- Hello everybody, it's Sam from the Financial Samurai podcast. And in this episode I have a special guest with me, Dr. John Durante, the principal of Syosset High School. He recently launched a podcast called the College Admissions Process Podcast, the CAP. And it's there, its goal is to provide insights straight from college admission professionals of top national universities and colleges.

So welcome, John. - Sam, thank you so much for having me. I've been waiting for this conversation. I really appreciate it more than you'll ever know. - Ha ha, no, no, I really appreciate you taking out your time. So today there's no school today during Memorial Weekend Friday? - That's right, no school today.

So I have all day, Sam. Go ahead, you shoot with the questions. - Well, tell me, John, you know, so I discovered your podcast because I've been listening to a lot more podcasts since the pandemic, which actually is kind of a contra because most people, many more people started working from home and they started not listening to as many podcasts.

But me, on the other hand, I started listening to more and I really enjoyed all your interview questions with various admissions officers. I have two young children, six and three, and I'm thinking ahead about how to pay for college, how to strategically get into college, and whether it matters most.

So I really appreciate all the 120 plus interviews you've done so far. - Well, I appreciate that, Sam. And like you, I too became a fan of podcasts throughout the pandemic. Obviously, we had a lot more time on our hands. So I was introduced to it and I love the on-demand nature of it.

Whether you're taking a walk, exercising, commuting to work, you could listen anywhere, basically any time. So that's what I loved about it. And I realized that I wanted to actually do a podcast of my own. When I was much, much younger, I used to DJ. And so this is something that, you know, it's in my blood, I think.

But I wanted to do a podcast that, you know, frankly was going to work and not fail. Because 80% of the people, unfortunately, that start a podcast, they actually fail quite quickly because it's a lot of work with editing, especially if you're a one-man person like I am. But the way it came about was that I went through the college admissions process with both of my daughters.

One of them, who is just finishing her sophomore year up in Connecticut, she had an IEP while in high school. So high school was-- - And maybe explain IEP to the listeners. - Yeah, so she had an IEP while in high school, which means she had an individual education plan.

So basically she was classified as a special education student, but she got her diploma, she took all the state exams that she needed to take, and she's thriving and doing fine today. However, at the time, it was very stressful because she wasn't your typical student. So I had to become that parent that really needed to help her, to talk to admissions representatives, and frankly, ask the question, should she even apply to your school?

And what I found was a few things. First of all, the admissions representatives are phenomenal. They are so accessible, they really wanna help, they're happy to respond to your emails. In my case, every once in a while, we even got on a phone call. Obviously, I would go to the college fairs like many people do.

But I also recognize that other parents, many of them feel, I guess, a stigma. Maybe they don't wanna reach out to the rep because they think somehow it's gonna be a bad mark on their child's application. And others perhaps don't really know what questions to ask. So since I had just gone through this, I came up with the idea, I said, if the admissions reps would sit down with me for a half hour, 45 minutes, whatever it is, and they would talk about their schools and all the great programs that they have to offer both in their classrooms and beyond, talk about giving insight into their overall application process, whether it's the essay, the test optional movement, and so many other things, and ultimately, asking the question, what are your top three pieces of advice that you would give students and their parents getting ready for the college admissions process?

And so I reached out to a couple of reps thinking, let me see if this idea could be a reality. And immediately, I had a lot of people saying yes. And that's when I panicked, Sam, because at that point in time, I didn't know how do you record, how do you edit.

And so now with 123 episodes live as of today, I've certainly become, I don't wanna say a professional, but I'm getting better. - Well, that's great. And this is on top of your day job as a principal, high school principal. - That's correct, yes. I'm the high school principal, as you mentioned, at Syosset High School.

I've been there for 29 years, only 13 years as the principal, and it's a phenomenal school, a highly academic place, the community is so supportive, and I've spent my entire career there and I absolutely love it. But again, this came about after helping my own daughters. She helped me to see the need that parents have.

A lot of people are just afraid to even reach out to the reps. And so the podcast was born, and I'm having so much fun with it. - No, that's great. Your episodes are great. I listened to, most recently, the William & Mary episode because I went to the College of William & Mary.

- Fantastic. - And I also listened to the University of San Francisco episode because I'm based here in San Francisco. And I really like that admissions fella. He had a lot of enthusiasm and insights. So as a principal, I'm curious to know how often are you approached by students and parents to get a college recommendation letter, and how much waiting does that have?

Because to me, it sounds like, "Oh, if I got a recommendation letter from the principal, that must be pretty impressive." - Yes, I probably write about 20 a year. So I would say I get approached pretty regularly. And I think that, first of all, I always love to help people, which is why I came up with this crazy idea of doing this podcast, and here we are.

But I think what's more important about recommendation letters or understanding the overall application is that you really have to look at it as a marketing package and understand that there are multiple parts, and the admissions reps will tell you that they take a holistic approach. So your transcript, that gives a picture of four years of your academic ramps, the challenges, and how you built those ramps.

