6 Days and 3 Takeaways from "Dream School"

🎓As we head into the publication of Dream School on September 9, the next two weeks of Next will focus on the new book. To get the full version of this newsletter, sign up here.

🎧 LISTEN UP: A new season, Season 9, of Future U. dropped yesterday with our first episode, where we recap some of the major storylines of the summer and introduce a new “speed round” segment. Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

🔜 TONIGHT: One of the inspirations for my new book, Dream School, was Frank Bruni’s Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be.

So I’m thrilled that Frank, a New York Times columnist, will be joining me TONIGHT in a virtual conversation about my book. And you can join us, too, in a conversation organized by one of my favorite groups, the Family Action Network (FAN). 

 TONIGHT September 3 ⏰ 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT

👉 Register for free (to also get the recording)

TOMORROW: There’s no need to wait until next week to order the book. Join the more than 7,000 individuals and schools that have pre-ordered it already.

And if you do so by tomorrow morning, you’ll get access to our last exclusive webinar for pre-order customers (and you'll get the recording).

• This is in addition to the recordings from earlier exclusive webinars on motivating your kids during the college search and how to launch from college into the job market.
• And, of course, you’ll get the 18-page PDF guide, Finding Your Dream School, that offers practical tools you can use right now, and is only being offered through the book launch. 

Even if you already ordered the book, tell your friends about this offer. It’s good for the hardcover, e-book, or audio version from any retailer.

• And don’t forget, you need to complete this proof-of-purchase form to get the goodies.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 19: I’m co-hosting a book launch party with Denison University as part of the annual NACAC conference in Columbus.

• If you’ll be there and are interested in coming, please complete this form.
• Space is limited; formal invitations will follow later this week (if you already filled out the form, no need to do it again).

THE LEAD

Perhaps it was fate that the first excerpt from Dream School appeared last weekend, while I was visiting my family in Northeastern Pennsylvania, where I grew up.

The excerpt, "The Elite College Myth" (gift link), opens with my own college search more than 30 years ago—one that wasn’t full of anxiety about getting in, didn’t consume half my high school years, and didn’t revolve around fine gradations of prestige.

It was an enjoyable journey, the rite-of-passage about what’s next in life that the college search is supposed to be.

It was, in a word, fun.

When I first started writing the proposal for Dream School a few years ago, my basic framing for the book was that we should bring fun back to the college search. Later on in the reporting for the book, when I surveyed 3,000+ parents, the idea of happiness permeated the results.

• When asked about which outcomes were most important for their children, 61% said a fulfilling career was “extremely important,” followed closely by great friends (59%).
• A “fulfilling” career was chosen as a top priority three and a half times as often as a "lucrative" career.

My hope for the book is this: that it gives families and counselors permission to think more broadly about what signals a “good” college and then the tools to discover their dream school.

Last week in an interview with a magazine reporter about the book, she noted many of the families I interviewed in Dream School seemed level-headed compared to those I interviewed in my previous book, Who Gets In and Why.

She asked why that was? 

Mainly it’s a matter of perspective. The families and young adults I feature in the book now look back on the college search a year or more later.

As I think about their journeys with six days left until the book drops, I wanted to recall the journey of the book in two parts for this newsletter.  

This week, I’ll focus on three takeaways from the book; next week, on pub day, I’ll go behind-the-scenes to tell you more about the journey to getting the book out into the world, along with a few other key points I hope change the conversation about college. 

Takeaway #1: The college admissions landscape at top-ranked schools continues to shift.

Assembling a freshman class at any college is like making a complex stew.

• The adjustments that colleges made in the last few years—going test-optional, establishing multiple deadlines, and practicing “yield management”—messed with a tried-and-true admissions recipe, especially at selective colleges.

Although application inflation runs rampant throughout higher education (see chart below from the book), it’s even more pronounced at the super-selective colleges your kid might desire (or, be honest, you might desire).

• Schools that today accept fewer than 20% of students collected 1.9 million applications in 2023. They received just 600,000 in 2001. It’s as if every applicant back then applied again in 2023, and then found three of their classmates also applying to the same top schools. Meanwhile, the number of seats at these colleges hasn’t budged much since the late 1970s.

As a result, it has become much harder to get into highly selective schools, even though families continue to pursue the search like it’s 2019.

As I lay out in the book, this overconfidence is driven by a few things, but going into senior year, it’s test scores and grades that students and their families think are the differentiator when they’re not.

For the book, I asked Niche , which has accounts from roughly half the U.S. college-bound students, to help me figure out how their college lists shift throughout high school.

We found that the list doesn’t solidify until right before the senior year of high school. Accounts on Niche that are created freshman year have the widest spread of colleges in terms of their rankings. As each month of high school passes, the array gradually narrows, as you’d expect.

But then something noteworthy happens in July before senior year: Rather than continue on a fairly straight line, that rankings spread falls precipitously in the months before October, right about the time early applications are due.

What that means is that seniors are not only reducing the number of schools they’re considering (as expected), but they’re also focusing on a narrower range of schools clustered closely in the rankings.

As I explore in Chapter 1, this trend is fueled in part by test scores and junior-year grades that drive students to add more reach schools to their list. 

Takeaway #2: Success isn’t exclusive to Ivy-plus institutions.

The bottom line of the Wall Street Journal excerpt this past weekend was that we tend to over-index on the outliers when we talk about the outcomes of elite colleges.

One way we do that is on where grads work. The Journal included an amended graphic from the book. Originally the editors were going to reproduce this graphic from page 65 in the book, which shows that in a sample of three blue-chip companies from a variety of industries, employees come from schools in all five tiers of selectivity. And the less-selective colleges are very well represented.

It’s not just outcomes in terms of jobs where colleges deeper in the rankings shine.

I’m often criticized for focusing too much on the job and earnings outcomes of college; I do because that’s what students and parents say they go to college for.

But Dream School also includes an exclusive and new analysis of data from the National Survey of Student Engagement filtered by the selectivity of the 900 colleges that participate in the poll, which surveys freshmen and seniors. The results, as you’ll see in Chapter 6, show that being selective doesn’t automatically translate to providing a more engaging experience. 

Takeaway #3: Yes, there are good colleges where you don’t need to break your back or the bank to get in.

As I told Ron Lieber (He/We/Abba) his “Your Money” newsletter yesterday in the New York Times, fewer families are “willing to stretch for prestige.” You can read more here, but there are three reasons this is happening:

1. The definition of elite is narrowing.
2. Families want to do something else with their money.
3. The reality of what may be an extended launch period for children after college.

Finding your dream school isn’t about fixating on a single name or a universally understood brand. It’s about choosing a place where you can thrive, learn, and become the person you’re meant to be.

To help you, I’ve compiled a list of colleges in the book’s Appendix that might not (but perhaps should) be on your radar.

The “New” Dream Schools is not meant to be a ranking, nor is it a comprehensive catalog (although I know some will see it like that). It’s a sampling of schools designed to get you started, to expand your thinking.

My hope is that if you have this selective school on your list (like Carnegie Mellon), you’ll also add that “New Dream School” to it (like Case Western Reserve University , Stevens Institute of Technology , or the University of Delaware ). 

• To get the complete list and descriptions of the 75 "New" Dream Schools, you'll have to buy the book, but you'll be seeing outtakes in the coming weeks like this one below if you follow me:

Until next time, Cheers — Jeff  

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