How Do I Survive College Admissions Crazyness?

00:00:00.000 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:00:03.400 | We got a question here from a frustrated mom who

00:00:09.400 | is asking about college admissions hysteria

00:00:13.280 | and the selectivity of colleges for future employment.

00:00:18.800 | Let me excerpt this question a little bit.

00:00:20.520 | But this querier says, my teenager

00:00:25.640 | is utterly unmotivated and likely

00:00:28.440 | has an undiagnosed learning disability

00:00:29.960 | because she seems quite intelligent outside

00:00:31.800 | of academics.

00:00:32.320 | I'm in California, where kids seem

00:00:35.200 | to take an average of eight AP exams

00:00:37.520 | and seem to have weighted GPAs over four.

00:00:39.600 | I worry for her future, and it upsets me

00:00:41.520 | when people point to examples like Steve Jobs or Larry

00:00:44.680 | Ellison and claim a college degree is not

00:00:46.520 | important to succeed.

00:00:48.560 | If this were true, then please tell me

00:00:50.120 | why companies aren't lining up to hire out

00:00:51.880 | of high school or community college or second tier schools

00:00:55.440 | but all make a beeline to hire from the Ivies.

00:00:59.960 | And she says, what about kids who

00:01:01.680 | need to work or can't handle the pressure of doing it all?

00:01:04.680 | If college was so optional, then why the hiring queues

00:01:07.920 | outside of Harvard and Princeton and why

00:01:09.580 | the sentencing of teens who didn't do it all at an already

00:01:12.720 | vulnerable time in their lives?

00:01:14.600 | All right, so frustrated mom, this

00:01:16.020 | is something I used to do a lot of work on,

00:01:18.360 | college admissions stress.

00:01:21.920 | When I was a graduate student in the first decade

00:01:25.160 | of the 2000s, there was a huge issue

00:01:29.000 | with college student stress because of two things

00:01:31.220 | that occurred during this period.

00:01:33.120 | One was demographics.

00:01:35.080 | So I'm a part of the millennial generation, which

00:01:37.120 | is the children of the baby boomers.

00:01:38.620 | It's a very large demographic group.

00:01:41.200 | I'm at the very older end of the millennials, right?

00:01:43.800 | So I'm one of the first millennials.

00:01:45.320 | So when I was just arriving at graduate school,

00:01:48.660 | you had a huge number of millennials

00:01:52.680 | entering college admission season.

00:01:54.460 | So there was suddenly this huge strain on college admissions.

00:01:57.760 | And then at the same time, they introduced

00:01:59.520 | the common application.

00:02:01.840 | So it used to be, like when I applied to school,

00:02:05.080 | when I wanted to apply, I applied to Dartmouth.

00:02:07.440 | There was an application for Dartmouth.

00:02:09.040 | And I had to go use a typewriter at my dad's office

00:02:11.500 | because you had to typewrite in information in the fields.

00:02:14.800 | And for your essays, you would write your essays

00:02:16.840 | and print them.

00:02:17.440 | And I vaguely remember pasting them into this thing.

00:02:20.480 | I mean, the application was a physical booklet

00:02:22.800 | you would send away for.

00:02:23.800 | You would send them money.

00:02:24.940 | And they would send you back this thing.

00:02:26.600 | And it was a huge pain.

00:02:27.960 | So you were pretty selective.

00:02:29.240 | I'm applying to three schools.

00:02:30.500 | And it took me a while.

00:02:32.240 | But the common app, it was, oh, I'd

00:02:34.280 | fill out all this information on the website once.

00:02:36.400 | And I can apply to anywhere I want just by clicking a button.

00:02:39.120 | And now suddenly, people were applying to 20, 30 schools.

00:02:42.080 | And everyone who was at least a little bit smart

00:02:44.800 | would say, well, I might as well just do Harvard.

00:02:47.160 | I might as well do Princeton.

00:02:47.920 | I might as well do Yale.

