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today on my channel i have a very exciting interview i'm interviewing author jeff selingo of of the book who gets in and why i matched my sweater to the book cover today um very excited about this book you guys i just read it i got through it so fast it's all about of course everything i'm interested in if you know anything about my channel so it was really fun for me to read and we're gonna have jeff here today to talk a little bit about the book and his experience writing the book and some of his thoughts on college admissions because he's a bit of an expert and with that jeff do you mind giving us just a brief introduction about yourself a brief introduction about what this book is everything like that sort of an overview yeah so um i've been writing about higher education in colleges universities as a journalist for more than 20 years i've written for and it was editor of the chronicle of higher education but also the new york times the wall street journal uh the washington post the atlantic you name it um i've written about higher education in it so this book is really a year that i spent inside the admissions process i was embedded in offices at the university of washington at emory university in atlanta and at davidson college in north carolina i also followed a group of seniors through the process who were applying at all different kinds of colleges and really looked at how their search evolved over a year but then the third piece were a group of people that most applicants and most parents never think about and that are is the marketing agencies the financial aid agencies the testing the rankings all these different players that kind of work on the periphery of of admissions and are influencing where you go and even whether you get in and most of people don't even know these exist right it was so interesting you know i talk a lot on my channel about students as they're applying most of my is students who are really in the midst of the application process so it was really exciting for me to hear about the periods of the timeline that i don't think about as much the research leading up to it and what's happening on the other end of it could you tell us a little bit about where your inspiration to write this book came from or how did you get interested in the topic so i actually interned at us news of world report a long time ago in college and i started working on the college rankings and that's when i started to realize that um how much has changed even since i interned there about the rankings and then what happened was every time i would write about admissions i would get inundated with mail and calls and stuff on my twitter feed where people would be complaining about how difficult it is to get into college and i didn't really quite believe that because if you look at those statistics the average acceptance rate of american higher education is 65 so most kids get into most colleges but what we're really talking about here is the most selective colleges right the most elite colleges the biggest name brands those colleges have become much more difficult to get into and that was really my inspiration well what does it take to get in and why does one student get in and the other student doesn't even though they might have pretty identical backgrounds yeah no that's wonderful to hear i i totally agree and i think you know you cover so much in your book and i encourage all of you guys to go read it whether you're a parent going through the admissions process with one with a child right now or whether you're in the admissions process yourself i think if nothing else it just helps you be more educated informed which can help students and parents feel a lot calmer with that said if you had to give us a one sentence answer to who gets in and why what would you say it's all about the college's priorities and their agenda has nothing to do with you the applicant that really leads nicely into my next question which is can you explain to us a little bit more the idea you talk about of college admissions running like a business i think you know some people might even be hearing this interview for the first time and be a little bit surprised to hear you say anything about marketing agencies you know what is that how does that play in can you just walk us through that concept a little more so colleges and universities have a class that they have to fill every year and they have a certain set of priorities to fill that class they might want more kids from all 50 states so maybe they're in the southeast and they want more kids from the northwest they may need more full pace students every college needs more men right so they want certain types of students at the college now also the other thing is that some of these priorities might be very narrow they might need a third baseman for the baseball team uh they might need a piccolo player for the orchestra or somebody for the debate team so they have all of these priorities and so what i one of the things that i remind students is if a college has a 10 acceptance rate that doesn't mean you personally have a 10 chance of getting in you actually might have a 90 chance of getting in if you re if you're really what they want or you might have a zero percent chance of getting in if you're like every other applicant in that way thank you thank you for that overview yeah that's you know that was a super interesting idea that i definitely have heard of and engaged with a bit but it was great to see how how well you broke it down and i definitely feel like i've come out with a much better understanding at the same time i think when students hear that or whether you know maybe they read it in their book and it's the idea that it seems like there might be a lot less agency in the admissions process especially for these higher um higher educate like more elite colleges for lack of a better word um i'm wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about what students can do leading up to the process to feel like they can take agency you spoke a little bit of the idea about students you know reversing the roles of buyers and sellers and you know how can students feel a little bit more in charge of their admissions process yeah so i think a couple of things and i don't want to make it sound hopeless because it isn't hopeless right every year students get into some of these great colleges and universities across the country the first thing to remember is what is the story that you want the admissions officer at the particular institution you're applying to to know about you i think part of the problem is that most college most students now are applying to eight or ten schools they're working on these applications all at once they have massive google docs where they're cutting and pasting and moving things around and in in that you kind of lose the story about you as an individual that you're telling to stanford or you're telling to emery or you're telling to harvard or princeton or university of scotland or whatever it might be because remember all those institutions are