn't necessarily have to be the internship, but do you have a chance to apply your learning in real time? so that could be internships, undergraduate research, project-based learning that's happening. and the college is helping you get that is absolutely, critical.
[00:34:50] Jeff Selingo: And then finally, it's really around finding the sense of belonging, and how do colleges help you? not only the admissions process, but through that first year experience in finding those people that are, you know, right for you,
[00:35:05] Jeff Selingo: that are your people that can help push you, advise you, and do all those things, you know, and, and many of them will become your, you know, friends for, for life.
[00:35:15] Adam Fishman: something that I'm concerned about as a parent, is this sort of growing trend in the rise of neurodiversity, especially A DHD in kids. you know, I have a son who has that diagnosis. and so I'm wondering if you address this at all, or if you come across, you know, parents of neurodiverse kids, how you talk to them about thinking about college admissions and finding fit.
[00:35:37] Adam Fishman: Is that different than, you know, how you might talk to a neurotypical family?
[00:35:41] Jeff Selingo: it is different. the book doesn't really get into, uh, into this. There's a lot of expertise out there. I always point people in that direction. And, you know, there's a lot of books in this area as well. Uh, this is where again, I think also independent consultants that we're talking about earlier, it could be helpful on that front, uh, as well. I do think though, that colleges are starting to understand that there's not one segment of student that they need to serve, and this is where again, looking at colleges kind of off the beaten path, deeper in the rankings. if you wanna go to a highly selective college, they have a ton of applications. They don't really care that much about the student. they care about just kind of maintaining their presence in their rankings where they are, they're gonna serve the traditional 18-year-old student who comes largely more from, middle and upper middle class families. they'll put a little bit of effort into, uh, low income students, you know, who are on Pell Grants, but for the most part, they're gonna serve the student that they've always served, that their faculty likes to teach. If you have a Neurodiverse student, this is where I'm talking to parents about, is like, you do wanna look for schools where. They are going to have the resources and give you the resources, give you access to the resources to help you. And again, I just don't see, and I know that these highly selective colleges that were so enamored with care as much, in many ways, they don't care about your success. At the end of the day, it's kind of
[00:37:10] Jeff Selingo: sink or swim mentality where a lot of other colleges really care about you as a student.
[00:37:15] Adam Fishman: Yeah. So we talked about, on the same topic, the role of prestige and how brand name probably matters a little bit less than people think. It's not the end all be all. I'm curious if you could provide a couple of examples from Dream School of, maybe some lesser known schools that aren't that Ivy level name or that household name that,
[00:37:38] Adam Fishman: end up being also great schools and kind of what makes them special.
[00:37:42] Jeff Selingo: I'm just gonna throw out a couple of, options here. And we are not playing any favorites. So, 'cause I'm literally gonna talk about these off the top of my head. Let's, let's say Dickinson, uh, college in Pennsylvania, a really good price to earnings ratio, which is one of the things we looked at the book.
[00:37:57] Jeff Selingo: In other words, how much money are you spending to get the degree that you have largely 'cause of their location. They're not that far from the nation's capital, they're not that far from the state. Capital students have a lot of access to good internships and, and jobs. as a result, St. Olaf College in, in Minnesota. really focused on that first year programming, uh, creating this first year experience. I see this through a couple of the dream schools. Denison, uh, university in Ohio. Furman University in South Carolina also do that, Michigan State, right? We often think of a University of Michigan when we think Michigan State creating neighborhoods.
[00:38:30] Jeff Selingo: As we think about creating smaller. Groupings of students within a larger university. Many do this through honors colleges as well. Arizona State University has a great, the Barrett Honors College where they're making the big school feel small, as a result. So those are just some of the examples that I talk about in the book about these new dream schools.
[00:38:53] Jeff Selingo: All of them, by the way, have acceptance rates of at least 25, 30%. Most of them have acceptance rates. Forties, fifties, sixties, seventies. Very important for this list that we want them to be accessible, and we then brought a lot of data to the table to really look at how well they're serving students as well.
[00:39:12] Adam Fishman: Yeah. That's amazing. And, and even in that list that you just, rattled off there, like, I think I only know a couple of those colleges. It pains me to hear Michigan State as a University of Michigan graduate
[00:39:22] Jeff Selingo: Which is why I picked that
[00:39:23] Adam Fishman: But, uh, I appreciate you twisting the knife a little bit there, but No, you're, you're
[00:39:28] Adam Fishman: right. I mean. it does sound like they are even doing some things that I wasn't aware of and trying to create more like community, uh, small community, aspects to make that experience better for, for students.
[00:39:39] Jeff Selingo: And listen, the University of Michigan is a fantastic school, just like in North Carolina, university of North Carolina, chapel Hill, great school. But in North Carolina I talk a lot about, North Carolina State, again, you're looking at these places that are accessible.
