123: Should You Apply Early Decision or Regular Decision? (And the Chart That Can Help You Decide)

Ethan Sawyer  0:08  
This is Ethan. Saw you're the College Essay Guy doing my best to bring more ease, joy and purpose into the college application process. Welcome to the College Essay Guy podcast, where it's my job to interview the most brilliant minds in the college admissions world, analyze their genius and break it down for you into a series of practical, actionable steps that you can take, whether you're applying to college yourself or helping someone else apply. I've almost got that memorized. So this is episode three of three with the amazing Jeff Levy and Jenny Kent. Last episode, if you heard it, was Jenny talking about which schools are the most generous with financial aid for international students. The episode before that, you heard Jeff talking about, which schools are most generous with domestic students, which is to say students applying from the US. And for the first time on this podcast, we're doing a double interview. This one happens to be my favorite, and it's because of the topic. It's a kind of a controversial topic. The question is, should you apply early decision or not? Is there a statistical advantage to applying early or not? Well, when making this decision, it might be kind of nice to know what the regular decision acceptance rate is for a school that you're interested in and what the early decision acceptance rate is for a school and you know, then compare those numbers. But imagine if you had to do that for all the schools that you're applying to. In fact, imagine if you had to do that for over 200 schools. Wouldn't it be better if somebody else just did that work for you? That's exactly what Jeff and Jenny have done. They spent weeks, maybe months, last year, poring over college admissions websites, calling admissions reps and sometimes calling them back, asking for their numbers so they could put together for you in a neat little spreadsheet all this information. And then they did it again this past year. Why would you do such a thing? You ask. Well, that's the first thing that we cover on the episode. After that, we talk about, why did they choose the particular metrics that they chose? In other words, why do these numbers matter? What are some of the dangers of interpreting this data, and who is early decision right for, and who is it not right for? Is it right for everybody? And of course, we talk about how you can use this chart practically when you're applying to college or when you're helping someone else apply. I'm so excited that I want to end this intro right here and let you get right into the episode. So here you guys, hi friends, welcome to the college sai podcast. This is episode three of three. I'm with Jeff Levy and Jenny Kent, and I'm so excited to be here with both of them. This is the first time I'm doing this, where I'm interviewing two folks at once. So we have not so meticulously planned out this interview, so there will be some talking over each other. We are in different area codes in different countries, which is hashtag, technology is amazing. You can listen to like their longer bios on the episodes one and two of this. But in short, I'll start with Jenny. Jenny is a member of Ica. Well, you know, I don't even know if you guys even know what these things mean, but if you're interested in all the designations that she has, the important one, I think the big one is this certified educational planner. She spent a bunch of years helping students through the college application process, and in my episode, I talked with her about how international students can figure out which schools give money and how much money they give and how many students they give it to. So you can check that out if you're interested. And with Jeff, who's also here. He's also a member of a bazillion organizations that make him super legit and qualified to be here. That's what that's the joke I always make, Jeff, I hope it's okay that I'm making that joke with you. He teaches, he's a counselor who teaches other counselors how to be better counselors. And he's based out of Los Angeles. Jenny is based out of Bogota. And guys, thanks for doing this. Welcome to the podcast.


Jennie Kent  3:45  
Thanks for having us. So


Ethan Sawyer  3:47  
thank you. I want to jump right in. And I want to get to, you know what? What is this resource? It's I'll just say that when I heard that somebody had created this, I was like, what? That's awesome. So maybe, let's start with just what is this Maybe Jeff, you can start with, just tell us what is the resource. And then Jenny, you can tell us a little bit about bit about why this resource was created in the first


Jennie Kent  4:06  
place. Sounds good. We,


Jeff Levy  4:08  
we, we call it the early decision and regular decision acceptance rate chart. It's pretty straightforward. It has, I think, Jenny, how many colleges total? Do you remember? I'm scanning through now. It's called, it


Jennie Kent  4:29  
has every college that has an early decision plan. So exactly, slightly over 400 I believe.


Jeff Levy  4:36  
No, no, I think this one. I'm looking at it now, actually. So something, it's about two, 215, and then we have a handful. And we have, oh, we've got so many charts. How can you possibly keep track of them all? And then at the bottom of that of that chart, we have a little bonus section, which has two. Six colleges that offer single choice, early action, as opposed to early decision. We'll probably get into that later. Eugene Is now a good time for me to describe in detail what the chart looks like. Or do you want me to hold off on that? Let's


Ethan Sawyer  5:15  
do it. Tell us what's on the chart, and then we can go back and define the terms.