different although they might seem the same to you and you want to tell each of them a slightly different story about you what do you want to emphasize also remember the application is a story as i say in the book eight to ten minutes they have with most of these applications maybe 12 or 15 if you're really lucky what do you want them to know in that time period about you they're not detectives they're not going to look up all these things about you they're only going to know what you tell them so make it a story all these different pieces of the application should tell a story about you i love that thank you and it seems like one of the most important pieces of your application of your story is actually you know something that you might not necessarily have the ability to change at the moment you're applying because it is the um the array of courses you've taken and the rigor of your coursework i think something that you know not necessarily surprised me but i was excited to see you talk about was how important the classes you take in your high school are especially compared to you know just what your high school has to offer admissions puts a lot of emphasis on you know how were you doing in the context of your school and did you challenge yourself and i think that's something that not many college youtube channels such as myself talk about because it's not something that once students find my channel really have the abilities it's a little bit late right yeah right so i'm wondering if maybe you could just give a few words for some of the younger members in my audience about how important it really is to have challenging courses and to be working hard in those courses yeah i mean the question i always get is is it better to take an easier course and get a better grade or a harder course and get a worse grade and you know the joke in admissions is always take the harder course and get a better grade right but but it's always best to take the harder course they want to see that you challenged yourself in high school because they want to make sure that you haven't peaked right that's what they're looking for they're looking for kids are going to come to college and and just continue to push themselves and do better and think differently and change as part of their college process so if you're if you're watching this channel and you're uh you know freshman or sophomore in high school think about what are the courses you could take junior and senior year because those junior and senior years especially junior year but even senior year courses really matter you really want to max out on those courses that are available to you in high school and then do as well as you can in those in those courses critically important yeah that's really interesting you know i think it wasn't until i read that chapter of your book that i was like wow i think you know my high school classes probably play a larger role in my admissions than i anticipated you know i think there's a lot of conversation about it's hard to compare kids from other schools and even within your school it's hard to compare but i was really excited to see such concrete information in your book about the importance of college classes you mentioned that often you know parents are asking you questions you're getting questions about classes can you give us a few of the most common questions you get and maybe some answers you got during your research period or what you know what was the most surprising answer you got or really anything that came out of your research that you feel has been really helpful for answering those questions that parents so often come to you with well i think the first question is around test optional uh is is test optional really test optional and i will tell you in the middle of a pandemic it's definitely going to be test optional because most colleges most students don't have test scores because they haven't been able to get to take the sat or act so this is the year to apply to test optional schools because most tests most schools are just optional but parents don't believe that students sometimes don't believe it they think they need a test score and as we've just been talking really what gets you most of the way there are your high school grades and your high school classes it's all these other factors that are going to get you over the top so that's one big thing this year's optional another thing is essay how much does the essay count and what should i be focused on in the in the essay the ones that are more authentic that you that you really wrote um and that are really about a slice of your life that's what the that's really what's going to rise to the top with admissions officers they just read the same essay it seems over and over again it's right these tried and true topics that i think students read in books or watch on youtube or everywhere else right just kind of take something from that that's really personal to you and again go back to what i was talking about earlier that storytelling what is the piece of your story that might be missing in other parts of your application that you haven't had a chance to tell use your essay for that piece absolutely no thank you i think that's that's such wonderful advice and i end up reading a lot of college essays myself and i just want to emphasize how true it is what you say that so often they're just about these you know sort of similar token topics that all sound really great but don't really reveal much about the applicant so you mentioned that test scores test optional i think test scores are one of the most stressful parts of the admissions process which is a very stressful process period i was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about who you noticed was the happiest during the process or what sort of approaches to the process did you notice students and families who end up the happiest uh take whether that's planning really early or not getting too attached to a school how can students and families approach this process with a little more clarity and ease a couple of things and you mentioned it earlier i i separate colleges into buyers and sellers sellers are the most elite most selective schools out there and they and they have something to sell they have a name brand that everybody wants to be part of it but they also don't give out a lot of financial aid if you don't need it right and so what ends up happening that i found in the in the book and the reporting for the book is that sometimes students will get into these sellers they'll be very lucky to get into these sellers but then their parents can't quite make it work financially because they just make just enough over the cut off for financial aid and then they end up at another campus that they're not really thrilled with so make sure you think about the financial fit of your university or college choices as you're putting together that list very important second is think about that list and have a nice balance of schools that you're really interested in going to again i think that we get so focused on going to one or two places on our list and