Guidebooks have been a staple of the college search process since 1982, when The Fiske Guide introduced a new resource to prospective applicants and parents. Today, over 300 titles assess and describe campuses and their offerings as prospective applicants explore and compare options. The co-authors of The College Finder—a voluminous list-based guidebook now in its fifth edition—join AB to reflect on "the voyage of discovery" a guidebook supports. "You are really a fit guide!", Dartmouth's Lee Coffin observes.
Guidebooks have been a staple of the college search process since 1982, when The Fiske Guide introduced a new resource to prospective applicants and parents. Today, over 300 titles assess and describe campuses and their offerings as prospective applicants explore and compare options. The co-authors of The College Finder—a voluminous list-based guidebook now in its fifth edition—join AB to reflect on "the voyage of discovery" a guidebook supports. "You are really a fit guide!", Dartmouth's Lee Coffin observes.
Lee Coffin:
From Hanover, New Hampshire, I'm Lee Coffin, Dartmouth's vice president and dean of admissions and financial aid, and this is Admissions Beat.
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One of the fundamental tools of a college search is a guidebook. Could be an actual book that you go to your local bookstore to purchase and flip through. It could be a website. That's a guidebook in digital form. But the idea here is it's giving guidance. these elements surprisingly did not appear until the early 1980s when Edward Fiske, who was then the higher ed reporter at the New York Times, published the Fiske Guide to Colleges. That was in 1982. That was the very first guidebook that gave an outside perspective on colleges in a more narrative form. Since then, there are over 300 versions of that. If you Google, it highlights things like the Fiske Guide, the Princeton Review, Barron's, the Insider's Guide to Colleges, Colleges That Change Lives, and The College Finder, a guidebook now in its fifth edition. And we are going to meet the co-authors of that guidebook and talk with them about the lists it provides to prospective students as they go through what they call the voyage of discovery. And I'm really excited to have a conversation where we discover some interesting things that you might not have known about colleges near and far, but the point being, how does a guidebook fit into the discovery part of your search? We'll be right back.
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So this week I'm joined on air by Charlotte Albright, my producer and editor. Hi, Charlotte.
Charlotte Albright:
Hello, Lee.
Lee Coffin:
For listeners, Charlotte, once upon a time, was a reporter for Vermont Public Radio and on air with Maine Public Television. And I thought, let's have the two of us be co-hosts of this journalistic topic of guidebooks. And we're joined this week by the co-authors of The College Finder, Dr. Steven Antonoff and Jay McCann. Hi.
Jay McCann:
Hello. Thanks for having us.
Lee Coffin:
Nice to have you both. Let me introduce you both quickly because your backgrounds are really impressive and then we'll jump in. So Dr. Steven Antonoff has dedicated himself to becoming what he calls a student of colleges and universities. And I love that characterization of yourself, Steve, because I never really heard that phrase before, but it made sense as soon as I read it. So it's great to have a student of colleges and universities as the author of a guidebook. The College Finder is his flagship publication, but he's also authored the influential College Match: A Blueprint for Choosing the Best School for You, which is now in its 15th edition with over 30 years in print. That's really amazing, Steve.
Dr. Steven Antonoff:
It is amazing. I'm just thankful that people seem to like it.
Lee Coffin:
Like it and find value in it.
Dr. Steven Antonoff:
Find value. Yes.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. And before you became a student of colleges and universities, you spent 11 years in college administration at the University of Denver, serving as dean of admissions and financial aid, executive director of admissions and student affairs and dean of students. Steve holds a PhD in human communication studies and a master's in education from the University of Denver. So that's Steve. And joining you as co-author for this fifth edition is Jay McCann. Jay brings an unusual blend of expertise in highly selective admissions, financial aid, international colleges and athletic recruitment. Jay began his career in financial aid at Point Loma Nazarene University before spending a decade guiding students in diverse Colorado high schools. As department chair of counseling at George Washington High School, he led college counseling initiatives and was nominated for Colorado School Counselor of the Year. He's currently associate director of college counseling at Westminster School in Atlanta and serves on multiple college admission advisory boards and has the distinction of coordinating the largest college fair in the state of Georgia. So let's talk about guidebooks. Steve, you started this five editions ago. When was that? 1990 something?
Dr. Steven Antonoff:
Yes. 1993.
Lee Coffin:
So this guidebook, College Finder, has been running for 33 years at this point.
Dr. Steven Antonoff:
Yes.
Lee Coffin:
Why? How did it start?