Jeff Levy  5:19  
Okay, it's got the list of colleges. It's got their early decision acceptance rate. It then has a column for their regular decision acceptance rate. And this is the big deal. You know, this is the present under the tree, because it's easy to find early decision acceptance rates. It's early it's easy to find overall acceptance rates. But one of the things we do with this chart, one of the several things we do that you won't find elsewhere, is that we extract the regular decision acceptance rate. So you can, you can really see the difference between the two moving moving through the chart. We also, we also have a column for the percentage, the percent of the class of the freshman class filled from early decision. And this can be quite an eye opener. We have another column which has the ED early decision to rd regular decision acceptance ratio. So that will give you a kind of just a straight numerical description of, Is it crazy? Out of whack? Is it one to one? So you can quickly, kind of, you know, see where, where it all falls in there. And then we have a column which lists the additional admission plan. So some early decision colleges have also have an early action plan. That's good to know, some early decision colleges have ed to which we can maybe go into a little bit later. So that column will list the additional plans. Finally, the last column is the source of the data, and in most cases, it's going to be from the common data set, 2016 2017 so I'm going to take a breath here and let you guys talk for a moment.


Ethan Sawyer  7:33  
Thank you. You set us up beautifully. Jenny, help us first. I'm going to ask a two parter. So first, help us define some terms, what's early decision, what's early action, and if you could, what's common data set, and then give us some sense of why this chart came to be in the first place.


Jennie Kent  7:51  
Okay, I'm just writing down what it is that you want me to define here so that I do it in the right order. So early decision and early action as well as regular decision are basically their application plans that colleges offer. So an early decision plan means that the student is going to apply ahead of time and it's there, they're basically agreeing ahead of time to a binding decision so that if the University says, Hey, you're in the student guarantees that they will attend the school. And early action, the student will also apply early will also get an admission decision earlier. I should have said that with with early decision and early action, students will usually hear, you know, just before or around the start of the of the new calendar year. But early action is non binding, so that means you're going to apply early. You're going to hear early, but you don't have to decide until May 1 where where you want to go. And then the common data set, which Jeff mentioned, is it's basically, well, it's exactly what it says it is. It's a common data set that universities fill out and and they distribute to things like like guide books and big future that the College Board has. So it's just a set of of basic information about the university has many different sections that gets filled up by the university so that you basically can have all of the information about every university that you want. The trick with the Common Data Set Ethan is that some universities just have them. You know, right up there on their website, they're easy to find. Other universities won't share them. Some universities will share them, but they don't make it easy to find them. And so one of the things that Jeff and I love to do is to track down those common data sets.


Ethan Sawyer  9:48  
How much do you love to do that?


Jeff Levy  9:52  
Jenny, Jenny loves it more than I do for sure.


Ethan Sawyer  9:55  
What kind of work did you put in to do this? Like to put these put to put this information together and. If you could give us some sense of why you picked, like, what you picked, the data points that you picked, and either one of you can answer


Jennie Kent  10:08  
that, go for it. Go ahead. Jeff, so in terms of the amount of work that we put in, I don't think I could even calculate. You know, we usually, we produce these charts annually, and I think it's fair to say we start thinking about it in March, because that's when a lot of the private institutions will have their common data sets finished. But it goes all the way through August. Many of the public institutions cannot post their common data sets until state budgets have been kind of decided on. So usually, by, you know, September 1 at the latest, you can get a common, a common data set. So it's really a labor of love. You know, I love it when I can just find it online. That's great. But I now have, you know, I have many email threads with admission offices where I, you know, politely ask and then beg for them to share the to share the information with us. So lots and lots of time goes into that, and I already forgot the second


Ethan Sawyer  11:09  
part. So, and why did so? Why did you choose these particular data points?


Jennie Kent  11:14  
Jeff, why don't you take that? Well,


Jeff Levy  11:16  
we're both Jenny and I are data nerds, we kind of, we kind of love quantifying things, and I know I'm petrified of not knowing what's really going on, you know, not being informed. So I want to see the data. I mean, I just, I just need to see it at the same time. I know that there's a limitation to what the data can tell us, but there are stories behind the numbers, and I just think it's so cool to uncover what's kind of going on through, you know, through this, through this information,


Ethan Sawyer  12:01  
that's that's super interesting. Can I jump on that? What stories do you do you see coming out of this, of this chart?


