110: How to Find and Research Great Colleges: The Fiske Guide

Ethan Sawyer  0:08  
Ethan, hello, wonderful humans out there in the world. This is Ethan Sawyer, the College Essay Guy. My goal here with the podcast is to bring more ease, joy and purpose into the college application process. My job here is to interview the most brilliant minds in the college admissions world, analyze their genius and then break it down for you in a series of practical, actionable steps that you can take, whether you're applying to college or helping someone else apply. My guest today is a really exciting one. Is Edward B Fisk. He's known to most folks as Ted, and he's well known, especially for writing the FISC Guide to Colleges. And if you know this book, I mean, if you're, especially if you're a counselor, this is a book that resides on your library, and you get the new version every year. It's the nation's best selling college guide. And you know, this book's been a go to reference for me and a lot of other counselors in our work with students. And it was really cool getting a chance to just go behind the scenes a little bit and hear how this book was made, why it came to be on the podcast. We talk about, why did it even, you know? Why did Ted even write the thing in the first place? I asked him how he avoids sounding generally positive about all schools, because I imagine that that would be, you know, a trap or a temptation. How the FISC guide rating system is different from that of US News and World Reports. He's got some cool things to say about that. I asked him, Who actually writes all 882, pages of the FISC guide, what the best approach would be for students who have no idea what they want, what advice he would give to them, how to use the guide itself. And you know what some of the biggest mistakes that students and parents make when they're searching for a school finally, we talk about the dangers of narrowing your college choices too early on, and he offers one quality that he finds essential to having an amazing college experience. So I had a lot of fun getting to know Ted a little bit, and I hope you enjoy the podcast. My guest today is kind of one of my heroes. I don't know if he knows that, so I haven't told him that directly, but his name is he's known to you as Edward B Fisk, known to his friends and his the folks who know him as Ted. He served as the education editor for The New York City in 1974 to 1991 he's well known to college bound students and their parents as the editor of the Fisk Guide to Colleges. And if you go into pretty much any college counselor's office, you'll see this green book this. It's a tome of the college application process sitting on their shelf, likely, in fact, if you just buy one book, this is probably the one you'd want to get. He's co authored a range of other books on college admissions with Bruce G Hammond, including the Fisk guide to getting into the right college, what to do when, for college and real college essays that work. Oh, and also nailing the new S, a T, by the way, so Ted, I just want to say, first of all, this is a huge honor for me, and I feel like it's because of you and a few folks like you that have helped set the stage for a lot of us counselors. And so I just, you know, really want to thank you for being on the podcast today. So welcome.


Ted Fiske  3:19  
It's my pleasure. Good morning, and I really appreciate all those nice things you said about them. I hope my wife is listening.


Ethan Sawyer  3:29  
Well. So first of all, Ted, I'm just curious, what do you do and why do you do it? And you can take that to mean whatever you want to mean. But what do you do and why do you do it? Maybe college admissions related, but feel free to riff extemporaneously if you feel like it.


Ted Fiske  3:44  
Well, I do. I'm a journalist. I spent 27 years The New York Times as an editor and writer, first covering religion, then covering education and the fiscal got started while I was the education editor. It originally was the New York Times selective Guide to Colleges, but then a lot of evolution took place, and it's become an eponymous this guide. But my other interest would be, I do a lot of writing about education in developing countries. My wife Helen Ladd, or Sonny. Ladd teaches Public Policy at Duke University, and she focuses on education policy. So I've lived in various places in the world, writing about education in developing countries, and so I basically am, on the one hand, a regular journalist. No longer with New York Times. I left the times in the in the mid 90s, but then also the college guide. So I spend, takes at least, least half of my time is spent on updating the fifth Guide to Colleges


Ethan Sawyer  4:54  
and to the second part of this question. And this is maybe the harder question, but, but why do you do it? I.


Ted Fiske  5:00  
Why do I do it? Well, you know, I guess journalists are curious people, and it's a, it's a, it's a wonderful profession for me, because I do tend to have a lot of curiosity. I know something about how how to write, and it's just interesting. And so what we've discovered, my wife and I, as we wandered around the world looking at education systems in various countries, is that there's kind of a global marketplace for ideas about school reform the same way there is about everything else, from oil to pork belly futures. But then the other thing is that with the fit with the Fisk guide, I have a sense that I'm I like to think that I'm helping a lot of people. The whole college admissions process can be pretty daunting, and I think that I have something to offer to students, maybe help them, help them rationalize the system and help them find the right colleges for them. So I feel that it's, it's, it's helping a lot of people, and that's very satisfying.


Ethan Sawyer  6:08  
This is, you mentioned the FISC guide, and it's something that I think you know, as a counselor, you know, having come into this, I felt like, well, it's kind of always been around. But of course, it wasn't always, always around in the literal sense the word. Could you just give us the brief, the origin story for the Fisk guide, why it came about, and perhaps a bit about how it came about?