Dr. Steven Antonoff:
I had written College Match earlier, and that is a general guide to how you go about the process, but it didn't cover colleges. It didn't help people or students to really be able to know about colleges. So as I continued to visit colleges, it just seemed to me that there were so many colleges that needed their own category in a way. I felt like there must be some way to highlight Haverford, for example, or to highlight the College of Worcester. And one of the ways of doing that was to compile a group of lists. The more lists, the more likely it is that the different personalities of colleges would be able to come through. So that was the primary motivation to write the book.
In addition to that, I have a terrible memory. And when I left the University of Denver and started visiting colleges, I started making lists. Colleges that were particularly outdoorsy or colleges that were particularly right for a scholar as opposed to an A student, for example. And so that is another reason that the book was established. I was trying to find methods that would allow the flavor of colleges to come through, to allow the reader to know that colleges differ and that there are different cultures. So for all of those reasons, it seemed like a good venture, and the book has grown significantly. It's not always been 800 and such pages. It was much, much, much, much smaller. But as we have gone forward and as Jay joined the effort, we were able to do more things and research more and try to be more comprehensive.
Lee Coffin:
Well, and to listeners, it's a precise number, there are 856 pages. It is a tome. When I carry it around, it is a big book, but it's a very dynamic book. And what jumps out at me as I've started reading it was there's a lot of information that's easily digestible. And I love the idea that you say it's bringing the flavor of colleges. I haven't really heard that phrase before, but it's exactly right. Every college, even in the same category, a liberal arts college, a research one university, a Jesuit, they're not all the same place. Even though people think they are. And Jay, working in schools, I think that's part of the challenge you must face as junior families sit down with you for the first time and say, "I want X." And then you have to fill in X with a certain flavor.
Jay McCann:
Absolutely. I think there's sometimes a process that is backwards where students only think about college admissions and not what their four-year experience is. The opportunity for them to slow down and think about what do you want your experience to be? What do you see thriving academics to be? What do you see engagement with professors or really goofy traditions? Have you thought about what the on campus experience could be, the types of communities you could be a part of? I think it's been really helpful and enlivening just creating a better conversation.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. And Jay, when do you hand a guidebook to a junior? When does it fit into the calendar as they move through 11th grade spring into the discovery summer and then get to the fall? What's the right moment or is it a constant companion?
Jay McCann:
Well, at the beginning of this book, we do have trying to give some help on how to navigate the book of, here's some beginner's first steps, is I believe what we called it. And it's helpful to, if you're navigating, here's some questions that you might be thinking about. Here's how you get through 850 pages and make it more manageable for you. I'm finding students are wanting to start their searches earlier. And so it seems to be a very good starting point. College Finder, because it is not like Fiske Guide, which is a long narrative format, because it's not set up in that structure, it is just names that it helps a student to just say, okay, I have a student who was looking at it for not wanting a conservatory, but wanting music. And so we have a list on there, and she looked at the list and she's like, "All right, this is going to give me something to go research a little bit further and I'll come back." And so it seems that initial starting point helps, but it also can be something that they keep coming back to as they think about, "Maybe I do care about this type of community. Maybe I do really want a non-Greek life school." Is that such a thing being down here in the South? Those priorities that start to emerge, it allows itself to be something you can come back to.
Charlotte Albright:
It also seems to me that the size of the book should be quite comforting at the very beginning of a search. You might think a big book would be intimidating, but I think you can flip that because if I'm just starting out on my college search and I see this many colleges out there, it's like when I go into Trader Joe's, I know I'm going to find something I like. There's a lot out there. If I go into a convenience store, maybe not so much, I don't just want a Slim Jim. And I wonder how many colleges there are in it and how you gather the information about them.
Jay McCann:
This version of the book, we included a whole chapter on international colleges. And so I think that the number of colleges grew just because we focused on Spain and British Islands and such, but I'm seeing 3,666 schools that are listed.
Lee Coffin:
3,666 colleges are mentioned in some way in The College Finder.
Jay McCann:
Give or take 10 or so.
Lee Coffin:
That's impressive. Well, it underscores the point I hear admission officers and college counselors make every time I do a program. There are so many places beyond the US News and World Report Top 25, 3,641 of them to be ...
Charlotte Albright:
Yeah.
Jay McCann:
Exactly.
Charlotte Albright:
And how do you gather the information about so many? You can't make a visit to each one, can you?