Jeff Levy  12:09  
Well, if we, if we look at the percent of class filled from early decision, we'll see numbers that are all over the place. And I think so. For example, here, let me, let me. Northeaster, 9% of their class is filled from early decision. Middlebury College, an outlier in the other direction, 66% of their of their freshman classes fell from early decision and plenty that are between them. So I think it's part of the information that counselors and consultants and families need to have to be able to make smart decisions about where to apply, when


Ethan Sawyer  13:06  
take so take, follow that through a little bit. What? So when you see numbers like this, 9% of the class at Northeastern and 66% of the class at Middlebury, how does that help students decide where to apply? Like, what? What stories do you make up about that?


Jeff Levy  13:21  
Jenny, you may, you may want to jump in. Sure,


Jennie Kent  13:25  
sure, I'll jump in. You know, if I look at a school like like Northeastern that, you know, they're accepting, they're accepting 29% of their students during the regular decision, and 27% for early decision clearly, there's, there's no advantage to putting an early decision application into Northeastern. I mean, there's no admission advantage anyway. It's great if that's the school that you know you're in love with and you know you want to go to, but it's, it's not easier to get in during the early decision round. And, you know, they're, they're only taking 9% of their class. So it's not like Northeastern has this policy where they're like, Wow, we're going to fill, you know, 50% of our class. We're going to lock it in during early decision that's just not the story at Northeastern versus, you know, Middlebury, which, which Jeff mentioned that when you have a 13% acceptance rate during the regular decision round versus a 43% acceptance rate during early decision and they're taking 66% of their class, there might be, might be an advantage to applying there early. So you know, that's why these numbers are so important. And yeah, like Jeff said, numbers don't lie. That's why, that's why we love them,


Jeff Levy  14:46  
you know. But it but they don't tell the whole story. And so just to follow up with what Jenny said, it doesn't therefore mean that at Middlebury, which has a three and a half to one. Ratio of early decision acceptance rate to regular decision. It doesn't therefore mean it's going to be three and a half times easier for any applicant to get in early decision. These are not identical cohorts of applicants, and that's something that Jenny and I both caution our students about. The early decision round is made up of a higher number of athletes, of legacy students, of students who are just more applicants, who are more savvy about the the application process, so than the regular decision round is. So it doesn't say everything, but it certainly does say a lot to inform what might become a smarter college application strategy.


Ethan Sawyer  15:55  
So Jenny, I want to, in a second, I want to talk to you about who you feel like early decision may or may not be right for before we get into that, tell me a little bit more about why you feel like this resource is


Jennie Kent  16:06  
important. Well, you know, I think, as I mentioned in the other podcast, you know, it's hard to play a game if you don't know the rules. And you know, Jeff and I don't believe in in gaming the system, but you know, you do need to understand, you know, how, how everything works. Otherwise you can't have a good strategy. So it's really important to use this chart just to have a better strategy. And I think what happens with both of us, Ethan, is that, you know, we work for, usually a really long time with a student developing a list. And then, you know, there comes a point in time where every student we work with, you know, might have some schools on their list that offer Ed and the question is, is this your dream school? And if it is, are you going to take advantage of that plan or not? So it's really about helping the family make the best possible decision,


Ethan Sawyer  17:00  
right? So great. That's a beautiful segue. So who, who do you feel like early decision is right for and who is it not right for?


Jeff Levy  17:07  
Most coaches encourage their their recruits to apply early decision. They want to lock in. You know, their their teams early. Many schools will give a bump to a legacy applicant only if they apply in the early decision round, and that that bump may disappear if they applying regular decision as we've been discussing students who are very clear about what is their first choice, not just because there's an admission advantage, but because they really believe the school is the best school for them, if they're, you know, if they're ready to apply in mid October, and we'll have the strongest application they can put together by by that early, early Stage Ed can be a very smart choice,


Jennie Kent  18:02  
you know, I think early decision is right for the student who wants to marry a school, because it's a binding decision, you know. And so if you know, I had a student come into my office, you know, a few weeks ago, Ethan, and said, So, which school should I apply to early decision? And I said, Well, there's your answer, you know, maybe none, because you know it's, it's early. There's a lot of, you know, stress and anxiety, and I think you know, a lot of students just, you know, want to commit, but you know, if you're not in love with the school and you and you can't picture yourself on their campus for four years, it's probably, you know, not, not the right choice. And I also think you know, if there are students who can't commit to paying full freight, they really should think about it carefully, because it's a binding decision. And while yes, you are allowed to get out of the decision if you know your financial need isn't met, I don't know how clearly that's defined. You know, I think there are families who think they have a certain amount of financial need, but that a university would see it a little bit differently.