The activity sheet, obviously, that's what you've done outside of the classroom. Your essay is your voice about yourself. A recommendation letter is someone else's voice about you. So it's very important to understand the role of each of the parts while building upon each other and not repeating where the information is found somewhere else.

So I'll give you an example. If I am a soccer player, and on my activity sheet I talk about playing on the varsity team and maybe I play on an academy team, and perhaps I help students after school with homework that are younger than me that play soccer in my club, that's fantastic.

Those are all great things. If my essay is also about playing soccer, Sam, it's a missed opportunity, right? Because the activity sheet clearly defines all of those things that you do after school. So unless the essay, yes, could be related to soccer, but it gives more insight in terms of something that occurred, your thought process, your reflections, how it made you better, how you see yourself with those qualities contributing on a college campus, unless the essay is giving that off, it's a missed opportunity.

So you asked a question about when students come to me for me to ask them, for me to write a letter of recommendation for them. I'm very mindful of not repeating what's already on their activity sheet or on their transcript. The college admissions representatives know whether you're an A, a B+, an A+ student based on your transcript.

They already know if you're a part of five after school activities. I don't need to reiterate that in my recommendation letter, otherwise it's a missed opportunity. So I'm going to give you an example of my favorite recommendation letter for a student. I was in my office really early, Sam.

In my building, period one begins at 7.30. Wow. 7.30? Yeah, it's really early. So I was in the office before 7 one morning, checking email, and a student walks into my office and says, "Hey, I found this and I want to make sure it gets back to the rightful owner." I turn around and he puts a $100 bill on my desk.

True story. We ultimately got it back to the rightful owner, but the point being is that what I said to that kid, and at the time he was in 10th grade, I said, "When you're ready for college, I'm going to write a letter for you." And my letter was the entire story.

And I think that talking about an incident like that, it's not so simple to find that story on a transcript, on an activity sheet, but his principal was able to talk about his integrity and how he found the $100 bill and never even thought once to take it, but rather he wanted to get it back to the rightful owner.

So think about the admissions representative side. That letter is my voice explaining all the great characteristics of that student. So that letter builds on all of the other parts. Right, right. No, that's a great story. It's about character. A lot of it is about character. I've listened to more than a couple dozen episodes of yours and the admissions officers continuously kind of highlight about your essay.

It doesn't have to be about how glorious you are. It can be about the day-to-day things, the simple things, your ride on the bus, what you eat, discussions with your family. Because they must be screening over and over again highly qualified, highly tailored, customized applications. So I would think that something unique that does stand out does matter.

It does. And they'll tell you that the most common essays are sports injuries or a story perhaps of a, or a story about a grandparent, for example. So in the case of a grandparent, many mistakes that students make is they speak about their grandparent, many, for example, perhaps a grandparent came here from another country to find a better life for their family, which is a great story.

But the reps will say, "I want to admit grandpa, but I know nothing new about the student." So it's very important to write the letter. It's very important to write the essay, put the pen down, put the computer down, go back to it a day later, a week later, a month later.

And here's the point of the essay. When someone reads your essay, did they learn something new about you, who you are, the way you reflect, your thought process? And frankly, another thing that the colleges are trying to determine is how are you going to contribute to their school community?

So those, in general, that's what you're trying to get out of the essay, again, as opposed to repeating that you're an A+ student or that you've played soccer your entire life. Each piece of this holistic process, right, that's what they say, they review the application holistically, each piece has to build upon the next.

So it's very important to understand what each piece means. Now, another thing, Sam, if I may, many colleges, they'll ask students for a supplemental essay. And what happens is students, many of them, they spend so much time on their general essay that when they see a school ask for one or two supplemental essays, they almost get frustrated, right?

They just want to rush through it and get it done. Big mistake. Big mistake. The point of the supplemental essay is for you to demonstrate your understanding of the institution. Why do you want to go there? Why do you see yourself there? How do you see yourself contributing to their school community?

A typical supplemental question would be, for example, why NYU? In other words, why would you want to go to NYU, New York University? And so some students see that as a simple question, but it has a deeper meaning. They're testing your demonstrated understanding of their institution and what you're going to do to make it better and contribute.

Right. You know, it just seems like getting good grades and standardized test scores for colleges who accept those scores is standard nowadays. And I think you're absolutely right. Getting a unique essay that has a different perspective is very valuable. So don't shirk on the responsibility of writing and spending time on those essays.

In terms of standardized admissions, I love your consistent questions about what percentage of the admitted students took standardized test scores. And it seems to me strategically that if you have a high standardized test score, you submit it. If you don't, or it's not, you know, maybe it's 50 percent or it's below the 50 percent range, you don't submit it.

What are your thoughts in general about the trend towards no standardized test scores? And what are some good strategies that parents and students should think about? Sure. And that's a great question. Thank you so much, Sam. So first of all, I absolutely think that every student should prepare for the SAT, ACT.