Ted Fiske  6:26  
Well, you have to flash back to the anti diluvian days of the early of the late 70s and early 80s. As you may may recall, by that point, the baby boomers were finishing their checks through college, the number of high school graduates was declining, and a lot of college admissions office officers were nervous about whether they'd be able to fill up the classes, and so the they became much more aggressive in their in their recruiting activities now, as we look back on it, is all seems rather quaint. The aggressive marketing consisted of four color brochures and mailboxes and and and and tapes, videotapes. Remember them, and I it was a story that I wrote about for the New York Times, because they were doing some, sometimes kind of outrageous things. And I wrote about for the front page New York Times. I covered it for the business section of the times. One point, I wrote an article for Atlantic on the whole phenomenon and the but the basic idea was colleges were beginning to market themselves, and that at that point was was quite new. So I figured, and I had some conversations with the publisher of times books, which was a publishing arm of the New York Times at that time, and we decided maybe there was a market for somebody to need, for somebody to come in and on the side of the consumers and cut, cut through all of the propaganda that was coming from the colleges. And so that's essentially how the fist guide came into being.


Ethan Sawyer  8:12  
Wow, and it seems to me like such a monumental task of collecting all this information. I'd be curious to know about how that process began, and also how that's evolved, and how that how the information on the colleges is gathered. So maybe the first part, how did you begin to collect all that information? Because that just seems like


Ted Fiske  8:30  
a huge task. Well, the basic thing to remember is, it's essentially a journalistic effort. What I do is I journalists ask people questions, writes, writes down what they have to say, and then it puts it out in a readable form for readers and viewers. And so we, what I do is essentially twofold. We have a questionnaire, which we send out to all the colleges that are in the guide, and we have a little about 325 schools. That's still only about 15% of all the four year colleges in the US, but we send questionnaires to the administration, and they give us the kind of information that you would expect, not just applications and yield rates and that sort of thing, but also we asked them, you know, what's your educational vision? What are you trying to do? What are the what are the curriculum requirements, the course requirements, and what's your rationale behind them? And so we ask these questions to the administration, and then we ask the administration to pick a small number of students to answer student questionnaires, and these are separate, and they're sent directly back to us, and we asked the students what it's like to be a student at your college. And so I'm asking things like everything from what's the academic culture? Is it intensive or laid back? Are students competitive with each other? Are they sabotaging each other's lab experiments? And what's the social life and the culture life and the dorms and so forth? And then we basically take what we what is what the two sets of questionnaires have given us, and we write up a narrative description of the school. And these are, as I say, narrative. There is a coherent little essays. They follow a pretty much a set pattern of topics that we cover, and then we try to capture the institutional personality of the school.


Ethan Sawyer  10:36  
I have that leads to two questions. One, is because I went to a session at NACAC a few years back where, you know, one of the presenters was talking the title was The Myth of fit, and the notion that, you know, because there's kind of, you know, homogeneity and the resources, or the propaganda, as you put it, that gets put out, that you've got liberal arts schools touting their sports programs, and the schools known for sports touting their arts programs. How do you sort of suss through all this information for colleges who want to be, want to seem like they're pretty great at everything, or so, I'd guess, you know, how do you avoid being, you know, general, or just, you know, sort of generally positive about all the schools? Is there some sort of process of weeding through for that? Or how does that go?


Ted Fiske  11:17  
Well, one of my, one of my assumptions, this is actually a little bit of a risk when we first started at the editorial risk, because what I feared was that once you'd written about the 17th small liberal arts college in Ohio, where the faculty often invite the students to their homes for dinner, things would begin to sound alike And blend into each other, and it would be pretty dull reading. And what I found, much to my surprise and delight, was that colleges are very different. They have very distinct institutional cultures, very distinctive institutional personalities, and even schools that on paper kind of look alike, and they may be 15 yards, 15 miles down the road from each other, are quite different. They have different feel. They have different histories. They have different cultures. And so what I'm trying to do in these essays about each school, and they run anywhere from 1000 to 2500 words, depending on on the school. What I'm trying to do is to capture that institutional personality. What is it? What is seems to be the special feeling about this school? What about and what it's about. And then the assumption is that the reader, the potentials undergraduate or parents, yeah, can then figure what's a good match for me is this kind of an institutional culture that I'd like to be part of.


Ethan Sawyer  12:51  
And because there are so many, as you mentioned, so many different schools, and they are so different, how do you decide which colleges get selected for the guide and and in particular, like you mentioned, 325 schools. You know, which 325 get get the honor of getting in the guide?


Ted Fiske  13:07  
Well, that can be, sometimes be a matter of controversy, and I often some colleges that aren't in the guide often let me know about their disapproval of that decision. Although we do continually add schools and we're open to changes, the what we we have basically the most the school, the obvious schools, the ones that are most selective, the ones that are most desired, desirable, or from a journalistic point of view, that the schools that that most readers are going to want to read About. So this would include all of the really selective schools, the selected privates. It would include all of the major state universities, the flagship campuses. But then I then I basically look for good representation of various niches of schools. I want to have some historically black schools. I want to have some evangelical schools. I want to have Roman Catholic schools. I want to have schools that are environmentally oriented. So I'm basically trying to anticipate the kinds of schools that readers are going to want to know about, and to then have a, you know, have a good representation of those. I'm also looking for geographic diversity. So a small liberal arts college in New England that's maybe marginal in terms of quantity of quality might have would have a lot less chance of being in in the book than if it were located in Texas or Oklahoma or someplace where there just aren't a lot of liberal arts colleges. So I want what I want to do is to serve readers by giving them as many options as I can in their particular area.


