Everything Counts!

From Hanover, New Hampshire, I'm Lee Coffin, Dark Myths Vice President and Dean of Admission and Financial Aid, and this is admissions beat. One of the most common questions I get from parents and even from students is what counts? I'm just back from a visit to a Dean's program in Atlanta and I lost track of how many people came up to me and said, "So what counts?" And they ask in such an earnest way, hoping that there's a magic bullet that I can share that if you do this, you're getting it in. Or this element is the secret key to the door you're trying to unlock. And the truth is, that's not how it works. Everything counts, different things count based on the applicant, the way the application has been completed, the way the admission officer reads it, the class that's being constructed. And that may not be a satisfying answer to hear everything counts, some things count, they count in different orders, but it's true. So I thought, let's have a conversation that parallels discovery, that allows both juniors in high school to be thinking about the elements that quote count, six months, nine months from now, because that counting should be things that count in discovery. But for seniors who are quietly waving for their applications to be reviewed and decisions to land, a conversation about what counts as a reassurance, that the application that is under review right now is going to have a deliberate, multi-dimensional evaluation that produces a decision. So when we come back, I will welcome my friend and colleague Logan Powell, the dean of admissions at Brown University for a rebroadcast of an episode from season seven. And everyone's so well, we do an episode and I think this is evergreen and this conversation is good year by year by year. So like a good holiday special, it's back. And hopefully the conversation between Logan and me will illuminate this essential slip-pre question, what counts. We'll be right back. Hello, Logan Powell. How are you? Hello, Lee Koff and I'm doing well. Thank you for having me on the pod. You're welcome. So Logan, you're Brown. You and I both started our great gigs, Summer of 2016. So I know you're in your ninth year, turning into your tenth year momentarily. You've had gigs before Brown. Where were you? That's right. So I've been very fortunate like you to have a long career in admission and in selective college admission. So no one plans in college to go into college admission. It's something that most of us in my experience sort of fall into. And I feel very lucky to have fallen into this career because I've really loved it and have done it for a very long time now. So I began my career at my college, Alma Mater, Logan College, started working in admission there and then was very fortunate after that to work at Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And from there I went on to Princeton University. I was the director of admission at Princeton University for nine years. And as you mentioned, I'm finishing my ninth year of time now at Brown University where I'm the associate provost for enrollment and dean of admission. So a sparkling resume and one of the reasons I thought you'd be a great guest on this topic is you have worked at three of the most selective universities, I mean, three of the IBS first of all. But also with Bowden, you've spent your whole career in this really narrow end of the selectivity range where merit really matters. So you've seen it in lots of different ways and I thought. But I always ask first time guests to go all the way back to high school. But how did Logan go from home to Bowden? What was the story of your own search way back when? Well, so it's a really good question, Lee. And I pinch myself every day. I come to work because I was a low income kid. My whole life I grew up totally poor in Florida, literally grew up in a trailer park in Florida. Single parent household, my mother was a secretary for whole life. We got by on food stamps and government assistance and church charities and things like that. Second hand clothes. And so I was not part of a college going culture in my little neighborhood, which was this little trailer park in Northeast Florida. So all of these places that I've worked and attended either for undergrad or graduate school were completely foreign to me. I had never heard of any of them. I didn't know anything about this. You know, when I was growing up in Florida, for me, it was just how do I get out of here? How do I get a job? And what comes next just in terms of being able to secure a meal, frankly? And so answering your question, I knew that financial aid was going to be huge and important because we, again, we're living on government assistance. And so there was no money at all to afford college. We could barely afford at that time to even visit colleges. So it was hard to even contemplate, you know, when I saw the mistake or price of these schools, which back then were obviously dramatically different than they are now. But the shock was still the same, you know, for a family of three, I have a younger sister, but for a family of three, making, you know, 30,000 dollars a year back then at most, it was inconceivable that I'd go to college and then go on to graduate school. And I have to say, by the way, I'm an avid listener of your podcast. And so I thought it was really, I thought it was great. Your first episode in this season was about beginning the search. And you know, whether you want a big school or a small school, you know, is there a major you want? And so I talked about the the peas and the seas and the eyes and all of that was great advice. For me, cost was really a huge factor. And so I began by search thinking about who had the most generous financial aid. And that led me incidentally to these schools that we've been talking about because they they happen to be the most generously financial aid. I was also