Not early Emily Gilmore. I have no desire to run the DAR or terrorize caterers. But I probably would be good at both.

I want to be Nantucket Emily Gilmore.

I want to move to Nantucket, become a docent at the whaling museum, and spend my days gleefully terrifying schoolchildren with historically accurate descriptions of the whaling industry.

This is mid-life to me.

But I digress. Or maybe I don’t.

Because lately I have also been thinking about Nantucket baskets and college admissions influencers.

Stay with me.

Nantucket Lightship baskets were not invented as expensive handbags.

They were baskets.

Men stationed aboard lightships off Nantucket began weaving them during long stretches at sea. They were sturdy, practical objects, made by hand around wooden molds.

Then the baskets came ashore.

Over time, the form evolved. Lids were added. Handles. Decorative elements. They became purses, and the baskets that had once been associated with working men at sea became associated with something entirely different: Nantucket society.

Eventually, having the basket meant something beyond having a beautifully made basket.

It meant you knew the tradition.

It meant you belonged to the place.

And eventually, it could mean you belonged to a certain class of people who belonged to the place.

The basket went from being useful, to being valued for its craftsmanship, to being valued for what it signaled.

And that’s the part I can’t stop thinking about. Because college has undergone a strangely similar transformation.

But first, my phone is absolutely listening to me.

I realize everyone says this isn’t exactly how algorithms work. I remain unconvinced.

My phone has somehow determined that my two primary interests are Bama Rush and college counseling companies with some combination of Ivy, Elite, or Crimson in their names.

It is an extraordinarily specific form of psychological warfare and I am getting sick of influencers.

“The essay that got me into Stanford.”

“The extracurriculars that got me into Harvard.”

“Five things you MUST do to get into an Ivy.”

And my personal favorite genre: the 19-year-old explaining how college admissions works because they successfully completed college admissions once.

Getting into Harvard is impressive. It does not make you an expert on getting someone else into Harvard.

You possess the thing.

That is different from understanding how the thing is made.

And I think college admissions has developed a Nantucket basket problem.

A college education is useful. It has a purpose. You study things. You meet people. You encounter ideas that challenge you. You discover things you didn’t know you cared about. Ideally, you leave knowing more about the world and considerably less certain that you know everything.

But somewhere along the way, admission to a tiny group of colleges became something beyond an education.

It became a signal.

IYKYK.

And once something becomes a status symbol, an industry inevitably develops around helping people acquire it.

Do these extracurriculars.

Take these classes.

Start this nonprofit.

Write this essay.

Build this “spike.”

Follow my strategy.

Carry this basket.

But here’s what bothers me most about all of it.

It creates the impression that everyone else knows something you don’t.

Someone else’s kid has the right internship. Someone else’s kid started earlier. Someone else’s kid has a better extracurricular profile. Someone else’s parents hired the right person who knows the secret thing you somehow missed.

So you keep watching.

And clicking.

And worrying.

Because the algorithm doesn’t need you to be better informed.

It needs you to be just uncertain enough to watch the next video.

College admissions anxiety isn’t an unfortunate side effect of this content.

It’s the business model.

And the content works particularly well because it removes all the complicated context that makes college admissions college admissions.

Take “the essay that got me into Stanford.”

The problem isn’t necessarily that the essay wasn’t good.

The problem is that we’ve removed the outcome from its history.

We see the basket without the basketmaker.

One student. One application. One admissions cycle. One institution building one particular class.

All of that disappears, and what remains is the shiny object: Stanford.

Then someone sells you instructions for how to get one of your own.

Except there are no instructions.

There are absolutely ways to become a stronger applicant. There are smart application strategies. There are people who have spent years doing this work and understand how admissions offices operate.

Expertise matters.

But expertise should help a student understand the process.

It shouldn’t convince them the process can be hacked.

And it definitely shouldn’t begin with the assumption that the objective is an Ivy League school.

Because before we start teaching kids how to get the basket, shouldn’t we ask why they want one?

Maybe they genuinely love the basket.

Great — I love the basket.

Maybe they’ve studied how it’s made. They appreciate its history and craftsmanship. They’ve wanted one forever.

Also great.

But maybe they want the basket because they like what they think carrying it will say about them.

Those are two very different things.

The same is true of colleges.

If a student loves Princeton, let’s talk about Princeton.

Do you love the idea of doing independent work and eventually disappearing into a senior thesis? Is there a professor whose research you’ve actually read? A department that approaches something you care about in a way you haven’t encountered before? Can you picture yourself eating dinner in one of the residential colleges, joining an eating club, writing for The Daily Princetonian, or spending far too much time in Firestone Library?

What is it about Princeton—the actual place, not the orange sweatshirt—that you want?

Because if we take away the name, the ranking, the acceptance rate, and the ability to tell people you go to Princeton, there should still be something left that you want.

But if the answer eventually boils down to some version of, “Because getting in would prove that I’m smart,” then we have something much more important to talk about.

A college cannot prove that.

An admissions decision cannot prove that.

And no 18-year-old should need it to.

This isn’t an argument against highly selective colleges any more than it’s an argument against Nantucket baskets.