Ethan Sawyer  14:48  
So here's a question, if I'm a college and I want to get in the book, how do I convince you that I'm worth getting in the book? I


Ted Fiske  14:55  
asked the colleges to write me a two page letter, no more than two page. Just after if I read more than two pages, my lips get tired reading. So the I said, make the case for including and and tell me along the way how you compare favorably with some schools that are already in the guide. And that system works pretty well, and I am often persuaded by some of these letters,


Ethan Sawyer  15:21  
what's your yield rate Ted? So for folks, that means, if you accept a certain college, what percentage about what percentage of them accept you back and decide they want to be in the guide? Is it


Ted Fiske  15:34  
pretty high? Yeah, I think my yield rate is about 100% cool. Nobody ever says they don't want to be in


but anyway, I'll worry about, I'll take that problem when it comes


Ethan Sawyer  15:51  
right? So in the intro, you mentioned a few different ratings, or, you know, criteria that you use when you're assessing the schools, you know, just for folks who don't have the book in front of them, academics, campus, setting, student body, you mentioned these, financial aid, housing, food, social life, extracurricular activities. I'm curious to know, what are your prejudices and values that have shaped the criteria for these ratings?


Ted Fiske  16:15  
Well, actually, I'm glad you asked that Ethan, because I really do. I try to think a lot about the values that I'm building into the into the fist guide, and especially as as the higher education scene changes the I guess the first one would be that the picking of college and this is something that every guidance counselor is going to tell every kid. So there's nothing original about this is it's a matching process. It's a question of fit. One of the great bonuses about going to college in the United States is that the United American system of higher education is is so diverse. I mean, we've got 4004 year colleges, it's and there's big ones and small ones in rural and urban and religiously oriented and and so forth. So there is this huge diversity. So there's no way, there's no reason that any particular student can't find 1214, 20 schools that are going to be a good fit for them. So it is a it is a question of finding a place where, where your particular needs are going to be served by the particular culture and personnel, institutional personality of the school. So this idea of finding the right fit, as opposed to saying this is the best school is? Is this the key thing? And what I try to do is to encourage students to understand this, and this is to have confidence that at some that there are schools out there that are going to be a good match for them, because there are the answer is, they can be sure that's true. I think the other, another thing would be what I just talked about, that the schools do have very different institutional personalities, and it's a way, and it's possible to look at them and describe them. I keep we update every year with things like new dorms and new buildings and new majors and so forth. But the basic personality of the school that we're describing doesn't evolve. Doesn't change very much. It I was it was interesting, even the the former all women's colleges that became co ed in their case, their person, their culture, didn't change all that much because, like this, the men who go to Vassar are, in many ways, have the same kinds of interests as the women who went to Vassar when it was still a women's colleges. I think that another value would be what I just alluded to, the diversity is a good thing, and it's good that we have a diverse system, but But I try to say in the write ups that looking for diversity in the student body is an important value, and this is becoming more and more evident as we enter into a globalized society, globalized world, that you're not really going to be getting a good education if everybody, or high percentage of the of your fellow students are just like you, that Being exposed to different viewpoints, different students from different backgrounds, socioeconomic, geographic, national, or whatever is really important and it's essential to a good education these days. So for example, I will we, in the last few years, started giving reporting on what the percentage of. Students who are interested, who are eligible for Pell Grants, which is to say, federal money for low income students. Because, because the assumption is that being educated where there's some socio economic diversity in the among the students that you're rubbing elbows with is a positive thing. It's going to benefit you as well as the institution. I think globalization is another value. I mean, I've always I did, I did study abroad as a student myself. I've lived in a bunch of other countries from the very beginning, we included some Canadian schools. Write ups about Canadian the 444, of the leading Canadian schools. Since then, we've added schools in Scotland which are good match for American students because they they have the four year system that's comparable, that's that fits in easily with us. Educational patterns. We added Trinity College Dublin. So what I try to do is let students know about some of these other opportunities, encourage them to maybe think about even going to one of these schools, if not for four years, then maybe as an exchange student for a semester or a year. But then I've also, in the write ups, done a lot more aggressive reporting about how many, how many, reporting about how many international students they have, and then how many students at this particular school study abroad. So I've really built this, what you might call global awareness, into the write ups. And then I guess the final value that I would comes to mind would be, I really believe strongly in the liberal arts education, liberal arts values, because whatever you learn of a technical sort is going to be obsolete, maybe even by the time you you graduate. But learning to think and developing cure intellectual curiosity, learning to write and speak. You know, these are the kinds of things which are going to the skills that are going to last you, not just get you the first job, but less for the whole, for your whole career. And so I really, I really do talk a lot in the book about what, how the college thinks about it, its curriculum is serving the broader purposes of liberal arts


Ethan Sawyer  22:38  
and in terms of rating the schools, or we'll say, you know, comparing one school to the other. How does that work? Is it? Is it self assessed? You know, on the questionnaire, for example, is there like a one to 10, how well do you think you're doing? Or, you know, is it just sort of, you read the information that they've shared with you, and you do some kind of internal assessment based on what you know and based on the information you get, to give it a sort of, you know, assessment. Or is there any kind of rating system? How do you how does that go?


