I am the mom of an 8-year-old child. Recently I was speaking with a new potential babysitter who had come over for a get-to-know-my-kid playdate, and we were making small talk over Legos. I knew she was a senior in high school. I almost – almost – asked where she was applying to college and […]
Is College Admission Clear-Cut?
This week we welcome Assistant Director of Admission, Ashley Brookshire, to the blog. Welcome, Ashley! I used to think a lot of things in life were pretty clear-cut. I was very confident washing your hands was clear-cut until four years ago when I learned I was doing it wrong (rest assured, dear reader, I now […]
Value (Capture) in College Admissions
A few weeks ago, a friend told me about the concept of “Value Capture” – a phrase coined by Dr. Thi Nguyen, a philosophy professor at the University of Utah. Essentially, value capture occurs when a metric becomes the motivation for a certain behavior (Abstract and paper here.) For example, instead of posting pictures on […]
Focus on Admission
It is Saturday at 5:30 a.m. and pouring rain. There are two ways I can view this fact: It’s dark, windy, early, and of course… it is the weekend. Naturally, it’s been beautiful all week (while I was working and could not really enjoy the weather). I am only up because I set my […]
What do colleges want?
My wife has celiac disease. While many people do not know exactly what that is, they have at least heard of “gluten” and are familiar with the GF or grain symbol on food labels in the grocery store or at restaurants. 20 years ago, however, when she was first diagnosed, that was definitely not the […]