just I was a nerd, you know, it was a nerd and a water in high school. And so I wanted a place that had generous financial aid that had a great academic environment. And that had a strong, you know, sort of community, community of current students and community of alumni. And so I looked at a lot of schools in the Northeast, just, you know, wanted to get away from the environment I was in. It was very, very happy, very lucky to have a number of choices and was, was honored to go to Bowdoin and loved it there. And I've also loved every institution at which I've worked. I think they're all special places. And every time I visit to college campus, when I visit handoverly, I think how could, how could anyone not fall in love with Dartmouth? You know, every college in university I visit, I think is an incredible place. So I was lucky that I was excited about going to college almost anywhere, but affordability and fit more clearly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that. It's both poignant and powerful. I mean, I have a similar background, maybe a step less socioeconomically severe than how you grew up. But similarly, you know, I often look around and think, how did I end up in the seat? I mean, because nothing in my origin story ever suggested Lee would be sitting where I sit. I mean, that's true for you too. But to listeners, it's an example of lots of us landing these roles from really humble origins. And in many ways, merit opened the door. So here's the topic. Right. That little work hard. They do well. They tell their story. They get in. And life takes a turn in a really different direction. So Logan, is you ponder this topic, you know, what counts, but to be even more precise, the five letter word merit? What does that mean to you? Yeah. So it's interesting, Leah, been thinking about this and I actually have been thinking about it just since we started this conversation because we've talked about what counts. And what comes to mind is the old adage that not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted. There are things that count in this process that are not quantifiable. And I think that's part of the brilliance of the processes that many of these highly selective or selective, holistic, follow, you know, generally holistic review colleges and universities employ that certainly, you know, the families who were listening to this podcast are thinking about SAT scores or ACT scores and GPAs and class ranks and, you know, how many extra curricular activities, you know, they're involved in, but there's all this other, you know, stuff. We'll call it, you know, there are all these other factors that you just can't quantify, but that are equally important. And I think that's the character counts, but how do you quantify it, you know, leadership in the classroom or in the community counts, but how do you count that? How do you quantify it? You know, quality of writing for the community, all of those things count, but I think that's the hard part for families to navigate is all of the additional, non-quantifiable pieces of information that we consider that are really critically important to the evaluation that so it provides a little bit more clarity and transparency on how all of those things come together. No, that's the goal, because I've smiled when you were giving me adage. Not everything that can be counted counts, not everything that counts can be counted. It's literally taped next to my computer. Albert Einstein said it for posterity, and I use it every time I do reader training, because I think those words from Einstein himself put us spotlight on the point you're making, that we see lots of things, many of them very quantifiable, and I think a lot of people go to the quantifiable elements first as, oh, that's what counts, they do count. And it places that are more open selectivity, that's all that counts. But as you move into the selective range and go all the way to the edge of it where, you know, the acceptance rates are low, that's not enough. And I said to someone yesterday, that's a foundational consideration, you have to have the merit of being able to perform in a classroom, but then what animates that classroom and the community around that classroom, that counts. Maybe even more so than the grades and the GPA. But let's, for listeners, let's start with the obvious part and talk about data. So, you know, when I do junior programs, I will often say that you have the data, and then you have voice. You have numbers and you have your narrative. You have what's quantifiable and what's qualitative. All this alliteration, like the D's, the N's, the Q's. But I think the numbers are what jump out of everybody. If you're in a high school with a Naviance platform, and you can see previous decisions of students from your school to that college, you see here's an access with your grade point average, here's an access with your test scores. And here's a little figures that said, who got in, who didn't? To me, that's a really flat representation of America's just looking at the numbers, but for a number of purposes, Logan, let's go into the data and just kind of tick through them really quickly. So, talk about data. Sure. So, when we think about data in our process, and I hope this answers your question, Lee, because I think families do get overwhelmed with what are your averages and people looking at this is one of the things that I try to tell families all the time. People see averages as not as averages, but as minimums. And it's something that I hope we can sort of recast the narrative around that there's a broad range of academic qualifications that we consider in our process. And so, when we begin our process here at Brown, we're starting, of course, with a threshold of just asking the question, do we have enough information here to make an assessment about whether or not the student can be academically successful