Dr. Steven Antonoff:
The College Finder is based on really four or five research methods. The first method is that we pulled school-based counselors and independent educational consultants and collected almost 1,500 surveys, and over a third of the lists that are in the book come from that survey. Some of the more interesting lists, I think, come from those surveys, lists of colleges that are fashioned for a student who's fashioned forward or for the lover of ideas or something like that. The second method is research. For the last edition, we had about 10 researchers going through all kinds of different publications and journals to try to find reliable lists. Then the third way we added lists was if there were credible publications that had a list. For example, we wouldn't have a list in the book on costume design, but it so happened that the Hollywood reporter did several studies of great costume design programs, and we felt like that was reliable enough that we could include that list.
The next way of researching was actually insights from my and Jay's visits to colleges and our interaction with other counselors. Have we visited 3,600 or whatever? Clearly not. But I still spend after lots of years, at least two or three months a year visiting colleges, Jay visits routinely, so that was another way. And finally, we ask specialists. So for example, we asked people that really knew colleges in Argentina or Peru to provide a list in that category. We asked people that knew a lot about autism and schools that were appropriate for those students. So it was really a combination of all of those. As I said, the majority of the lists come from our counselor survey, probably the next came from credible publications and then the other research strategies.
Lee Coffin:
It's comprehensive. It's a really interesting compendium almost of lots of different sources that create a set of lists, which I'll come back to in a minute. They're quite interesting and accurate to my eyeballs, to the purpose. In the beginning of the book, you say the primary goal of The College Finder is to expand the pool of colleges that students consider to extend the possibilities they envision and magnify their sense of power as they research colleges. Talk a little bit about that, because I think that's a really elegant mission.
Dr. Steven Antonoff:
My feeling is that families and students know a very limited number of colleges. Obviously, they know the Ivys, perhaps they know the more competitive liberal arts and sciences types of colleges. They know their local state university and some of the options that are available in state. But that's a very limited group of schools to know. When I was dean of admission, and I'm sure this is different for you, Lee, you probably really know college well. I did not know college well. I knew colleges that competed with the University of Denver. I knew admissions deans and directors. If I liked the admission dean, I liked the college. I didn't really know. So visiting opened up my eyes to the fact that there are so many great schools, and so that's what we're trying to do in College Finder. And it is really a way to begin. If somebody is really, really interested in ballroom dancing, even though there's a list in the book, they're going to research more thoroughly and so forth. But for the generalist, for that student who is not familiar with the incredible landscape of higher education, that's really the student that we hope The College Finder will serve best.
Lee Coffin:
You say in the book, "The voyage of discovery is a time to consider your life, your goals, your dreams." You say, no one factor, not overall prestige, academic program of interest, prowess of athletic teams nor social environment is all important. College choice is best done when numerous aspects are considered, and I would say and overlap. Because when I think about your guidebook, so many of the categories ... I did a little experiment for myself and I said, let's pretend I'm 17 again, what are the things that resonate with me? And I found, oh, several of the same places keep popping up in these categories. And I took a highlighter and I said, "There it is. There it is. There it is." And so to me, that overlapping set of characteristics point towards this point you're making about there's not one factor, it's the combination of all the factors and helping people see that.
Dr. Steven Antonoff:
And if we could just encourage more students to consider a broad range of factors. I find that a lot of students think that they've made a great decision when they decide that they're going to focus on psychology, for example. Well, that's all well and good, and there are ways to look at the quality of psych programs, but a much more thorough search includes the major, includes obviously the cost, includes the academic climate, includes the opportunities of involvement, the rigor that the student is seeking. So the more I think we can encourage students and their families to look at as many of these components as possible, the richer the search will be.
Charlotte Albright:
Lee, I have a question for Jay. Jay, since you do work with these kids, and I think a lot of our listeners right now might be juniors just because of what time of year we're in, it seems to me that a guidebook like this with lots of categories, like if you're a metalhead, if you love dancing, if you like this, if you like that, it's useful only if the student has figured out who that student is. How easy is that? How do you help them do that so that then when they turn the pages of your book, they see themselves?
Jay McCann:
You touched on something I completely agree with because Steve and I would both say that a good search doesn't start with the college, it starts looking in the mirror and getting a better sense of yourself. And I think that's what compliments the other book that Steve does, which is College Match, and starting to get a better sense of who you are and what you want to have an impact in the world and how you see what belonging looks like as well, can be a big factor. And it leads to that notion that we often will see families that have a very surface level approach towards a college search that seems broken. We can easily search by the size and the location, or which friends do I know that are there. Doesn't allow for the harder work. And this is famous true of essays. Have you brainstormed and thought about yourself and how you portray yourself before you've started writing, before you've started applying?