Jeff Levy  19:11  
I want to underline that that I'm pretty discouraged. I really discourage families who expect to get financial aid away from applying early decision, I don't think in most cases, it's a smart choice. We can't be mechanical about it. There are financial aid families who may apply early decision to schools that meet 100% of need, but in most cases, financial aid awards are so varied, school to school, even between schools, that say they meet 100% of need, that it is usually in the family's best interest not to to put admissibility second and to put affordability first and at the end of the. Process to compare the financial aid offers and possibly to to appeal one or two of them to make sure that they're getting the best possible offer. So generally, not, generally, not a smart strategy for financial aid families.


Ethan Sawyer  20:19  
So with great power comes great responsibility. And I make up that having these numbers, you know, give students some more power and give students some more at least context for understanding, you know, what the numbers are and how this game works. Jenny, talk to me about, how does a student say a student is listening to this podcast? How can they use this chart to better inform their you know, development of their college list and just their college application process. Because when I look at this, if I'm if I'm a kid, and I see American University has an 85% early decision acceptance rate and only a 23% regular decision acceptance rate. I'm like, Great, I'm applying to American but why is that potentially flawed? How do you, how do you help students? You know, how is this in the larger constellation of resources that use of them. How can this help them in their process?


Jennie Kent  21:06  
Yeah, I, you know, I think Jeff and I both think that the first step is just to create a really great list. And by a really great list, you know, you want to look at schools that are a financial fit, a social fit and an academic fit. I just think that that's the and I would really push the social fit a lot. That's sort of one of the things that I'm really big at, and the financial that the academics actually probably for me lower down. Because I think that, you know, you can go to the best program in the country, but if you're not with your people, it's going to be really hard for you to be happy and be successful. Especially, I work with a lot of international students. They're very far away from home, so if they don't feel a connection, that can be really, really tough. So I think you need, you need to kind of be with your people. You need to be at a school that's affordable, and you need to be at a school that's going to give you the academics that you want. That would be the very first thing, really


Ethan Sawyer  22:03  
great. And what? Just real quick, I just be curious, Jenny, what resources do you use to help students develop their initial list, even before we look at this chart, say,


Jennie Kent  22:12  
Oh, wow. Well, what I mean a bit a big resource is my brain, because I spend a lot of time traveling and visiting campuses, particularly because I work with so many international families who can't do that. So, you know, I do really in depth student interviews and parent interviews to kind of get a feel for what sort of a campus I think a student, you know, would would fit, fit well at as for finances again, you know, I have the family come up with their estimated family contribution, as I spoke about in the earlier podcast, to figure out, you know, is there financial need? Is there not financial need? And, you know, in terms of academics, I think there are lots of different resources that you can use. I'm a very big fan of college data.com they have lots of information. And I'm a big fan of those common data sets. Because I think when it comes to academics, you know, you really want to know, like, Am I in the ballpark or No, I can't tell you the number of parents who come in my office and they say, Well, if my child doesn't apply to Harvard, obviously they can never get in. But if you're not, you know, sort of like what I call academically in the ballpark, I'm not sure that it's worth it. So, you know, I like to use college data and common data sets to kind of look and see, okay, are my test scores, you know, at least in the average range. You know, GPAs can be tricky to compare, but I like to kind of look at my students GPA versus the average GPA of universities. And I use the university websites all the time. I think, you know, students, and I really dig deep and look and say, like, hey, does this have a program and a curriculum that that really appeals to me?


Ethan Sawyer  24:07  
Beautiful. Talk to me, Jeff, what's your process? How do you help students? What are the resources you use? And then, when does this chart come in? At what point the process?