[00:39:52] Jeff Selingo: big problem with Michigan is it's hard to get into whether you're in
[00:39:55] Jeff Selingo: state or outta state, and you need places where. They're not defined by how many students they're rejecting, but how many students they're accepting.
[00:40:04] Adam Fishman: Yeah. So if a parent of a younger child asks you, let's say they're my kid's age, you know, seventh grade. Fifth grade, you know, they've heard maybe the other competitive parents are starting to talk about college admissions for a 13-year-old or something.
[00:40:21] Adam Fishman: what's the single biggest piece of advice from Dream School that a parent like me should remember when my kids are that college bound age? Like, what would you tell, you know me now that could help me in a few more years?
[00:40:39] Jeff Selingo: Pay attention to what you like, how you like to learn the why. and there's an opening anecdote in the book, around a student who ends up at Columbia. won the lottery as he said, to get into Columbia. And then he gets there and all these like little things that add up pretty quickly that he never noticed during the college search.
[00:41:00] Jeff Selingo: He, he can't get into the class he wants, he can't do research with a professor that he wanted to. There's like lines, essentially lines to get into a club, meaning a student club. because so many students want to get into certain clubs, The core curriculum is not what he thought it was, or it really didn't even pay much attention to it.
[00:41:18] Jeff Selingo: And I think that's the thing. We get so focused on the name on the institution, that sticker we're gonna put on the back of our car. Even when we go to campus, we're not really looking under the hood very much. We're taking a quick tour around campus. Oh, they have good food in the dining hall, and the students seem happy and it's sunny here and oh, look at the game on Saturday.
[00:41:40] Jeff Selingo: It's so much fun and Greek life is so much fun. And then we get there, and this is the biggest takeaway from Dream School for me, is we get there and we're like, oh, it's like touring a house on an open house and skipping like the kitchen, and the bathroom.
[00:41:56] Jeff Selingo: Just like skipping some rooms that are really critical to how you're gonna live in that house every day or. like going to buy a car and never getting into it and actually driving it.
[00:42:07] Jeff Selingo: And that to me is the essence of what you should be doing earlier in high school. I have kids who are ninth rising, 10th grader now, and a, or a 10th grader and a, eighth grader. We just talk about what they like, what they like to do, what are their favorite classes?
[00:42:23] Jeff Selingo: What are their teacher, you know, what are their teachers like? What do they like about their teachers? Do they like when the teacher's lecture at them? Do they like small group projects? All those things, because all of that one day will add up to what are you looking for in a college?
[00:42:38] Adam Fishman: that's great. Alright, I want to talk a little bit in closing about. Future outlook here. So, college has changed a lot, over the last few decades. I expect it will change more. a few colleges, like my other arch rival Ohio State, have recently announced that they're starting to really more deeply integrate ai.
[00:43:01] Adam Fishman: Into their curriculum. I don't quite know what that means yet, but we'll find out. Do you think that this type of change and this sort of rise of AI technology, does this change the consideration process for finding your dream school, or should it change the consideration process or should we wait and see?
[00:43:20] Jeff Selingo: if I knew the answer to that question, I don't know what I'd be, I'd be, but I'd probably be the richest man in America right now. you are right to ask that question, and I think parents are right to be worried. And I see this every day, you know, maybe my kid should not be a computer science major now because there's gonna be no computer science jobs in four years. I will argue that we've always known that jobs change. Maybe they are changing faster today than they ever have before. I'll give you that, let me tell you a little bit of a personal story here in that I went to Ithaca College in 1991. It was the time when communications,
[00:43:56] Jeff Selingo: it was all analog. and you know, people went there because they wanted to work in newspapers. They wanted to work at radio stations, and they wanted to work in tv, network TV Today, if we think about those industries now. there's really no such thing as network TV anymore.
[00:44:14] Jeff Selingo: It's all streaming. we don't turn on the radio. It's all streaming now and the whole music industry's changed. Newspapers don't exist the way they do because we carry these things in our pocket that tell us the news or we're getting it on Facebook and things like that. In other words, all those industries were incredibly disrupted, I would argue within the first 20 years. Of me graduating. Now I understand that's 20 years to pivot and parents are saying, but this is all gonna change in four years, three years, two years. We've always had a pivot. And the reason we're able to pivot is because we're educated, we have, we're able to problem solve, we're able to communicate, we're able to work in teams, we're creative. I'm using those words deliberately right now because that to me is what you're looking for in a college education.
