What You Need to Know About Elite College Admissions from College Expert Mark Stucker

In this very special episode, college expert Mark Stucker covers three main topics: 1) Automatic Advantages & Disadvantages of race, gender, socio-economic status, etc., 2) Understanding how elite college admissions works, and 3) Finances.

Mark Stucker’s Book: 171 Answers to the Most-Asked College Admission Questions

Mark Stucker’s Podcast: Your College Bound Kid Podcast

Mark Stucker’s Podcast Website: Your College Bound Kid Website 

Mark Stucker’s Business Website: SchoolMatch4U

Transcription

Kamila
on this podcast, I have interviewed tons of people from extremely selective schools, such as Dartmouth, Northwestern, Duke, Princeton, MIT, Yale, Johns Hopkins, and they’ve all shared the different components of their college application. But we can only speculate as to why they got in. That got me thinking, what exactly goes to the minds of elite college admissions officers, when they read an application? What are they looking for? And why do they accept who they accept? So today’s interviewing Mark Stucker, he is currently a private college coach, but he has worked both in college admissions, and as a college counselor for both private and public schools. He has come on. He basically knows the ins and outs of this college admissions process. He has come on and has done a very thorough job in explaining the elite college admissions process. I hope you enjoy.

Hey, college kids, welcome back to my podcast who cares about college? Today’s episode is very special. We have a very special and knowledgeable guest with us. Mark Stucker. He has been in the college industry for many years now. He’s worked on the side of admissions, private and public school counseling, and now he helps students find the correct and right college for them. So I’m happy to have you on today.

Mark Stucker
Thank you happy to be here. I also have a college admission podcast in our fourth year, called your college bound kid. And that’s how Camila found this, how you found found me if I remember correctly, right, it wasn’t my book. I think maybe it was the

Kamila
book and then the podcast, which I totally recommend. It’s amazing. It has lots of information in there.

Mark Stucker
Thank you. Thank you. So when I found out what Camilla was doing, I said, this is great, I have to support her. And anyway, I think it’s fantastic for somebody in high school to be doing this, I wouldn’t not have been as advanced as you at your age. But anything that helped bridge the knowledge gap out there and want to play a part in that. So it’s an honor to be on with you today. No questions off limits.

Kamila
Thank you very much. So what we’re going to do is kind of do it in three sections. So number one, we’re going to discuss, like the automatic advantages and disadvantages you have because of something you can’t really control, you know, your race, socioeconomic status, the state you live in your gender. And then number two, we’ll be kind of exploring and understanding how top schools and elite schools choose their applicants because the acceptance rate is so low, and people want to know how to get into the, you know, pool that actually got in. And then number three, is finances just a very broad topic in general. So we’re gonna start with the advantages and disadvantages. So one question I have is, how much of an advantage do you have in having something that no other applicant has? You know, for example, being of some ethnicity that is like not well known, right? So if you’re like a citizen of the United States, but a citizen of some other random country, like how much of an advantage does that give you in the college application process?

Mark Stucker
So, in 2000, from 2012 2014, I produced this video series called Game Changer. And it was a 10 hour college counseling series in a box like it was on DVDs, which nowadays aren’t around that much anymore, everything streaming. But one of the things I did in there was I took over 20 hooks. And would your listeners, we’ve heard that term recite, define hooks, define it, define it? Yeah, so hook is an admission term for something that gives you an advantage in the college admission process, it’s something that’s an institutional priority of the college so they value it more. And they put an extra thumb on the scale like an asterisk beside your name, because you’re bringing that and I took over 20 different hooks and I I attempt to do something which is challenging, but it did it which was to rank every hook in almost an order. And what I did was I gave them grades like this is an eight plus hook and this is a B plus this is a b this is a see. So and it was according to how much weight it carried in the admission process. The hook so your A plus hooks are going to be things like recruited athlete and a revenue producing sport like basketball and football. Some some you know different some sometimes different schools have revenue producing sports like most of the time, lacrosse isn’t but at Maryland it is because you know big lacrosse is in the state of Maryland, right? Or like women’s basketball, Connecticut. So being an athlete, a revenue producing sport, that’s like a a plus hook. Another eight plus hook would be wood be a faculty kid. Like I’ve worked with lots of kids over the years where their professor dad or the mom is on the faculty and they can really get into schools with credentials that nobody have no other student really could because it really carries a lot of weight. Being a celebrity kid is actually a really big deal. Being famous, you know, actors, actresses, all that it gives us a lot of publicity. And it helps their name recognition. So that’s a big thing. And then, and then another big one is if like your parent can build the new $50 million Student Center, they want something called development or advancement cases. So those those things are hooks that carry substantial amount of weight, being an underrepresented student of color is a hook. And it will carry weight at certain schools, other schools that want their there further tends to there’s 10 states that by law, are not able to use race at all, in the college admissions process, they literally passed state laws, that says that they can’t do that, there’s not going to count at all at any of those 10 states. And then you have a lot of other schools that do what I call admissions by the numbers, some people call it guaranteed admissions, or formulaic admissions or grid admissions. And they’re basically just looking at test scores, GPA and curriculum. And if you have the right scores in the right GPA, then you’re automatically admitted. So it’s not going to count for that. But more selective schools tend to do holistic admissions, where they’re looking at a whole range of different things looking at you as the whole person. So being an under being an underrepresented student color can be a hook that can have value. For schools that do holistic admissions is not going to care, that massive weight, like those other hooks, but from my experience, it tends to carry a little bit more weight than alumni, which is another hook obviously.

Mark Stucker
And so it can carry some weight, and it’s going to be school by school dependent. The basic axiom in admissions is that schools want what they don’t have. So and another thing is what gets inspected, gets inspected. So what happens is schools do produce their class profile. And on that class profile has all kinds of information, you know, like your average test scores, and it will have things like that, and tends to have things on there, like the percentage of students of color, in every category, and people are looking at that not just overall students of color, but they’re looking at a category, that category. So they want to see like Asians, and they want to see like black and Native American and all of that. And so they know that that’s being looked at by people. Another thing that’s been looked at is how many states you have represented, and how many countries you have represented. So if you’re coming in, and you’re gonna boost that, overall, it’s not. And it’s not just about the statistics, it’s about the education that you are providing in the student body, because you’re exposing people to cultures that they will not have been exposed to before. And so you’re adding value. Because in the dorms in the classroom, your experiences are different than someone that hasn’t lived the life that you’ve lived. And so you’re adding to everybody’s educational experience, keep in mind, the average student takes 15 hours of classes, and there’s 168 hours in a week. So there’s a tremendous amount of education that happens outside of in the classroom. And so more selective schools are really cognizant of that. And they’re looking at, okay, how can this student add to the student to student learning that happens, like in the dorms around the meals, just casually? So I don’t know if I answered your question, or if you have any follow ups, but it, you know, it’s, it definitely can be a factor, there’s no question about it. And there’s a correlation between the more difficult somebody is for a school to get, then the more carries weight. So Native American would carry the most weight, because that’s the hardest demographic for the schools to get. So Native American students wouldn’t have to be as strong statistically, to still be highly desirable. But everybody needs to be someone who the school feels confident, you can do the work, they’re not going to admit you, just because of ethnicity, they, you’re still going to have to be sticking out to be completely confident that you can come in and excel in their program. So I don’t know if you have any follow up questions or financial?

Kamila
You did answer but I have one follow up question. So that podcast inside yell admissions, and for people who don’t know yell started this, I guess, podcast series, and there are two admissions officers mainly, and they bring in some guests to discuss about the Yale admissions process. And one of the episodes was called Myth Busters or something. And they were talking about how, you know, they were taking different myths people have about the college process and then saying they weren’t true. And one of them is one of them was like, living in a random state like that. They don’t get many applicants from, for example, Wyoming. And they said that that doesn’t really weigh in, in the college process. But can you kind of elaborate Is that true or not? Like if you come from a random state like Wyoming versus like California, which has a lot a lot of applicants. Can you explain is that like something colleges actually look for? What were what were they saying? Like, what are the