Frankly, take both of them and see if you do better on one or the other. With my own daughters, both of them, for whatever reason, did better on the ACT. And so that's what we followed. So the reason why I ask that question, and thank you for posing it, it's basically, can you tell us the percentage of students that applied and who were ultimately admitted, not only who applied, but who were admitted that did not submit their test scores?

And so I ask that question because a lot of people think that the test optional movement is a myth. So clearly, if you listen to the episodes, in most cases, in most cases, it's about a 50/50 split. Schools that are more competitive, maybe it's 60/40, 70/30, but clearly the test optional movement, if the school says that they are test optional, they are test optional.

Another thing to be very mindful of is that many times when you're researching a school, everyone looks at that mid 50%. And it's very important to understand that obviously right now, in this era of test optional, of the test optional movement, only students that score high are submitting. Therefore, the mid 50% in terms of standardized test is skewed.

It's much higher than it was before. Don't be discouraged by that, students. Don't be discouraged. Know that it's going to be higher for that reason. Only students that score well are submitting. And take the test. If you fall within that middle 50 and you feel it's a great indication of who you are academically, submit it.

If a school says that they're test optional and they're reporting in my episodes that it's 50/50 in terms of how many submit or not, trust it. Trust it. You want that marketing package, your overall application to be the best that it could be. If your score falls so much lower, but your transcript shows the rigor, the ramps that you built over four years, don't submit.

But if that score falls within the 50%, certainly submit that test score. And there are schools, for example, the UC system, Sam, right where you live, they're test blind. So whether you submit the scores or not, they're not looking at it. And where I think the trend is going to go moving forward, many of the admissions reps, they're reporting that they're looking at trends over the next couple of years.

And they're trying to determine going test optional, if they're seeing any changes in terms of the courses that students are taking, if they're seeing any changes in graduation rates. And what most are saying is that if they don't see significant changes, the test optional movement is probably here to stay.

- Okay. No, that makes a lot of sense. What would you say to the people who are skeptic regarding the test optional movement so that colleges can do more to subjectively instead of objectively admit students based on what they think is the ideal class, what the ideal class looks like?

- Yeah, so that's something really difficult to dig deep into. I can tell you that all institutions have their institutional needs. So for example, it was reported that one particular school, they could only accept up to 18% of the students that are out of state. Another school might be looking for more students within a certain major.

Another school might only accept a certain amount of students from a particular high school. There are so many institutional needs governed by their board of trustees many times that, you know, I think the best advice that I could give is to control what you could control and don't worry about the rest.

And what I mean by that is that there's a reason why you might hear of a student that gets accepted to Stanford and gets rejected to, I don't know, Yale, right? Both phenomenal schools, and I'm not trying to compare one with the other, both highly selective, highly academic. But the reason may be if you have a straight A+ average and you've been part of many activities and you've taken on leadership roles and you've done so many humanitarian things, you've done all you can.

You wrote an outstanding essay. Your supplemental essays were, to the point earlier, really demonstrating your understanding of the institution. You have to understand that that's the best that you could do. You created a marketing package that really represents who you are as a student, both inside of the classroom and out.

But it's also important to recognize that, yes, many times there's no rhyme or reason as to why students get accepted or not. Let me put it in simple terms. Many schools, for example, they might have 1,000 seats. They're looking to accept 1,000 students as a freshman class. But they get 15,000 applications, 10,000 of which are all viable candidates.

So how do they choose? And so that's why there are so many things that come into play that, frankly, are out of our control. So I just think that part of the process is being mindful of all of this. And of course, what makes it worse now is that if you're mindful of it, you're going to apply to more schools, which means that schools are getting even more applications.

And so it's a vicious cycle. But my point in the whole podcast is to just shed light on all of this and really give people a resource that they could chew on and digest. You know, as a parent, I have hopes and dreams for my children, as do you.

I think all parents do. And then we wonder about the future. And I think one of the stepping stones for many families is for their children to go to college. However, it seems that most of the information we can learn online is free or low cost now. The European model has apprenticeships, which gets the apprentices into decent paying jobs and it goes up.

What is your thought about the overall future of college, given tuition rates have gone up way faster than the rate of inflation for so long? And there seems to be a huge disconnect. I just recently saw the University of Southern California has a total all-in cost of about ninety one thousand for the coming year.

And that times four is a lot of money. And it doesn't seem like it's going to stop or abate. So what are your thoughts about the disconnect between the cost of college and the median income post-college? It doesn't seem like it's keeping up. It's definitely not keeping up and it's certainly a major problem.

And obviously it's a conversation family to family. There are many families, I myself went to a state university growing up. And so it's a very important point to talk about the financial situation early and often with your student. Many times the reps talk about the fact that a kid is really excited about a certain school.