[00:45:05] Jeff Selingo: How do I get those creative juices flowing? How do I learn to work with teams? How do I problem solve, how do I communicate, which I think is gonna become even more important in an age when AI is gonna write so much more. That to me is if you focus on those things, you're gonna be able to compliment technology and not have to always compete with it going forward. More than that, it's hard to give specific advice 'cause I don't think any of us really know. I don't think we should not go to college as a result, I don't think we should be so hung up on what major we wanna pick, but whatever major we pick, just make sure that we are broadly educated. Because at the end of the day, when I think about what I take away most. For my Ithaca College education, it was not around a specific course that taught me radio the way it did, but it was the philosophy courses, the macroeconomics courses, the internships I had, the jobs I had on campus.
[00:46:01] Jeff Selingo: All of that contributed to my education to make me who I am today.
[00:46:05] Adam Fishman: last couple future outlook questions for you. you talk in the book about value, value picking and trying to find good ROI. but I think more broadly, you know, the cost of college has really. Grown so fast, and this is a big topic, right? It just seems unsustainable
[00:46:27] Adam Fishman: untenable for a lot of parents, right?
[00:46:30] Adam Fishman: and certainly wages aren't increasing at the rate of college expense. do you foresee that. Something has to shift here over time when you talk to colleges, like what are you hearing there? you just kinda kinda mentioned this, but how do you talk to parents when they ask that question?
[00:46:47] Adam Fishman: Like, is college still worth it?
[00:46:49] Jeff Selingo: So I definitely say college is so worth it. But what's interesting, I, I just posted recently online, this is like the US news. I have these US news rankings from like. 1989
[00:46:58] Jeff Selingo: and 1990. Look how yellow they are,
[00:47:00] Jeff Selingo: but they're in one of them. There's this poll of college presidents around how to reduce prices. We were talking about this when I went to college
[00:47:12] Jeff Selingo: and what has happened. Prices just continued to go up.
[00:47:15] Jeff Selingo: this is a perennial problem. I do feel like we have reached a breaking point when the majority of the public is not only stressed about this, they literally just can't afford it. and I think there's been a number of changes in Washington over the last, uh, couple of months in terms of, loans and funding for higher education.
[00:47:35] Jeff Selingo: I think that's really gonna squeeze colleges in a way that they're gonna have to figure out how to do business differently. At the end of the day, Adam. People always ask me, why does college cost so much? It's because it can't.
[00:47:45] Jeff Selingo: There's been a market for it, and either people paid for it out of pocket and went deep into debt to do it. But they did it because they thought it was important. And I still think it's important, but we shouldn't be putting people into, especially young adults, into deep debt so they can have this dream that they need to have in order to succeed in life. And so I do think. Maybe I'm Pollyannish here. Maybe I'm overly optimistic. I do think the time has come where colleges to stay in business will have to focus on cutting their costs in order to either, I don't necessarily think cut the price, but at least like level it off for students at
[00:48:29] Adam Fishman: slow that growth or, or flatline it. A little bit of a supply demand question for you. we talked about this at the very beginning of the, of the recording here, that we are crossing over this enrollment cliff, right? We had this huge graduating senior class, uh, huge spike in applications obviously, 'cause the average application per student, uh, volume is going way up.
[00:48:51] Adam Fishman: But now you mentioned that enrollment or graduation rates from, from high school or graduation numbers from high school are gonna start coming down. And we see this in, K through 12 education across the country. There are fewer students in school, like it's just numbers are down. That's a population thing.
[00:49:10] Adam Fishman: How do you think this is gonna impact college admissions in the overall landscape?
[00:49:16] Jeff Selingo: at the very top, I don't think it's gonna change that much. Those schools are already inundated with applications. They could actually take a care cut on applications and be fine further down the pecking order. Though I think it's gonna be incredibly competitive marketplace to get students, I think that means there's gonna be bigger discounts. But there's also gonna be more differentiation between colleges and universities. 'cause they're gonna have to differentiate in ways. Like, oh, we're gonna be the place that gives you, Co-ops or internships, oh, we're gonna be the place that really focuses on the last two years and we're gonna partner with this community college, or we're gonna increasingly take more students who want to transfer to here after getting a community college degree. we're gonna be the place that focuses on that first year experience and not forcing you to pick a major that first year. we're gonna be a place that is interested in mastery-based learning, meaning. you're gonna have more personalized learning. So if you learn something more quickly than somebody else, you could move on faster.
[00:50:14] Jeff Selingo: Or if you move slower, you could really focus on those things.there's all these different ways. Just like me, and you could watch TV very different today than we did 30 years ago, right? We don't have to turn on TV at eight o'clock at night to watch the same program. The same thing is gonna happen in colleges.
[00:50:31] Jeff Selingo: Not everybody has to start in September, end in May. Not everybody has to go for four years. Not everybody has to go to class, you know, X number of times a week to get a Y number of credits. That to me, that differentiation is going to be forced on colleges because they're gonna have to finally. Contend with their costs.