Mark Stucker
gaps? So let me say a few things. First of all, I really like that podcast a lot. On our podcast, every single episode, we recommend a resource. And one of our recommended resources on our podcast has been that podcast, because I do think it’s a very good podcast, however, and I’ve really liked both the people that the main hosts a lot, one of them is actually the Georgia rep. And I live in Atlanta, by the way. So there are times that admissions officers say things that are a little bit on the politically correct side. And and it’s there’s a lot of pressure with them have to do that. Because there are people that want to go to Yale so badly, that if the admission officer said, yeah, there’s kind of an advantage to us, if we see someone from Yale or Montana, then they feel like literally, there would be people that would move to that state, and game the system. So there’s a certain type of pressure that they have to not say things that could cause people to try to game the system and to do things that quite honestly, that they don’t want them to do. So when you’re looking at a school, like yo, you’re going to have to be exceptionally strong in every area still, like if you’re from Wyoming, but your grades aren’t great, your riggers not great, your recommendations aren’t great. They don’t get a sense from the teachers, the counselors that you’re someone who made a huge difference in the school you came from. Then being from Wyoming won’t make a difference. However, I’ll answer this through a conversation that I had two weeks ago. So we do this thing on our podcast, where I do a deep dive into different college, we call them college spotlights. And I was doing one on the University of New Hampshire. So I part of part of the process involving the interviewing admission officer from University of New Hampshire. And he found out what I what I do, I haven’t really said what I do, but I’m a private college coach. So I work with students all across the country, to help them find the right school strategies for getting in and strategies for getting money. So I work with students in 25 different states. So that’s what I did. So he found out that what I did, and he’s like, can you please get us somebody from South Dakota and Mississippi, those are the only two states not in our student body. So there’s a different perspective from what you heard, right? Schools, strongly value, as I said before, they want what they don’t have. And this not only applies to states, it’s actually applies to regions of the country as well. So they’ll look at the whole entire country. And they’ll say, wow, we’re underrepresented in the south or underrepresented in the Midwest or the Rocky Mountain states. And that becomes a hook that is a hook. It’s more of a hook. If you’re from a state where they literally don’t have anybody coming in at all, or they don’t have anybody at all, from that state that’s even more because then they can add you and they can say, well, we’re up to 47 states now. But even if you are, even if they have some kids from that state, if it’s underrepresented, or if it’s a country they don’t have anybody from then that is something that is a plus factor. It’s hard to quantify exactly how much it is because like I said, it’s not going to trump bad recommendations. It’s not going to trump bad writing, it’s not going to trump, someone who didn’t do anything at all in their school to show that they were a difference maker, it’s not going to trump all those things. But when you get into applicant pools like these, the kind of pools you’re talking about. Keep in mind, there are 43,000 high schools in this country. So think about that. That’s 86,000 solute turns and valedictorians and you’re talking about schools that are going to admit, like 2000 kids. Okay, so like, that means that one out of every 22 high schools, like gets a kid in gets a kid admitted at schools like that. That’s not even counting internationals, applicants who are incredibly strong, you know, that, and they tend to gravitate toward those namebrand schools. And that is not kind of recruited athletes. So getting in these places is so difficult that I really, hopefully can talk about this later. I think it’s really not in everybody’s best interest to put the pressure on themselves to do this. Really not. And I think that that’s something I hope that we can talk about, because that’s one of the biggest mistakes I see out here was students putting pressure on themselves to get into elite schools when it’s proven over and over and over again, that so many different schools can get them where they’re trying to go in life. So I kind of went off on a tangent a little bit there, but

Kamila
no, that was fantastic. And yeah, we will discuss like, you know, elite schools and how they picked it. applicants since my audience is like, you know, middle class, relatively, they go to competitive high schools, they’re gonna want to know this. And one thing that just came up as you were talking there, and this is like not related to this, either. But I think if you look at the statistics for the top schools, especially their admissions rate has been decreasing. And I understand why they want to like become more and more competitive, it just affects the rankings and such. But like, do you think this is just gonna keep continuing and continuing? Like, how far are these schools actually going to go? I mean, Harvard has like a 4% acceptance rate, if they go any lower, it’s just how far are they willing to go to keep that acceptance rate low to keep their school as like one of the top lever? Yeah, top? Yeah,

Mark Stucker
well, so a lot of it is driven by the consumer. So the the more elusive something is the market makes people want it. And and so now, don’t get me wrong. There’s definitely a role that the schools play to one of the ways I was talking about this with a colleague of mine. Students, search students searches the process where and any of your students who are who have taken an AC T or Nessie to an AP, know that when you take when you take that test at the start, before you complete it, they ask you, would it be okay, if colleges contact you? And if you say yes, then you get bombarded with ridiculous amounts of mail and email. And so yeah, so these schools, they still buy some cases, a half a million names, you know, from the College Board, or the AC t so that they can target. And maybe, you know, we can maybe talk about that if you’re interested in what the process they use and how they target. And, you know, it’s something that people find fascinating. So yeah, so there is a role that the schools are playing by doing tart by names and targeting. But there’s also something out there where the more people hear how difficult it is, the more that makes that that makes the prize valuable to people, and then they end up pursuing it. This population of the of the country is growing. And then in addition to that, the harder people hear that it is to get into schools, the more they add more schools to their list. So it makes caught like, if you look at the research on how many students apply to three schools, or more seven schools, or 10 schools or more, it’s like drastically different now than it was even 15 years ago. So and then through the Common Application coalition, online apps, it’s just easier than ever to apply to more schools. So all of these things come together as a confluence of factors between the growth of the population of the country and international growth, you know, the competitiveness making people apply to more schools and the ease of online apps make people apply to more and more schools to protect themselves. And so I don’t necessarily see the trend changing. And then, on top of that, so many schools went test optional this year. And then that was for, for your most selective schools, they got between 20 to 60% more applications by going test optional. And so that’s led to even more applications, you know? Yeah. So look at like, MIT was up 62%, Harvard at 57%, Colgate was up 102%. And many, many schools are up 2030 or 40%. This year alone, mostly because they went test optional. And I don’t see that changing. A lot of schools have already announced that their test optional for next year’s class already. Class of 2022 to junior class.

Kamila
Wow. And they only have like a limited number. So like, the more applicants, the smaller the acceptance rate, wow. 60% for MIT Well, okay. So I want to quickly go back to advantages and disadvantages wrap that up before we go on to like, top schools and how they choose their applicants and how they manipulate it. So for an applicant who doesn’t have those really big hooks, like being a recruited athlete, or having a rich or famous parent, for those who have something like, you know, they have an ethnicity that not everybody has, or Yeah, like an ethnicity that nobody has, or maybe a socio economic status, or they come from a state where the college doesn’t get many applications from, how do you play on those advantages that you have? Even if they’re not like as big as being an athlete or having a really rich parent? How do you play on those advantages in your application? Yeah, and

Mark Stucker
it can be a lot of differences. So what am I working with the family and they’re, they’re actually pretty financially successful. They have a student with a disability. And they asked me, how will that be seen in the admission process? So that’s actually an advantage because colleges want what they don’t have. Once again, they’re looking at how can you educate people about your experience in a residential setting? So there’s a wide range of things that could fall that can fall into the category of things that can make people interesting or things that can add diversity it beyond just ethnicity and race. You know, it could be the person that like lived in six different countries before they were 15. And you know, they like that makes them interesting. They’ve had different types of experiences. But though, the way that you want to bring that out is, you know, there’s a term that some schools used to use when I was doing admissions, I don’t hear as much anymore, but this is related specifically to the, to the ethnic or racial hook, but they used to call it like authentically ethnic. And so what that means is like it, let’s say it’s a student that’s coming in, let’s say it’s a Latin X student. And they’re coming in, and let’s say their background was like Cambodian. Okay, so what will make that student more attractive is if a school can see that their identity has really impacted their experience versus their versus if they’re just a box checker. They’re just a box checker, it tends not to really have much weight at all. But so if I use the example of the family that I’m talking about, now, this is a family of means they’re not going to qualify for financial aid at any schools, and they have multiple kids. And I worked with the oldest child as well, who’s at an Ivy League school. Now, that’s the second one is working with. So the thing is, the student is very involved in I’m now on a national organization, helping students with a disability that he has. So that becomes really a lot more attractive to a school because I don’t just get somebody that has a disability, I get somebody that’s been involved in like national awareness initiatives, then working on anti bullying initiatives, people disabilities, so I get somebody with some passion for their background. And, and, and that same could be true for other, you know, for other ethnicities as well, I’m working with them, you know, Asian American student out of Memphis. And she has done, she’s become really, really outspoken on racism that Chinese students have experienced, since Trump labeled, you know, Coronavirus, a chai with the China virus. And she’s been very, very outspoken on that. And she’s also been outspoken about the myth of the model minority, and how that’s actually insulting, you’re not giving people credit for the hard work. And, and she’s written on that, and she’s written essays on that, and, and then there’s gonna be admission officers are gonna value that because they’re gonna see, okay, she didn’t just check a box. But she’s bringing an element of passion, and conviction and involvement in causes related to that, related to that ethnicity. So now I’m getting somebody who I feel will elevate the classroom discussion, I feel will have a positive effect in conversations that they’ll have with other students, because there’s some involvement into some conviction there. So it’s not just a matter of you, you check a box, it’s a matter of like, what’s been your involvement in causes related to the unique background that you’re bringing is something that I feel is going to have a significant impact on on my campus. And that’s when it carries more weight than if they just see that you’re in a particular category.

Kamila
That makes sense. And the flip side would be disadvantages. So one example I have is, well, being a female and applying to a top engineering school, like Harvey Mudd, for example, they want like as much equality as they possibly can. So I think they do have like 50%, female 50% Male, but the thing is, there are significantly less females applying. So applying as a female to Harvey Mudd gives you an advantage over the male applicants. So if you are a male applicant, let’s say in this case, and you’re applying to this engineering school, which wants to create that equality and gender, how do you combat that disadvantage that you have? And you can’t really control it?

Mark Stucker
So coming at it from the male perspective, not the female perspective, right.