He or she gets admitted only to find out that the parents can't afford it because they didn't get the financial aid package that they had hoped for. These are conversations that have to start early. If you're a family, like my family was, where we could only afford a state school growing up, then make that very clear early.

Another thing to understand is that every school has something called a net price calculator. They're supposed to make it available to you on their websites. And if you use the net price calculator, it's really a good indicator in terms of based on your salary, based on your financial situation, what it is that you're going to be able to afford or not at each and every school.

So my recommendation would be for people to use the net price calculator. Sure. Yeah, you know, it's interesting because I take a lot of views from a personal finance angle given financialsamurai.com. And one of the things I didn't realize until listening to many of your episodes and other podcast episodes is that, you know, I used to think, "Ah, if you make a lot of money, you're going to get penalized and you're not going to get a lot of financial aid." So that's fine in the sense that, well, you make a lot of money so you can afford, more easily afford to pay for college.

But on the positive side is that actually if you make a lot of money, maybe, true or false, the admissions officers might say, "Oh, okay, well, you make a lot of money. You can pay the full freight and you can also maybe be a bigger donor in the future." So what are your thoughts on that situation?

So those are not typical questions that I ask in the episode because the goal with my podcast is, again, to have them give insight in terms of the programs that they offer inside of the classroom and beyond, to give insight into the review process, to give insight of life on campus, and then, of course, the advice that they could give students and parents.

In terms of the financial side, the net price calculator is huge. The other thing that's huge is to apply early, usually it's within the early action stages because that's when they have the money that they consider for merit scholarships and things like that. But you're absolutely right. You know, it's a vicious cycle.

You made reference to $91,000 a year times four. That's a lot of money. Most people in the United States and beyond cannot afford that. So something's got to give. And again, I highlight the fact that it's very important, very important to talk about the financial ability of a family to afford a school or not, to have those conversations really early.

Right. Yeah, my fear is for students and parents to apply to a school. They love the school. They get in, but they have to pay a lot more than they expect. And then they're saddled with a lot of student loan debt, and they don't get that job that they thought they were going to get.

It's interesting. I was looking at some statistics at Harvard. And to apply to these elite universities, you talk about a lot of nonprofit work, helping society, volunteering and all that. You look like a great humanitarian on these college applications. But then I looked at the percentage of graduates who went to tech, finance and consulting, and it was almost 60%.

60% of graduates from Harvard went to these fields. And I wondered, well, what happened to saving the world? What happened to humanity? Do you have any thoughts on why this is? Well, I do think that there's -- let me just take a second. I'm sorry, Sam. I'm going to take a sip of water.

So I think there's a reality that students do a lot of humanitarian efforts, a lot of volunteer work to make sure that their activity sheet is full of diverse activities. And whether or not they continue with it later on, maybe throughout college, they mature, if you will, and their -- they mature, if you will, and their interests change.

But I don't know. That's something that's individual and not something that I necessarily dig deep in in my podcast. That's not the focus of my podcast. My focus is to make sure that I get every single rep from every single college and university throughout the country. So I'm not an investigative reporter where I'm trying to pin somebody in a corner, you know.

But we do have a lot of honest conversations. And yes, you know, there are institutional needs. And it's a problem. And we talk about the fact that if you could take the first 20% of students that are denied admissions and you compare their profiles to the students that were accepted, many will tell you that there's no difference.

There's really no difference. But if all of a sudden you have a donor that gives millions of dollars towards a health facility on campus and that person tells the board of trustees, by the way, this is something that was in Rick Clark's book, The Truth About College Admissions is what it's called.

If there's a donor and they build a health building on campus and the donor says, I want to see more, for example, and this is just an example, I want to see more females in the STEM fields, then that institution will hire more females in those majors. And there's multiple examples of that as well.

So that's definitely a reality. Rick Clark was on one of my episodes. He's phenomenal. He's at Georgia Tech. But when he was on, we spoke about his book, The Truth About College Admission, which I would recommend because he's excellent. And if you're going to listen to the podcast, I would listen to that episode because that was one episode where we dig really deep into exactly that, the different institutional needs and Rick gave tremendous examples that I think would be helpful in terms of his insight to your listeners, Sam.

Sounds good. On the podcast, you speak about the importance of visiting campus and just to get a feel, I guess how long should you stay to visit campus and what if you can't afford to visit campus or you can't get to it because of scheduling conflicts? And what are some questions that students should be asking while they're on campus and what should they be doing to really get that full immersive experience so they don't have any kind of head fakes or surprises once they matriculate?

Well, those are great questions and I'll try to break it down different ways. So first off, many students are not able to visit campus because of financial constraints. There are many students that may be able to afford it but then there are time constraints. So it's not easy to visit campuses, especially if you're on the East Coast and you're thinking about going to school on the West Coast.

So what I would recommend first is wherever you live in the United States or beyond, there's got to be a college campus near you. So whether or not you intend to go to the schools that are within an hour from wherever you live, go and pay them a visit.

