Junior Kickoff: It's Time to Discover!

02/25/25 • 48 min

Discovery is act one of every successful college search, and it should reveal as much about the searcher as about the places being explored. AB host and Dartmouth Dean Lee Coffin leads a “junior kickoff” deans panel that includes Elena Hicks from SMU and Karen Kristoff from Colorado College as well as college counselor Darryl Tiggle of Friends School of Baltimore. The quartet of admissions veterans offer advice and tips for juniors and parents about assessing personal interests and “non-negotiable” priorities that will frame the search; developing a list of college options that sync with those personal considerations; planning in-person or virtual visits to explore those places; and then assessing reactions as early ideas about college become more tangible. Dean Coffin advises, "You have to figure out who you are before you can figure out where you want to go." And when that happens, “You will discover your options with purpose.”

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Getting Started: Plan Your Work, Work Your Plan

Season 7 of Admissions Beat gets underway at just the right time to give this year's high school juniors a preview of what's to come, as they look closely at themselves, survey the college landscape, and weigh options in higher education. Host Lee Coffin, Dartmouth’s dean of admissions and financial aid, and recurring co-host Jacques Steinberg, author of The Gatekeepers: Inside the Admissions Process at a Selective College, and co-author of The College Conversation: A Practical Companion for Parents to Guide Their Children Along the Path to Higher Education, offer calming, concrete advice about how to get started on a search for the school that will best fit each applicant's abilities and aspirations.

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What Counts?

Many people ask, "What counts?" as they ponder the elements of "merit" in a college application. This week, two Ivy deans tackle this perennial query as Brown's Logan Powell joins AB host Lee Coffin from Dartmouth for a wide-ranging conversation about assessing merit and where it is discovered. They consider the numbers and the narrative--the quantitative as well as the qualitative information--that emerges from a college application. Both deans channel a wise adage from Albert Einstein: "Not everything that can be counted, counts; not everything that counts can be counted."