They’re lovely baskets.

There are also extraordinary colleges with very famous names.

The problem starts when we mistake the symbol for the thing that gave the symbol value in the first place.

The basket matters because of the craft, history, place, and people behind it.

A college matters because of the professors, students, ideas, opportunities, relationships, and experiences inside it.

When we reduce either one to something recognizable from across the room, we’ve missed the most interesting part.

That’s an awfully heavy job to give a basket.

It’s an even heavier one to give a college.

So perhaps Emily Gilmore had it right.

Move to Nantucket.

Learn the history.

Understand what you’re actually looking at.

And, when necessary, scare the children with the truth.

But there is one thing that eventually becomes true for every kid applying to one:

There is a point when you have done what you can do.

The next thing is to wait.

At my cousin Peter’s rehearsal dinner in Newport, Rhode Island on Thursday, the bride’s best friend told a story about the two of them in college.

During finals period freshman year, Grace’s best friend had written the date of her final economics exam incorrectly in her paper planner. As they were walking across Boston College’s quad, a classmate yelled to her to ask how the exam had gone.

Grace’s best friend confidently called back that it was tomorrow.

The exam had, in fact, been that morning.

The best friend proceeded to panic.

Grace, however, did not.

She swiftly got her best friend to a bench, helped her figure out what actions they could take, and calmly emailed the professor explaining what had happened.

And then Grace said:

“Let’s play I Spy.”

Her best friend said she looked at Grace like she had three heads, which seems fair.

Let’s be clear: the best friend had just missed her final exam. Her grade was hanging in the balance. Somewhere, a professor had an email in their inbox that would determine what happened next.

And Grace … wanted to identify something old? Something blue?

Thinking it through, Grace’s logic was airtight.

The best friend had emailed her professor.

There was nothing else she could do until the professor responded.

So, they sat on the bench and played I Spy.

As humans, we are not very good at the part where there is nothing left to do.

Especially in college admissions.

There is so much doing built into this process.

Take the harder class. Study for the ACT again. Visit the college. Write the essay. Rewrite the essay. Ask for the recommendation. Submit the application. Send the test scores. Check the portal.

Doing feels productive.

Waiting does not.

And yet eventually, every student in this process reaches the bench.

The application has been submitted. The interview is over. The admissions office has the materials.

This is where people start looking for another lever to pull.

Should I send another recommendation? Email my admissions officer? Update them about this award? Visit again? Should my counselor call?

Sometimes there is another thing to do.

Often, there isn’t.

And doing something because waiting feels unbearable is not the same thing as doing something useful.

I see this outside admissions, in my own life, too.

Sometimes, I send an email and check repeatedly for the response 11 minutes later. I wait not-very-patiently for test results. I stress while someone else makes a decision, wondering if I gave them all the information they need.

I wait for news I desperately want to control.

My brain immediately starts looking for something else I can do to change an outcome that, at least for the moment, is no longer mine to change.

Grace, at 19, understood something on that bench that I, at 44, am still trying to learn.

Sometimes waiting is the appropriate action.

You send the email.

You submit the application.

You ask the question.

And then, until there is new information, you go live your life.

That matters enormously for teenagers applying to college.

What most people forget is that senior year is still happening while colleges are making decisions.

There are football games and school plays and dinners with your family. There are friends you will not live down the street from next year. There are teachers whose classrooms you will never sit in again. There are ordinary Tuesday afternoons that you don’t yet realize you are going to miss.

You can spend that time mentally refreshing a portal.

Or you can recognize that, for now, the application is out of your hands.

There will be a time to respond to whatever comes next.

A deferral may require an update. A waitlist may require a letter. A rejection may require a little time before you look at the rest of the list.

When there is something to do, do it.

But don’t confuse anxiety with an assignment.

Maybe that’s where this whole series has been headed.

You can take challenging classes. You can find things you care about. You can build a thoughtful college list. You can write the essays and submit the applications.

You can do your part.

But eventually, the college gets to do its part.

And you get to go back to being a teenager.

There will come a point when there is nothing left to optimize, fix, add, email, or check.

You’ve sent the email.

You’ve submitted the application.

You’ve done what you can do.

And until the professor writes back, you might as well find something old or blue.

No one puts something on your seventeen-year-old’s head, considers their intelligence, character, ambition, work ethic and potential, and announces:

Northwestern!

Or Michigan. Or Boston College. Or wherever they are apparently destined to belong.

I think we know this. But we don’t always act like we know it.

We talk about admissions as though colleges are sorting students according to merit.

Work hard enough, take enough difficult classes, score high enough, distinguish yourself enough, and eventually the system will put you where you belong.

It won’t.

Because admissions officers aren’t sorting kids.

They’re building a class.

And those are two very different things.

A college might need a goalie. It might be trying to grow a new academic program. It might want more students from a particular part of the country. It might need more full-pay students. It might have a new president with a new set of priorities.

And next year, those priorities may change.

This is the part of the black box I wish more families understood.

Your child can do everything “right” and still not be what a particular college needs in a particular year.

That doesn’t mean admissions is random.