at Brown? And for the vast, vast majority of our applicants, the answer is a resounding yes. Our selection process is not built around choosing who can do the work at Brown and who can't. It's choosing from among the many, many, many, many qualified students in our applicant who could clearly do quite well at Brown or any other college university. And then we begin the really tough part of selecting from within that group. And it's humbling because in every one of these cases, you're thinking, my gosh, I didn't do these things when I was in high school. These students are incredible. How did they do it all? And I will tell you, as a bit of an aside, I was on a panel years ago and someone asked me, what about the admission process, if anything, could I change? And I said that I wish we could communicate personally with every student we were not able to admit, to tell them how great they are. We didn't, and the situation that we face, and that you face, and that many of us face is not in choosing who is qualified and who is not. It's these really agonizing decisions among the most incredibly qualified students one can imagine. So in terms of data, the advice I would give, if that's what you're asking really, is the family certainly should be guided by general thresholds, but they shouldn't be dissuaded or discouraged from applying if they think that college university is a good fit. And they're generally within the range, because there are all these other factors like whizzily and grit and leadership and community impact that we're also looking at that are not measured by the SAT or ACT or GPA. And so I would say family should not discount those non-data elements in the application. Yeah. Well, I think you're giving a good cautionary warning around the power of a mean or an average versus a range, as people are looking at the data and saying, "That's what I have to have." I mean, how many times have you been asked, "What score do I need to give in?" And they're like, "Depends. It depends where you are. It depends where you fall on the range." But you know, and I think about the day that part of our work and the merit that flows out of an academic assessment, you know, listen to us. We're looking at your transcript. We're looking at the courses on that transcript relative to what your high school offers. We can come back and talk about that for a second. Especially 11th and 12th grade. So, rigor. You know, what does the school teach? What did you take? And then, how did you do? Are there patterns? You know, I used myself. I was a humanity social science person. So I took all the honors courses I could take, but I really leaned into English history, foreign language, more than science because it just wasn't my thing. That's a pattern. You know, my grades, you know, if I got a B in high school, it used to be in science. The testing usually syncs with that too. So all of these pieces tell the story of, "Can you do the work? Are you prepared for the curriculum we offer?" And that's a type of merit that's not very sexy. You know, being able to say, you know, as we both must do on the first day of school, I certified that everybody matriculating today is comparably prepared. That's merit. Right. That's exactly right. And, you know, just as I think a good juxtaposition to this, I was science-marked. You know, I love biology in the opposite of me. Exactly. Exactly. And so, you know, it's important to say that in addition to what we've been talking about, you know, we don't, in terms of data, we don't look for perfection. How many times have we said, "Lean, there's no minimum." There is no process for students above a certain test score and students below a certain test score. It doesn't work that way. We really just open every application individually and we look at it individually, contextually and holistically. And we're looking at who the person is. And so, it's not just the test score. It's, you know, it's, what does that test score mean in the context in which that student was educated and raised? That's really the question we're asking. It's not, what is the test score relative to a 1,600 or a 36? It's what's the test score relative to the opportunities that that student has had in their, you know, 17 or 18 years at the time of application, if they're applying as a first-year student. That's really the question. And I think that's the question that families need to remember. We're actually starting with is not measurement against perfection or against some arbitrary goal. It's, you know, it's a look into what has the student done based on the opportunities that have been available to them. That's what got to the discussion. I think most people either don't know it or don't believe it. That we really do zero in on, where are you? What's your high school? What's the community that surrounds that high school? I mean, we've started talking about environmental factors. Like, what are they? You know, what percentage of your class typically goes to a four-year college? And the higher that is, is usually a sign that there's some resources in that community that prepare students really well. And going to college is more than norm than not. And you go the other direction. I just was looking at a file for my high school alma mater and I thought, oh, only 64% went to a four-year college that I didn't know that and it didn't surprise me. So talk a little bit more about context Logan. Like, why is that important? Like, how does that help us assess merit? Context is important for us, bus meaning college admission professionals because we're not just looking at achievement at a moment in time. We're also looking at trajectory. We're looking at what is the arc that the student is on? You know, can we see that there's a pattern of growth? Can we see that the student is exceeding expectations? And so it's not just looking at, you know, what is the GPA? What is the