00:02:48.640 | You never know.

00:02:49.520 | And suddenly, they had these admissions percentages

00:02:52.640 | that just seemed like they were plummeting, when in reality,

00:02:55.240 | it was just you had a bunch more people applying who never would

00:02:57.880 | have before because they already knew

00:02:59.080 | they weren't going to get in.

00:03:00.000 | Anyways, it caused a huge issue.

00:03:02.200 | College admission stress became a problem.

00:03:05.680 | There was a bunch of national cases, case studies

00:03:08.800 | that were drawing national attention, like Gunn High

00:03:10.920 | School in Palo Alto, California, where

00:03:12.660 | they had a string of suicides.

00:03:14.800 | This was starting to happen with high school students.

00:03:17.320 | Which is all to say I wrote a book eventually called

00:03:19.400 | How to Become a High School Superstar.

00:03:21.640 | And it was all about defusing college admissions stress.

00:03:24.360 | So I feel your pain.

00:03:26.600 | Let me give you a few points before I just

00:03:29.040 | say read that book, which, by the way,

00:03:30.640 | I think you're going to like.

00:03:31.480 | But let me give you a few points.

00:03:32.880 | Yes, college matters.

00:03:34.240 | Ignore the Silicon Valley types that say

00:03:36.440 | Steve Jobs didn't go to college.

00:03:38.620 | Because your kid's not Steve Jobs.

00:03:42.280 | And your kid's not Larry Ellison.

00:03:44.840 | And so yes, if you want to do a knowledge sector

00:03:51.220 | type job, like an office job, for better or for worse,

00:03:54.200 | you have to go to college.

00:03:55.840 | There are obviously other types of work.

00:03:57.600 | Read Matt Crawford's book, Shop Classes, Soul Craft,

00:04:01.640 | that there's a lot of other really good work that

00:04:03.640 | has to do with skilled manual trades, which

00:04:05.400 | I think we definitely overlook.

00:04:07.040 | But I think the people for which that is well suited know that.

00:04:10.080 | It doesn't sound like this is your daughter.

00:04:11.880 | Like there's some people that know,

00:04:13.340 | like I want to repair things and fix things or work on a ranch.

00:04:16.800 | And the people who want to do that know they want to do that.

00:04:19.300 | And I think we need to normalize that more.

00:04:21.080 | And that's not your path.

00:04:22.320 | Yeah, college matters.

00:04:23.240 | So yes, I agree.

00:04:24.520 | You can't just skip colleges.

00:04:26.480 | I also agree, yes, it's true that the very selective

00:04:29.520 | colleges open up a lot more opportunities, especially

00:04:34.040 | for very high paying elite jobs.

00:04:36.000 | They go to the very selective colleges

00:04:37.760 | to do that type of recruiting.

00:04:40.600 | There was this famous study that everyone

00:04:42.480 | kept talking about during that first wave of college stress.

00:04:45.100 | There's this famous study that people are talking about

00:04:47.400 | that said, aha, it doesn't matter what school you go to.

00:04:51.040 | See, we did this study where we looked

00:04:54.480 | at students who got into good schools,

00:04:57.200 | but also to less good schools, and went to the less good

00:05:00.320 | school, and some went to the better school,

00:05:02.080 | and it didn't matter.

00:05:02.800 | In the end, they both did as well.

00:05:04.160 | So it's the person, not the school that really matters.

00:05:06.460 | This study was really popular because people like that idea.

00:05:10.420 | Don't over sweat the school you go to.

00:05:12.040 | It doesn't really matter.

00:05:13.120 | I wrote an article about this way back when, like in 2008.

00:05:17.080 | That's a crazy interpretation of the data.

00:05:18.840 | If you actually look at this study,

00:05:20.300 | it turned out to matter quite a bit, actually.

00:05:22.680 | If you went to a better school, you made more money out of it.