And I think that's the hope that we have as college counselors and college consultants is that we think about fit daily. It's the in and out process of being able to do that. And I think that's what I appreciate about being able to tap into so many different voices in these surveys that we did, 47 different states. But I do think that to your point, the question of starting to understand what is your mission? What is your vision you see of yourself? And if you're a thriving junior in college, relay that back. What would you be doing on a Thursday night or on a Saturday night? How would you know that you are thriving? What would that look like? Would it mean you're deeply in research on a Thursday night and happy to be in the lab? Or is it that you want to be going out to dinner and really loving the restaurant scene? It doesn't need to be one answer. And the more that you are able to see that there's variety in it, you actually ... I think it opens up a little bit more freedom.
College rankings can be frustrating for college counselors because they short sell the whole process and they provide sometimes an answer to questions that aren't always being asked. And so I think this book is a bit of the antithesis of that, where it's not one ranking or in some ways it's like the epitome of college rankings because we're looking for the best school for a metal head. Not that we are saying we are the end all, be all on that list, but it does help to change the way the conversation's approached.
Lee Coffin:
I read it less that you were saying, this is the best option for this type and more of, these are places that would make that person happy or where they would find their people.
Jay McCann:
Yes.
Lee Coffin:
As I was doing my homework, I have discovered the Google AI function on my phone. And so I typed in College Finder Guidebook, go. And it spit back out a description of the guidebook, but it said it is unusual among its peers in that it prioritizes fit over prestige. And I think the two of you are saying exactly that. It's almost a fit guide as much as it is a college guidebook. It's inviting kids and parents to think about this more personal component to a search. It's not just what's your GPA, what's your test scores, what college is going to have the best sweatshirt. But to say more holistically, what are the variables that make a person happy in a community? And this helps them find that.
Dr. Steven Antonoff:
It's interesting. I used to, when I would see students or families that would bring in US News, I would dismiss it as not that great. I don't do that at all anymore. What I do is explain what their criteria is and let families know exactly what percent is the perception of presidents and what percent is this and that. It's still a valuable source of information, but only if you know what they're measuring and then you put that up against what your interests are. And I think of all the things that we rank in our society, but we don't rank churches because we feel like they're much too complex, much too difficult. How can we compare one denomination and one this? Too complex. Well, I would say the higher education world is just as complex.
Lee Coffin:
So interesting.
Dr. Steven Antonoff:
And yet we try to ... And US news is try to separate categories, national this and that. But still they're trying to rank a enterprise, which I think is very difficult to really rank.
Lee Coffin:
Charlotte, as the journalist among us, comment on that to these news outlets that like to rank us versus a fit guide, not the Fiske guide, the fit guide that we're talking about today that is inviting students to feel the vibe.
Charlotte Albright:
As a journalist, I avoided using US News and World Report rankings in my stories, and that's not because I think it's unreliable. I think as Steve just said, it oversimplified something that I was trying to become more nuanced about as a reporter. For the same reason, I often avoided using statistics that came out about high school's test scores and whether the federal government considered that high school a high achieving high school or not. Because when I would get inside classrooms, whether they were high school classrooms or college classrooms, I saw learning going on everywhere. And some of the schools that were lower ranked were in places where students didn't have books in their homes. So of course they're not going to get high test scores, but the teaching that was going on there was stellar. And I saw the same thing in colleges that people never heard of. So I was wary as a journalist about using any of that.
Lee Coffin:
Okay. So your method in the guidebook space is to use lists more than editorials. There's maybe an editorial flavor to some of the topics. But you have presented in this 856-page guidebook, a set of 1,200 lists. Let's just talk about those just broad. So there's the obvious one. You have field of study. When I talk to kids about a search, I say start with program. Not just the subject that you'd like to study, but how that subject is delivered, class size, semester versus quarter, lecture hall versus discussion. That all goes into the way you learn. And so you spend a lot of pages helping students find examples of here are places that are good at or notable at marine biology, just to pick one. Is that a good starting point? As a fundamental, just get the academic piece front and center?