Ted Fiske  23:07  
Well, yeah, I mean, I don't have a rating system comparable to US News. I mean, I don't say this college is number one, this number four, this is number 17, for a whole lot of reasons. I just don't think that's that's accurate. And what I do is I did want to have some kind of a way to help readers compare schools. And so I'm, as I said several times, I'm a journalist, and so I use the restaurant critic model of stars, so I give a sign the number of stars or telephones or other characters, not just stars based on academics, based on social life, and then quality of life. And so I have these one to five stars, although there aren't any one, because if there was, if it was a one, the question would come, why do you put in the book? But anyway, so I do assign stars, but the purpose of that is really so that students can can compare schools within, you know, they can look at this the relative, the relation between the number of academic stars, the number of social stars, social being more measure of the quantity of social activity. And say it's a way of comparing the schools, and again, helping figure out whether this is going to be good place for it's going to reflect your values. But I don't pay a huge amount of attention to the to these ratings. The the core of the book is the narrative description. And as I said, keep saying about the what's, what is, what's it like to be there as a student?


Ethan Sawyer  24:59  
It's. Yeah, great. And I'm so glad that you mentioned the US News and World Report rankings, because at this point Ted, we're only this is the sixth podcast episode. So anybody who's just coming into the podcast or coming into the college admissions process may not know about the US News and World Report rankings, so all they may know is that that's those are the rankings that people go by, and they might even be developing a list based on those rankings. So I'd love for you to just say, you know, give me what's your take on the US News and World Report rankings, and keep in mind that your listeners, again, may feel like this is the sort of the way to go and a place to look for, you know, good and like the sort of be all, end all.


Ted Fiske  25:36  
Well, as you as I guess most people would know by now that US News publishes a lot of statistical data on on schools, and then it assigns a ranking, and it and it ranks the schools, 12345, seeing number one is this is a better school, so number one is a better school than Number seven, and numbers, which is better than number 17, and so it's, you know, we're used, we're used to rankings. American love. Americans love this kind of statistics and rankings. And we do it in lots of areas. When it comes to trying to pick a college where you're going to be spending a huge amount of money and four time and four years. I know this is not a very good way to make this kind of a decision. Me, for one thing, as you may have guessed from what we've been saying before, the US News rankings asks the wrong question. The US News is basically what's the best school, and what's the second best and what's the third best. The right question to ask is, what's the best? What's the best school? For me, there are a lot of really bright 17 year olds for whom Harvard would be a terrible place, especially if you need a little nurturing and want to see a faculty member before you're a junior. It's, it's, it's that question of fit. And the US News rankings don't pay any attention to this question of fit. They have this abstract set of they have a formula, and they say this school is better according to that formula. Another problem with the US News rankings is it's all based on inputs. It looks at the SAT scores of the incoming students. It looks at the institutional resources. It doesn't look at anything that happens once the student enrolls. So it doesn't say anything about the quality of the teaching or the academic climate. It's all based on some abstract some things that can be measured. You measure what you can measure what the most important things about schools are, not necessarily things that lend themselves to quantification. And closely related to that is it's it's essentially US News rankings are essentially a measure of institutional wealth. It used to be that there were plenty of public flagship universities like Berkeley and UCLA in Michigan and all there were at the top of their rankings. But over the years, the number of public institutions has declined, and private institutions, by definition, have bigger endowments and a lot of wealth. So essentially, what the criterion, the criteria that US News uses for doing their rankings is large, pretty closely tied to wealth. So a rich school is going to do better whether or not the faculty cares very much about teaching or not. And then finally, you know, you can us. News has its own criteria, which some of which I just talked about, but it might be theoretically possible for you, and they're not necessarily the criteria that are important for you. I mean, theoretically, you could take the US News data and create your own ranking system based on your particular values. And that would be an improvement. They it is useful for some for some data, if you're comparing things like application numbers and and yield rates and so forth. But it's the rankings are just, they're, they're what US news editors think are is important, and that's not necessarily going to be what's really important for you. I mean, years ago, one of them, and I know the editors of US news that they've been around for a long time, the it, it. The whole idea began as what they call it. They were, some editors were sitting around. It was a journalistic parlor game. Is the way they the. Describe it, but somehow it's taken on a life of its own. And it's really important that students, if they're really thinking about seriously about issues like like fit, if they just don't pay much attention to those rankings,


Ethan Sawyer  30:15  
is there anything that the US News, World Report rankings are useful for?