00:05:25.960 | It was crazy the interpretations that media outlets

00:05:30.600 | were making of that study.

00:05:31.880 | And I don't mean to go on a tangent here,

00:05:33.600 | but basically there was one way you

00:05:36.560 | could rank schools by which you could

00:05:39.200 | show that effect went away.

00:05:40.400 | That's something to do with the median SAT score.

00:05:42.720 | But if you looked at the most natural way

00:05:44.840 | to rank schools, which was looking at their ranking in a--

00:05:49.720 | it wasn't US News, might have been Barron's, but whatever.

00:05:51.600 | Just looking at their ranking, it made a big difference.

00:05:55.200 | In these dyads, the students who went to the higher ranked

00:05:57.520 | school versus the lowest ranked school made more money.

00:05:59.480 | OK, so that's true.

00:06:00.440 | There's jobs that are open to people in the Ivy leagues

00:06:02.740 | that aren't open otherwise.

00:06:04.720 | You can't do much about that.

00:06:07.520 | Can't do much about that.

00:06:08.640 | That's true.

00:06:10.240 | But I'm going to try to make you feel better here frustrated,

00:06:12.760 | mom.

00:06:14.760 | I don't think you want most of those jobs.

00:06:17.440 | Yes, you can be a derivatives trader.

00:06:19.160 | You can be a management consultant.

00:06:21.720 | And you can get into really good law schools.

00:06:23.760 | But I don't know that you--

00:06:25.280 | so?

00:06:27.280 | So where does that end you?

00:06:29.120 | That you have a very expensive penthouse apartment in New

00:06:31.720 | York.

00:06:32.240 | You're also completely stressed out and alienated

00:06:34.240 | from your family because you're a managing director

00:06:36.200 | at a big bank.

00:06:36.960 | Some people want to do that.

00:06:38.080 | Most people don't.

00:06:38.840 | So that's my first point.

00:06:40.120 | So what?

00:06:42.600 | And then two, I would say, don't think about that hype.

00:06:49.120 | Go to a good school.

00:06:51.160 | Go to the best school you can get into.

00:06:53.640 | Do well when you're at that school.

00:06:57.400 | Find an interesting job that gives you options.

00:06:59.840 | Do career capital theory and lifestyle-centric career

00:07:02.000 | planning.

00:07:03.240 | Make yourself an awesome life.

00:07:05.600 | That's the recipe.

00:07:07.480 | And California is crazy about this stuff.

00:07:09.800 | DC is kind of bad about it.

00:07:10.920 | California is crazy about this type of college stuff.

00:07:13.600 | And they really-- and I can see it in your question,

00:07:15.280 | so I have so much empathy here.

00:07:16.360 | But they really get under your skin

00:07:17.840 | and make it seem like, well, if you're not going to Yale

00:07:21.920 | or University of Chicago, dot, dot, dot.

00:07:25.240 | But you know what?

00:07:26.000 | Follow out that dot, dot, dot.

00:07:27.920 | What happens?

00:07:29.280 | Yeah, I don't get to go work for Goldman Sachs.

00:07:33.520 | I would say congratulations.

00:07:35.000 | You don't want to do that anyways, right?

00:07:36.720 | I mean, what happens?

00:07:37.680 | So you focus on your grades.

00:07:39.720 | Get the best grades you can.

00:07:41.800 | Go to a good school.

00:07:42.840 | My advice is typically go to your state school

00:07:47.040 | unless you can get into a small number of very elite schools

00:07:51.600 | that are much, much better than your state school.

00:07:54.360 | I'm a bit of a curmudgeon on this.

00:07:55.760 | I'm not a big believer in shopping

00:07:57.660 | for random private schools that are nowhere near you

00:08:00.300 | just because you like the look of the campus.

00:08:03.880 | I mean this with respect, teenagers,

00:08:05.440 | because I'm talking about myself at that age.

00:08:07.320 | But 18-year-olds and 17-year-olds are idiots.