It means admission is not a reward for being good.

And denial isn’t a punishment for failing to be good enough.

There is no hat examining the contents of your teenager’s soul and declaring where they belong.

Which is actually good news.

Because if colleges are going to build their classes according to priorities we can’t know and can’t control, teenagers can stop trying to reverse-engineer themselves into applicants they think colleges want.

Your ninth grader doesn’t need to join Model UN because someone told her colleges like Model UN.

Your sophomore doesn’t need to start a nonprofit.

Your junior doesn’t need to abandon something he loves because it doesn’t seem impressive enough.

They can spend high school becoming more themselves instead.

Take the classes that interest them.

Get really good at something.

Work a regular job.

Coach little kids.

Build robots.

Read weird books.

Play the tuba.

Do something simply because they care about doing it.

Because here’s the funny thing:

That’s also better admissions advice.

The most compelling applications aren’t usually the ones where a student has spent four years trying to look impressive.

They’re the ones where I finish reading and think:

Oh. I get this kid.

Their choices make sense together. Their interests have depth. Their activities sound like things they actually wanted to do. Their essays sound like them.

Specific is memorable.

Eventually, we still have to make a college list. But instead of asking:

Where does the Sorting Hat say I belong?

We should ask:

Which of these colleges makes sense for the person I’ve already become?

And then decisions come.

Some of them will make sense.

Some won’t.

A student will get into a college with a 7% acceptance rate and be denied by one admitting 20%.

Two seemingly identical kids will get different results.

Everyone will try to figure out why.

Most of the time, we won’t know.

We weren’t in the room. We don’t know who else applied. And we don’t know what that college needed when it built that particular class.

What I do know is this:

An admissions decision cannot tell you how smart your kid is.

It cannot tell you how hard they worked.

It cannot tell you what kind of person they are.

And it certainly cannot tell you what they’re going to become.

Decisions are information, not identity.

There is no Sorting Hat. And maybe that’s a good thing.

As a college swimmer and water polo player, Julie was absolutely made for roller derby: endurance, strategy, controlled chaos, an instinct for communication, and the understanding that sometimes your job is to create space for someone else.

For the uninitiated, my favorite description is: “Roller derby: It’s like NASCAR meets hockey, played like Red Rover on quad skates.”

I’ve traveled to see Julie skate a few times, and every time I am amazed by how the team works. Not wins, which they do, consistently. But how they work.

In a bout, the jammer is easy to spot. She wears the star on her helmet and scores the points, but she cannot do it alone. The blockers are simultaneously trying to stop the opposing jammer and help their own get through the pack. They communicate, anticipate, close openings and create new ones.

Why I bring this up is that they aren’t waiting for their turn to become the jammer.

Blocking is the job.

Maybe that’s why I love watching Julie do this. I’ve known her for more than twenty five years. Roller derby didn’t suddenly make her a communicator or a teammate or someone who knows when to push and when to make room for somebody else.

Those things were already very-Julie.

And watching her team, it’s impossible to miss how much the whole thing depends on people doing different jobs.

Dear reader, are you now asking how I can connect this to college admissions?

The only thing true about all colleges is that they are communities. And communities work the same way as roller derby.

Yet, I’m not sure the way we talk to teenagers about college admissions always reflects that.

This week, ninth graders all over the country will walk into high school gyms, cafeterias and hallways filled with tables advertising robotics and Model UN and theater and student government and service clubs and sports they have never played.

To those reading, I have one request: please don’t walk into that room trying to build a college application.

You are fourteen.

Go find something interesting.

Put your name on the email list because your friend is doing it. Stop at the table because the poster makes you laugh or the one that has candy. Try the sport you’ve never played. Ask what the club actually does. Join something you eventually quit.

You do not need to identify your future leadership position before you have attended the first meeting.

Because four years from now, students will arrive at the “Position/Leadership description” box on the Common App and some will immediately start apologizing.

“I was just a member.”

“I wasn’t captain.”

“I only volunteered.”

Only. That word does enormous work in college admissions.

Spend enough time consuming admissions content and you can easily believe every successful applicant spent high school founding nonprofits, conducting research, serving as president of three organizations, launching a business and, somewhere between AP Chemistry and varsity practice, negotiating a minor international peace treaty.

We tell teenagers to differentiate themselves. Stand out. Show leadership. Make an impact.

Then we give all of them essentially the same instructions for how to do it: president, founder, captain, researcher, entrepreneur.

We tell teenagers to stand out and then tell all of them to stand out in exactly the same way.

So, ninth graders: don’t worry about the title.

Find the table.

Then show up.

See if you like the people. See if you like the work. Get better at something. Be useful. Notice what needs to be done. Help somebody else get better. Stay long enough to find out whether this is something you actually care about.

Maybe someday you’ll become captain because your teammates trust you. Maybe you’ll be elected president and actually lead. Maybe you’ll see something missing and build something useful.

Wonderful.

But maybe you’ll be a member.

Member is not a bad word.

The only thing true about all colleges is that they are communities. And communities require people doing different jobs.