Ted Fiske  30:20  
Well, they have a lot of data. And if you, if you're getting to the point, especially late in the in the process, where you where you want to know where a particular aspect of a school is is important to you, you you can, you can find data, but you can do that without, without buying into their system of what, without the editors telling you what's important, right?


Ethan Sawyer  30:49  
So the fist guide is, you know, 809 100 pages, and I have this image in my mind of you sitting down each year just with a blank Microsoft Word document, and starting with the first school and just typing until you get to 900 pages, redoing it each year. But that's right,


Ted Fiske  31:07  
that's right. I start out I write about a Delphi and work my way through to Yale.


Ethan Sawyer  31:14  
Yeah, that's exactly how it goes. So just know, tell me, how does that go? Who writes the all pages, and how does that process? It


Ted Fiske  31:21  
would be an interesting experiment to figure out how much overlapping language there is between now and when the book first came out, 30, over 30 years ago, where what we do is we update the write ups every year. Yeah, so we keep abreast of new buildings, new programs, the new health centers, new dorms, all that sort of thing. And we update things like the statistics, like, how many, how many students study abroad, and and all that. But so probably, you know, by far, most of the language in any particular write up is not going to change all that much from year to year. And as I said, the one immutable thing is our description of the institutional culture. What's this place really like? And that that does not change very much. It's like moving steering a battleship. And so what we do is we get the question, we send out questionnaires both to the schools, and we get to questionnaires from the students each year, and those then we read these, and then we read the current write up, and in light of what the students are telling me, telling us, and and then we then we update, great. And


Ethan Sawyer  32:47  
who's we? How big is the just curious. I don't actually know this. How big is the team? You know, who's how does that go?


Ted Fiske  32:53  
Well, I have two principal assistants, one of whom, who is actually my daughter, Julie, who is who works on sending the questionnaires out and maintaining our contacts. We a lot of the questionnaires are filled out by Institutional Research people. And these, you know, they, they evolve every, every few years, there's new people. So, so she works on the follow up and making sure that we get the information in. And then I have a managing editor, Michelle decoy, who does, takes charge of of the updating of the of the write ups. And then I have a heavy, I have a big hand in, I say heavy, yeah, I have, I have a big hand in, in doing that and service setting general editorial directions, and then the public. I have a wonderful publisher of source books in Illinois and in Naperville, Illinois, suburb of Chicago. And then there's just a whole bunch of really good folks on source books staff who who deal with all aspects, from helping to send out the emails through the computer system to proofreading and quality control and that sort of thing. So it's a little hard to answer how many people are involved. I said I have two basically on my staff, but it's very much a collegial activity.


Ethan Sawyer  34:27  
Ted. When do you feel the guide is most useful in the process of applying to college?


Ted Fiske  34:34  
Yeah, of course. I mean, I like to say that it's useful at any point in the process. I would say there are two there are two points where it's particularly valuable. The first would be at the very beginning. I mean, what do I I want to go to a four year school? There are 2200 of them to choose from. How in the world do I even start? Do I just kind of sort. Of the book down the down the stairs and see what pages fall out or so. It's a way to begin to think about what your values are. And I have a there's a little quiz at the beginning of the book for called sizing yourself up, which allows you to suggest some questions you could ask is about the sort of place that you that you might want to, want to go to, and so identifying some schools to begin the searches is one point, but then also broadening your horizons a little bit. And one of what I suggest is to lot of students is if you know, if there's a school that you know that you might be interested in, then look at the schools that they share a lot of applicants with, and we list those at the end of each write up, because you can take the advantage of the fact that other students coming before you have seen if you like one school you might like this. Yeah, so that's a way of looking at the overlapping admission applications. But basically, as a, you know, as a tool for narrowing the search and at least getting started. And of course, I encourage students to visit different types of school, you know, visit an urban one, visit a rural one, visit a big one, visit a small one, just to get a little sense of what's going to be good for you. And then I suppose at the very end of the process where you have, maybe you have offers from three or four schools, and you want to start doing a comparison about of them on particular things that are important to you. If you are you really concerned about the quality of the dorms or the sports programs or what. So at that point, you can use the book in a very different way, and that is to look at, look at what the write ups say about each of these schools on a particular point, like the quality of the dorms or the do you have to be a member of a fraternity, Japanese and social life, things like that. So the little bit more compare and contrast. But other than that, at any given point, questions are going to arise and and the book sits there, all 800 pages of it, ready to help you out,


Ethan Sawyer  37:25  
right? And because it's such an, you know, a big guide, let's get just really practical. So you know that you mentioned, for example, the sizing yourself up section where, you know, you identify a bunch of these qualities. You know, say, I'm a student who's trying to develop a good college list. You know, would it be? Would it make sense to just start at that sizing yourself up section and just