Dr. Steven Antonoff:
Yeah. It definitely is. Although I have to say, Lee, that my experience is that one of the hardest things to judge is the academic strength of different departments, particularly on the undergrad. Well, yes, on the undergraduate side. Graduate is a little bit easier. That said, we have gathered in that chapter the most reliable information that we could find, and some of those lists are expert choice lists. So they are what departments counselors feel is the strongest on certain campuses. There are a lot of areas of study that are not listed because we could not find a reliable enough list in that category. But I agree with your premise that's a good way to start if you know what you're looking for, as long as you don't stop with that academic department and you move on.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. No, because I mean, I opened up to that section and you've got art history and you've got a set of schools. You said these schools have strong undergraduate programs in the history of Art, and there's probably 50 places listed under that one heading. It starts with Barnard and goes through the alphabet, includes places like the School of the Arts in New York and Notre Dame, State University of New York at Purchase. Places that are not all the hardest to get into. And I appreciate that part of this guidebook that Jay referenced. This is not about how to get in, which I think a lot of the guidebooks tip towards that. It's more of how to discover.
Jay McCann:
So the idea about major, if a student doesn't know where they want to major in, there's even in the next chapter, academic experiences, colleges with unusual majors, college is great for students without a major. I think there's so much potential for the discovery space. I think early on in a student search process, it works really well because it's not about trying to find a strategy and early decision or any of those things that just tend to convolute a process about how a student's discovering and figuring out how they're going to love their college experience. For me, it's also really fun and fulfilling to be able to be a part of that part of a conversation and not just this is admissions.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Well, and I use my device. I talk about the four Ps are the broad topics that should guide discovery. So program, people, place, price. And you cover all of them. Each of my Ps are included in this book. I flipped to the next section, you're talking about faculty, that's people. And you've got everything from campuses with accessible professors to colleges where students rate their professors highly to colleges that spend the highest percentage of their budgets on faculty pay. Those are really different definitions of faculty that you give permission to, I guess, the parents in this one to say, "What do you care about? Here's the information."
Jay McCann:
And even thinking about the word diversity when we think about people, there's a list on diverse faculty and then how many different ways you could think about what that means. Being able to list non HBCUs with really great African-American and Black populations or places that are really ... I think a really interesting one that we tried to survey a lot. And I think college counselors are continually chewing on is places where diversity is working really well or where there's really great integration and how that engagement looks. I think that's what's nice about, again, surveys is we don't send it to one person, we send it to many, and we all are doing this kind of work day in and day out to know colleges and be that student of colleges.
Lee Coffin:
But then you also allow families to discover things they're probably not even thinking about. Just as I flip through this section we're talking about, I landed on Sea Grant universities. And I will be honest, I've been in higher ed my whole career. I had never heard of a Sea Grant university. And that is Sea Grant Colleges and University study, research and educate in fields relating to marine science in the hope of bolstering conservation efforts and awareness as they study and help protect the coasts, the Great Lakes and other marine environments. How cool is that? To me, if you're that kid, if you just heard me say that and think, Sea Grant, oh my God, here it is. In this guidebook, you might've said marine biology or environmental studies in the answer to the question, what do you hope to major in? But what I think you're doing here is broadening this in a more interdisciplinary way. What's your purpose and your outcome as well as what is it you want to major in? So all of that's here. So you spend a lot of time going through ... My book just opened up to undergraduate institutions represented at Harvard Law School. That's factual.
Dr. Steven Antonoff:
Which is one of my favorite lists.
Lee Coffin:
Why is that?
Dr. Steven Antonoff:
Well, because look at the variety of schools on that list. The students that are admitted to Harvard Law School are not all from the Ivys. They're not all from name schools. There's tons and tons of state schools and lesser known schools. It's just an example of the value of looking broadly. Lee, you're nice enough to mention several sections of the book. Even in the tidbit section, B.F. Skinner, for example, the famed psychologist behaviorist is a graduate of Hamilton College. Well, that may just be the thing that would get someone to give a second look to Hamilton. Bill Belichick, the famous coach, went to Wesleyan. And so there are tidbits like that that also hopefully push a student a little bit more toward more investigation rather than less. I do feel like many students stop too soon. They stop researching too soon. They don't push the envelope when it comes to where they're going to apply. If they think they want a big school, maybe they should look at one smaller liberal arts and sciences college. Maybe they should take a look at what women's colleges offer. Maybe if they're only looking at the East, maybe they should take a look at some place in the Midwest or the West. And hopefully College Finder helps those students to see some schools that they hadn't considered and to research them more thoroughly.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. I think there's a lot of aha moments. Following your Harvard and Yale Law School representation, you have colleges to consider for the Broadway bound. That's great.