They need presidents and members. Captains and teammates. Editors and writers. They need the kid who takes charge and the kid who notices what needs to be done and quietly does it.

They need people who score the points and people who create the opening.

Which brings me back to roller derby.

The jammer is easy to spot. She has the star on her helmet. She scores the points.

But once you know what you’re watching, you start watching the rest of the pack, too.

The blocker anticipating what is coming. The opening that appears for half a second. The teammate communicating what she sees. The teammate who makes it possible for someone else to get through.

The whole thing works because they aren’t all trying to do the same job.

Neither do colleges.

So if you’re fourteen and walking into an activities fair this week, stop worrying about how any of this will look on an application four years from now.

Find something you want to try.

You have plenty of time to figure out your place in the pack.

And you do not always need to be the one wearing the star.

And apparently what I needed during the third week of August, while spending my days inside the Common App with a bunch of seventeen-year-olds, was rom-communism.

This is unfortunate because I am Type A, the oldest daughter and a Capricorn. I need to know what happens next. I would actually prefer to know what happens after what happens next. If someone could put both on a calendar and tell me what time we need to leave and where to park, even better.

Uncertainty is not really my thing. College admissions may have been an odd career choice.

In “Rainbow,” the fifth episode of Season Two, Ted introduces AFC Richmond to rom-communism: his belief in romantic comedies. Things go wrong. People break up. Hugh Grant says something stupid. But that’s not where the movie ends.

Ted calls it the dark forest. The dark forest doesn’t come at the beginning of the story or the end. It comes in the middle, when you don’t know exactly how things are going to work out.

I hate this.

I also think he’s right.

Welcome to college admissions in August.

This is the time of year when everyone would very much like me to tell them the ending. What is the final list? Is this an Early Decision school? Should we submit the score? What are the chances? Is the essay good enough? What happens if the ACT doesn’t go up? Where do you think they’ll end up?

I don’t know. Trust me, this bothers me too.

There are things I do know. I know how to build a balanced list. I know when a college is a reach no matter how much everyone would prefer otherwise. I know when an essay isn’t ready and when we need to stop fiddling with one that is. I know when a testing plan makes sense and when we are taking the ACT again mostly because no one knows what else to do with the anxiety.

There is a lot we can know. We just can’t know the ending.

This is particularly difficult for those of us who have spent a lifetime operating under the perhaps misguided assumption that sufficient preparation can prevent most unpleasant surprises.

I love a plan. Plans have dates and deadlines and backup plans. Plans can be put into spreadsheets. Plans allow me to say, “If this happens, then we’ll do this,” which is one of my favorite sentence constructions in the English language.

And college admissions rewards planning. Take the classes. Make the testing plan. Visit the colleges. Build the list. Write the essays. Meet the deadlines.

Do the work.

But doing the work does not mean we get to know what happens next.

A plan is what we do with the information we have now. It isn’t a guarantee about what happens later.

My Capricorn heart would still like a guarantee.

Between now and May, the favorite college may stop being the favorite. The Early Decision plan may change. Schools will come off the list and others will go on. Then decisions will arrive. Some will be good. Some will be disappointing. At least one will probably make everyone stare at the computer and say, “Really?”

This is where I part company slightly with Ted.

I don’t believe everything in college admissions happens for a reason. Sometimes a kid gets denied from a college where I thought they had a good chance. Sometimes the financial aid doesn’t work. Sometimes something just stinks.

I am not going to tell a disappointed seventeen-year-old that the universe has a better plan.

But disappointment and ending are not the same thing.

Maybe that’s the part of rom-communism I can get behind.

I’ve written before that decisions are information, not identity. Maybe decisions aren’t endings either. They’re plot. Some change what happens next. Some require a new plan. Some require the oldest daughter with the spreadsheet to make a new spreadsheet.

Fine. I can work with that.

And then there is Roy Kent.

Roy has retired from professional soccer and become a television pundit. He’s good at it. From the outside, it looks like a perfectly sensible next chapter.

He hates it.

By the end of “Rainbow,” Roy realizes he wants to coach. Because the whole episode is a romantic comedy, the Rolling Stones’ “She’s a Rainbow” plays while he makes his way across London to AFC Richmond.

The love story is Roy and football.

But Roy doesn’t come back as a player. That part really did end. He comes back as a coach.

And that’s the point of rom-communism I had missed.

It isn’t that everything goes back to the way it was. It isn’t even that you eventually get what you originally wanted.

The story just isn’t finished yet.

And neither is your teenager’s.

It’s August. We’re in the dark forest. I am going to keep making lists, checking deadlines and telling students to finish the Common App sections they swear they already finished but definitely did not.

I still believe in a plan. You cannot undo this incredibly central-casted oldest daughter.

I just don’t believe the plan lets us skip to the last page.

Which means I don’t get to know what happens next.

Maybe I am a rom-communist after all.

It remains one of the best essays I’ve ever read.

Not because anything enormous happened.

She simply listened to the radio with her parents every Saturday morning. They talked about the music. Her parents told her where they were when they first heard certain songs. She vividly described sitting in the grocery store parking lot, windows down, music up, because you don’t get out of the car before the song ends.