[00:50:50] Adam Fishman: Okay. Well that sounds like a great place to wrap up our conversation. We'll do a little bit of lightning round. Just a couple fun questions. Before that though, I wanted to ask, in addition to buying a copy of Dream School, how can people follow along or be helpful to you?
[00:51:07] Jeff Selingo: the best way is follow me on most of the social media channels I'm @Jeffselingo is my, uh, handle. If you go to jeffselingo.com, that's my website. You could get everything you want to get there. You could subscribe to my newsletter, which is called Next, comes Out about every other week. I also co-host my own podcast called Future.
[00:51:25] Jeff Selingo: You mostly meant for people in the business, but it's interesting, a lot of parents and students and others who are interested in higher ed listen to it. because we're basically pretty accessible, I think, in terms of talking about higher ed. So that's the best way to reach me.
[00:51:39] Adam Fishman: Okay, well we will link to all of those places, can't wait to help you sell some copies of your book too.
[00:51:44] Jeff Selingo: you. I really appreciate
[00:51:46] Adam Fishman: alright, well, we have a few minutes for lightning round. Uh, lightning round is gonna be a little different than our conversation about Dream School. It's a little bit more about you and
[00:51:54] Adam Fishman: some of your thoughts on things and, and we try to keep it lighthearted.
[00:51:57] Adam Fishman: So I only have about six or seven
[00:51:59] Adam Fishman: questions maybe.
[00:52:01] Adam Fishman: all right. Here we go. No one is ever truly ready for lightning round. Just so, just so you know, uh, what would you say is the most indispensable parenting product that you've ever purchased?
[00:52:11] Jeff Selingo: I would go with, I guess, the car seat, right? Like you can't really go anywhere without the car
[00:52:17] Jeff Selingo: seat. So, uh, let's go with the car
[00:52:19] Adam Fishman: can't even leave the hospital
[00:52:20] Adam Fishman: without it. Um, what is the most useless parenting product you've ever purchased?
[00:52:25] Jeff Selingo: Oh Jesus. Like 90% of what's out there. Like anything that's in my, I will be honest with you. I am like a marketer's dream. My wife won't let me go to the supermarket because I always come back with twice as many things. 'cause whatever's on the end cap I buy.
[00:52:37] Jeff Selingo: So what's ever in my Instagram feed, I, I buy.
[00:52:40] Jeff Selingo: so I have wasted money on a lot of indispensable products.
[00:52:44] Adam Fishman: Okay. You'll probably get a lot more Instagram advertising after this episode too. true or false, there's only one correct way to load the dishwasher.
[00:52:53] Jeff Selingo: Oh, that's definitely true. Yes. I, I reload the dishwasher when my kids load it,
[00:52:59] Jeff Selingo: or sometimes even when my wife loads it.
[00:53:01] Adam Fishman: like a true dad. what is your signature dad Superpower?
[00:53:07] Jeff Selingo: connecting parents and, their kids, uh, with each other. Like, I, I like to talk to kids like they're adults because adults in my life, well, growing up, uh, treated me like an adult and they didn't talk down to me. And I, I love including, you know, families in conversations.
[00:53:28] Adam Fishman: Okay. If your kids had to describe you in one word, what would it be?
[00:53:33] Jeff Selingo: forgetful
[00:53:37] Adam Fishman: Oh, aren't we all? what is your favorite kid's movie?
[00:53:42] Jeff Selingo: Toy Story.
[00:53:43] Jeff Selingo: The original. The first
[00:53:44] Adam Fishman: The,
[00:53:45] Jeff Selingo: Yes, the number one. I know people love number three or whatever, but number one, still
[00:53:49] Adam Fishman: Okay. Now, do you have a nostalgic movie that you just couldn't wait to force your kids to watch with you?
[00:53:57] Jeff Selingo: Oh, yes. The karate kid, and they hated it. They hated it,
[00:54:03] Adam Fishman: Okay. how often do you tell your kids back in my day stories.
[00:54:08] Jeff Selingo: uh, every day.
[00:54:09] Adam Fishman: Okay, good, good. You're doing the job. and finally, I love to end with this question. What is your take on minivans?
[00:54:17] Jeff Selingo: Never had one, never will have one.
[00:54:19] Adam Fishman: Okay. All right. Clear and to the point. okay. Well, Jeff, excited for your new book, Dream School: Finding the College That's Right for you.
[00:54:28] Adam Fishman: Thank you so much for joining me today and, uh, educating me on the college, decision making process. And I wish you and your kids and your family all the best for the rest of the year.
[00:54:40] Jeff Selingo: It's been great to be with you. Thank you so much for your support of this book and for your podcast.
[00:54:45] Adam Fishman: Thank you for listening to today's episode with Jeff Selingo. You can subscribe and watch the show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Visit www.startupdadpod.com to learn more and browse past episodes. Thanks for listening, and see you next week.