Charlotte Albright:
That's the one you checked, right, Lee? That's the one I looked at when you were in high school.
Lee Coffin:
I did. I looked into that. Well, and it's like places that may not come to mind for your average college-bound family. So the University of Cincinnati, Elon University in North Carolina, Fordham. I mean, these are wonderful places that the drama club kiddo in Nebraska might not have dialed into on its own. Okay. So academics, you touch lifestyle a lot. Finding community, finding your people would be my way. And let's talk about that because I think that Charlotte and I talk a lot about vibe and fit on the pod. And I think what you're doing in this lifestyle section, whether it's ... Again, my guidebook just popped open to colleges with the highest percentage of Jewish students, Mormon-friendly campuses, Muslim-friendly campus. So your religion, places with LGBTQIA+ students. You're hitting all of these different ways people are and giving any individual in that space a way of saying, "Find your people if that's what's important as you're looking forward."
Charlotte Albright:
But how do you define lifestyle? How do you measure it? It seems so qualitative and ineffable in a way.
Dr. Steven Antonoff:
The lifestyle section is probably the most fun to create because we spent several hours thinking about different ways to characterize a student body, and that's where metalhead and hippie and flip-flop wearer and procrastinator and so forth came from. So we love those lists because again, they get to the culture, they get to the flavor, they get a little bit more into, what is it like to have an experience going to that college?
Jay McCann:
These lists aren't meant to pigeonhole. They are not meant to stereotype. They are not meant to limit in any manner. Again, if you're thinking about it early in the process and you're like, oh my gosh, that is so me. Then it seems like, oh, great to know that there's some other schools and there's more than one school that could be that. I think we don't want to want to play into stereotypes, but we do want to make sure that students can see themselves on a college campus.
Lee Coffin:
This year I've watched my niece go through her college search. She hasn't been on the pod, but I've mentioned her a bunch of times. She just chose her college and she called me up and she said, "I just visited. I found my people." And I said, "Stop. There you are." And she enrolled. She'd already done the homework on the academics. She knew they had art history, which is what she wanted. But the most important thing was feeling comfortable with the peers she encountered as she wandered around that campus. She found her people. And so Charlotte, I think it is a really qualitative question like, what's the vibe? Who are your people? But I think to Jay's earlier comment about a good search starts by looking in the mirror. This is the same thing. You're looking in the mirror. I go back to my own senior year of high school, which was 1980, '81, and somebody handed me a copy of The Preppy Handbook, which in its day was this tongue-in-cheek celebration of preppy. And I read-
Dr. Steven Antonoff:
Lisa Birnbach, I think.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Lisa Birnbach. And I read that book as a senior in high school and I said, "Oh my God, it's me." But I remember reading that silly little book and seeing myself, and it was helpful.
Charlotte Albright:
On the other hand, I also think it's helpful if a student can imagine who they might want to be by the time the four years are up, because sometimes colleges can change you in ways that you like. So I showed up at Bennington College with matching sweaters and skirts.
Lee Coffin:
Preppy handbook.
Charlotte Albright:
Exactly. I worked in a dress shop. I got my stuff. I would read Mademoiselle Magazine. In about a month, I had taken those to the Goodwill shop and I had started buying long, flowing tie-dye outfits…not to be like everybody else, but because I was starting to grow into somebody a little bit more Bohemian that I could have been in my Episcopalian boarding school. And the college was encouraging that. So I would say to people, don't worry that you don't know exactly who you are. Don't base everything on clothing. I'm not saying that. But I like this point that you don't pigeonhole yourself because you're going to fit into a lot of the categories in this book. There's so many of them.
Lee Coffin:
But they do overlap quite a lot. Just flipping through lifestyle. And for listeners who don't have this on their desk just yet, the college options for the outdoorsy student. I want to give a little editorial plug. I looked at some of these categories and said, when I know that's Dartmouth, did they list Dartmouth? And every time they did. So college is for outdoorsy student. There we are. But right there with Boulder, University of Colorado at Boulder, and you have three stars next to that, and that says the top choice. So the guidebook also does give a little bit of a wink to the campus in this category that seems to be most known for it. Is that a fair way of ... So you're saying Boulder with the runner up being UVM, the University of Vermont was your runner up to outdoorsy.
Dr. Steven Antonoff:
That would be the result of that survey. And so the majority or the top vote getter in that category was Boulder, and then the University of Vermont. Just let me add one other thing about the lifestyle section. It's fun, I think. The college search process has become so stressful in so many ways. And if somebody can look at some of these lists and laugh a little bit, can think about whether they truly are an outdoorsy person or whether they're more of a metalhead or something else, it can add a little bit of lightness to what has become awfully heavy.