Ted Fiske  37:45  
kind of well, let me, let me just maybe speak from my own personal experience. I, when I grew up in Philadelphia, went to one of the Quaker schools in Philadelphia, and I wanted to go to a small liberal arts college in New England. And one reasons was that I knew I wanted to be able to do lots of different things and not have to specialize, which is why I wanted to wanted a smaller school. And as it worked out, I went to Wesley in Connecticut, which is one of the better small liberal arts colleges in the country, and I was able to play sports, and I edited the newspaper and did other things as well as keeping up my grades. So I wanted a smaller school, simply because I didn't want to have to go to didn't have to specialize it. If I go into a larger school, and I wanted to be on the newspaper, it really would have been difficult to play sport as well. And so what, what I did was, you know, I now there wasn't a fist guide to help me, of course, but what I if I were to do this again, with this coming at it with the same attitude that I had, then, you know, I would look up Wesleyan or Amherst or school, and then read about them, and then look at the overlaps that they had, and maybe develop a list of 15 or 20 schools to read about. And then you can begin to focus in on where you might want to go go visit. But so it's you find some kind of a little hook that something that's interesting and you you're interested in. I mean, are there some people want, want the fun of being in school with division one sports so, you know, pick the schools that looks like Michigan or something that might and then then look at the schools that they compete with, academically and otherwise, and


Ethan Sawyer  39:41  
speak to the kids, students who are listening, who have just no idea what they want. They think I want to go to college, or I feel like I should go to college, but I have no idea what I'm looking for. What's the best way for them to approach this?


Ted Fiske  39:54  
Well, I mean, one thing I warn students about is is narrowing your choice. Is too early. Most people, they say, Well, you know, I want to go and be an anthropology major. Well, chances are pretty good you're going to change your mind four or five times before you end up doing that. So I think it's really important to go to pick a school where you're going to have other options, because you're gonna one of the one things about college, and one of the purposes of education, is to let you know that things existed you had no idea of. Yeah. So it may very well be that you get to school, and this turns out there's a medieval Urdu teacher who is really captivating and turns on your intellectual curiosity is going to teach you a lot about how to think. Maybe you didn't even know there was such a thing as Urdu until you until you got there. So you really need to keep your mind open and not just go in very heavily with a heavily prescribed program, I'm gonna study this, this, this, and this, let the intellectual culture the school wash over you. And so one it would be to keep look for places where you are gonna have lots of options. And now there are people in some fields, for example, engineering, where you do have to specialize a lot earlier because there's so much to, you know, to cover, and so that's a somewhat of a special case. But on the other hand, there are a lot of first rate engineering schools where they very much teach engineering within the culture of a liberal arts, of the liberal arts, and that that's the sort of thing that you can you can look for and make sure that you do what you want, but also realize, keep in mind, that the intellectual context of the place,


Ethan Sawyer  42:01  
right? And I love this sizing yourself up section at the beginning of the book that you mentioned, which basically, for those who haven't seen it yet, identifies 30 qualities that students you know could or should consider. Are there in your mind? Are there any particular qualities that are this is a weird way to put it, that's like, more important than others, or are there, like a, if you had to do like a top three things to consider list, you know, what would be some of those qualities that you think are really important, students will definitely think


Ted Fiske  42:31  
about, yeah. I mean, there are, there are values. Like, for example, do you like to be a big fish in a smaller pond? You would like to be one of the smarter people in the room? Or do you get a kick out of being surrounded by people who are less smarter than you are? Is you find that that's stimuli. And this, there's not a right or wrong answer for this. This is just a question of temperament. So that's the kind of a question if, when you're picking between a big school or a small school, I've always, I've already talked about, you want to be able to participate in lots of activities, or do you want to focus on one or two? And then the question of how you learn best? Sometimes, a lot of people can can handle large lectures with and, of course, with tutors afterwards. But it can learn very well from big, large lecture classes. Others really thrive on on seminars and want the give and take of students among themselves and students with the faculty member. It's not a question of right or wrong. It's just that different cult different schools offer different kinds of learning environments, and this is try to figure out what's one that's best for you. Do you want to do undergraduate research. This has been a huge trend in recent years, with colleges letting letting College, letting undergraduates work, work on it, on research, brought serious research projects, and the colleges do this in very different ways, and even small liberal arts colleges, there you have where the faculty members aren't there primarily to do research, but schools like that, the faculty members tend to pick research projects that lend themselves to having undergraduates do some of the grunt work on it, as opposed to it's big universities where you're immediately thrust into big science. So it's issues like that.