That was the essay. No national championship. No research breakthrough. No life lesson neatly tied up in the final paragraph.

Just a girl, her parents, the radio, and Saturday mornings. And by the end, I knew her. I wanted to be her BFF.

I’ve been thinking about her essay lately because I have been listening to the same playlist on repeat. And because I am knee-deep in personal statements.

As for the playlist, I didn’t make it.

It’s called “Lin Brehmer 1-22-23,” a collection of songs played on XRT after Lin Brehmer died.

For decades, Lin was one of those voices Chicagoans simply knew. The longtime XRT host called himself “your best friend in the whole world,” and somehow, coming through the radio, that didn’t sound remotely ridiculous.

Talking Heads. R.E.M. Pearl Jam. Joni Mitchell. Lyle Lovett. Van Morrison. The Rolling Stones. Muddy Waters. Freddy Jones Band. Wilco.

It is slightly weird. Very Chicago. A little all over the place.

In other words, it feels remarkably like me.

If you’re of a certain age—and I am—you probably had a thirty-pound case of CDs that lived in your car. It survived the summer heat and Chicago winters and was always within reach when you suddenly decided you absolutely had to hear a particular song.

Before that, we waited for songs.

Did you ever stay up late because you knew a song was going to come on the radio and you wanted to record it?

Blank cassette ready. Finger hovering over the record button. God help the DJ who talked over the beginning.

In high school and college, music was somewhat of a love language.

We made mixtapes. Then we burned CDs. You made them for your friends. Someone made one for you. You spent an unreasonable amount of time deciding which song should come first.

I am still upset that I lost a cassette from September 1999 that we played repeatedly during swim practices in high school. I don’t know where it went. I don’t even remember every song that was on it. I would still like it back.

Music has always worked that way for me.

My dad has seen the Rolling Stones nearly every time they’ve played Chicago since 1967. On his 75th birthday, my sister and I took him to see the Stones at Soldier Field. I grew up with them, and with my dad talking to me about them.

The Beatles take me somewhere else: dancing to records with in the Conniff family basement when they babysat me. I was little and didn’t know what to think about music but the people I adored loved it, and thus, so did I.

My youngest sister can hear a song I’ve claimed as mine for years and tell me a completely different story about it. Same song. An entirely different place.

And then there was XRT.

At some point, XRT became the music that was always there for you. In the morning. In the car. Getting ready for work. Driving to school.

Lin (and Mary Dixon) was there, too.

You didn’t tell XRT what you wanted to hear. Nobody asked you to choose between “Chill Mix” and “Feel Good Favorites.”

Someone else decided what came next.

Sometimes you thought, What the hell is this?

And sometimes you heard something you never would have chosen for yourself and loved it for the next thirty years.

That’s still what I want.

Put the Rolling Stones next to the Beatles. Follow them with something I’ve never heard before. Then throw in Wilco for good measure.

I’ll be happy. And I think I understand even better now why I loved my student’s essay so much.

She wasn’t really writing about Saturday Morning Flashbacks.

She was writing about herself through something that had always been there.

We ask teenagers to tell us who they are in 650 words, and they immediately start looking for the biggest story they have.

The biggest accomplishment.

The biggest challenge.

The biggest moment.

Sometimes I wish they’d look for the most familiar one instead.

What feels most like you?

For my student, it was Saturday mornings listening to XRT with her parents.

Apparently, for me these days, it’s this Lin Brehmer playlist.

I put it on. A song I haven’t heard in years comes up. I know it within three notes.

Oh, I love this.

Slightly weird. Very Chicago. A little all over the place.

Remarkably like me.

It has been essentially the same for as long as I can remember. A big wooden mid-century desk and matching filing cabinets that belonged to my paternal grandfather. Bookshelves cover the walls all the way to the ceiling. And a computer monitor so enormous that we joke you can see it from space.

For years, I had to forge a trail through the books and newspapers just to get to my bedroom.

I love that room. And I love what I’ve found in it.

For years, Streetwise Chicago: A History of Chicago Street Names by Don Hayner sat on a shelf at my eye level. I later coerced my middle schoolers on the West Side into learning the origins of the streets they lived on and those in their neighborhoods.

There is a framed copy of a Chicago Tribune op-ed my mom wrote in December 1990 to help save the Church of the Holy Family on Roosevelt Road, when the church was in danger of demolition and Chicagoans rallied to save it.

There are books I’ve read, books I haven’t read, newspaper clippings, old magazines and things someone thought were important enough to save.

I’ve tried to replicate my mom’s office in my own home and failed. The desk isn’t right. The shelves aren’t right. The lighting isn’t right. The room doesn’t feel the same.

Although, at this point, I could probably match her book for book.

Her office is objectively full of stuff. But somehow, there is an order to it.

My mom knows where things are.

I can find things, sort of.

And even when I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for, I know where to start.

Which is more than I can say for the Common App.

The Common App is a filing cabinet.

But unlike my mother’s office, absolutely nothing is where you think it should be.

I (objectively) hate the Common App.

I spend an alarming percentage of August working in it. I know it well. I know enough to be suspicious when something looks too easy.