Jeff Levy  24:15  
Well, I'll pick up where Jenny left off. I'm also a very big believer in the college website. I mean, of course, there's some slick marketing involved in that, but I love going to the list of a college, a college's majors, introducing that to the student, and just having them kind of go through the list and stopping it at a major that looks cool to them. And then we'll click on that, we'll dive in, we'll look at at what some of the core courses are for that major, what some of the electives are. It really helps students kind of picture what it is they might want to study in college. That's an important part of the figuring. Out which colleges fit for them. I love the FISC guide. I think it's unparalleled in in the way it describes what a place is like, what it feels like, what it might be like to go there. I don't use this early decision, regular decision chart early in the process. And I think, I think we've been, we've been harping on that a lot, that in the process of pulling together an entire list of colleges that make sense for the student, and then helping them get to the point where they begin to have some favorites that and in determining whether a student will actually be ready to apply by mid October, we can then begin to look at our chart and say, okay, you know, you seem to love these two schools more than all the other ones on your List, for some very good reasons. Does it make sense to apply early decision? Will you be ready for it? Do you want to and let's look at some of the stats that those schools to indicate to us whether it might be an admission advantage applying to those schools. So that's what I would bring it in to the process. So


Ethan Sawyer  26:19  
what I'm hearing from both of you guys is like, don't use this chart to make your college list. Like, figure out based on you mentioned, financial, social, academic factors using some of the resources you mentioned, okay, what's a great list? And then we bring this chart in and go, Okay, based on, you know, these schools that I'm really excited about, maybe I can start taking into account some of these numbers when I'm trying to figure out where I want to play, early decision, yeah,


Jennie Kent  26:46  
yeah, that's it. And Ethan I would, I would love to jump on a little bit to something that, that that Jeff said when he mentioned, you know, are you going to be ready to apply in time? Because you know, that's a big one too. I think, you know, I live in a last minute culture, so rarely are my students ready to apply on time


Ethan Sawyer  27:12  
a last minute culture. I like that. So talk to me. Give me some examples. Jenny, so that students have, like, a specific understanding of, like, how to actually practically use this chart. Can you think of examples of students who've used it and how it's informed their process?


Jennie Kent  27:28  
Yeah, absolutely, I am. I really like Claremont McKenna College. That's a school that appeals to a lot of students who I work with. You know, they have a nice number of international students. They're, you know, really kind of all about developing leaders. And when you look at Claremont McKenna, it has a 7% acceptance rate in the regular decision. So that's really low. Obviously, that's, you know, what I call, like a lottery school. You know, even the most qualified applicant, you know, good luck. Early Decision is 32% and they're also filling 68% of their class in the early decision round. So there's no question in my mind that there's an advantage applying to Claremont, Claremont McKenna early that's kind of one of the one of the big schools that that my students apply to,


Ethan Sawyer  28:25  
great Jeff, what about for you? What are their students that you know, if they're specific students that you've used this with, that you could see, like again, and what we're looking at is more of the storytelling, right? Like, when you look at things like this, like, what are you making this mean? And if you can tell that any specific students that you can think of


Jeff Levy  28:42  
that'd be great. Well, there was a student last year who was set on applying to Stanford single choice, early action, where we know there's, there's not really a very big advantage in applying single choice early action. And of course, the admit rates are minuscule. They're microscopic. So we developed a strategy with that family that he would apply single choice early action to Stanford, and then we looked at because he would hear by hopefully, on December 15, and if he was deferred or denied from Stanford, we then had a plan B where he would apply early decision to to to his second choice College, which for him was University of Chicago. So we can I think that's a really reasonable strategy to go for the stars. Not that U Chicago is an easy school to get into, because it's almost as difficult as Stanford, but, but at least they do have this early decision to plan where. If students who get deferred or denied in early decision one still have an opportunity to, you know, advantage their their admission chances great.


Ethan Sawyer  30:10  
Tell us what? For folks who don't understand what early decision two is? What is it and when is it? Typically


Jeff Levy  30:17  
so early decision two often is the same deadline as regular decision. It could be January 1. It could be January 15, but it's like Ed one, it's still a binding contract.


Ethan Sawyer  30:35  
All right, so I'm a student listening, and you know, I've this was a podcast about early decision and regular decision, and regular decision. But what I really want is you guys to just give me the answer. Should I apply early decision or regular decision or early action, or what? And I want to hear from both of you, so give me whatever answer pops up in your brains. For that.