Ethan Sawyer  44:55  
And you mentioned, you know, one of the mistakes that parents and students sometimes. Make is early on narrowing their options a little bit too early. Are there any other big mistakes that you see students and parents making


Ted Fiske  45:08  
when it comes to Yeah, well as I think that's, that's the big one is to decide to not look at the, look at the, at the overall number of schools. I think another big mistake is assuming that the published tuition price is definitive for you. Scott colleges. College is hugely expensive these days, but colleges have to discount their prices in order to get students and so what what you pay is going to be a function of, one what their tuition is, but also how much they want you, how much financial need, how much need based financial aid you might be available for to that might be available to you, And then how much they really want you. And there's a lot of schools have have merit aid, and so you, if there's a school that you really want to go to, don't write it right off. Write it off at the very beginning as as something that's going to be impossible, because it might not be, I mean, it might be, but you have, you have to really have a conversation with them. And then, you know, there's another sort of localized issue that I, I advise we don't write off the women's colleges if you're, if you're a woman, some of the, some of the best education that that's available is in these women's schools, and they aren't monasteries anymore, but they are places that take women seriously, and colleges can be pretty sexist places, especially in the larger classes. Men tend to want to dominate the airspace, and this is not necessarily the best place for women, and there, you're not sacrificing quality if you go to a women's college, because places like Bryn Mawr and Wellesley are among the best schools in the country. So don't if you're a woman at least, at least think about the fact that you might want to women's college might be the best fit. Yeah.


Ethan Sawyer  47:25  
I mean, I see this a lot, you know, where students or parents sort of get obsessed with one school or two schools, you know, and usually they're, you know, those schools happen to have fewer than, you know, less than 10% acceptance rate. What's the danger in that, in your mind, in terms of getting narrowing you mentioned this is really the big thing, is narrowing the choices. What danger do you see in that? Or what is the potential cost of that?


Ted Fiske  47:48  
Well, I think you're not being sensitive to the richness of American higher education. As we said the earlier, one of the definitive things about US higher education, it is so diverse. I mean, in Europe, students tend to go to the university in the it's in the closest city to them. There's not a lot of different personalities among the institutions in the United States. It's not that way at all. There is this, and I think a lot of it has to go to, goes back to the fact that higher education the United States was a lot of it was founded by religious organizations, and the different churches wanted to have their own colleges and universities so they could promote their own teaching. So they tend to be located in outside of big cities. They're not a lot of they're not very many small liberal arts colleges in cities, if you think about and even, yeah, Cambridge was a was out in the out in the boonies when Harvard was started, it wasn't in Boston, and still isn't actually in Cambridge. New Haven was, was New Haven Princeton is was a tiny town, so there is this diversity out there, and you might as well take advantage of it, because to go back to what we're saying before the there are dozens of schools that are going to be good fit for Any particular individual.


Ethan Sawyer  49:20  
Ted. Is there anything that you feel students should really consider doing during this process, but many, often don't actually do?


Ted Fiske  49:29  
Well, that's a that's an interesting question. I mean, I really encourage whenever possible, to visit some schools, because there's this, there's something about being on a campus. And it doesn't necessarily have to be just schools that you're really, really interested in. I think it's a good you know, visit us a larger one, visit a smaller one. But there's something just about being on a campus. US and maybe getting a feel for what's what's going on. You can always walk into the good idea to walk into the cafeteria and look around and or you see students and faculty talking to each other, or the faculty in one corner and the students in another. And you, yeah, if you're if you're bold enough, it doesn't hurt to just walk up to some students and start asking them about the what it's like in most, most colleges. And this is something that's been pretty important to the success of the fiscal most college students are pretty happy with where they went, and are happy to talk about it, but they're also going to be very candid. They're not going to they understand that they're not doing anybody a favor if some, if they delude some potential freshmen into coming and it's not the right fit that's not good for the freshmen or for the or for the school. So to the extent that you can get get on a physical campus and just get a sense of what it's like to be to be a college student. And one thing to remember is that, in a very real sense, the college admissions process itself is the first step in your education. So think of it as part of your college education, because what you're doing is you're you're looking at schools, you're asking questions. Well, what am I really interested in? What? Why am I doing this? What are my goals? And as you deal with these questions, then, then you're going to end up at a place that's a good fit for you, but also that's the first, the first step, when you started asking yourself about your priorities. You know that's very much. You're going to be doing that for four years, asking similar questions. So So think of the application process as part of your college education? Boy,


Ethan Sawyer  52:05  
I couldn't agree more. And I would even say, life, right? Life Education in terms of, you know, how to make decisions, because in a lot of cases, this is, you know, the first time a student's really going to be making a big, big decision that can impact potentially the rest of their lives. And that maybe kind of goes without saying, but


Ted Fiske  52:22  
yeah, and the other thing, I guess I might add, is that know that you're going to be successful. When I talk to kids who are really anxious about the process, I know that 12 months from then, they're going to be in a place that's a good match for them, assuming they use a little bit of common sense, and they're going to wonder about what was all the storm and drawing? Why was I so anxious about this? And that you are going to be successful if, for some reason, you end up at a place that you have some dimensions that you weren't aware of, you can always transfer. It's not the end of the world, but by and large, you should, you should enter the process and both as students and this is advice to parents as well, knowing that you're going to be successful because of all the things we've been saying, there is this diversity. There are all these there are dozens of places that will be a good match for you. You just have to find at least one of them.


Ethan Sawyer  53:23  
Yeah, I love that advice to visit a campus, too. One thing I'll say to students is to make sure you visit three schools that are clearly different. So what that could mean is a small school, mid sized school, large school, you know, a rural school and an urban school, you know, just to get, really, get a kinesthetic, a bodily sense of what feels right?


