How parents and students are deciding which college to choose in an ever-changing landscape

Amna Nawaz:

Well, we're in the middle of that fraught period when high school students are finding out what colleges they have been accepted to and have to then decide, which is the right one for me?

About 60 percent of high school students are going through this process right now.

William Brangham has more on this exciting and bewildering phase in American life and why some select schools may not necessarily be the right fit. It's part of our series Rethinking College.

William Brangham:

Anyone who is in the middle of this or has been through it recently knows exactly what we are talking about. The process of applying to college has likely never been more pressured, with college costs soaring, competition rising, and many schools mired in controversy or conflict with the Trump administration.

Luckily, we have a recurrent guide to this anxious period. Jeff Selingo studies and writes about higher education. And he has a new book, "Dream School: Finding the College That's Right For You."

Jeff, so good to have you back on the program.

You urge families in this book to slow the process down, to start talking to kids even younger, like even 10th grade in high school, about what it is they really want out of higher education. Isn't that extending this stressful period? And what do you want parents to be talking to them about?

Jeffrey Selingo, Author, "Dream School: Finding the College That's Right For You": Well, often, William, what I say in the book is that we often start the college process midstream. What do I mean by that? We just start putting names on a list on a piece of paper.

And where do we get those names from? Those are the names that we see on stickers on the back of car windows. Those are names that we hear in our community. In fact, I did a survey for the book of 3,000-plus parents, and I asked them, how important is prestige to you as a family, as a parent?

And only 16 percent…

William Brangham:

Prestige of the school.

Jeffrey Selingo:

Prestige of the school.

And only 16 percent said it was important to them; 27 percent said it was very important to their kids. But this is where it got interesting; 62 percent said it was important to people in their community. So we often look for that social — those social clues about what is a good school without first in our sophomore and junior year, just understanding, what do we want?

Do we want a big school, small school, big, public, small, private? Do we want rural or urban? And I often tell people, within 100 miles of home, they could go visit every type of college and university, forget about the name, but just go and see what you really want out of the process first, what do you really want out of college, before you start to put names on a piece of paper.

William Brangham:

You have also urged parents to dial back certain things in their conversations. Like, what do you want them to do in that regard?

Jeffrey Selingo:

Well, so often, what — everything we're doing in high school is about getting into college.

Often, as I have been talking about this book, I would have parents or students coming up to me and saying, well, do I need to take one more AP class? Do I need to become captain of yet another team? Do I need to join another club? What else do I need to do to get into X-college?

And what I often ask them, I turn the question around, I say, what do you want to do? Because what's going to happen is, at some point, your application's going to land at one of these super selective colleges, they're going to open it up, they're going to read it in seven or nine minutes, and then they're going to make a decision.

And they have way many more qualified applicants than they have seats. And that decision will come back to you, and hopefully it'll be good, but it might be a denial. And often what I hear from students is, when they get denied, what did I do all that for?

Meaning what they did in high school was to get into college. And we really should return high school to what it was meant to be, a moment of exploration, right? The teenage brain is developing so quickly. It should be a moment of exploration and fun, not about another hoop to jump through to get into college.

William Brangham:

But you're swimming against such — I mean, I know you know this.

Jeffrey Selingo:

It's hard, yes. Yes.

William Brangham:

On your book tour, you must be seeing this everywhere you go.

Jeffrey Selingo:

Yes, people basically nod politely and then they go on and do the same thing over again.

William Brangham:

Exactly.

(Laughter)

William Brangham:

There's so much of this talk about getting into the right school, the perfect school that's going to get you the right network, onto the best job.

And you think a lot of those assumptions are wrong or misleading. Like, explain a bit more about that.

Jeffrey Selingo:

Well, the book is not to say, don't apply to the top colleges, right? But most of the top colleges, their application numbers have tripled in the last 20 years, and the size of their freshman class has stayed the same.

So, even if you're highly qualified, you're more likely to get a denial. And so you need a plan B. And often that plan B could be just as good as those selective colleges, especially when it comes to the job market. We found not only in the research that's done by David Deming at Harvard University, but also in our own research that we did, the graduates of these colleges are ending up at great companies.

They're ending up in the Fortune 500 from lower-ranked schools just as often as those at higher ranked schools. So I often tell parents and students, as they're touring campuses, talk to professors, talk to the career center. Ask them where last year's graduates have gone on in your major. Where have they gone on to work? Where have undergraduates gone on to intern?

That tells you a lot more about the quality of where those students are going to end up than any ranking of a college.

William Brangham:

There is also this new overlay in higher education, and that is the conflict that higher ed is having with the Trump administration, allegations that schools have overlooked antisemitism, pulling back research funds at a lot of these schools.

How do you counsel parents and students to navigate those waters?

Jeffrey Selingo:

You know, I think it's really hard because you're making a decision on a college or university for the next four years. It's very much like I get a lot of questions right now from parents about, what should my kid major in?

I was told three or four years ago computer science was the future. And now we know, because of A.I., it may not be the future necessarily or at least in a big way. And so I think if we're making decisions on short-term things like what's happening right now with the Trump administration or what's happening with A.I. and majors, I think it's too shortsighted.

I think we should be making decisions on the long term, on how we — what we want to pursue long term, on what we think this college will be for the long term. I think we should pay attention to what's happening, but I think there's a lot of noise. And the signal really is a longer-term play when it comes to higher education.

It's not just something that you're going to do for four years.

William Brangham:

It seems like it's also getting back to that essential age-old question about the purpose of education. Are you here to get a job in four years or are you here to learn and become a critical thinker and hone your talents and skills or your art or whatever?

Jeffrey Selingo:

And it's more important than ever with A.I., right?

When you think of how do you complement a technology, rather than compete with it, it is those age-old things that we always knew that college provides, the opportunity to think critically, to problem-solve, to actually just get things done, to work in teams, to read and communicate.

All of those skills are going to be even more important, I believe, in an A.I.-driven world.

William Brangham:

The book is "Dream School: Finding the College That's Right For You."

Jeffrey Selingo, always great to see you. Thank you.

Jeffrey Selingo:

It was great to be here. Thank you.