You get a feel of the campus. Do you want to have a campus that is in a city? Do you want a campus that has an actual campus? Do you want to be in a big school, a small school? Do you want to be more than an hour away from your house or do you want to be closer?

These are all things that you should consider and so if you can't afford getting on a plane and traveling across the country, at least go visit local campuses to get a feel of what it is that you're looking for in a college, large school, small school, medium school, and all of that.

The next thing is that the pandemic has taught us that there's a lot that we could do virtually. So engage in the virtual events. If you're able to visit campus, certainly do the tour, certainly ask questions of the student, but take the time to speak to random students on campus.

How accessible are the professors? Is this a commuter school? What do students do on the weekend? Do they go home or is there a lot going on? If you're interested in the social life, yes. If you're interested in the party life, ask the random student. The other advice that I would give to students is to be aware of the full sense of comfort when you're on a college campus, for example, with your brother or sister or your parents or whoever it is that's familiar to you, that's visiting with you.

It's very easy to go to a campus, you go on the tour, they show you all the beautiful things, you usually go and have a nice lunch or a dinner with your family nearby and you feel comfortable. And be weary of that false sense of comfort because you're there with your parent.

So my advice to parents here is when you visit, if you're able to, give your child, even if it's a half hour on their own, let them go sit on a bench, let them go take a walk to the dining hall, whatever it is, so that they could get a better sense of whether or not they really see themselves being there, but on their own and not in the comfort of having their family around them.

Sure. That makes a lot of sense. I loved visiting college campuses when my sister was checking it out. She was four years older than me. It was so fun. It was fun to walk around, to imagine the freedom that you'd have once you're there, no parental supervision. It's amazing.

I wish I was back in college because I had so much fun. Me too. I mean, I hear more and more people are taking five years, six years and longer to go to college, to graduate. Speaking of parents, as a parent, I feel there is a level of anxiety, at least here when I live here in a big city like San Francisco.

There's a lot of type A personalities, real go-getters, people who went to some of the top 50 universities and are working at some of the highest paying firms. If you were to rewind time back to when your children were younger, maybe in middle school or elementary school, what would you do differently, if anything?

Well, we started the college process early, so that's definitely something that I would repeat, but I probably would have went more frequently and I would have been more mindful in terms of trying to get them summer internships or summer employment earlier, as opposed to waiting until much later. Of course, in retrospect, going through it the second time around would always be better, but that's, I think, what I would do.

I would have started earlier in terms of the research process, the conversations that families have regarding finances, regarding interests, regarding whether, again, they want to be close to home, far from home. It's very important, I think, that you make good use of your time, whether it's during after-school activities, during summer activities.

I would be even more mindful of cultivating that for both of my daughters. No, that's great. I have a dilemma to make because my daughter is three, so I guess I have 14 years to figure it out. I have two paths to take. One is the easygoing, non-Tiger Dad path, just explore the world, do long travel, enjoy the next 14 years, or to be more strict and to try to push her to get the best grades, best test scores, do the most extracurricular activity possible in the 5% hope that she gets into a top 10 or 20 school.

What do you think is the better path? If you had that choice to live an amazing next 14, 15 years, you can travel around the world, live for one or two years at a time, not really stress about the things that you don't want to learn, because I think a lot of us, when we go to high school, we have to learn stuff that we don't maybe necessarily all like.

I didn't like chemistry or super high-level math. What are your thoughts about these two paths to take? My thoughts are that you have to take a combination of each and understand what you can control and what you don't control. What I mean by that is, in terms of test scores, in terms of your grades, I would always encourage students to do the best that you can.

Immerse yourself in everything your elementary school, middle school, high school has to offer. There are some schools that offer multiple advanced placement courses or IB courses, and others that don't offer any. Based on wherever you're going to school, I would always advocate for hard work. Hard work is, you know, anything that's worthwhile in life is not easy, but if it's worthwhile, it's definitely something that you should do.

And so, absolutely, trying to be involved with various activities to see what you like and don't like, working hard to get good grades, that's something that you absolutely should do. But again, I think what you need to understand is that then there's all of the things that are not in your control.

I know many students that have a flawless GPA, have been president of their association, whatever club or activity they're involved with, have done the humanitarian things, and yet they don't get accepted to every single school that they apply to. And again, it comes down to institutional needs. Number of students that get accepted in-state, out-of-state, are they looking for more males, females, are they looking for more people in a specific major?

Those are all things that are out of our control. So to answer your question, I think you cultivate both paths, but understand again what you control and what you don't. >>Ted: No, I love that. Control what you can control. Do you believe, in terms of two variables, nature versus nurture, what is the more dominant variable?

>>Mike: Well, I definitely think that that, you know, varies, but, you know, you seem like you're a great parent, Sam, and I think you're doing the right thing. I mean, you mentioned that your daughter is three years old and, you know, you're already listening to the podcast, and I think that's good.