Ted Fiske  53:44  
Yeah, I agree that that's that's really important. And, you know, I'm a journalist, so I, you know, I like being out and being involved in situations and see meeting people and seeing things. So maybe that's a bias, but I think it's generally applicable,


Ethan Sawyer  54:00  
absolutely. Thank you, Ted. This is incredibly useful. And, and you know, anybody, any, any like throw a rock, and if you're in the college admissions world, and you'll find this guide, but obviously you can get it online, or, obviously you can get it in bookstores, but you can also get it online. Could you just say a little bit about that? You know, what the online world has opened up in terms of the fist guide. In other words, you know, who would prefer to get the printed copy, the hard copy, and who might prefer an online copy?


Ted Fiske  54:28  
Well, actually, what we found is that most people really want the physical book. There's an iPad app for it. There is an online version of it. Right now, we're having some hacking problems with the website, but we'll, we'll deal with those. But it seems to be one of those products where people just kind of want the physical book and you want to be able to sort of take it with it's not the sort of thing that lends itself. To hours in front of a screen, browsing for some reason, and I don't pretend to understand anything in this world, but it's the physical book that people seem to want, and so they the sales can it's the leading guide. We have greater more we sell more copies, and there's greater market than any other guy. So, but it is available online. And then if you're in another country, of course, and you don't want to ship the book around the world, it's it's a big help. But so there is an iPad version, and there is an online version. And then the source books website, sourcebooks.com without links to all these.


Ethan Sawyer  55:46  
Yeah, I'll link it all to the show notes, and I'll give the where folks can pick it up at the end of the show today, I like to do a little portion called Show and Tell where each of us shares just something that we feel has either been useful in our lives, or, you know, currently, or in the past, that we that other that might be useful to other folks, and that could be in the college admissions world, or it could be, you know, something outside that, something that's just, you know, that you would like to share. And I tend to, by the way, not prepare my show and tell thing until I've heard the guest share. But is there something that comes to mind for you, Ted, that you that you'd like to bring for show and tell today?


Ted Fiske  56:26  
I don't know. I guess to me, and this is maybe too closely related to what we've been talking about, but I just think curiosity is I have a lot of trouble with people who who aren't curious, and maybe that's my hang up. But as I said, being a journalist, it's curiosity is something that you you traffic in a lot. But what I, when I found, when I when I went, I went to Phil, what was supposed to be a fairly good high school, but it wasn't all that. I thought there was a lot that I was missing, and it was really when I got to Wesleyan that I sort of discovered the world of ideas, and really got turned on to the fun of learning about different things and and as I said, it meant it really it was kind of learning anything is is fun. And I mean, I studied the ancient Greek just kind of for the fun of it, but the idea of the serendipity of knowledge, the fact that you can there are a lot of there are interesting people, of course, and interesting writers. But again, this would maybe go back to what I was saying about the liberal arts, that being open to the fun of ideas wherever they are, and then just seeing where they lead you. It's just one of the great joys of life.


Ethan Sawyer  58:09  
I'm just nodding as you're saying this TED. You don't know this, but the tagline for this podcast is, stay curious.


Ted Fiske  58:18  
Okay, it is.


Ethan Sawyer  58:21  
Thank you and for that reminder. And so my show and tell is, you know, as I've worked with this book, that you've This amazing resource that you've created, and you know, spent the last 10 years helping students with this process, I've kind of developed my own version of how to create a great college list. So in the show notes, folks will be able to click a link, and you'll be able to see in the first part of the process, well, how do you figure out? How do you, you know, get really curious and figure out what it is that you're looking for. And then in part two of the guide that I'll share, how can you use great resources out there, one of which is the FISC guide to find schools that could potentially be, you know, a good match for you. And then how do you, how do you whittle it down and decide which, you know, number of schools to apply to? So my show and tell is a is a resource that that folks can check out in the show notes Ted. Thank you again. Such an honor to speak with you. And I just really appreciate,


Ted Fiske  59:16  
well, thank you. Either it's been, it's been a real pleasure, it's, it's nice to have somebody push me to think about some of these things, because I do get a lot of satisfaction, not only about learning about US higher education, which is incredibly diverse and interesting and always changing and Keeping up with things, but also like the feeling that maybe I'm useful to some people and helping them sort out where they're going to go to school and how they're going to get prepared for the rest of their lives. Well,


Ethan Sawyer  59:53  
I just want to on behalf of the college admissions community, as a professional in this community, I just want to say that you're. Contributions cannot be undervalued. It's just been huge. And so thank you for all your great contributions. Thank


Ted Fiske  1:00:05  
you. You're very kind.


Ethan Sawyer  1:00:10  
Thanks so much for listening. You can check out in the show notes my practical guide How to create a great college list. I encourage you to check that out. You can just Google that phrase and that'll pop up for you, and that's it. I hope you have an amazing week. Bye. You.


Transcribed by https://otter.ai