class rank right now? Let's see what the story is of how the student has achieved over a period of time. And what is the likeliest continuous arc for that student's growth? And so for many of our applicants, that means their test scores are far from perfect. But what they're demonstrating in their application is this remarkable sense of curiosity and desire for intellectual challenge and demonstration of growth and interest in pushing themselves, you know, beyond what would be sort of normally required of them. That's the kind of excellence in context we're looking for because if you think about if you think about a graph with X and Y axes and you're putting together a series of dots in that graph. And what you want to do is try to figure out where's the line going. And we're putting all those dots on the graph and we're saying, what's the likely trajectory of this applicant? And if we see that there is a growth trajectory in that applicant, even if they're not, you know, perfect test scores, that's okay because we can see that they're going to continue to grow and push themselves and ask for help. But, you know, do the kinds of things in our institutions that we really be proud of and that we would expect them to do. Those are cases that are really incredibly inspiring. Now, I should also say there are students who at their present time when they apply are, you know, really simply extraordinary and, you know, have taken advantage of every opportunity they have and they are, you know, in their superstars. But those are not the only students we admit. We admit students who are very much on the rise and demonstrate the capacity to be superstars in their lives. Well, it gets to this really elusive word potential. Jerome Carabell from Berkeley wrote the chosen history of selective college admission and he identifies potential in that work as one of the most important things a college can acknowledge and it's exciting to acknowledge it. Again, talk about a fuzzy concept to me reading a file and saying the merit of this person is potential. Like, you know, the evidence in this file is saying this flower hasn't fully bloomed yet, but it's going to be amazing when it does and being able to honor that. But I ask you about this context piece of Logan because I think it's really important for listeners to understand that, you know, we talk about quantitative and we talk about qualitative. And the context is where those two cues kind of combine where we're able to look at a number and say, what does this tell us about where it was produced and what were the elements that, you know, that B plus might be from a high school where nobody gets an A. And I think that the fact that A, that A might be at a school where 90, I really filed the other day where 90 something percent of the seniors have an A average or higher. Just great. Right. But it's like that A in that context was not as noteworthy as an A from a place where very few people get A. So like we read that way and merit around the academic piece flows accordingly. And the thing also the reemphasizes, yeah, we're representing two places with single digit acceptance rates in our part of this admission spectrum. The academic framing of a file is really important, but the story doesn't stop there. As you move in the other direction, I was just talking to a colleague was off on a junior college trip with his son and they were out west visiting some of the big state universities and he came back and he said, my son loved them all. And the admit rates are all 70 plus. And I said, yep, they're great places and he's probably going to get in because he's a really good student. And they're looking at merit as defined by can you do the work and they're big enough so that these other factors show up in the law of averages and he said that's really exciting. I said, yeah, so you know, depending on where you land on where you're applying. This can be easy or this can be a bit more sticky. So let's stick with the sticky side because we live in the we live in the Venus flytrap where it's like, I thought gummy. So let's talk about the other things. I mean, you mentioned grit. We've talked about curiosity and character. Where do you see that? Like, where does that merit sit? I think about it in this perspective. We are educational institutions. Our mission is certainly to create new knowledge, but it's also in some way to share the knowledge that we come in with. And we want students, faculty, member staff members to share their knowledge, create new knowledge, but also be willing to adjust and grow to the knowledge that they receive. That's critical to what we do, right? And it's it's the quintessential growth mindset. In fact, we don't want people to come in with a fixed mindset. We want people to come in with, you know, certainly a strong base of knowledge and even strong opinions. But we also wanted to be open to the opinions and ideas of others and not closed off to, you know, the reality that there are many, many different perspectives in the world that they should be and every student should be open to hearing about those in a, you know, in a way that that emphasizes simple discourse. So think about when you were in college, like, was it classroom? We're interesting when everybody agreed or when there were different points of view. The most vivid memories I have in college were when we vehemently disagreed on a topic. And we then rolled right into the dining hall and we had a two hour meal and we left his best friends. Yeah, no, I mean, I would say the same thing like I think about some of the late night debates in the dorm. Yeah, we'd order a pizza between the morning. I had one of my friends, without his yell, I'm a communist. I think everything he would introduce and grew up on Long Island. It was a really funny like the politics and the demographics weren't what you would have thought. He would push and it would