Kamila
Yeah. The male perspective because they disagree. Yeah. Yeah. So

Mark Stucker
you’re absolutely right. Women do have an advantage in engineering schools. And Harvey Mudd has made a great effort to be, you know, gender equity, they have special programs involved, and lots of my students have done. So what you have to do as a male, first of all, this is only one component, your gender. So there’s the overall assessment of your overall strength in its entirety as an applicant. And if you’re exceptionally strong and other areas, maybe you’re strong enough to overcome that, your overall application, I’m talking about all aspects of it. But if you’re not, then you need to adjust your list so that you’re applying to schools for whom you are strong enough. So I mean, that’s really I know that sounds simple, but that’s really how this process works like you have to be strong enough to be able to compete. And maybe somebody may be so strong in some of the other areas that they can still go ahead. I mean, Harvey Mudd is still taking males. So males are getting in. So if you’re strong enough to compete, then fine, then then go ahead and apply. If not, then you need to look at slightly less selective schools, and not fixate on Harvey Mudd. And the problem that I find I find most students aren’t good enough aren’t good at self assessing, you know, so they have a tendency to have very top heavy lists. And they have a tendency to not be able to take into consideration. What does it really mean that there are 43,000 high schools, a incredibly stellar international pool, and recruited athletes taking up a lot of spots and not just recruited athletes, alumni getting some spots, and then all the other things I mentioned to you before, that are hooks that are, as one former admission offer said, certain categories of admissions come with a built in Lobby, they have lobbyists, you have a lobbyist for you in the admission office, if you’re the athlete, or you’re the celebrity or the development case, or underrepresented students, you have a lobby built in Lobby, if you’re coming in without that, you just have to be that much stronger than the rest of the applicant pool. Or you need to adjust your list. And I don’t fault students for not being able to build bounce lists, because how could they really know how to do that it really takes a lot of experience to do it well. But most of the people that that I work with, they initially have a really top heavy list. They don’t know how hard it is to get into these schools and how much competition they’re up against. And so they tend to be a little bit unrealistic. And it’s my job to find schools for them that are fantastic schools, that they’ll get an amazing education where they’re that are highly respected in the workplace, by employers, and highly respected by grad schools, you know, that have great career placement, and have all of that, but they may not be a school that was on their radar.

Kamila
And going off that top school, I want to go into our second topic, which is like the really big one is understanding how elite colleges do their admissions. Because I, for those who haven’t listened to Mark’s podcast, I mean, he had an episode 159. And it was just like, they have so many things to consider, and so many factors. And there’s no like one way to do it either. So I want to get into that. And number one is understanding early decision versus regular, you know, applicants the regular pool. So can you explain the dynamic there with elite college admissions

Mark Stucker
there. So first thing I’ll say is, I never want to send anybody everybody knows what that is. So I just want to first give a brief definition or decision, you’ve got an early deadline. You know, it can be October 15, November, one November 15, very common. And some schools have a second round, which is usually January 1, or January 15, you have an early deadline, you have an early notification date, meaning you hear back earlier, but if you get in your it’s binding mean, you have to go. And you have to sign something saying you understand you’re committing to go your parents have to sign something, your school counselor has to sign something, everybody has to sign something, saying that you’re committing to go, it’s something that is actually only offered by a little more than 10% of for your accredited colleges. But it tends to be offered by your more selective schools, and especially your private schools. And so if you look at acceptance rates for early decision, they are substantially higher than regular, substantially in many cases three to four times higher. If you look at numbers like Duke and Northwestern, you know, Penn Columbia schools like that, you’ll it’s not uncommon at all to see, you might see an overall acceptance rate of seven, a regular acceptance rate of five and an early acceptance of 18 or 20. You know, that’s very, very common. So and the numbers just change depending on the selected the school, but it’s very common to see the percentage of people admitted being three to four times higher with early decision, and there are a lot of reasons for that. And should I go over why that’s the case or not?

Kamila
Yes, please explain it because it’s really eye opening when you learn. Okay,

Mark Stucker
so if you’re in admissions, and I did admissions, we never talked about that before, but it did college admissions in the 90s. Did boarding school admissions from 2001 to 2009. And I’ve been doing counseling now for 21 years. Already admissions, it’s a Herculean job, you have so many constituencies you have to please you think about it like all the people you have to please like, the alumni office is not gonna be happy unless you invite unless you accept a sizable number of alumni. The development office is not going to be happy if you don’t bring in some people that can help Let them raise money for their big projects. The faculty is not gonna be happy if you don’t bring in really smart kids who are talented, and down to actually individual majors a lot of times because some schools are made by major, but even if they don’t admit by major, they have faculty and the faculty need kids. So they need a certain number of people interested in all of the different things that they offer to keep all the faculty happy. And then there’s a lot of people that may be looking at your stats, and they’re going to be looking at like things like your acceptance rates and your average test scores. And they’re going to assume that if those numbers don’t get better than your standards are going down. So there’s pressure to have better stats than the year before when it comes to things like acceptance rates, average GPA, average test scores, all of that. People are looking at your geographic diversity, like, oh, you had 31 States last year, while you’re down to 24, what’s happening? Are you becoming more limited in your attraction, so they’re looking at that they’re looking at your racial and ethnic diversity down to individual type of person, not just overall students of color, but they’re looking at, you know, what’s the Asian American rate versus the black American, Latino, American, Native American, they’re looking at all that international numbers, looking at athletes all the way down to not just the sport, but individual positions within each sport, because coaches need individual positions with any sport to win. And then same is true for things like the orchestra. So it’s incredibly hard to please all of these constituencies, unless you can lock some people in it, that’s the only way to kind of ensure that you have balance, it’s just way too risky. To have these admission officers go out and think you’re gonna have any kind of balance like that, not to mention gender balance, as well. So that’s one thing is there’s so many people to please, that if you don’t lock people in, there’s a good chance you’re going to be imbalanced in one in one or multiple constituencies are going to be unhappy. So that’s one thing. The second thing is there’s an admission term called yield, which is really important at admission, we say yield drives the bus. And yield is the percentage of students that accept your offer. So if you accept 100 students do 50 Come to 10 km D 90 km, that’s called your yield 50 km that’s a 50% yield 10 km to 10% yield. So what happens with early decision, you’re getting almost 100% yield. I say almost because there are some people that end up not coming anyway, because they say they couldn’t afford the offer, and they can’t send you to jail. So it’s more of a moral obligation than a legal obligation. So most schools have about a 97% yield on edX Ed admits. And they look at their admission, when you look at their yield for regular mix, it might be one in three, one in five, meaning you have to take five kids to get one. So you significantly decrease the work, the admission office has to do if you can accept one to get one versus five to get one, three to get one. So that’s another reason why it’s important. And the third reason why it’s important is because these schools do build their brand by having lower acceptance rates. So if early spots gobble up half of the spots in your applicant pool. In some cases, it’s 6065. At some, some schools, literally gobbling up two thirds of their spots in the early round.

Mark Stucker
The vast majority of people apply regular mission at every school, there’s no school, I never even heard of it. Where when a school gets more early decision applicants and regular, that’s unheard of, as most people are not willing to commit without seeing what they’d have to pay, or they’re not able to get all their work done in time to submit or whatever. So most people apply regular. So when you have masses of people applying regular for less spots, because half of them have been gobbled up. That’s what creates a really low acceptance rate. So it drives acceptance rates down and then people think the school is better, let they’re only accepting this low number. And when they think this school is better, then two things happen. One, they’re willing to pay more to go to your yield goes up, because people are like, I hear this all the time from my students like I kinda in the school and have like a 7.2 acceptance rate, I feel so honored. So they know that and so it builds their brand there, which increases their yield. And they can they can charge more. And so and so it so it does a lot of things in all in one, it pleases multiple constituencies. It makes it makes it less work for the admission officers don’t have to accept as many kids to fill to get their class. And it builds their brand. And another thing it does is it helps that it’s really hard actually to accept the right number of people people don’t realize that. Like let’s say you have to bring in 2000 Kids 2000 beds in your freshman class, like it’s really easy to over enroll and where do you put them or under enroll. And so it also helps you to hit your admissions targets more accurately. So anyway, set a lot on why it’s valuable. But I think you had a question for me that I never even got to.

Kamila
Okay, so Well, I mean, you answered it really well. It’s really educating because I didn’t know about it. And I would say I’m probably a little bit more educated because I’ve been like, you know, listening reading stuff, but that was really eye opening, how early decision can like, actually affect your acceptance and such. And one thing is because of the financial commitment, you did mention that people who apply EDI are financially comfortable with affording, you know, the 200,000 $300,000 that comes with the top college. And so I think that’s one of the main reasons that people don’t apply Ed, they apply regular, and I want to help those like regular pool students. There are like, there are even less spots for them, then there are an ED and there are a bunch of fabulous applicants and regular pool who apply but just can’t afford the ED commitment. So can you say, can you tell us how you stand out in the regular pool? When there are so many amazing applicants? Is there anything that you as a student can do to ensure that like, Oh, you are one of the college’s top choices?