Jeff Levy  30:55  
I can jump in on this. I'm, you know, a supposed expert on this. And when my daughters were applying to college, I urged my older one, who was applying to some very selective schools, I urged her, take advantage of the early decision bump. You got to do it. And she refused. She was one of these people who wanted to apply to a whole list of great schools and see who loved her before she was going to commit to any one of them. Fine. She did. Well. She got into the to to many of the schools she applied to, and then she made a great decision at the end which one she loved the most. My my younger daughter, I urged her not to apply early decision. I didn't want her to commit to one school. I felt like she really needed to get to know a whole bunch of schools before deciding, you know, to see who accepted her before deciding which one she wanted to go to. She didn't listen to me either. She applied early decision, got into her early decision school and and went there. The lesson, I think, is that this, it's it's really up to the student. It's right for some kids, it's not right for others. Early action may make more sense for some students, may not for others. In the end, it's really about what makes sense for each individual applicant.


Ethan Sawyer  32:42  
Jenny, what's your take? Thank you, Jeff.


Jennie Kent  32:45  
Well, you know, Jeff brought up, I guess first I'll say, I feel like I've kind of, you know, said my piece about early decision. I just, I think yet you have to be in love with the school. It has to make sense for you, for, for a whole, for a whole bunch of reasons. You know, I don't believe it's like, which school should I apply to early decision? And when it comes to early action, you know, I'm actually not a huge fan of early action. I think, you know, for one as I, as I mentioned, my international students aren't usually ready to apply in the early rounds. And a lot of times that's just because they haven't kind of, you know, gotten all the pieces together, but, but also, they almost always need that first semester of senior year to show, you know, more grades. A lot of my students tend to really figure it out. Like, the summer before senior year, they're like, oh my gosh, like, college is almost here, and, you know, I need to be a little bit more focused on academics. And so I like to give them that complete, you know, first semester. So, so I don't, you know, encourage early action there and, and what, what I think. And, you know, I don't know, I don't know if this is true, but this is just kind of, my theory is, I think that you know, for the same reason that we said earlier, that it doesn't always make sense for a student to apply in the early decision round if they have financial need, I feel like students who apply in the early action round are very often real superstars. You know, these are kids who are high achieving a lot of times across the board, but have financial need so they aren't applying in the early decision round. So, you know, unless I'm working with a student who's a real rock star, I try to talk them out of early action. And you know, I don't, I don't mind saying, Here, I have students that argues, me about every single year, and every year we kind of agree, like, okay, then choose one and apply to one early. And I think for a lot, a lot of it even is just they want this process to be over. You know, they are. They're worn out by the application process. They they just. Want it to be over so I don't feel like they're applying early for the right reasons. Jenny,


Jeff Levy  35:03  
students aren't the only ones who argue with her. I do too about early action. We don't completely agree on this. I think it varies. It varies school to school. Whether it might be a disadvantage for students to apply in that round, whether it's it's much of an advantage for students to apply in that route. I completely agree with her that a lot of students are not ready, but sometimes just wanting to get it over with is not such a bad thing. I mean, if a student does find out that they've gotten into two or three or four of their top choices by mid December. What a relief to have it over with. You know, you don't have to sweat it out through through April 1. So that can be an advantage. So I don't know, you know, it's sort of, I take it on a case by case basis. How


Ethan Sawyer  35:57  
do you guys advise students in terms of writing their essays. Do you tell them, wait, wait till you find out. Or do you kind of say just once you once they've turned in their early decision? If so, if a student has applied early decision, do you tell them, Okay, now start working on those other essays, as though you're not going to get into the school. Or do you say, wait it out until December and see,


Jeff Levy  36:19  
I don't think I use the word wait ever in my work with students. I think I think Jenny and I are pretty similar here with our calendars. I send out a blast to all of my students in late October, early November, that I am done working with you mid December, all of your applications, all of your applications must be complete and submitted by the Sunday prior to


Ethan Sawyer  36:53  
winter break. I just sent that out a lot three days ago.