I think that's good. And of course, you know, we also have to be mindful of the fact that five, ten, fifteen years from now, who knows what it's going to be like. Hopefully it's going to be better, but who knows, you know? So that's a tough question to answer.

>>Sam: Yeah, I mean, I'm always trying to think, as an investor in me, I'm always trying to forecast the future, think about the future. I try to, you know, hedge against bad outcomes. And currently, the current hedge is to build wealth, be a present parent, teach the reasons why education is important, some practical knowledge, and actually have this podcast.

I have a goal to keep it running for the next fifteen years as a recording to see, you know, what dad and mom were thinking about at this time fifteen years later, and maybe something that maybe my kids can take over in the future one day. You don't know.

There's all these, that's why we take insurance, right? Because there's all these unknown variables. >>Mike No, it's true. But what you do know, right, is that you want your child to work hard, whether it's in the classroom or beyond. You want them to be good people. You want them to be, you know, humanitarians.

You want them to invest in their future. You want all of that. And so, I think all of those things are very noble things to cultivate. And you know, you're obviously a great role model for your kids. But where is college admissions going to be fifteen years from now?

I don't think anyone would know at this point. >>Adam Yeah, it is interesting. I just have low expectations. But you know, just, I mean, five percent acceptance rate literally means, yeah, ninety-five percent people can't get in, and maybe you have to just shoot at different levels of college. I went to a state school.

I went to the College of William & Mary. Right now it has, I think, like a thirty-five percent acceptance rate. So it's a, I guess, a top fifty school. I guess for other parents and students out there, how do you help them manage expectations in terms of, you know, trying to get into the top school possible?

Let's say they don't get into the top school. What happens next? Is life over or not? How do you go about that? >>Mike Life is definitely not over. Ironically, I just interviewed Amanda Zuckerman, who happens to be the co-founder of Dormify, which is a company where if you need to decorate your dorm, it's the leading company.

And I bring her up because what she explained was that her life dream was to go to the University of Pennsylvania. And she was rejected eventually. And what happened was, in doing her tours, she found a place called Wash U, Washington University in St. Louis. >>Very tough school to get into, actually.

>>Great school. Well, so I teased her on the episode to say, "Listen, you know, you were highly academic. You probably could have gotten into Penn based on your profile. But, you know, they only accept less than ten percent or whatever it is. So not everyone's going to get in." But the moral of the story is that she was disappointed, but she explained how everything happens for a reason.

And the fact that she went to Wash U, and Wash U had certain programs related to students and business and finance, that that helped her develop the concept of coming up with Dormify, which is frankly a multi-million dollar corporation right now. You know, so yes, she was disappointed at the time.

And she explained how her journey at Wash U wasn't always, you know, sweet, but things truly happen for a reason. So I think that you have to move forward with integrity, do the best that you can, save for your future, cultivate your grades, cultivate your activities, and you have to trust that you're going to find the right fit.

And it's important to understand that there are over 4,000 colleges and universities throughout the United States alone, and there is a school for every single student. In fact, there's more than just one school for every single student. But not every single school is the right fit for each student.

So it's very important not to worry about where mom and dad went, where your best friends are going, but to really be mindful of, again, do you want to be far away, do you want to be close, do you want to be in a rural, urban, suburban environment, is there a particular major that you're looking for?

These are things that too many times students neglect because they want to go where their friend is going or they're worried about the sticker on the back of the SUV. But you know, I guess what I'm trying to say is that there are a lot of gems, a lot of gems out there.

And so you have to have an open mind. Yeah. As a high school principal, what are your thoughts on students considering going to a public high school and a private high school? I think that varies based on individual needs. My school happens to be a public school. It's a highly academic public school.

And frankly, if that's where I lived, I would be extremely happy to have my children go to that school. So I think that's a family decision. If you live in an area where you're happy with the public schools, and there's a lot of great public schools on Long Island, we're very fortunate, extremely fortunate actually, then I would absolutely go with the public schools.

There are people that live in certain areas, for example, you know, perhaps in the city where they prefer to go private as opposed to public or, you know, vice versa. It's very individualized based on what the family needs are. Yeah. And your thoughts, how does that extend to private versus public universities?

And have you noticed any kind of difference when you're interviewing admissions officers from private or public universities? The first difference that stands out for me is basically the percentage of students that they're permitted to accept from out of state. Private schools, they have less restrictions. They could kind of do what their board of trustees told them to do.

Whereas many of the state institutions, you know, it's a different governing body, I guess, from their states that tell them that, you know, you could only accept up to 30% or whatever the number is from out of state. So in my conversations, I've seen differences like that. But I guess, like I said earlier, there's over 4,000 colleges and universities.

So it really comes down to there is no right answer. It's what is best for a family, you know, what is best for a particular family. Growing up, I said earlier, I went to a state school, SUNY Stony Brook here in the state of New York served me well.