Mark Stucker
Yeah, I want to answer that. But I also want to also the bunk a myth, that it’s not necessarily true that everybody that if you’re not affluent, that you shouldn’t apply ed. So people think, well, I can’t not not apply EDI because I need to see the money in advance. There are some schools that are so good with their financial aid, especially if you qualify for some, some need based aid or decent amount of need based aid. That, that it’s in your best interest to apply early. Because the schools are so generous, that getting in them, even with the commitment you’re making is going to be in your best interest. Now, this is particularly true for students who are not coming from wealthier families who qualify for a lot of need based financial aid. So So for example, now, this is early action, which I know we’ll talk about now, we’ve been talking about early decision. I know we can talk about early action. But Harvard has early action and early decision, they have single choice, early action. But Harvard has a plan, if you make under 150,000, you pay 10%. Like without any loans, like that’s actually really good. So I found that it makes 150,000 We pay 15,000 for college with no loans, you apply to the average school with $150,000 income. You know, they’re likely to turn around and ask you to pay about $35,000. You know, maybe, maybe more than that, actually, maybe 40,000 off that income. So the difference. So I do want to clear up like that’s one of the myths out there like that. I shouldn’t apply early and less money is just completely a non issue for me. So I want to first talk about that. But now let me get to your question. So you’re saying like, okay, there are other people? Where does it make sense to apply early? Because what because you, you might have merit a merit scholarship offer from another school. And now you don’t have the ability to see how that merit offer compared to the need based offer? Yeah, so it doesn’t make sense. And especially, you know, for families that make, certainly over 200,000. You know, I would say that could be true. And also a lot of times, even for families that make you know, in the mid ones, it could also be true as well. So how do you stand? The question is how do you stand out in regular missions? Yeah. And it’s a very difficult question, because it’s a it’s a very individual answer. So like, for example, I just started working with a new student, Chicago, she’s very strong academically straight A’s that scores and very interested in applying to competitive schools, but probably will apply regular because of the because of the cost of college not going to qualify for money, need based money, and they’re probably going to want to play the merit based game to see where they can get merit money. So in looking at her application, she has been involved in high level volunteerism where she’s been a leader in four different organizations that she’s either started or he or she didn’t start, but she got involved in and she’s in a very high leadership role. And a lot her leadership in her a lot of her volunteerism is been in the medical medical, because she’s actually interested in something in the medical field. So it’s been in medical related things. So in her case, we’re gonna work on building that theme out throughout her whole application. So it just jumps off the page. That and so a school knows Okay, I’m getting the student that is super passionate about mental medical service and medical volunteers and has done it at a very high level lots of leadership and is pulled other people a lot. But that’s just her. Okay, that’s a student are going for Chicago, another student I met with last night. In Wisconsin, I’m working with, he’s a trombone player. Okay, so that’s going to be the angle that we’re going to work for him. And so it It, it’s when I say angle is stem. So manipulative when you say angle it what it is, it’s, it’s identifying what your authentic strengths are. And then learning how to present your authentic strengths to bring them out so that your application shines and pops. What I don’t believe in doing, personally, as a private college coach, I don’t believe in trying to manipulate the situation. So what I don’t do, and some private college coaches do this, they’ll say, You know what?

Mark Stucker
This, if you change your major to this major, that’s a undersubscribed major at this college, and they’re really looking for people interested in that. So. So why don’t you come in through that door? I don’t do that. I look at who is your authentic self? And how can we look at who you are authentically and identify the strength there, and then bring that strength out and make that strength pop in the application. So another thing about the student in Chicago give you an example, like I do this thing with my students I work with, I have my own recommendation form. Just a one page for, but it allows me to see what teachers think about the student. So I had her one of her teachers filled it out, she sent it to me and it was just effusive like popping. And I realized, okay, she’s that student that’s going to have these types of recommendations. So for any school that allow it for each school, I have the information about how many recommendations each school allows. And so if I have a school that requires two teacher recommendations and, and counselor recommendation, but they’ll allow two others, I’m going to be like, Okay, you’re going to get those two others because your recommendations, they absolutely rock. And that’s gonna be an absolute strength for you. You know, but if the recommendations aren’t as great, like, I’m lucky with another student in California now, and her recommendations aren’t coming in as strong. So I wouldn’t use that approach with her. So I can’t so when you know, so when you ask me, What can a student do in regular admissions to be competitive? There’s like more than 50 answers. It just depends on what are the strengths of that student individually. And once we, once I know what the strengths of that student is individually, then I know what should be done to make that person pop. Some people are incredible at interviews, and if a school allows for interviews, then that can be an opportunity for them. But you’re gonna have to follow up,

Kamila
I think, yeah, I had kind of like two questions, but I feel like they kind of go together. So you have helped a lot of students get into schools, and not just top schools, because top schools is not like determining your success or anything. So you’ve helped a lot of students but with people, I’ll use my school as an example. A lot of people aim for the Ivy’s and the top schools, that’s where they want to go. And a lot of them will probably apply in the regular poor because that we do live in a fluent suburban neighborhood, we go to a nice school, parents make comfortable money, but definitely not enough to afford the sticker price. So for those regular applicants that apply and that you work with, have you noticed a trend in something or like a pattern that you see in the students who do get accepted into, you know, top elite schools that apply in the regular pool? Or is it do you see just like a random pattern like two students you’ve worked with both really strong one got in and one didn’t?

Mark Stucker
That’s one of the hardest questions I’ve been asked. Because I see the answer is both. I see randomness sometimes because one thing that people really don’t understand, but within an admission office who read your file can make a difference if you get it or not. And I know that for an absolute fact, I saw it when I did admissions all the time, and I see it now like I’ve, in the last two years, I’ve been invited to sit in on the admission processes at Stanford, at Harvard and at Emory at Smith and who else am I forgetting at least others as well like I’ve sat in their admission process and and I’ve done it a couple of ways sometimes we’ve actually sat in with the real actual files are being read and sometimes they’ve simulated it where they take in past actual real applicants and they change the name but it’s everything else on the application is the same and they divide us up they bring in a group of counselors and we have to read files and accept one deny want to waitlist one. And inevitably when you do that different groups want to accept a different student and waitlist a different student and deny a different city and they always do it so that all three kids are like superstars. So it’s like not It’s not like really clear, right? It’s not like well of course we’re gonna except this one a weightless. No like they make all of them like extremely exceptional because these are like really highly competitive schools, and that it’s an intentional exercise they do to show how Different people have different things that they look for. And basically what happens is people look for people like themselves. That’s what we do admissions. You see it all the time, like, I did the job for nine years. So I would see like, I knew the person, like on the committee that was three sport athlete High School, he’s always looking for athletes, the other person was really involved in student government, they’re always looking for that. And the other person that was the dancer, the arts person, they got really excited about that. I remember when I was at who was I doing this with? Was it Stanford, Penn? Penn, no, Stanford sorry, I remember I was meeting with, you know, there’s, we had this kid, one of the kids we had to read was reg sec, in his classes from West Virginia. And he was like this incredible writer. And then one of the counselors on the team, she just kept pushing, pushing, pushing for this kid, even that is not the kid that we ended up taking, but and one of the things that she says, I grew up in Iowa, I identify with this kid, I was like that. So that’s how people think people look for people like themselves, you see it all the time. So that’s the random side. But then you also see certain other things too, like, people that get in in regular admissions, like these would be some general things that I would say, Okay, I would say their academic statistics are stronger than the school’s averages, they’re above their averages. Okay. Like, they have to at least be at the midpoint. But they’re, you know, if you look at schools, they list their 25th to 75th percentile, you know, they’re going to be there above that 75th percentile or close to it. So statistically, they’re going to be very strong with all the academic things. And that’s going to be things like test scores, and number of APs and AP scores, and all that stuff. So they’re going to be rock solid, they’re academically, then they’re going to have they’re going to have recommendations from from teachers and the school that are going to present them as

Mark Stucker
a real difference maker. So my friend, Rick marks a friend of mine, he’s the director of mission at Georgia Tech, he comes on our podcast a lot, he’s someone I really hold in high regard and respect highly. And the way he puts it is, you know, he says, what we’re looking for, he says, we’re looking for this, the kid that the school will really miss when they’re not there anymore. So they’re gonna have that about, that means like, that’s gonna come through in the recommendations, that this is like a real impact player, person, boy, we’re gonna miss this person a lot, they were such a good contributor. And that’s gonna extend to in the classroom and outside the classroom. So that’s going to come through on the teachers and the way the teachers describe the student in the class, but it’s also going to come through in usually, the way the school counselor will talk about them in the light of the whole school, their contributions, but also come through in the extracurricular activities. So the extracurricular activities tend to be, like, I just be honest, most of the time for the highly selective schools, they tend to be more like statewide, or national wide or international wide, or at least regional. They tend to be stuff that people have done more than just outside the school. But, you know, it’s like, you know, like, statewide robotics champ are, you know, you know, runner up in National Math cup. To me, it’s just different things where the students extracurriculars are, are on a really significant level, usually outside of just the school community. Now, all of this, all of this depends on how Lohaus elected we’re talking, right? I’m talking about like the most selective schools, B’s and IB competitors,

Kamila
and another crushers. Yep, go ahead. Another question I have with and this relates specifically to extracurriculars, and I’ll give a little one other thing I want to say too, but Go, go go first, and then we’ll

Mark Stucker
go okay. So the essays are going to be not the essays tend to be ones where they create this bond between the reader and the writer. Because there’s an emotional component to admissions. These are not robots. So when you read an essay from a kid like that, you know, you feel like we have to have this kid at our school. They create that kind of bond like some of it, a lot of it is likability. But likability is a huge part of it. But another big part of it is like, once again, this like this is a difference maker. And so I would say their writing is creates that type of emotional bond that has the admission officers really enthusiastic, and they’re going to go into the committee and fight for that person if they have to. But anyway, go ahead.