we're saying okay i'll get into one of those two places and and i'll put these other schools on my list because somebody has to tell told me i have to put them on there but what if you get denied by those top two places then what are you going to do so make sure you love everybody on your on your list and also open be open to changing that list during the year things are going to happen good and bad the the students that i end up being happiest at the end of this process were those that were willing to kind of learn something about one of the colleges that were on their list and say you know what even though that's been on my list for maybe two years i've not changed my mind be willing to change during this process because in many ways it is a learning process yeah absolutely and just one note on something you mentioned about financial aid i want to let you guys know that in the section of the book where jeff discusses financial aid there's a lot of great resources and avenues you can take to explore how you can actually figure out what type of financial aid you can expect from a college i know that's a question i get a lot how do you figure this out there's little information about it and there's a really great sort of uh guide in this book i definitely recommend so the next question i want to ask you something that was a little surprising and exciting for me about the book was the recommendations you gave for how the admissions process could potentially change in order to be a little more fair equitable stress-free one of them that really stuck out to me was the idea that maybe students have to like go to a center to write an essay for 30 minutes instead of spending like three years on their essays i thought that was so interesting so i'm wondering if you could tell us just a few ways you think admissions could potentially change or something maybe you see changing admissions now that is going to really affect the future of college admissions well i really wish and this may not be popular with some people i really wish they would do away with early decision i think it's really stressful on on students because it really pushes the entire search process up earlier in high school when you really should be enjoying high school so i think that's that's one thing i would like to get rid of second um i would like it to be more of a matching system colleges i was talking about these priorities earlier you as an applicant have no idea what a college's priorities are why do why don't colleges be more open about that what are we looking for you as an applicant you say what we're looking for and then we match them into more of a system right we we have algorithms and things like that that can really help students match to better match to colleges now than ever before it doesn't mean that you only get one choice and the institution only gets one choice but that you know there are thousands of colleges out there and we should have a more narrow choice set than than everything that's out there right now and then finally i wish that the most elite colleges would open up more spots they can afford to grow and there's no reason they can't be a little bit bigger all these places right uh so that we're not having so much competition tens of thousands of applications for just you know a thousand two thousand spots every year yeah absolutely you know definitely in my experience going through the process and now spending time at stanford and engaging with so many students in the process i feel like i'm really seeing a system that's almost on the brink of collapse with how stressed it is in so many different ways whether that's you know students really pushing their own limits or colleges pushing their limits so i definitely hope we see some change moving forward i have one final question for you i think you know in preparation for this interview i did the classic google of what should you ask authors when you interview them because experience though i would love to get some more and one question that i thought was kind of funny and interesting was the question what did you edit out of the book what did i edit out of the book um well i i spent time in three admissions offices and there were so many moments at some of the universities that i did not leave in uh in the book um what did i edit out of the book that's a good question so there's a lot of small moments like that uh that i i edited out from the university of washington and from davidson and from from emory i could have written the whole book just about inside inside those offices and and so to create room for the stories of the students and to create room for the story of the rankings and testing and marketing i had to create that room so you know the examples i give are of certain days i was at these universities i again i could have written an entire book just about one of them yeah absolutely i mean that was that was one of my favorite parts of the book was getting to hear sort of the deliberation process of some of the admissions officers about the students and their essays and their backgrounds so that that was definitely one of my favorite parts but really grateful that you included everything else you did as well i think it was so interesting to read about the history of the us news rankings and how that came to be and it's important so that was wonderful do you have any uh parting words last things you want to mention about the book or about admissions or anything you really want to put out in the world before we close out here yeah so i really wrote the book so to make all of you better consumers because you really are consumers in this process and you need to know the process i compare this book a lot to a book that i read a couple of years ago that i loved called fast food nation which really took you inside the ecosystem of the fast food industry and in many ways i tried to do the same with admission so that you understand the playing field that you as a student are going to enter when you get into the admissions process it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be more fair it doesn't mean you're going to get your way through the process but if you understand it better i think you're going to become a better consumer and that to me allows you to control what you could control in this process and kind of forget about the other things that are really out of your control as you'll see when you read the book absolutely thank you note thank you so much for sharing thank you so much for being here thank you so much for writing this book i'm so glad that this resource exists i definitely recommend all of you guys check it out even if you're you know all the way through the process like i was it was still so interesting to read and learn about and it's of course great knowledge to have no matter where you are in life so i will have the book linked down below and i will have all of jeff's information linked down below if you guys want to check out more of his work thank you again so much for being here jeff i will be in touch with unlisted video links and all that fun stuff great thank you [Music] you