The problem starts with the name: Common Application.

It sounds like one application that you fill out and send to a bunch of colleges.

Which is sort of true.

Students enter their basic information once. Their activities. Their honors. Their personal statement. There is a lot about the Common App that is, in fact, common.

But then the students add the colleges they want to apply to.

That’s when the word common starts doing a lot of work.

I’ve written before about how dangerous it is to make universal statements about colleges. This may be the best example yet.

The only thing true about all colleges on the Common App is that they use the Common App.

What I’ve learned over the years is this: the Common App provides the filing cabinet. The colleges decide what goes inside.

And they do not agree about where anything belongs.

This becomes particularly irritating when a student asks what should be one of the easiest questions in the entire college application process:

How many essays do I have to write?

I don’t know.

Yet.

I need you to fill things out first.

I realize how ridiculous that sounds.

But I can’t count essays the Common App hasn’t shown us yet.

The Common App itself tells students that essays and short answers can appear in three different places: the main Common App essay, college-specific Questions and separate Writing Supplements. It also acknowledges that some colleges only request a Writing Supplement based on how a student answers other questions.

In other words: even the Common App is telling you to open the drawers.

Some colleges have a section called Writing.

Sometimes there is writing there.

Sometimes there isn’t.

Then there are colleges that put writing under Questions.

Questions sounds harmless enough.

What major are you interested in?

Which school within the university are you applying to?

Would you like to be considered for Honors?

And then, mixed right in:

Please explain in 250 words...

That’s an essay.

I don’t care what you call it.

If a kid has to come up with an idea, draft it, revise it, cut 46 words, decide the first version was better, put 19 words back and send it to me to read, that kid wrote an essay.

This is how a student tells me she has two essays for a college and I tell her she has five.

She isn’t really wrong.

She has two things labeled as writing.

She also has three other things she has to write.

I care about the second number.

And then we get to the part of the Common App that I really hate.

Sometimes the essay isn’t there.

Yet.

Notre Dame has a particularly good example.

Notre Dame has an actual Writing Supplement. So a student can go into Notre Dame, find the writing, count the prompts and reasonably believe she now knows how much writing she has to do. Notre Dame’s published application overview lists one short essay and three short-answer responses.

Then she starts filling out the rest of the application.

And there is more writing tucked into Academics that only appears after she lists what she is interested in studying:

Briefly share what draws you to the area(s) of study you listed.

It doesn’t even appear as a required supplement on Notre Dame’s own published application overview.

I would like the record to reflect that I did not put it there.

This is why I keep telling students that I need them to fill out their college-specific questions before I can give them a complete list of supplements.

Sometimes the application needs to know something about you before it knows what else it wants to ask you.

Choose a major.

Choose a particular school or program.

Answer the academic questions.

Indicate interest in something.

And suddenly there may be more to do.

So, parents, I need you to hear this: your kid may actually be telling the truth when they swear that wasn’t there yesterday.

It may not have been.

Nobody necessarily missed it.

Nobody necessarily failed to read the directions.

The filing cabinet opened another drawer.

Columbia has another one hiding in plain sight.

Sitting among Columbia’s school-specific Questions is a prompt asking students why they are interested in studying in the United States—in fewer than 50 words.

You won’t find it on Columbia’s published list of supplemental essays.

And here’s where it gets stranger.

According to Columbia’s student newspaper, the question is intended for international students.

Except right now, it is showing up for everyone.

Domestic student from Ohio who has spent his entire life assuming he would go to college in the United States?

Apparently, please explain why.

Maybe that will change. Maybe it’s a glitch. Maybe there is an explanation I haven’t discovered yet.

But right now, the question is there.

And that’s the point.

A student can do exactly what we tell them to do: go to the college’s admissions website, find the supplemental prompts, make a list and start working.

And still not have the complete list.

Because another piece of writing is sitting inside the filing cabinet.

This is why I don’t count essays.

I count things a student has to write.

Fifty words counts.

One hundred and fifty words counts.

Two hundred and fifty words counts.

And short does not necessarily mean easy.

A student sees 50 words and thinks, Great. That’s nothing.

I see 50 words and think, Great. Now tell me something interesting in approximately three sentences.

We are not experiencing the same application.

And then there is Georgetown.

Bless its sweet heart: Georgetown joined the Common App this year.

This was big news to people who work in college admissions, which is perhaps evidence that we all need better hobbies.

You might assume Georgetown joining the Common App means applying to Georgetown now works like applying to every other Common App school.

No.

Georgetown is still Georgetown.

It still has its alumni interview process. Georgetown says that submitting an application opens the student’s application file and begins the process of scheduling the required alumni interview.

And its inaugural Common App application still looks distinctly Georgetown.

Students can submit the first section of the Georgetown portion to get that process moving before completing the rest.

Then there is the rest.

Including the essays.

There is also a place for the longer personal essay—the essay many students will recognize as their college personal statement.

Yes.

That personal statement.

The one they’ve already written.

Georgetown wants it over there too.

Georgetown has joined the Common App without entirely agreeing to become common.

I almost respect the commitment.