00:08:09.640 | How much do we really want to give them

00:08:11.840 | weight to their decision of, no, I definitely

00:08:13.720 | need to go to this random school halfway across the country?

00:08:15.920 | I was like, go to your state school probably

00:08:17.840 | unless you can get into a fantastic school.

00:08:21.040 | OK, if you're really into government and politics

00:08:23.760 | and get into Georgetown, go to Georgetown.

00:08:26.000 | But don't go to a random private school halfway

00:08:28.480 | around the country because you like something

00:08:30.360 | in their brochure about their gym and the campus look nice.

00:08:34.440 | Go to your state school unless you get into an elite school.

00:08:37.000 | Don't overschedule.

00:08:38.640 | Do really well in your major.

00:08:39.860 | Get good grades.

00:08:41.080 | This will open up job opportunities.

00:08:42.600 | Build a cool life.

00:08:45.080 | I think that's the takeaway message.

00:08:48.720 | So to bring that back to my book, what I did in that book,

00:08:51.920 | How to Become a High School Superstar,

00:08:53.540 | is I profiled a bunch of kids that

00:08:55.520 | did fine in college admissions but weren't at all stressed out.

00:08:58.280 | And I kind of walked through what their life was like,

00:09:00.200 | what matters, what doesn't.

00:09:01.280 | And spoiler alert, they're not overscheduled.

00:09:05.000 | They wander and stumble into interesting things.

00:09:07.680 | They're pretty smart about their study habits,

00:09:09.560 | so they get good grades without having to study all the time.

00:09:12.140 | And that's kind of it.

00:09:14.520 | So I am giving you permission, frustrated mom,

00:09:16.760 | to not get too caught up in this selective college hysteria.

00:09:23.480 | You should help your daughter with good study habits.

00:09:26.040 | Don't overschedule her.

00:09:27.720 | Let her live up to her academic potential.

00:09:29.920 | Go to the good school, maybe one of the great UC system schools.

00:09:34.760 | Don't pay twice as much to go to a school across the country.

00:09:38.560 | And let them do well there.

00:09:39.640 | Read my type of advice.

00:09:40.920 | Find themselves.

00:09:41.840 | Find their flow.

00:09:42.640 | Do good work.

00:09:43.360 | And then lifestyle-centered career planning,

00:09:45.520 | build a really cool, interesting life.

00:09:47.160 | I think that is what most people should be doing.

00:09:50.600 | And we need to stop obsessing about this dream that,

00:09:52.960 | I don't know, you're going to go to Harvard and then the Yale

00:09:55.560 | Law School and be like a senator at 30 or something like that.

00:09:59.040 | Hey, spoiler alert, that's not going to happen to you.

00:10:01.640 | It's going to happen to a small number of people.

00:10:03.240 | But don't build your whole life around that's

00:10:05.120 | what you need to do, I guess.

00:10:07.520 | Jesse, did you have that pressure?

00:10:13.120 | How do you remember that college?

00:10:14.880 | Because we were the same age.

00:10:16.480 | It's funny you bring up the Common Application.

00:10:18.640 | Because it got worse right after we

00:10:20.840 | went through this whole thing.

00:10:23.040 | Yeah, I mean, the Common Application

00:10:24.680 | was key to me because I never would have applied to Tufts

00:10:26.640 | if they didn't take it.

00:10:27.440 | I just submitted it at the last minute

00:10:29.040 | and ended up getting accepted.

00:10:30.400 | And then once I weighed other schools,

00:10:33.280 | I selected it and ended up having a great time and loved

00:10:36.920 | it.

00:10:37.560 | But I didn't think about the admission rates

00:10:42.040 | with the Common Application until you just mentioned it.

00:10:43.840 | It makes a lot of sense.

00:10:44.840 | It inflated them.

00:10:45.520 | So it made it seem super impossible.