Lee Coffin:
A hundred percent. So I've been the dean at Connecticut College and Dartmouth and Tufts. So Conn College and Dartmouth, both on the preppy list. I went to Trinity. There it is. So I'm like, yeah, but then right underneath that is college is for the procrastinator.
Charlotte Albright:
That's not you.
Lee Coffin:
No. That's not me. But if you are the procrastinator, you explain a college that may be well suited for a procrastinator likely has structures in place to help students stay on track and manage their time effectively. For example, they may have small classes, frequent assignments, and strong academic support. That's interesting and helpful. Next up was quirky, campuses for the quirky kid. Colleges for Shakespeare lovers. St. John's of Annapolis is the winner there. Colleges ... No, this is a really a poignant one. Great colleges for students who have struggled to fit in. Talk about that for a sec.
Dr. Steven Antonoff:
Again, a category, it's a broad category. There are lots of colleges where students that don't fit in could be happy, but there are some that come to the top as we ask our experts, and that's the list that you see. The other thing that comes to mind as we're talking about this is ... And I think we've already talked about the fact that the lists increase the number of schools that families are looking at, and that's so important because families and students are really in their bubble. They know their student, they know their high school, perhaps they know their community, but don't really think about all of these different possible categories. If we can be a little bit more broadening as they're thinking about the college search, hopefully they'll make better decisions.
Charlotte Albright:
The thing I love about that too is that you're asking them to be curious about things that are not immediately visible. So I've taught a couple of students who have shown up at a college and they've become a little bit too interested in what I'll call the shiny things, because in the last 20, 30, 40, 50 years, colleges have become hotels. The student centers look like Hiltons now. There are riding rings. There are all these things that are so seductive to look at that you think, oh, I like that. I love the food. It's often very superficial on a visit. But if you've gone into your visiting phase armed with all of these other deeper thoughts, it seems to me you're not so easily swayed by what is on the surface. Am I right?
Dr. Steven Antonoff:
Yeah.
Jay McCann:
Yeah. And I think that's one of those things that when students go on a visit, reminding them of their values or what they care about, again, coming back to that helps because they might see, did you know they had a makerspace? Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know that you liked engineering or doing that type of 3D printing. No, I don't, but now that you really ... Should I? And again, or a beautiful libraries, there's a whole chapter just on some of the amenities that you'll find on college campuses. And it does feel like when you're on a college campus, the college is making a pitch for why this is great for everyone. And what's nice about a chapter that is dedicated towards community or dedicated towards activities is you have to come away with, well, which one am I? Which group might be the better one for me?
Lee Coffin:
Well, you do the selfie, and then the selfie tells you what are the characteristics I represent or that I value, and then The College Finder helps you find them.
Charlotte Albright:
I love this. Lee calls it the existential selfie, not just the regular one.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Because it's that hamlet. Who am I? To listeners, this guidebook has everything in it. And we're talking about lifestyle. There's a section on admissions because it has to have that where there's factors that matter. There's a long section about affordability and financial aid, which I think pulls from both of your backgrounds as financial aid people. Talk a little bit about that. How is this College Finder valuable to the family that needs need-based or merit aid to make college a reality?
Jay McCann:
It's a starting point. I don't think we would say it's the ending. It is helping to understand some things in that chapter is showing admissions as well as financial aid is trends. What have we seen? Oh, this college has gone up $25,000 in the last eight years. That's a bit of a jump. Or how schools are going about fulfilling need-based aid or which ones are a little bit more focused towards merit scholarships. It's trying to give some exposure towards what types are. And the more that you get to know these names that are on each list, you start to see some similar qualities about them. Sometimes, oh, all these urban schools are looking a little bit different price point than the ones that are listed as more affordable. We even have the questions about what value means. Again, these are surveys sent out to experts, but they're also interpreting what is the college that's good for breaking the bank for. And recognize that even when we say the word value, there's not a quantitative way of judging that. There's always the sense of a qualitative judgment that everyone's taking into what they see out of a four-year experience for themselves.