I always joke that I probably wouldn't get in at this point because that school too has become far more competitive. And both, you know, both of my daughters right now are in private schools. They're in small private schools up in Connecticut. And I wouldn't say there's no right or wrong, in my opinion.

It's really what the individual family wants and also the student. My oldest daughter, initially, Sam, wanted to go to all the RARA schools. So we visited Penn State, the University of Maryland. And like you said earlier, I had such a great time visiting. And my daughter who thought she wanted to go to Penn State because of the RARA feel and everything was like a fish out of water when we actually visited and they were in session.

We walked into a building that looked like an auditorium and she said, "Dad, what's this?" And I said, "Well, you see all these kids laid out in the hallway? That's because they don't want to go sit in this auditorium that probably has 500 seats in it, whatever it was, 400 seats." I said, "That's class.

That's a lecture hall." And I could tell that my daughter was panicked. Then she realized that it was whatever, a six and a half hour drive from my house. P.S. She ended up in a mid-sized school but on the smaller end up in Connecticut. And there's no rhyme or reason.

There's no right or wrong. Personally, if I had to go back, I'd love to go to Penn State. I would love the big school, the football, the RARA. I'd love to go to USC, UCLA. I would love that. It wasn't for my daughter. You're a different person now. You're a different person.

Right. You're a different person because my daughter grew up in a suburb. I grew up in an urban area in the city. So people have different needs and different expectations. And again, there's no right or wrong. And that's the beauty of the college process. Let's focus on the positive.

There's over 4,000 choices. There is something for everyone. You just have to have an open mind, do your research, and surely you'll find the right fit. Right. And now I'm wondering, so both of your daughters are in college now? Yes. But how has your level of worry changed when they were in high school to try to get into college and also now that they're in college, hopefully to get a job that they enjoy doing?

Yeah. I think as a parent, speaking for myself, I feel like I'm maturing as they're growing up, right? The things that I was so worried about 10 years ago, five years ago, I'm not as worried anymore. As a parent, I'm always there for my children. One daughter is studying to be a teacher of mathematics.

She just got her bachelor's degree last week, as a matter of fact. She just graduated. Congratulations. Thank you. And she's staying on one more year to have a four plus one program where you stay on one more year and she'll have her master's degree. My youngest, 15 minutes away from her sister, is studying to be a psychologist.

And I'm just there to support what they want to do. I'm just happy that they're exploring, they're working hard. I just feel confident that they will find the right fit for them in terms of career. My little one, there was a moment where I wasn't sure that she was going to go to college.

And here she is. And ironically, just last week, she told me that this was the best year academically that I've ever had in my life. That's awesome. So it's just being mature about it, being patient, continuing to be a supportive parent, doing the best that you can, the best that you know how.

And I just believe it. I believe if you do good things, good things eventually will come back. You just have to believe in that. I really appreciate that perspective. I really appreciate how you said you are maturing as a parent, as your children mature as well. You know, because I'm 45 now.

How old are you, John? I'm only 51. I'm just a little older than you, Sam. Not by much. Okay. No, no. That's good. So what I'm saying is when I was in my 20s, I thought, "Oh, when you're 40s, 50s, you're mature. You should know a lot of everything." But what I'm discovering is that we continue to mature.

We continue to get wiser over the years. Now what's next for the cap? You told me that you've got 20 plus episodes in the pipeline. Is your goal to try to interview at least half of the 4,000 out there or the top 500? What's the goal? Well, the goal is definitely to continue.

I'm going to definitely continue to interview college admissions representatives. And again, these are the people that are at the table. They're the ones who ultimately make the decisions or of course are on the team that make the decisions in the admissions offices. And I'm looking to do different things.

There's one rep who is going to bring, for example, a nursing student on and we're going to have a conversation specific to students that are interested in nursing. There's a couple of panel discussions that I have with some particular schools, right in your neighborhood, by the way, out of California.

So I'm going to do more panel discussions. And the next thing for the cap is that I'm going to be interviewing students that are actually in college to hear from them what their college journey was like. Yes, that'd be great. What was their top three? How did they get to their top three?

What would they do differently? So that's going to be the next step as well. Shortly, I'm going to start more episodes where we're going to talk to students as well. Oh, I think that'd be fascinating to hear from students directly in the college, in the university. That's correct. Also, parents who were going through that process to help guide them on the way.

I think that'd be fascinating. I agree. That's why I'm going to do it. And again, like I said at the beginning, I came up with this idea and it was funny because when I reached out to representatives and they said yes, that's when I panicked because I didn't know how to record virtually, how to edit, how do you get it on Spotify, Apple, Google, and all of that.

So like any other good person, you go to Google and you learn so much, right? And so quickly. But I'm having so much fun. My analytics have exceeded my every expectation and people are listening and so I'm going to just keep going. It's just, I just love it. I just love helping people and I know how stressed I was as a parent and I'm someone that's in the field of education.