be these really interesting conversations about economics and politics and we didn't agree, but it was interesting. And that's so, you know, what I'm raising this because as admission officers, we, if we're going to, if that conversation is going to happen, we have to do the best we can to make sure the viewpoints are in the class. That's right. And it's so similar, similar to your experience was my experience in college where I love sitting down with people whose perspectives were just completely completely different from mine. And we would have very strong disagreements about things and we were still very close friends at the end of it all. And so that's really, I think sort of the essence of what these college communities should be. And so you asked the question, how do we get a sense of that? Where do you see? We can see it in a variety of ways. We can see it in essays, you know, the personal statements, we can see it in supplemental essays. We very often last questions that try to get to the heart of that, the ability to engage in civil discourse disagreements, but civil disagreement. We try to get a sense of that. Some schools will offer interviews, some schools like Brown offer the ability to do video introduction, you know, where we can just learn more about a student, their interest, their perspectives and what they would add to the conversations on campus. But there, I think there's a much broader range of perspectives that we want that we seek out that we actively recruit than people might really imagine. And so we're going all over the country and around the world to recruit in quotes, students, very specifically, because we think they'll add a different perspective to the campus community. And that's really important. And so for those applicants who are listening and thinking about what to put in their applications, it's really important to know that offering a perspective that may not be the predominant perspective you think we have on our campuses can be really valuable because we want that perspective represented. So you and I leave we care deeply about having more rural first gen students on campus. We care deeply about having student veterans on campus. You know, we could go on down the list and say it's really important to have these perspectives represented and to have their voices heard. And so, you know, we really actively seek them out in the process. And they should tell their stories in the application through essays, interviews, video introductions, whatever platform the college university may offer. No, I mean, that's the type of merit. That's right. Yeah, I mean, I often, I mean, we're talking about academics, we're talking about personal merit. There's almost a third category here, like institutional merit, like what goes into the way this campus gets built. And how do we proactively find it? Ask for it. Think about it. And knit it all together. I think about these perspectives, whether we call it merit or we call it, let's call it, there's a value, let's say there's a value to those perspectives that is not quantifiable. That is really really important. It is valuable to have those different perspectives represented on campus. All of the students who were thinking about applying to college will born into a set of circumstances, whatever happened to be. But there's value in those circumstances, there's value in the perspective that they bring. And we're going to get as strong a sense of that as we possibly can in the application process. And, you know, students, you'll tell us about these values in your essays. Your teachers will tell us about them in the recommendations they do. And some places will have an interview. Brown does not. Dartmouth does. And that's another platform. Your extra curriculars will be places where the things you care about show up. And there's not a right wrong answer here. That's exactly, you know, I was thinking about this lead before, before the pod. I was thinking, you know, who's sort of the modal listener of your podcast. And thinking it's a very high achieving and striving student from, you know, probably a wide array of backgrounds. But it's someone who prior to a test asks the teacher, what's going to be on this test? Mr. Kaufman, Mr. Powell, how should I prepare for this test? And there's a book or there's study materials and the teacher will say, these are all of the topics that are on the test. And you have a pretty good sense of how to prepare for it. And then you get to the college application. And you think, they haven't given me the answers. I don't know. And I think there's this moment of, you know, students being prepared for tests and papers for, you know, most of their young lives and they get to this point. And it feels like a test. But it feels like a test for the first time in their lives. They don't have all of the answers to. And I think that's really challenging. And so I think, you know, when I talk to families, one of the things I try to say is don't try to crack the test. It's not, it's not a test. The college application process is not a test. It's a process because people always say that the college admission process is a total crap shoe. Right. How many times have we heard this? It's a total crap shoe. You know, it's a, it's a lottery system. No one knows. And one of the things that you said that I try to repeat and I don't get it quite right. So you'll tell me what your exact quote is what you said. You say that it's unpredictable, but it's not random. And it always says we make her very deliberate. They're just not knowable or predictable in advance. And so I think trying to, you know, cheat the process or anticipate an outcome is going to be very nerve wracking. And so I've always said to families, you know, it can be anxiety inducing, but I also assure you that your level of anxiety is not going to change the outcome. So try to enjoy the process as