Jeff Levy  37:02  
You know, some days, some years, I not quite as early as I'd like to do. But the reason for this is number one, I want to break over Christmas. I don't want to be getting applications. December 29 Oh, my God, please look at my No, I'm done. And I want the students to know that they really need to be done weeks before so, no, they can't wait until they hear from their early decision school that they've been deferred. In most cases, that will be the case, or in some cases, denied on December 20, they're going to begin to do the rest of their applications? No, they must proceed from the from September, realizing that they may not get into their early decision school and preparing all the rest of their applications as if they will need to submit them.


Jennie Kent  37:58  
Great. Jenny, yeah, I I do the same thing as Jeff, except I'm less generous. So I actually asked my students to have everything done the Monday before Thanksgiving, which is interesting, because the majority of my students don't celebrate Thanksgiving. But anyway, I always give them the Monday before, before Thanksgiving, exactly I do. It's the one time of the year that I cook, so I need to really focus on that, so I don't burn everything or have a dry turkey. No, you know what happens down here is, really, is it's, you know, we have a very different calendars, so there are three different academic calendars in Columbia. And you know, in early December, we have something called noche develitas, and pretty much from that point forward, it's like the entire country grinds to a halt, and very little work gets done until the end of January. And so what I say to the students is, I want everything the Monday before Thanksgiving, so that at the very latest, you know your school based counselor, if they even have one, because many schools down here don't, you know, knows by December 1 you've got everything done. Because if they wait until the holidays, the school won't send anything in. There's no one there. The schools closed down, and they're closed till the end of January. So I really encourage them, you know, I say, like, we're just going to know that this is, it's there, it's ready to send. If you, if you need to send it waiting, not a good idea. Great.


Ethan Sawyer  39:35  
I hope you're scaring some kids a little bit right now, and they're like, Oh my gosh. What


Jennie Kent  39:40  
if that's so, yeah, right. Okay, yeah. Actually, what I did yesterday, Ethan, what I, what I did yesterday with a, with a with a bunch of of students who are struggling, is we mapped out due dates for every single remaining essay that they have, you know, just so that they I really was, like, trying to drive home the. Just not going past the Monday before Thanksgiving.


Ethan Sawyer  40:04  
And I'm so glad that they're gonna, I'm gonna, so glad they're gonna meet all those deadlines perfectly for you. And yeah, exactly. It's that clockwork or just gonna, they're gonna show up in your inbox to be awesome.


Jennie Kent  40:14  
They actually almost always do really, pretty rare that they don't. Yeah, that's


Ethan Sawyer  40:19  
great. What do you do? How do you how do you make that happen? What's your secret? I


Jennie Kent  40:23  
think I have a dominant personality,


Ethan Sawyer  40:28  
a lot of fear. So All right, guys, I'm gonna throw this situation. I didn't prep you for this, but say you're applying to college. Now, where do you apply? And do you apply early, or do you not apply early?


Jeff Levy  40:44  
Oh, all right, I'll go, I'll go out on a limb and say that I would apply to Wesleyan University in Connecticut, and I would apply early decision. They've got a pretty nice advantage in early decision, and I would be willing to apply their early decision because it's one of my favorite schools. I love the combination of academics and politics and and creative stuff that goes on there, and I think that would be my, my best choice.


Jennie Kent  41:22  
Lovely Jenny, okay, well, well, Jeff and I asked you were both just on a tour of Minnesota schools, and I have been drinking the Macalester Kool Aid since I was on their campus. I loved everything about it. And luckily for me, I love the winter, so I think I could be really happy at Macalester. I don't know, though that I would apply early anywhere, because I'm a girl who likes to have choices. So I think you know for sure Macalester would be on my list. But you know, do I want to marry it? I don't know. Not sure. I like Tulane a lot, too, and it's warmer. It's


Ethan Sawyer  42:05  
definitely warmer. I remember just walking through that campus and just sort of like feeling that Miami stickiness, as I was from from high school. So my as I was just, I was just scanning through the chart being like, Ooh, cool shopping. You know that my first impulse was to say, I think, if I'm being really honest with you, I think I'd be one of those kids that would apply to highly selective because of that. And this is the kid I was like, I applied to Harvard for undergrad, applied to Yale for grad, you know, got rejected by both. But I would, I'm one of those kids who's like, and this is part of my personality, is like a dream. Personality, is like a dreamer who, like, would want to give it a shot and see the the my second answer was, y'all, I had such a great experience, and this is not a very interesting answer, but at Northwestern that I don't think I could have been happier anywhere else. So I, I think my second, like, more measured answer is, like, I'd apply to Northwestern Ed and then. But I'd be smart enough, I think, to, like, forget that I'm actually going to get in there and assume that I'm not going to. And I would have worked on, you know, a wide range of schools, blah, blah, blah, and I would have had some of those reaches in there assuming, because I don't think I'd actually would have gotten into Northwestern now, I'm trying to think of, like, what my, you know, credits would be. Now, you know, which is a weird thing about know, that we were


Jennie Kent  43:21  
supposed to think that way, oh no, and, yeah, I'd be in trouble.