And then, just to keep everyone on their toes, there are colleges with no supplemental writing at all.

None.

Students almost never believe me when this happens.

“That’s it?”

Yes.

“There’s no essay?”

No.

“Are you sure?”

Yes.

“Should I—”

No.

Walk away.

Take the win.

Do not go searching for work simply because the last four colleges trained you to believe there must be a hidden essay somewhere.

Sometimes there really is nothing else in the drawer.

All of this is also why I am not terribly interested in the little green checks.

Kids love the green checks.

Parents really love the green checks.

I understand.

At a stoplight, green means go. In Monopoly, passing GO means collect $200.

On the Common App, green means stop: you’ve completed this task.

Except when it doesn’t.

Sometimes green means something closer to:

You have completed what we have shown you based on the information you’ve given us so far.

That is not quite the same thing.

So when a student tells me a college is done, I become annoying.

Did you pick your major?

Did you answer Academics?

Did you choose the undergraduate school?

Did you answer the Honors question?

Did you finish the college-specific Questions?

Did you go back into Writing?

I know. I am delightful.

But I would much rather be annoying in August than surprised in October.

Because that’s the part that actually matters.

This isn’t really about my personal irritation with an application platform.

It’s about planning.

If a student has seventeen pieces of supplemental writing to do, I want to know there are seventeen.

I don’t need all seventeen tomorrow.

I don’t need a rising senior spending the last two weeks of August frantically writing supplements while everyone else is squeezing the last bit out of summer.

I want them to know what is coming.

Seventeen essays in August is a plan.

Discovering Essay Number Seventeen on October 27 is a problem.

That’s how the chaos starts.

A student thinks she has six things left.

Six becomes nine.

School starts. There is an AP Calc test. Practice. A club meeting. Homecoming. Someone has decided to retake the ACT. The personal statement suddenly needs “one tiny change” that becomes three hours.

And then a parent walks into the kitchen and asks one of the most dangerous questions in college admissions:

“I thought you said you were done?”

Nobody needs that.

So here’s what I want seniors to do right now.

Add your colleges.

Then fill things out.

Not just the main Common App. Go into each college.

Open Questions.

Open Writing.

Open Academics.

Choose the major.

Choose the school.

Answer the Honors question.

Answer the program questions.

Then go back and look again.

Only after you’ve done that should you make the list of everything you have to write.

And actually make the list.

Not:

Notre Dame supplements

Write down the individual prompts.

Write down the word counts.

Know what is actually left.

Because “I have Notre Dame left” tells me almost nothing.

“I have a 150-word response and two 50-word answers left” tells me what the work actually is.

That we can plan.

This isn’t complicated advice.

The ridiculous part is that it is necessary.

I should probably say something nice about the Common App now.

I am old enough to remember paper applications.

I wrote my own college applications on a blue typewriter in my mom’s office.

Separate forms. Separate applications. Separate envelopes. Things that actually had to make their way through the United States Postal Service.

I do not want to go back.

The Common App solved a real problem. Students can enter a huge amount of information once rather than recreating it for every institution. That is, genuinely, better.

But it did not create one common college application.

It created the filing cabinet.

The colleges still decide what goes inside.

Which brings me back to my mom’s office.

That room is packed.

There are books in front of books. Newspapers and clippings. Things saved for reasons I probably don’t know. Bookshelves all the way to the ceiling. A desk that has belonged to our family longer than I’ve been alive.

It is not minimalist.

It probably doesn’t make much sense to someone walking into it for the first time.

But somehow, I know how to find things.

If I want the book about Chicago street names, I know where to start.

If I want that old Tribune piece about Holy Family, it’s there.

And sometimes I start looking for one thing and find something else entirely.

That’s part of what I love about the room.

The problem with the Common App isn’t that there’s a lot in the filing cabinet.

There should be.

Colleges are different. They want different things from applicants.

The only thing true about all colleges on the Common App is that they use the Common App.

The problem is that you can’t trust the labels.

Writing may not contain writing.

Questions may contain essays.

Academics may contain writing.

And something you need to write tomorrow may not even be visible today.

So open everything.

Look around.

And parents, when your kid looks at you sometime this fall and says:

“I swear that wasn’t there before.”

Maybe believe them.

Sometimes the filing cabinet really did just open another drawer.

His summer has been largely devoted to superheroes, monster trucks, playing with his sisters, and swimming, which seems like appropriate preparation.

Benny has a way of observing the world around him that feels considerably older than just his five years.

He watches people. He notices things. And then he develops theories about them.

A few weeks ago, in advance of our family reunion, Benny invented a game called Super Sitters. The rules were simple: the adult who could sit the longest won.

To Benny’s chagrin, it was a huge hit. His Gramp — my dad — won by a landslide. But since he’s Benny’s favorite human, and since Benny was the only judge, the voting might have been skewed.

This morning, my sister texted me a video of Benny sharing another observation. This time about teenagers.

According to Benny, teenagers have a superpower: they can walk very far.

For a kid obsessed with superheroes and monster trucks, this made me pause.

It wasn’t super strength or invisibility or flying.