00:10:47.960 | I mean, the point I make in that book

00:10:49.880 | is the key thing about college admissions

00:10:51.520 | is that it is a vanishingly small number of schools

00:10:54.000 | and students for which things like your extracurricular

00:10:57.880 | activities or whatever matters.

00:11:00.040 | For the vast majority of colleges

00:11:01.520 | and the vast majority of kids, what's your grades?

00:11:04.520 | What's your SAT scores?

00:11:06.120 | Are they in the range of our accepted students?

00:11:08.240 | Yes, you get to come here.

00:11:09.280 | That's the vast majority of colleges,

00:11:10.700 | the vast majority of kids.

00:11:11.780 | So get the best grades you can.

00:11:14.840 | Get good SAT scores.

00:11:17.520 | Find schools that you're in the middle of that range.

00:11:19.440 | Go to those schools.

00:11:20.040 | Don't even sweat it.

00:11:21.080 | It's such a small subset of people

00:11:23.040 | for which you're applying to a school in which they're like,

00:11:26.080 | we have so many students who have

00:11:27.640 | grades that are pegged at the top of our range

00:11:30.120 | that now we have to start differentiating

00:11:32.720 | among other factors.

00:11:34.400 | But even then, that's not most students,

00:11:36.080 | because a lot of those slots are reserved for various sports

00:11:40.160 | or for the orchestra needs someone.

00:11:41.940 | So now we're down to a really small number of students.

00:11:45.040 | And then there's some shoo-ins, because these type of colleges

00:11:48.160 | want as interesting as a possible of class.

00:11:50.400 | So there's just some really interesting people.

00:11:52.560 | And then there's people who are daughters of presidents.

00:11:55.280 | So they need to come here too, because we're

00:11:57.120 | trying to create a whatever.

00:11:58.680 | And now we're down to a very small number of slots

00:12:01.440 | at a very small number of schools

00:12:03.680 | where you have an admissions officer saying,

00:12:06.840 | what activities do you do?

00:12:08.560 | So I think we definitely overblow that.

00:12:10.480 | Everyone is obsessed with what are my activities.

00:12:13.760 | And they're wrong about it.

00:12:15.000 | That's the whole point in that book.

00:12:16.500 | One of the big points in my book is

00:12:18.320 | that people are wrong in terms of what

00:12:21.000 | they think is important when it comes to activities.

00:12:23.160 | They focus way too much on quantity,

00:12:25.360 | thinking somehow that raw quantity of activities

00:12:28.360 | is somehow impressive.

00:12:29.560 | It's not.

00:12:31.200 | Or they fall into the trap of looking

00:12:33.160 | for activities that have incredibly clear competitive

00:12:35.240 | structures, like am I the first chair of the state orchestra?

00:12:38.200 | Only one person in your state gets

00:12:39.560 | to be that for the instrument.

00:12:40.760 | So it's not necessarily a great place to be competing.

00:12:43.000 | So I don't mean to rant.

00:12:43.960 | But I just want to give more people permission to say,

00:12:47.960 | I'm going to get the grades that--

00:12:49.760 | I'm going to work hard, get good grades,

00:12:51.280 | see what schools that opens up, go to that school,

00:12:53.120 | have a good experience in that school, build a cool life.

00:12:56.120 | And we-- and of course, I'm saying

00:12:58.000 | this as someone who went to an Ivy League school

00:13:00.040 | and trained at MIT.

00:13:00.880 | So maybe it's easy for me to say.

00:13:03.240 | But I don't know that my school opened up

00:13:06.320 | for the vast majority of my peers

00:13:09.200 | really cool, interesting, happy lives.

00:13:10.960 | They all just went to Harvard Law School.

00:13:12.240 | Everyone I know just went to Harvard Law School

00:13:14.200 | and are all law partners now and are tired.

00:13:17.240 | So congratulations.

00:13:19.520 | They have nice houses, though.

00:13:21.520 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:13:24.880 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

How Do I Survive College Admissions Crazyness?

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