Ethan Sawyer  43:27  
So, you know. But you know, other schools that I've loved, I mean, and this is where I my wife and I joke, but I'm like, oh, Zola, our daughter. I'm like, Oh, she's going to like, UCLA, you know, like, because it's going to be probably a little bit less expensive, you know, and so I'm getting, like, really practical with it. So there's another part of me that's like, you know what? These UCs are pretty great. And so I would definitely apply to all the UCs, not all of them. I'd apply to six of them, but, you know, so those would definitely be on my list, because I think that there's some, you know, great opportunities there. So yeah, this is fun. All right, so show and tell. What have you got? Show and Tell is the portion of the if you this is the first time listening to the podcast where we share a resource, or a, you know, a book we're reading, or it could be, you know, a plant that you really love, as my first show and tell guests shared. So what's what have you got? Jeff, what have you brought for? Actually, let me, Jenny, I'm gonna go with you first. What have you brought for show and tell?


Jennie Kent  44:24  
Well, for show and tell, I have brought the website cadenza, and that's with a, k, k, A, D, E, N, Z, E, I love it. It's a few years old, and basically it was a bunch of, like, really cool art and design schools that all decided to have a website together and offer online classes, and so there's like, different levels of membership. You can, you know, just have a free membership and audit classes, or you can pay and take classes and do the assignments and get a grade, and then you actually, at the end, if you would like, you can also pay to receive a. At it. So I'm one of these people I just like in my free time, I like to study. So you know when, when I'm not on Duolingo, I'm on cadenza, and right now I'm taking a class on fashion style icons. Love


Ethan Sawyer  45:17  
it. Jeff, what do you got


Jeff Levy  45:22  
for show and tell. I am recommending that your listeners open their favorite newspaper and read the paradise papers these. These are, well, the articles about the paradise papers. They were like over a million leaked documents telling the world what the wealthiest people and corporations are doing to hide their money, and it even includes colleges and university endowments that they have been investing in offshore accounts to avoid to maximize their investments and to invest in instruments that normally they would have to pay taxes on, but offshore they don't. So I have found the stories over the last few days to be really fascinating about what goes on behind the scenes beautiful.


Ethan Sawyer  46:22  
I'm inspired by, well, I'm inspired by both of you, generally, but cadenza reminded me Jenny of my latest obsession is master class, and it's something that's maybe pops up in folks' Facebook feeds because they do a lot of Facebook ads. But master class basically takes some of the brightest minds and coolest people in our world, David Mamet, you know, Shonda Rhimes, Steve Martin, and they teach a master class that you can basically, you know, walk through what you know, what it takes to, you know, write country music by Reba McEntire, or, you know, what is a Werner Herzog's filmmaking course look like? So there's a cool offer. I don't know if this will be good when folks listen to this, but for you, for you can get what the classes for like, 90 bucks each, or for a whole year, you could do it's like 180 bucks, and you can get access to all the classes for year. So I will be binge watching these over the next couple weeks.


Jeff Levy  47:14  
Very cool. So let's


Jennie Kent  47:16  
not forget Diane Von Furstenberg master class. Don't forget fashion that's


Ethan Sawyer  47:20  
coming up. I know I'm still I'm excited about I'm geeky. I'm kind of a chess nerd, so I'm super stoked about the Gary Kasparov one. Jeff, Jenny, thank you so much. I really appreciate you and appreciate this resource. And y'all can check it out on the show notes page, college, sa guy.com/podcast, Have a beautiful day. You. Hi friends, thanks for listening. You'll find the link to this awesome resource, the PDF version and the Excel doc version in the show notes, which you'll find at college. Sa guy.com/podcast and while you're there, if you would be so kind as to leave a review, subscribe to the podcast. I would so appreciate it as always, stay curious. You.


Transcribed by https://otter.ai