Lee Coffin:
I think your whole guidebook gives a permission structure for qualitative information. It weans the reader off of data, which so often clobbers us as we talk about college admission and says, "These things matter too." Maybe that's my spin on it, but that's what I take from reading the book, having this conversation with you. It's a guidebook of lists, helping people as you say, expand the pool of options, find themselves, be surprised, adapt. I think the danger of a lot of college searches is they start out in junior spring with this resolute, "Here's where I'm going." And it's like, well, maybe the map says turn left and you have to turn left and see where it goes. This helps them do that, I think. Or to find some places that perhaps were not on their radar when they started.
Dr. Steven Antonoff:
But it takes time and students have to be able, be willing to give the college search the time that it needs. You're not going to find some of these hidden gems, you're not going to find the ideal school by sitting back and listening to what your peers are saying. You're going to find what you want and what you need by carefully considering both who you are, and then what things are really important to you in choosing a college.
Lee Coffin:
Charlotte, going to pitch the last question too. Is there anything you wanted to ask our co-authors that I did not touch?
Charlotte Albright:
This is a trick question, but from all of the surveys you've done and Jay, those families that you work with, is there a single myth or a single wrong reason to choose a college that you'd like to talk about? Are there things out there that people should avoid doing as they're searching for a college?
Jay McCann:
I might relate to the last two chapters as a way of starting to think about it. We have these tidbits and fun facts. And I remember I had a student one time who she saw that the mascot was the spiders and she said, "Ooh, gross. I could never go to Richmond." Maybe how I interpreted your question was also, what are gap year programs? What are other options that might be as well? And we do have a section just towards that of what are other ways if you're thinking about this more broadly or going into it? But I think to the element of what is not the right reason, I think every adult knows don't go to a college because of your significant other, but it's really hard to tell a 17-year-old that is the number one reason that you should not choose that school, and yet it does come up.
And there are always these elements of my emotional pull, this football team's really good. SMU last year, the amount of applications that they received when they were tracking it, the further they go into the season, it happened. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't go to said institution because they're good at football, but I'm just saying as we balance out, I think you said the four Ps, and I think a lot of times we'll talk about academics and the community fit and then the financial fit, those three elements that come into, if those are still in the conversation, we can still add in those other variables that matter.
Dr. Steven Antonoff:
All the lists in the book direct a student toward joining a community. The other way to think about that is if all of those ways of joining a community don't seem like you, then maybe it's time for looking at a gap year or looking at some other option. I actually believe that more students ought to seriously consider whether going to college immediately after high school makes the most sense for them. And there's certainly plenty of students and plenty of wonderful students who elect to take time off and do so productively. So I think that you have to think about whether you want to join that community.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. I think community matters. It's probably the unsung hero of the college search, and it's there. And I think this guidebook gives families a way of ...
Jay McCann:
It's trying to also move towards this idea that these college campuses are communities, and you're not just a consumer. It's not like a Carvana commercial where it's like, just put these numbers in and boof, there's the college. Steve's analogy of a church, I was thinking of a neighborhood. It's a lot more of that. There's not just one thing that you look at when you make a decision. And also when we do it just as a consumer, we don't think about how we would show up in those communities, like what Charlotte was sharing as well of who do you want to be in those communities and how will you even adapt will allow you towards the person you want to become?
Lee Coffin:
Well, this has been fun. We've been talking to Stephen Antonoff and Jay McCann, the co-authors of The College Finder: Your Comprehensive Guide to Finding Colleges That Fit Your Unique Path, which I think Jay just underscored. Where can folks find The College Finder?
Jay McCann:
Yeah. So our website is thecollegefinder.net, and you'll see on there that we are on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and I believe Walmart. Is that right, Steve?
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Well, there you go. The big three.
Jay McCann:
The classic trio. Yeah.
Lee Coffin:
So listeners, I'm putting a plug. Go buy this book. It is a really lovely, interesting, huge book of information that, as we've said, it's surprisingly fun. You're reading these lists and I got drawn into it in ways I had not expected. So Steve and Jay, thank you so much for coming on Admission Beat and having this conversation with Charlotte and me.
Dr. Steven Antonoff:
Lee, we certainly appreciate it. You're very kind to highlight our book. I want to make a pitch for other guidebooks and other information. I want to make a pitch for families and students to look around. There's a lot of information out there. Some of it is worthwhile and some of it is noise, but we're very grateful that you took the time on your podcast for us.
Lee Coffin:
Happy to do it. Next week, we will be back for the third annual live studio audience episode where accepted students and parents at Dartmouth's open house will have a conversation with me under the heading, The Things I Wish I Knew. So that's next week. For now, this is Lee Coffin and Charlotte Albright signing off from Dartmouth College. Thanks for listening.