Kamila
So one of the questions I have and this relates mainly to extracurriculars, and I’ll give a little backstory as to where I got this from. So when I was first, you know, because the first schools that I have toured, and honestly most of the schools I have toured are pretty elite. They’re well known. They’re top schools. And I, you know, I went to those schools, I started doing some research about them. And then I came across this article on PrEP scholar it was, you know, I don’t know the exact title, but it was talking about admissions at elite schools. And the writer of the article was saying something about a spike, like the spike theory. So you have like a well rounded kid who’s mediocre at everything, like they have many interests, but they’re not especially good. And then you have one student who’s relatively okay, at most areas, but then they have one area where they just absolutely outshine other applicants. Is that almost necessary for elite college admissions, if you want to get in in the regular pool? Because that’s a

Mark Stucker
great question. And the answer is that it’s easier to get in if you have that spike. There’s a lot of terms that you’ll hear for it. Sometimes I call it spike, sometimes they call it Angular kid. Sometimes they call it well lopsided is opposite of being well rounded, well lopsided. It is, you know, a schools will say, Yeah, we picked some well rounded kids and somewhat lopsided kids. But overall, at highly selective elite college admissions, it’s easier to be that spike, or Angular or Well, lopsided kid, it’s easier because what happens is, they’re not really so much looking for a well rounded person as a well rounded class. And so what you want to be is that unique piece of the puzzle that nobody else can quite be who that person is. And so like, you know, you’re the person that, you know, did stand up comedy and ended up like, competing nationally, because you were so good at stand up comedy, like, okay, that’s like what lopsided, right? You’d went really deep on that in that area and that talent and developed it and honed it really, really well, or ventriloquist, or whatever, all these different things. And so now you’re like adding something to the student body that nobody else can be that unique piece of the puzzle. That tends to be an easier path than like being the kid that was in like, you know, all the standard clubs that everybody’s in, in high school and did like really standard things, you can do everything like really well, but not one thing that really makes you pop. So I don’t want to say that it’s a requirement, that would be too strong. Schools do take both well rounded and well and well lopsided, but it’s easier in highly selective admissions to be well lopsided and stand up.

Kamila
And another question that I was thinking of is, okay, again, I’ll give a little backstory to this. So when I was at my Vanderbilt information session, and walking tour, this was like, a year or two ago, we you know, the lady was going through the slides and the information session saying Vanderbilt looks for these things. They require these things of you, blah, blah, blah. And she pulled up the slide in there she had the different basic components of your application, you know, your statistics, such as like your GPA, LSAT, extracurriculars, personal statement, letters of rec. And what she did was she listed them in matter like importance for Vanderbilt specifically. So grades, were at the top, you know, grades and LSAT scores, then came, I think extracurriculars, then essays and letters of recommendation. So do schools have like a priority? Are there certain parts of your application that are more important than others? Do schools rank

Mark Stucker
for pretty much every school? highly selective school? The three most important things I will say will be a three to four, your your rigor and doing well in that rigor. Okay, so like that’s at the top. And this is not hypothetical, because there’s a survey, you can look it up stuff, the NASDAQ survey admission survey, and every year NASDAQ National Association of College admissions counselors, they do a survey to the admission officers, they actually asked them, Which of all these different things and there’s almost like 20 of them going down a portfolio and interviews all things and they asked them like is this like extremely important, very important, blah, blah, blah, and every single year, it the top things are always the same, which is your basically rigor and doing well in rigor, rigor, rigor, grades, testing, are always like the top three academic things. And then what kind of person you are, is really going to be really big. So you know, that that it doesn’t show as high in that survey, that’s because they send it to so many schools, they send it to some schools that don’t even take recommendations. But if you’re just targeting the highly selective schools, what kind of person you are, like your your character is huge. And that’s also going to be really, really big and that’s going to be everything from like likability intellectual curiosity, ability to get along with a wide range of different people grit, resiliency, creativity, motivation, like all kinds of different character traits. Those are really going to be extremely important as well, because you can have like all the academic firepower in the world but if like you’re a jerk, or nobody likes you or you can’t get along with people, that’s not going to To go over well at all, so I’m going to say those are going to be the biggest ones. And then after that it can, it starts to vary a lot from school to school, where it’s going to, you know, different factors can vary a lot to school, like some schools put a huge emphasis on interviewing some don’t, you know, some schools put a really big emphasis on. I mean, everybody buys extracurriculars, but some value them more than others. Some value, RX more than others and other components as well demonstrated interest is another big one, that can be extremely important to some schools and less important to other so. So some of the other factors are going to be school by school, each school in their own mind will sort of have something like that. But whether they share it or not varies, but I can tell you academic rigor grades, and I would say test scores, but now it’s only suppose our test optional, that test scores are a little bit in flux right now, because so many schools are allowing you to apply without scores. And then what kind of a person you are, you know, character, which is subjective, but they’re going to pick that up from essays, from recommendations, from interviews, all those things form an impression of what your character, those are, those are going to be the big ones.

Kamila
And another thing that you mentioned on your podcast is, if you are an applicant, you don’t have any major hooks about you and you’re not super, you’re not like, in fact, you’re not in desperate need of like financially because your family makes a nice income. But you’re definitely you can’t afford that price of college, you did say that one of the things you can do as an applicant is become more educated on the process of college process and learn how these people like read over applications and what they look for. So you did say to like, become a little bit more educated on the process. So if you are not educated on the process, you don’t really know how this works, and you’re just taking your shots, are you almost like, doomed? If you’re applying regular pool, you’re not really you don’t know much about the college admissions process are you just kind of it’s basically luck at that point if you get in.

Mark Stucker
So it’s gonna be if you don’t know much about the college process and don’t have somebody guiding you. The biggest problem I see is that you put together a bad list. If you put a bad list together, you are doomed. I mean, you know, I mean, I got a phone call from a student two years ago from a school that ranked 658 students in the class and she was number two, and she didn’t get in anywhere. That’s crazy, that should never happen. But everybody said, You’re so smart, like, you know, so like her list was like Yale, and Stanford, and Princeton, those are all this kind of school she applied to. But as I said before, there’s 43,000, high schools, 86,000 salutatory valedictorians for about 2000 spots, those schools have acceptance rates of usually under 25% For valedictorians. So but she didn’t know that. And so that’s an example of somebody that was doomed, because she just sort of listened, everyone’s like, you’re so smart. And so all her schools were like all schools and 1010, to 12, charter schools and country to get into. So she had a completely imbalanced list. If you have a balanced list, and you don’t know that much, you’ll still end up, okay, because you have a balanced list, and you’ll still be strong enough for some of the pools that you’re in. So the biggest problem is not having a balanced list. You know, that’s the biggest problem I see for people that don’t know much about the process. And if so, if they happen to luck on a bounce list, then they’ll still end up okay. But if they don’t, then they will. Now the other problem I see, huge problem I see with people don’t know that much, is they don’t know how to put together a really good financial strategy. So you can put together a really good financial strategy that can position yourself to get a lot of merit money, if you don’t qualify for need based aid, if you know what schools to apply to, and you know what to do. And so I have that all the time, like people will come to me and they’re like, Look, we’re not going to qualify for any financial aid. But we just can’t see, pay more than 50,000 or 40,000. Or, you know, and so we’ll put together a strategy for them to get in, you know, really good schools, that that are financially viable for them and are within their budget. And you will know how to do that. Because you won’t know what schools you should be applying to where you’re strong enough to get that money who has the money, you won’t know all that you’ll end up either paying way more than you should end up paying for college or not knowing about some options that you could have had. So those are some of the challenges that I see for people that are that aren’t knowledgeable about the process.

Kamila
And to the example that you used before about that girl. She ranked number two in her school, but she didn’t get in anywhere for that problem of like not creating a good list would one of the you know, this is very common at my school and I think for a lot of high schoolers. I think they hear this as well. So there’s the strategy of applying to two to three safeties two to three targets and then Two to three reaches, do you think that’s like a good plan of action when you are applying for colleges, and you do want to reach for the top.