much as you possibly can. Yeah. No. And I have started saying the work we do is informed subjectivity. Yeah, it's, it's not random, but it's not predictable. You know, you've got a big scrum of high quality students, comparably credentialed in context. And we're making decisions towards a scarce outcome, a seat in a class versus a lot of volume to a little economics 101 there. So when you say what counts, everything counts, but some things might count more than others, depending on how you put it together. I mean, I love having this conversation in February because we're in the midst of it. And, you know, the five are reading day and I go through 25 or 30 of them. Each, each evaluation is individualized. I mean, I like one to two to five to 12 to 15. Each of them has told a different story that I respond to. And the values are in this macro way or are they are they accomplished people? Yes. Are they helping me build a community on my campus that each of them thrives and the community as a whole thrived? Yes. And like all that comes out and then informed way, but it requires professional judgment. Right. I think there's there are parts of our process, particularly for those of us who have a residential college campuses that is really often overlooked in this. And that is, you know, simply asking the question, do I think this person will be a good roommate? Do I think this person will be a good classmate? Do I think this person will be a good teammate? And, you know, going back to your question about merit, how do you measure that? There's a test for that. You know, students, students aren't sitting down for three hours on a Saturday taking a test about whether or not they would be a good roommate or a good teammate or a good classmate. But all of those things have merit in our process because we're creating a community and, you know, you and I say this Lee all the time. And, and I don't know that we, I'll speak for myself. I don't know that I ever really explain what that means in our committee process. And what that means is that we really are asking those questions. We have some very, very bright students, many, many of them in our applicant pool, many of them who stand out are students who are really quite bright, who show, you know, growth mindset, growth trajectory, who we think would just be a fantastic fit with this community. And, you know, the community is a fantastic roommate and teammates and classmates and, you know, and future Brunonians. There's some, there's value in that there's merit in that, but it's very hard to measure if you're a high school senior and you're thinking about flying to college. But, but trust us listeners, these are the things that we're thinking about and looking for the application. And, and I think that's a good, that's a good, like vocabulary or today. No, you know, Logan, I, I was reading a file the other day and I wasn't going to be too specific because it's still an active file, but that was about sitting in the coffee shop doing calculus homework and an older woman struck up a conversation with the student and the student said, Calculate problem sets weren't going to happen. She needed someone to talk to and it was just beautiful essay about shifting your plan and having a conversation with someone who he had met before probably wouldn't see again. And I remember reading it thinking what a lovely kid that essay had merit because I thought I want a person like this in my community and I wrote it up accordingly. Now in the big pile of people who have done well in high school, the student was among them, but the essay showed a humanity that felt powerful to me and didn't see that coming until I got to it. I didn't expect my eyes to well. It's like, I went to the essay, but they did and think for listeners, the thing to remember is that the humanity of the admission officers like we're not robots. And now we're reading and thinking and feeling as you share it with us. I often think about something that I heard earlier in my career, which is that in in the work that we do, we are embarking on the process of creating a 70 year relationship. And that, you know, that really stuck with me and I didn't really take it to heart when I was a younger admission officer in the way that I take it to heart now because I have seen students from the time they were, you know, first years or sophomores in high school through the time they applied to college through the time they graduated from college and they're now off, you know, and their young adults in the world. It's incredible to see that growth and it really is the beginning of creating a relationship between the institution and the individual, but also between a large group of individuals. And that's something, you know, you talked about the humanity of it and the humanity of it is central to our process. And there are all these, you know, they're now very, you know, they're very tried and cliche about, you know, how many students with X incredible SAT scores we don't take or how many valedictorians we don't take. And I hesitate to share those stats because I worry that in trying to send the message that we're not just looking for the valedictorians that were, you know, scaring a lot of people away. So I am not going to quote that particular data point that you know that there is that there is very inherently a humanity in our process because we are creating this relationship when we're creating the community and that's invaluable to what we do. Yeah, well in between us, we have each worked at eight very selective colleges and universities. And so I'm raising that to say like, you know, you represent Brown, I represent Dartmouth, this podcast is for a more universal audience, but we have a reference point of eight institutions. Do you think what we're saying is true across those eight? I mean, have you seen what we're saying, Harvard and Bowdoin, I saw it at Concollege