So I can only imagine the parents out there that, again, they don't know the questions to ask necessarily. Maybe they're skeptical about reaching out to the rep. So that's the point of the podcast. It's me talking to reps and I don't get every question answered. But the point is, listen to the episode and hopefully that prompts you to come up with better follow-up questions so that when you meet with a rep, whether it's at a college tour or at your local college fair, you're going to be better prepared to ask good follow-up questions.

Right, right. I have an interesting scenario analysis for you, John. That is, let's say there was a different time and 10 years from now, the CAP podcast has grown massive. It's got, I don't know, 100,000 downloads per episode or a million listens per month. It's the top 0.001% podcast in the world and the number one podcast about college admissions process.

And then you had children, right? So you had teenage children who are applying to college. You're world famous. Every single college admissions officer knows you, parents, students, anybody who wants to go to college. How much would that, do you think that would help your daughters get into a top school?

Everybody knows who you are. They're like, "Wow, if we admit John's daughters, we can get mentioned and have a good experience." And he knows what it's all about. So it's funny. I just interviewed the director of admissions at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. And one of the examples that he gave was that some people think that, you know, obviously it's in Chicago.

Some people think that getting a letter from Barack Obama, who obviously has a lot of ties to Chicago or Michael Jordan, right? Who obviously has ties to Chicago. So what he said was, all that means is that either they know Michael Jordan or Barack Obama or they know someone who knows them.

He said, from the admissions perspective, it means nothing. So he said it. You got to listen to him. No way. Wait, what university is this? University of Chicago? University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Nah, really? He said that in the episode. And so, you know, I have no false hopes.

I do want to cultivate the podcast, but thank God my daughters are already in college. Who knows? Maybe one day it will help my grandchildren. Right. I mean, that's the way to think about it. You keep extending the future. I'm going to take the – I'm going to believe that having a letter from Barack Obama or Michael Jordan will help because let's say you're really good friends with them, one of them, like, "Hey, Barack, can you come speak to my class?

Can you drop in or give a commencement?" And the school doesn't have to pay you a hundred grand or whatever that is, right? I don't know. But, yes, I would say helping people, being known in a positive way is a positive for your children. And so what you're doing I think is definitely a positive for, yeah, maybe your future grandchildren.

Great to think about that because in personal finance, as soon as you start saving and investing for something and if that something is your child, your most valuable asset, I think you get much more motivated. And if you get to the point where you have enough and then you start thinking, "Well, what's the point?" Well, if you have grandchildren, you're blessed with them, you might start getting motivated again.

Absolutely. Absolutely. But for me, it's helping people, right? And I know that we talk about money and saving and it's important. Yes, you need money to live. So it's very important, especially the cost of living in California, the cost of living in New York. It's very expensive. For me, I get very excited at the fact that I'm helping people.

The number of downloads, again, far exceeded my every expectation. And so this is something that I'm never going to stop. I'm just never going to stop because 100 years from now, Sam, guess what? You and I and everyone listening, we're probably not going to be here anymore, right? And so while we're here, in addition to, yes, planning for our futures and being financially literate and all of that, but we might as well, while we're here, help each other.

And to me, there's nothing more important and that's why I do what I do. Absolutely. So if you were a high school student, John, and I was an admissions officer at a top school, I think I would accept you. I don't actually care about your grades too much. If you got a B or higher or 1,000 on the SAT or higher, but because you're doing this, I would say, "You know what?

You're unique in doing this and I think you're committed. You're going to gut it out and you're going to help a lot of people as you continue." So I would definitely accept you. Well, I appreciate that, Sam. And Sam, you're doing awesome work as well, by the way. I have listened to some of your episodes.

You're awesome. I wish that my family as a whole, I wish we were more financial literate as you seem to be with the work that you're doing. So keep going because people need you as well. I appreciate that. So in closing, we've covered a lot. Any final tips for parents or students in the college admissions process with their children and where can people find you?

So they could find me, my website is collegeadmissionstalk.com. My email address is collegeadmissionstalk@gmail.com. And the name of the podcast is The College Admissions Process Podcast, which could be found anywhere you listen to podcasts, Spotify, Apple, Google, and what have you. And so my final advice is start early if you can.

And what I said in the beginning in terms of recognizing what each part of the application represents and how it's a marketing package where each piece has to build upon the next. And be mindful, as we said a couple of times throughout the episode, of what you control. You know, you do control starting early and working hard on your activity sheet, your transcript, your essay, and all of the other parts.

And then there are institutional needs that we don't control. So just be mindful of that and start early as a family to talk about the financial needs of the family and whether or not you want to be far away, close, big, small, you know, and all of those questions.

And good luck to everybody. Good luck to everybody. And I hope to see you on the podcast. All right. Well, thanks a lot, John. And I appreciate your time. I really, really appreciate all the wisdom you've provided. Well, thank you so much, Sam. You're doing great work. It was an honor and a pleasure to be here today.

Good luck to everybody and all that you're doing out there. Thank you. Take care.