I'm curious in sort of your research, how do you define fit? And what do you think are some of those very specific factors that families should be looking at when they're really just trying to find what's the right match for their student?

I think about fit across three dimensions, which is academic, social, and financial, which I don't think we talk often about.

And then when we're thinking about the academic fit, it's not do they have the right major, but it's more about is this a place that is going to give me a supportive start? I'm really interested in that first semester of freshman year because we know things can get quickly derailed if that's not a great experience.

I'm very interested in many of the colleges that I profiled in Dream School have this integrated first year experience program where students get to know their peers.

They get to know a professor.

They get good advising, which is often overlooked.

So that to me is a big key piece of that academic fit.

How do people uncover hidden gems? How do we find all these great schools that we know are out there, but we only often find out about them way later than we should have?

What is the biggest mistake that this story tells us about what families think about when they're thinking about a so-called dream school?

Well, in many ways, we begin the college search kind of midstream.

What, what do I mean by that? We just start putting names on a list.

Those names are often what we hear in our communities, which shows up on Naviance or Scoir, which is those, are those guidance programs that are used at many schools, many high schools.

We don't think about what we want out of college, what the learning environment that we want out of college, what are the activities that we wanna do in college.

And so for William, it was about getting into the most selective college he could get into.

He placed a bet in early decision on Columbia, and he got in, and as he said, it was like winning the lottery, but the high of that win- Once he arrived on campus, disappeared pretty quickly, and things he didn't think about during the search, or things he didn't consider that he wanted out of college during the search, started to appear.

Like, how do you recommend families do this?

If you could draw up a perfect college or even a perfect professor, given AI, given the approach, what would it be? And w- and, and if you've talked to professors in colleges that are using AI in a great way, w- let's hear it.

Well, so I interviewed an Ohio State, uh, pr- uh, professor in the business school there, who is using it around, uh, a logistics course that he teaches.

As he said, uh, it used to be that the business majors were always at a disadvantage with the CS majors who knew how to program, and now they're more even, right? That you- as we know, in a lot of our lives, I use AI to do things that I either, uh, need to do faster or I don't know how to do.

And, and increasingly, I think that professors who have figured that out, like, to basically bring students up to an even level, uh, for something that they may have to do on the job, I think is a really good idea, and, and again, we're seeing professors, um, uh, uh, do this.

But where I think what's happening now is that what we most need is to just give students more exposure to the employment market.

And so colleges like Northeastern, for example, or Georgia Tech or the University of Cincinnati, where they build a co-op right into the undergraduate experience so that you're working at the same time that you're going to school.

Uh, or, you know, there's a small little college in Georgia called Berry College, where students have campus jobs, where they're learning things like Salesforce or Workday, right? They're learning software, or they're managing projects.

So, so what are companies ideally looking for in students right out of school with respect to AI?

What is going on here?

Um, well, I think part of it is we have a math problem, uh, in the, in the US.

We could trace this back to, um, states getting, uh, vou- uh, uh, waivers for No Child Left Behind, you know, way back 10 years ago, and so start... those students are now starting to come through the system, where there was just overall less accountability around math and reading scores than there was, um, you know, 20, 20 years ago.

Um, we've also seen grade inflation.

Um, you know, one of the interesting things about the San Diego report in particular was that many of these students who couldn't do middle school math on average were getting an A- in high school math.

So clearly, there is something happening, um, in high schools.

We know there's great inflation in high schools, and clearly it's happening in, uh, in the math area in particular.

But is your advice changing at all? Like, for example, I've heard a lot of people say, "Okay, if you want an MBA or you plan to be a doctor or lawyer, of course, go, yeah, go to college." But if you're majoring in maybe something else, maybe think about going to a trade school, maybe think about something outside of the four-year parameters.

He's also Special Advisor to the President of Arizona State University.

We could trace this back to, um, states getting waivers for No Child Left Behind, you know, way back 10 years ago and so sta- those students are now starting to come through the system where there was just overall less accountability around math and reading scores than there was, uh, you know, 20- 20 years ago.

Um, we've also seen grade inflation.

You know, one of the interesting things about the San Diego report in particular was that many of these students who couldn't do middle school math, on average, were getting an A-minus in high school math, so clearly there is something happening, um, in high schools.

We know there's grade inflation in high schools and clearly it's happening in, uh, in the math area in particular.

The other thing is during the pandemic, uh, the University of California system went, uh, test blind.

In other words, they do not require, uh, the SAT or ACT for admissions anymore, and one of the reasons why some colleges have gone back to requiring testing is because they particularly wanna look at the math scores on the ACT and the SAT because they don't trust high school grades.

"... maybe something else, maybe think about going to a trade school, maybe think about something outside of the four-year parameters."

Like, what do you want them to do in that regard?

Well, so often what everything we're doing in high school is about getting into college.

Often, as I've been talking about this book, I would have parents or students coming up to me and saying, "Well, do I need to take one more AP class? Do I need to become captain of yet another team? Do I need to join another club? What else do I need to do to get into X college?" And what I often ask them, I turn the question around and I say, "What do you want to do?" Because what's going to happen is at some point your application's gonna land at one of these super selective colleges, they're gonna open it up, they're gonna read it in seven or nine minutes, and then they're gonna make a decision.

And they have way many more qualified applicants than they have seats.

And that decision will come back to you, and hopefully it will be good, but it might be a denial.

And often what I hear from students is when they get denied, "What did I do all that for?" Meaning what they did in high school was to get into college.

And we really should return high school to what it was meant to be, a moment of exploration, right? The teenage brain is developing so quickly.

Like, e- explain a bit more about that.

And I should say, you said there's a big migration south for money and return on investments.

There is a big migration south, yeah.

And then, but we're even looking further north, Indiana University, Michigan State, right? When people think of the State of Michigan, they think the University of Michigan.

Well, Michigan State actually has some better outcomes than Michigan on a number of different measures.

But we don't tend to think about it, uh, as a result.

But we're also thinking about small colleges, Den- Dickinson College in, in Southern Pennsylvania, or Denison University in, in Ohio.

These are places that have been really focused on getting their students real world experience, but not only that, at a pretty good price.

... "This school was so great, I want a parent loan because I just wanna be able to make sure my kid gets into that dream school" that you write about.

I assume number one is still, is still grades, but are high school grades now what high school grades used to be? Is there inflation?

No, there's definitely a lot of inflation and what happens for admissions officers is, as they're looking at the application, it's really hard to tell grades from each other and because everyone essentially is getting an A.

And that's why there're increasingly this idea of what they call holistic admissions where they're not just looking at the grades, they're looking at what courses did you take? How many AP courses did you take? Did you take the hardest courses that were available to you at your high school and how did you perform in them? They're also...

This is why many schools are either bringing back test scores, bringing back requirements for the SAT or the ACT, which they did away with during COVID, or even if they're optional, my suggestion, my advice to students is that they at least take the test and increasingly, especially if they're applying to a more selective school, that they submit that test score, because that's another thing that admissions officers are using to differentiate students.

And then finally, they're looking at the rest of that application, the essays, the extracurricular activities, to try to make these students look a little different because when it comes to grades, a lot of them look the same.

Talked a little about the future, what do you tell parents of new kids if they ask, or, or younger kids, what, what's college gonna be in 10 years? What should you be doing in terms of preparation and, and obviously in terms of saving?

Well, I think part of it is don't get enamored by the rankings, because I think what ends up ha- happening is that parents and students get all anxious because they think they're not gonna get in and they're not gonna be able to afford it, and the fact of the matter is, is that there's a lot of excellent and accessible schools.

I talk about this in my book, Dream School.