Mark Stucker
So I think it’s really good to have those three tiers. And especially if you’re properly creating those tiers, okay? I’m not someone who thinks there’s like a perfect number of kit of colleges to apply to it varies a lot based on a lot of factors. So I normally will say, two to five, two to five, two to five in each of those three buckets. I actually have five buckets in my in my in the way I look at school, so I have the most unattainable categories, what I call unlikely or long shots, or like even lottery schools, like those are schools that I love

Kamila
that term. Like say, I love that term lottery school, it’s just,

Mark Stucker
yeah, those are terms I call it. So these are schools, I don’t recommend for you to apply to because your chances are like under 15%, normally under 10%. But I tell people like what some people, I don’t want you to go through the rest of your life, like wondering why they have. So if you have like one of them, to get your curiosity that you just want to apply to, that’s okay, but guard your heart because this is a school like I wouldn’t have been doing this long time, I wouldn’t recommend my daughter by two. But if you want to do that, go ahead, you know, and then I have like, what I call like challenge schools or reach schools or stretch schools, you know, you’ve got like a good 15 to 40% chance in those schools, you should have two to five in that list. And whether it’s two or five, it depends on a lot of factors. And then and then the next group are what I call possibles, 40 to 70% chance in that range like you, you you could get in you could not get in, you have a great chance of getting in, but you also shouldn’t be shocked if you don’t get in. And once again, sort of two to five in that range is a good balance list. And then probables are like 70 to 95% chance. And then the last group is safety schools 95 to 100. Safety schools are really schools that just make the crunch numbers, and you can look and see that you have the stack, so you kind of know what you’re going to get in. So I sort of have a five tier system. And it is important to have a balance within each of those. And so if people are if people are creating the right list for themselves, then that’s okay. I wouldn’t say it has to be two to three Exactly. Because it’s a lot of different factors. Like let’s say I have somebody that want to stay close to home, they know they want to stay close to home, they may not need as many schools, or let’s say I have someone they just fall in love with a school, that’s a high probable for them, it’s a high safety for them. I mean, one of the things we haven’t talked about is schools. There are a lot of schools that are not ranked at the top overall, but they’re absolutely incredible at what somebody might want to major in. So let’s say you want to be a meteorologist University, Oklahoma’s the top school for meteorology. I mean, that’s where all the National Weather Center and everything is all the hurricanes, it’s all there. And so, you know, so if that’s what you want to do, then that’s the strongest place for that you might have the statistical profile to know that you’re going to get in there, you don’t need as many schools. And lots of schools are like that, right. And so they’re like, amazing in an individual thing. If you want to do classic ballet, then you’re going to either look at the University of Utah or Indiana, those are two of the strongest programs in the country for classic ballet. So you you may not need as many schools if the school that you’re you really know you want to go to is more of in the probable bucket, or even a safety bucket, then you don’t need as many. On the other hand, sometimes I work with kids like working with a student. Now, the SMD student lets you know, was a program to like automatically get your Bachelor’s of Science and Medical medical school degree, you’re immediately admitted into like the medical school track without having to apply to med school and take MCAT and stuff. And so the student, he knows he’s in at Florida and a couple other schools that like, look, these schools are fine for me. And he’s got great financial aid there. And so he’d rather take a shot at a lot more selective schools he like I’m already in a decent school. So I’d rather take a shot at a lot more of my stretch and reach type school. So it’s hard to have a perfect scenario, but it’s a 2232232. That doesn’t always work out perfectly. But what I like about that is the balance in the list, especially if you are properly categorizing each one, like someone might think there. I have that like I had someone come to me I work with this year and she told me like Dartmouth’s like my safety. And I say no, it’s not safety for anybody. So like she thought she had that little categorization like you but it was completely off. You know, she’s fine. Like she ended up going ed to Tufts and she’s in tufts, and she’s, you know, it’s great. But so yeah, I like the balance. I like that approach. I wouldn’t fixate on two to three because sometimes sometimes you you know now sometimes it’s better to have a few more. Now I’m not into huge college lists either I really don’t see a need for rarely ever see someone who never needs more than 13 schools, that’s a lot of work to do it really, really well. So, but if you took, you know, three to one, category four and another foreign another, then you might end up at 11. It just depends.

Kamila
And actually going off. I mean, I thought of this and you kind of summarize it perfectly. That girl who’s like Dartmouth is my safety. Yeah, okay. So I have at my school, I go to Maryland, right. And we have a really, really good state school UMD College Park, it’s a fantastic school, great programs there as well. But people at just not my high school, but Maryland in general, there are a lot of great competitive schools in Maryland. And for some people, they come up to me, and they’re telling me like which college they want to go to. And they’re like, UMD is my safety. And I look at UMD with this 45% acceptance rate, I’m like, How is this a safety? I don’t get how it’s a safety. And I think they have that misconception because their stats are incredible. Their GPA is really, really high. So is it safe to say that like with a really good GPA with a really good si t or AC t score, that some schools are more likely if they’re like in the 40% acceptance rate? Because some people are like you empty is my safety, and I never saw you empty As my safety. And that surprised me there. So is that like a wrong approach? Or is it kind of right to say, oh, maybe this I have more of a chance of getting in here, then the acceptance rate says,

Mark Stucker
So depends on how school does admissions, and it depends on their admission criteria. Like, for example, let’s like look at Penn State, Penn State really crunches numbers. So you, if you they use a grid system and interface between test scores and GPA. And it’s like, if you have the stats that they look for, then you can have a high degree of confidence. You know, but if it’s a school that’s doing holistic admissions, it’s putting an emphasis on recommendations and extracurriculars and essays and fit to major and demonstrated interest in institutional priorities, all these things, then making the sausage in a more complex way, then you can’t be confident just because you have the stats that you’re getting in. Because one thing that’s a lot of people don’t realize, this is a common mistake I see people make, they look at schools, average stats, and they think, Oh, I have those stats. So they think that they’re getting in. And they don’t realize like the more competitive schools, the profile of the who they waitlist, and who they deny is also really similar Stat wise a lot of times. And so just just meeting the school stats doesn’t mean you get in. The thing about stats is, if you don’t have them, a lot of times, they’ll mean you, like stats can knock you out, but they don’t get you in. So not having them can mean your non competitive applicants. But having them doesn’t mean necessarily that you’re getting it, it just means that you’ve made it through to the next level. So that now we will take a look at other aspects of your application to see how you measure up. So a more competitive school stats knock you out if you don’t have them, but they don’t get you in to have them because everybody kind of has them.

Kamila
Another thing that came up is I never thought UMD for me personally, a lot of people at my school thought UMD is like a safety for them because of the stats they had. I never thought it was 50. But I thought I had more of a chance of getting in because I do have the stats I do. I live in Maryland right, I have pretty good extracurriculars like strong extracurricular. So I thought I had a good enough chance at UMD. And I do want to take my shot and apply to a couple like really top schools just to see if I would get in. So schools like UMD, or Penn State, which are state schools, and their acceptance rate is still not easy. It’s around like 50%, could they reject an applicant because they’re almost certain that the applicant is applying to top schools? And if they get an offer, they’ll go? Like

Mark Stucker
that is a really good question. And it’s a trend I’m noticing more of which is public schools putting emphasis on demonstrated interest and never used to but I’m seeing it like some really strong kids that didn’t get in Auburn and Clemson this year, that would have gotten in in past years. And in one case, we actually follow it up and talk to them and they said you know like we didn’t think the student was necessarily going to come so the waitlist and see if you show enough interest and then if they if you show interest, they can flip you from waitlist to admit that’s something private schools have done for a long time and now that’s tricky. That’s starting to trickle more into into public schools as well. And so you know, you have to be careful because sometimes things can change from the year before to the next year and even when you think you know how something works it can switch if a school decides to put a little bit more emphasis on on on whether or not they think somebody is going to come use usually public schools don’t do that they feel that that’s judgmental. It’ll how do we how are we to know but increasingly, you know, we’re seeing that happen. And you know, one thing I know if you want to talk about another week, we’re going to talk about early action. How are we actually impacts? Yes.

Kamila
You’re kind of gloss. We kind of skipped that because we were getting to other questions. But yeah, one thing I want to do with the podcast, I want to ask a question, and then we can get to like the early action versus early decision. So with, again, that same podcast inside yellow admissions, one of the myths that they were, I guess debunking was demonstrated interest. I thought demonstrated interest was one of the ways to tell a top school I really, really want to go here, right? But then they were like, No, that has nothing to do with our like, process are picking again, can I get your opinion on that? Like, what what does that mean?

Mark Stucker
Oh, yeah, so I’m happy to talk about this some sort of one of my pet peeves. So Jim Bock, who’s at Swarthmore College is one of the most selective liberal arts colleges in the country.

Mark Stucker
He’s given the best interest I’ve ever heard to, on at least on a panel, he was asked like,

Mark Stucker
you know, do you guys factor demonstrated interest into decisions? And he said, Of course we do. He said, any school that has early decision looks at demonstrated interest. That’s what early decision is, you’re telling us you’ll come if you apply by this date, and we put like your thumb on the scale because of that. Now, let’s talk about Yale specifically. And I love Yale, it’s one of my favorite schools, I’ve spent a lot of students to Yale every I’ve never seen a CTL that hasn’t had a good experience at Yale. And I’m gonna say something’s gonna contradict what Neil said, at a conversation with the singer yo, admission officer this year. And this was my question to this to this admission officer. So I don’t know if your audience knows this. But there been about five schools in the past that have something called single choice, early action. So it’s a it’s not like early action. So early action early, you have an early deadline early notification day, but you can shop around you can wait all the way till May 1 decide whether you’re going right? That’s early action differs from early decision, single choice early action. It’s not committing like early decision is. But what it’s saying is you can only apply early action to one school. So yeah, if we early deadline, early notification day, and you can wait all the way up to May 1, you can compare financial aid offers, you can shop around, but you can’t apply early action to more than one school. Sometimes some people like me and some others and who do what I do, I tend to work with a lot of high achievers, it’s part of like my practice, it tends to be more high achieving kids. Not always but majority. And we don’t like single choice, early action. And the reason for it is well, first of all, I can tell you the only schools that have single choice, early action last year in the whole country. The only schools that have it were Stanford, Yale, Princeton, and Harvard. That’s it, those four there’s Georgetown at Notre Dame have a slightly different version, which you know, which, you know, if we want to get into or not, but they have a slightly different version, where you can you can apply to more, more than one school early action, but you can’t apply early decision anywhere else. So they’re a little different. So you can apply somewhere else where you’ll be bound to go is the way Georgetown and Notre Dame’s version works. But for Stanford, Yale, Princeton, and Harvard, you can apply to any other school early action, and sometimes they’ll make an exception for your in state public. But that’s about it. So what happens with those schools is they’re so hard to get in, even with early on even a single choice, early action, because there’s Stanford, Princeton, Harvard and Yale, right. So people apply them. And they don’t get in early, they get deferred. And now they lost the ability to apply to all the other schools early action that they could have. And one of the changes that’s happened in the last less than 10 years for sure, is that more schools are starting to put more emphasis on early action than before, and have differential admission rates between early action and regular. It’s not the same as Ed and regular, but it’s noticeable. Schools are prioritizing EA early action over regular and I’ve had lots and lots and lots of conversations with admission officers I’ve had about this. So what I don’t like about single choice, early action is you, you apply you get deferred, and now you lost your ability to sow interest, all these other schools that would have noted that you applied early action. So now you’re, you’re like, you know, doomed is your word you’ve lost out on those schools. So I was having a conversation with you because this year Princeton decided not to offer it at all. They got rid of early action. And yell overlaps with Princeton, you know, is one of the big overlaps, right? So I said to your mission, this is this year. I said are you going to be getting Random single choice early action. I told her all the reasons why I don’t like it. She actually used to do college counseling. So she said, I totally get it. I can understand from your perspective why that’s not good strategy for all the reasons I just said, like Princeton is? And what do you think she said to me?

