Aug 24, 2026 · 50 min · 11 segments
You've been told a 180 must be better than a 175. It isn't, and the reason has less to do with math than with what an admissions officer thinks when they see it. Ethan explains why retaking a 174 is a…
It's everyone's favorite season as the calendar changes from August to September.
It's orientation season.
Woo-hoo.
Woo.
[laughs] Yay.
Guess who?
And it was a decade ago.
It's Pauline.
[laughs]
What was it like where you-
So she's gonna tell us exactly what it's like a decade ago, and we're all gonna have to translate that into modern times.
[laughs]
When she told us about it, she did reference a question about AOL usernames, which I just don't think would even-
Yes.
Oh, what? [laughs]
Yes, that kind of-
Wait, what was the question?
Should you, like, prep for the icebreakers? And I was like, we couldn't even prep for ours 'cause it was, uh, what was your first ever email address? And all of us were, like, millennials basically.
Yeah.
And mine was tennis chick with some numbers, and I was like, the fact that I was, like, trying to decide, like, do I wanna reveal that or do I wanna, like, make some up?
Wait, no, you should always reveal.
Mine was cookiedough29@q.com. [laughs]
[laughs] Cookiedough29.
Betsy, you were...
It's everyone's favorite season as the calendar changes from August to September.
It's orientation season.
Woo-hoo.
Woo.
[laughs] Yay.
Guess who?
And it was a decade ago.
It's Pauline.
[laughs]
What was it like where you-
So she's gonna tell us exactly what it's like a decade ago, and we're all gonna have to translate that into modern times.
[laughs]
When she told us about it, she did reference a question about AOL usernames, which I just don't think would even-
Yes.
Oh, what? [laughs]
Yes, that kind of-
Wait, what was the question?
Should you, like, prep for the icebreakers? And I was like, we couldn't even prep for ours 'cause it was, uh, what was your first ever email address? And all of us were, like, millennials basically.
Yeah.
And mine was tennis chick with some numbers, and I was like, the fact that I was, like, trying to decide, like, do I wanna reveal that or do I wanna, like, make some up?
Wait, no, you should always reveal.
Mine was cookiedough29@q.com. [laughs]
[laughs] Cookiedough29.
Betsy, you were...
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.