and Tops, I mean, I do, I do. I think the beauty of it also though is that every one of those institutions has and and probably many others have a similar foundation of looking for, you know, academic potential academic growth growth mindset. But they're all a little bit different, you know, so it's not going to be the case that Dartmouth is looking for exactly the same kind of student that Brown is and Brown is going to be a little different from Princeton and Princeton is a little different from Harvard and you know, you can go on down the line like that school after school after school. And I think that's the beauty of it is that, you know, there's the same question of can you be academically successful. But then the nuances at each school, I think are what create some of that variability families in the applicant process would call it unpredictability, but I think that's, you know, and that's the frustration of why are there outcomes that are so seemingly different and unpredictable. Why did, you know, why didn't one applicant get into this school and not that school? Why did the classmate get in, but, you know, but I didn't and it's because we're all looking for something that's just a little bit different whether it's, you know, you need to strengthen some part of an academic program or music program or a athletic program, etc. They're going to be these little differences from one school to the other or in some cases some big differences from one school to another, but I think that's actually great. I think it's good that we're looking for slightly different things, even though it is probably one of the more vaccine parts of the process for perspective applicants. No, I think that's right. I think the what's vaccine is the fact that we cannot say a plus b plus c equals admit. That's right. It's not an equation. It's not, you know, like our international listeners might be familiar with university admission where you take an exam and you pass the exam you're in. Right. And that's not how we do it. And it's not how we've done it for a long time. And that opens up the topic of well, it can't be fair. And I mean, that's where the meritocracy piece is it fair? I think imagining a certain set of academic qualifications as being necessary, but not sufficient. Yeah. You know, you're able to show that that you can do the work at our institutions is necessary. Yeah. But it's sufficient necessarily. That's not where we're drawing the line. We do ask the question, can you, can you be academically successful? And then beyond that is going back to the beginning, me, all of these things that count that can't be counted. And that's that that's where, you know, there's value and that's where there's merit and experience that was not quantified in a test. Yeah, we come back to Einstein at the end. And yeah, by the way, I didn't know that I didn't know that that Einstein said that. I knew it was I'm making any comparison. I actually had no idea, but it was such a it's such a powerful concept. Yes, that's what made me. So thank you for sharing that that was my welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. I stumbled upon a bit ago and did a screenshot. And in the picture I found he's got his tongue out. He's got this really goofy, you know, the wild hair and this tongue out. And it's fun. So how would you wrap this Logan like what like back to the question, what counts? I think the answer is everything. That's helpful. Well, I know, you know, I'm trying to think about, you know, if you're, you know, if you're a listener, you know, what you what you take away from this that will be helpful. And I think it is a couple things. It is one, everything counts. It does. I mean, in a process that is individualized, holistic and contextual everything counts. The other thing I think that's really important is that I think there's value in working hard for the simple reward of having done the hard work. And not knowing when it's going to pay off, but trusting that it will. And it may not pay off in the way that you anticipated, but it will pay off. And I think, you know, we live in a world, we live in a society where there are certain sort of golden ring achievements. And if you, if you, if you, if you attain this particular goal, if you achieve this particular goal, you have succeeded. But I think it's such a narrow definition that it leads to disappointment. And, and, and I think long term, you know, giving advice to like my younger self, I would never, I would never pretend to give advice to others, but giving advice to my younger self. You know, I would say there's, there is value in just working hard and being open to new ideas and new possibilities and trusting that the hard work that you put in will pay off, but never in a way that you that you could have or would have predicted. Well said. And I, I think my two cents on top of that would just be merit lives in places you don't always expect. It's our job as admission officers to read the file to sniff it out to contextualize it and to make sense of it as it relates to you. Logan, thanks for joining me on admission. Thank you, Lee, for having me. Hope you'll have me back. I will. I will. So not only did we have him back, we had him back verbatim from the episode we aired a year ago and on hearing it again, I'm as impressed by his wisdom as I was when we first recorded it. So I hope that that ring true for all of you. Next week, we will have a trio of guidance counselors join me for a conversation I'm calling let's just see what happens, which is something these counselors hear a lot from parents and sometimes students who are tempted to ignore the guidance they get. And so this episode will be a cautionary tale parents about how to listen to the experts who are giving you their considered guidance that's next week. For now, this is Lee Coffin from Dartmouth College. Thanks for listening. [Music]