Kamila
I don’t know. We’re thinking of getting rid of it to to match Princeton? No,

Mark Stucker
I thought that’s what she was gonna say. She said, We will not be getting rid of that. She said, 90% of people who apply single choice early action, we yield 90%, meaning nine out of 10. Come,

Mark Stucker
wow. And want to keep that yield?

Mark Stucker
Correct. And they said, so you’re she said, we think it’s important that you signal to us that your top choices. So what that’s really saying is Yale does count earlier that Yale does count interest, regardless of what they said. And the way they count interest is by did you apply single choice early action or not? And if you look, their acceptance rate for single choice early action is higher than their regular acceptance rate. Look at their numbers, it is it’s noticeably higher, not four times higher, but it’s more than twice as high. So they do look at that. Now, let me let me say this in fairness to schools, one of the common things you’ll hear from admission officers is oh, we don’t look at demonstrated interest. You hear that all the time? There are some schools that don’t Okay, so especially some big public schools that don’t so I will say that. But a lot of times when schools say that they’ll answer their say, they’ll say we don’t do it for two reasons. One, they’re defining it differently. Like stem to them demonstrated interest is there are schools that use incredibly sophisticated algorithms of like how often you’re on their website, and how long you stayed in, when did you start going on there, and how many emails you opened and how many times you filled out cards, it felt like there are schools that have these really complex algorithms, and they project well, you have an 87% chance of coming based on all these things that you did. So some schools are saying we don’t do that. Okay, and so they’re saying we don’t do that. So therefore, they say we don’t use demonstrated interest. But to me, if you’re telling me that we will never get rid of single choice, early action, because we know that we have a higher yield with those students, then you are using demonstrated interest. So sometimes schools, it’s a different like they’re communicating, you’re using different terms for it. And so they’ll say they don’t do it. But they still are using interest in different ways, because they have different acceptance rates for EDI and single choice CA. The other reason why schools say they don’t use demonstrated interest is because as soon as they say that, then they have to worry about their admission officers getting stopped. They have to worry about like people like showing up four times to to their school for information sessions and emailing them constantly and harassing them. Like that happens, it already happens without them saying it. So if they say yeah, we look at that, we count every time you email us, they’re inviting themselves to get stopped. And they don’t want that to happen. So background.

Kamila
So basically, like the 50 emails I receive a day from various colleges, if I click on them, some of them could be keeping track of who like when I clicked on how long I’ve been clicking on those emails for

Mark Stucker
that’s very common. Really, that’s very common. Like for people to check, who’s opening our emails and who’s not opening them. They you know, I’ve done lots of podcasts on all these topics, like where you went on their website, how long you went on, they use cookies to track all that. In fact, they’ll they’ll, they’ll generate marketing materials to you, some of them based on where you went on their website. They can tell like you’re looking at marketing, you’re going around that next thing you know, you get an email about their great marketing program, would you like to come to this webinar? They’re doing it under like, all that stuff is all intentional.

Kamila
And one thing I want to ask is because you know, you can ask this on the internet and whatever, and they’ll give you different things. But in the overall Do you think attending an elite college is worth it? Like are you getting your, I guess they say like your bang for your buck or something? Is it worth actually attending an elite college?

Mark Stucker
Though it’s a very complicated question. What I will say is this that you do not have to go to any going to an elite college is generally not going to be the thing that will determine your career that will determine your career options, that is going to be determined more by things like how good your people skills are, what your work ethic is like whether you have personal integrity, whether you are good at what you do. Whether you have grit meaning you like when you get knocked down, you bounce back up. Like it’s really your people skills usually and and oh optimistic. Are you like a positive person? All those things are what determine like, who gets promoted and who gets job advancements way, way, way, way more than advanced degrees. You know, there are certain professions where it makes more of a difference than others. Like if you want to be a lawyer, if you want to work in certain law firms than going to a highly ranked law school can make a difference in whether you get hired. You want a Wall Street job, there are Wall Street jobs and certain consulting jobs that do prioritize and hire from certain schools.

Kamila
Can I throw an example at you? Yeah. So let’s say you want to be like a diplomat. Right? Or just yeah, like diplomat, government work? Is it necessary to like go to No, Georgetown, and George Washington University have unrivaled like programs that are amazing in the stuff? That’s like a diplomat, for example, would it be kind of almost necessary for you to at least have maybe a postgraduate degree from Georgetown or George Washington? No,

Mark Stucker
because there’s lots of other programs that are also really good. You know, but but I would say this, that it’s more important that you go to a school that’s strong in your major overall, right? So yeah, if you want to go in international relations, there’s lots of really good programs. I mean, Georgetown is really good, George Washington’s good Americans really good. You know, but so is Johns Hopkins. So as tufts, so is Occidental, I mean, so as James Madison, I mean, there’s lots and lots and lots of other programs that are also really good, as well. So going to going to a school that’s, that’s got a very strong program that you’re in, that is respected by employers and by grad schools. That’s, that is something that I think is important. There’s also a student that I work with, that really wants to be challenged academically, like they, you know, question I asked everybody on my questionnaires, do you want the courses that you take to be harder than your hardest, high school classes easier are the same. And there’s some students, they’re like an IB, AP, all these things, and they still want their classes to be harder. Well, that’s assuming that should go to a place with a lot of rigor, they’re not going to feel challenged, you know, and they want, they’re going to need to be at that level to have that level of intellectual stimulation. But overall, like, it is such a fallacy, that if you don’t go to a highly ranked elite school, that your career options are going to be diminished. Your career options will be mostly based on how hard you work, how good you are at what you do, how good your people people’s, I cannot tell you how competent people skills are to who gets promoted, who gets jobs, you have to be able to get along with people different people than you are, be likeable. That’s what ends up happening in the real world, like you get to the environment, and people like you, and then they put you up for promotions, all those things, and then integrity, people lose jobs all the time, by cheating and taking shortcuts and things, those things are gonna have way, way, way, way, way more bearing on your on your options. And, you know, I, there’s a book I’d recommend for all your listeners, it’s by Frank Bruni, and it’s called where you’ll go is not who you’ll be. And he takes a look at all like people in very, very prominent positions, from CEOs to Fulbright scholars to Pulitzer Prize winners to Rhodes Scholars. And he, he walks them to, and he looks at where they went to college, and some of them went to elite colleges, but most of it. And another thing I’ll tell your listeners to do is to you can Google this, you can look it up. Every year, Harvard produces the list of where Harvard Law students went to undergrad, you know, just Google it, where Harvard Law students went to undergrad. And like, this year’s list has over over 180 different colleges. And you’ll see some brand names on there. But most of the names you’re gonna see are not brand names. And so a lot of people would be surprised that Wow, I’ve never even heard of like half of these schools. And clearly Harvard thought that they must be good because they’re accepting students from them. So I feel very strongly like students, I’m all for aspiring to something, it’s good to set goals for yourself, that’s a good quality to have. But to put this pressure on yourself to go to an elite school, is if it makes all this difference in the real world. That is such misplaced energy. And that’s just not the way the real world works. The real world, like I would much rather have a student that goes to a generic college, but they have incredible people skills, you know, and, and they have a high level of personal integrity and they work hard that students gonna go way further than the person that goes to the elite school that doesn’t have those character traits.

Kamila
Okay, so I want to get to our last topic here and I was discuss it a little bit. So it’s finances. Sure. Huge topic, major problem for a lot of people.

Mark Stucker
So it’s a problem, but it’s also an opportunity.

Kamila
Yeah, also an opportunity and it’s really just it stresses me out a lot. And one of my questions is, should finances be the most important factor when choosing a college, like your affordability and I don’t mean like pulling out loans, I truly mean walking out either debt free, or just maybe a couple $1,000 in loans because debt is not always bad. But the $50,000 loan the $100,000 loan, it should finances be the most important factor.

Mark Stucker
finances should not be the most important factor, but they should be an important factor. So what I do when I’m working with a student is I’m always looking for for matches. Okay, I’m looking for an academic match an academic match is going to be a lot of things, it’s going to mean that the school is strong in your major, it’s going to mean like that they the teaching styles, the way you want the style to be competition, student body opportunities for experiential education, internships, coops, all that are there. So there’s other aspects to that academic match, but those are a few. A social match means that you’re going to have a good experience, you’re gonna have a good college experience, college should be time when you’re happy, you have a good experience. So I’m looking for a social match. An emotional match means that it’s healthy. So social is your happy, but emotional is is also healthy, it’s good for your mental health. And then the last part is the financial match. So it should be within the family’s budget, it should be affordable. small loans as not as amounts of loans, I, I do not think our problem, because people take loans out for houses, they have a mortgage, okay, a lot of people even get car payments, well, your education is way more valuable than any of those. So investing yourself a little bit. And having a modest loan. And a modest loan to me I define is less than 80% of what you’re going to make in your first year. So if you’re coming out, and you’re going to make you know, and that’s after taxes, so if you make 50,000, your first year, and then after taxes, that’s 40,080% of that could be 30,032. That’s a reasonable amount alone, I think the Federal Direct Student Loan caps, which are set at 27,000 is a good max for most people, that’s going to be payment of about $260 for 10 years. But if you’re if you’ve got a good education, that should be nothing for you to have to pay that. So I don’t feel pain, that is something that is a problem if you’re getting a really good education. And certainly if you can do it without that with 5000 loan or 10,000 or zero, then sure that’s great. But so some loans I’m not opposed to, but a lot of loans. Yeah, I am opposed to a lot of loans, like you said, the 50,000 Plus, I’m not, that’s just not worth it. And it’s hard. I can’t justify that. And I don’t advise that. So I would not say that the finances are the most important thing, I think it’s very important that you get the academic match, social and emotional, and financial match all of them are really important.

Kamila
And another thing I wanted to, like I want you to answer is because the loans who’s actually like suffering from like, you know, loans is like either sometimes the parents, sometimes the student or sometimes both. So I know a lot of parents are willing to pull out like a huge loan, put it on themselves, just so that their kid can attend this, like really nice school that they got into. So what would you suggest to parents, just in that regard, when your kid is really aiming for the stars, they want to go to the school and you can’t realistically afford it, you’re going to need to pull out a lot of loans. What would you sound really

Mark Stucker
big into most parents taking out a lot of loans? Modest maybe. But first of all, most people don’t save enough for their retirement, and you can’t take any loan out for your retirement. And so the first thing is a parent needs to be on pace. And I know that might sound like well, you’re thinking about yourself, not your kid. No, there’s lots of places that you can get an education out there, you don’t have to go to this one school. And so most people, so I’ll first with parents say make sure that you’re on pace for your own retirement. You know, now if you’re in such a strong position with your retirement, that’s you’re in a great place, then maybe you do take some time out of school. And so then we need to take a look at the Parent PLUS versus home equity or HELOC loan, or cash out refi or private we need to look at all of them and see, there’s pros and cons to all of them. But, you know, typically for a parent loan, I want to I want to look at what that payment is going to be monthly and can that EASILY fit into your budget. If it can EASILY fit into your budget. And there’s rare cases where pulling out a pulling money out of your retirement. Makes sense. Usually it doesn’t. But sometimes people have really set themselves up with such a strong financial situation that probably 50,000 out of there. Makes sense, but that’s usually rare. less than 10% of the time was that advisable. You know because you’re losing the compound growth and most people haven’t set themselves up so nicely in there that they, they can afford to do that and lose the compound growth. So you have to be careful with loan. So I’m like, people go to both extremes with loans, they either say no loans at all. And I’m going to challenge that I’m going to say, so you never take the car payment and never get a mortgage ever, right? You buy everything caps. And then people are like, No, I would get a mortgage well, so why would you not invest in yourself. So like, you can’t tell me a one hand education, so important, but then you’ll be willing to do something more for where you live and for your future. So that’s one extreme, but then the other extreme is, whatever it takes, we just have to do it no matter what. And that extreme, I’m also going to really challenge and I work with people that have really large loans afterward, and they’re in bondage. So or they’re either the parent or the student is in bondage. And so I feel like both extremes are heirs.

Kamila
Yeah. And I do find like, a lot of people go to competitive schools, and usually aim for these top schools, their parents are also willing to pull out massive, massive amounts of loans. So I’m not the most financially apt and I don’t understand all the terms that you’re using. But can you suggest some financial strategies for families? Like when should they start and how should they start, like, you know, planning out college and trying to earn as many merit scholarships and eliminate them out of loans they need to pull out.

Mark Stucker
So if a student is really young, I would first recommend you max out your Roth IRA, if you can do a Roth IRA. So if you can’t do a Roth IRA, if your incomes over like, you know, it gets over like the high 100, you may not be able to do a Roth IRA, but that money compounds tax free, you can always pull it out if you need to. So the Roth IRA, if you’re able to do it, I would first prioritize that, I would also look at 529, where your money grows tax free, and in most cases, more than 35 states, you can get it state tax deduction, I would do those things. Otherwise, I would be if you, I would know what your expected family contribution is, know what need based amount of money you qualify for. If you qualify for any at all, it’s very important to know what the need base analysis indicates which you can afford an assessment of your assets and income. Know that in advance, that’s really important. So I see people all the time, if you’re not going to apply for any need based aid, and you’re interested in schools that only give me based aid. And you’re like, there’s no way we’re paying 80,000, then we need to read completely reshape your whole list. So know what know what you qualify for, if you qualify at all from a need base analysis. And then you need to know how to, you need to know how to get merit scholarships, there, majority of schools get merit scholarships, overwhelming majority of them do and in some cases, there can be extremely large. And so those are all things that are important.

Kamila
And besides scholarships, is there anything you as a student can do to combat the like a huge price or sticker price of some colleges? Is there anything besides scholarships that as a student you can do?

Mark Stucker
So there’s two types of scholarships, I want people doing both there’s institutional scholarships on the clouds themselves. And there’s outside private scholarships that come from things like corporations, churches, religious organizations, civic organizations, foundations, philanthropists, so there’s both. So this first thing I want to say, so people shouldn’t know how to have a good scholarship strategy, both institutional and private, outside. Okay, so that’s the first thing that I’ll say they need to, they need to know how to self assess. So that you’re applying to schools for whom you are a real, strong applicant for the institutional money, the institutional money is the larger money, most of the cases, the easier money to get, it’s the money that’s renewable for four years. And if you have a really good institutional scholarship strategy, you should be able to walk away with really substantial scholarship money from a lot of schools that are very, very good schools. And so just just informing, I mean, we cover a lot of this on our podcast. And also, you know, if any of your listeners are interested in working with me directly, I can also work with them directly. And I’ll actually give myself on out because it’s four, I’ll share it, it’s 404-664-4340 404-664-4340. I’ll say that one more time. 404-664-4340. And so people can just text me if they’re interested in doing like a free 45 minute individual consultation session. And I can go over some things with them. If they want to, you know, that’s generally speaking, it pays for itself many times over because what they invest, you know, I show them how to work the whole scholarship game.

Kamila
Yeah, I definitely recommend your podcast too. And the book that goes along with free resource. Yeah, amazing. And it’s a really in depth dive and it’s really education. like listening to one episode, you can learn so many things. And also the book as well, it like your podcast follows the book by chapters. So definitely recommend those two resources. So thank you very much for coming on today was very big honor.

Mark Stucker
You’re welcome. I’m glad that I was helpful to you. And I really want to support what you’re doing. And so when I found out what it was like, I was very inspired that you’re doing this. And I said, I have to try to do what I can to support you and your listeners. And I think that I definitely think that a lot of colleges will be impressed, you know that you took the time to do this to help people too. So keep doing what you’re doing, and I’ll try to do what I can to support you.

Kamila
Thank you very much. And yeah, definitely go check out Mark’s podcast and his book. And there, he does have a website, your college bound kid. That’s the name of your podcast name of your website. So definitely go check that out for a lot more in depth about the college admissions process.

Mark Stucker
Yeah, and the one thing on your cosmic kit.com There’s some very unique things there. Like you can click the interview tab and here 65 interviews we’ve done, you can, you can click this college spotlight tab and the deep dives we’ve done on two, I think about the same that we’re about 65 colleges, there are some and we have a transcript service where you can like look up individual search for things and then go right to the spot where we talked about them. So there’s some things that are only on your cosmic cave comm that you won’t get. I mean, obviously we’re like on Spotify and Apple and Google and you know, and Stitcher and like all the places people have podcasts, but there are some things that are only on the website.

Kamila
Yeah, so definitely go check that out. But other than that, I know you’re busy. We said we were gonna finish around this time. So thank you very much for coming. And have a good day. Okay,

Mark Stucker
I bye. Bye bye.

Kamila
That ends my entire interview with Mark. I hope you enjoyed and I hope you learned a lot. If you’re new to my podcast, make sure to listen to my other episodes. And also subscribe because I will be releasing in the upcoming weeks I’ll be releasing episodes with students from Swarthmore, UVA, University of Virginia and Stanford. You do not want to miss that. Also, make sure to check out Mark’s podcast, your college bound kid and check out his website. Also your college bound kid.com But other than that, I hope to see you in the next one.