And, much like Super Sitters, I thought: Well, he’s not wrong.

Teenagers will walk astonishing distances when no adult has suggested that they do so.

They’ll walk miles with their friends. They’ll walk to get food. They’ll walk from one friend’s house to another and then somewhere else entirely. They’ll wander around a neighborhood with no particular destination.

The walking itself seems to be the point.

These are, of course, the same people who can regard a parent’s suggestion that they walk three blocks as an outrageous violation of their civil liberties.

But give them some independence, some friends and nowhere they absolutely have to be?

They’ll walk very far.

Benny thinks that’s their superpower.

And because it is August and I spend most of my waking hours talking to teenagers about college applications, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.

Maybe walking far is one of their superpowers.

And maybe, during the college process, we adults spend too much time trying to make them take the shortest route.

I understand why.

It is August.

I know exactly how many days there are until November 1, and I assure you I am not advocating for a completely unstructured stroll toward the Common App deadline.

There are applications to finish. There are essays to write. There are supplements that cannot remain Google Docs entitled “Northwestern essay NEW new FINAL 2” forever.

Eventually, someone has to hit submit.

But I also know that some of the best work my students do comes after they have gone in what appears to be entirely the wrong direction.

They write the essay that isn’t the essay.

They visit the college they were certain they would love and don’t.

They announce that they know exactly what they want to major in and change their minds.

They spend twenty minutes telling me about the story they think matters and then casually mention something else that makes me stop them.

Wait. Go back. Tell me about that.

And there it is.

From an adult perspective, this can be maddening.

It is maddening.

I can see the destination.

Why can’t they just go there?

Perhaps, it’s because they don’t know it’s the destination yet.

That is the part I think we forget.

We’ve made more decisions. We’ve made more mistakes. We know that November 1 is coming because November 1 has been coming for us, in one form or another, for decades.

Teenagers don’t have that perspective yet.

A parent looks at August and sees November.

A teenager looks at August and sees August.

The parent thinks: We need to get moving.

The teenager thinks: I am moving.

Both may be right.

I see this most clearly in the personal statement.

A student starts with an idea. It doesn’t work.

We try something else. That doesn’t work either.

There is an outline. Then another outline. Then 900 words that answer a Common App prompt but don’t tell me much of anything about the person who wrote them.

It would be lovely if I could simply tell a student on day one what the essay is going to be.

Sometimes I can see it before they can.

Sometimes they have to write the wrong essay to figure out what the right one is.

It’s not unique to essays.

I’ve watched students fall in love with colleges their parents had to beg them to visit.

I’ve watched a school that seemed perfect on paper disappear from the list before the tour was over.

I’ve watched students discover academic interests because of a class they took almost accidentally.

I’ve watched them become leaders in activities they joined because a friend told them to come along.

None of it looks particularly efficient while it is happening.

Later, we turn it into a story.

Of course she chose that college.

Of course he became interested in that subject.

Of course that was the essay.

But it wasn’t “of course” when they were in the middle of it.

They were walking.

This doesn’t mean adults should disappear.

Teenagers need guardrails. They need deadlines. They need people who have walked farther than they have.

And sometimes they need an adult to say, with love and considerably less poetry, you need to sit down and finish the Common App.

There is a difference between giving a teenager room to figure something out and allowing them to wander directly past an application deadline.

But there is also a difference between guidance and removing every wrong turn before they have the chance to make it.

That’s harder.

Because when you love a kid, and you can see a shorter route, of course you want to point it out.

When you know an essay idea isn’t working, you want to fix it.

When you know a college isn’t the right fit, you want to save the trip.

When they’re uncertain, you want to give them the answer.

Sometimes that’s exactly what adults should do.

And sometimes we need to sit on our hands.

The college process is, after all, one of the first times we ask teenagers to make a whole series of decisions about a life that will actually be theirs.

Not forever. Choosing a college at 17 does not determine the rest of anyone’s existence, despite what certain corners of the internet would have you believe.

But it is theirs.

They are beginning to decide where they might live, what they might study, what kind of community they want and what matters enough to carry with them.

They are also figuring out how they make decisions.

That may be the more important part.

Can I change my mind?

Can I recover from a wrong turn?

Can I try something without knowing exactly where it leads?

Can I listen to people who know more than I do without handing them the decision?

Can I get somewhere myself?

Those are useful things to learn before anyone drops you off at a dorm.

Benny starts kindergarten next week, so thankfully we have some time before anyone needs to ask him where he’s applying to college.

His parents met at DePauw University so I’m cheering for #DePauw2043.

But for now, I’m going to trust his assessment of the species.

Teenagers can walk very far.

Let’s let them.

It wasn’t on a campus tour.

It wasn’t in an admissions presentation.

It wasn’t even during a conversation with an admissions officer.

It was June 2014, sitting in an auditorium at Vanderbilt University during the Annual Conference of the Association of College Counselors in Independent Schools.

In the middle of a presentation on presidential rhetoric, the keynote speaker put a photograph on the screen.

For everyone else in the room, it was an image from Grant Park on election night in 2008.

For me, it was one of my best friends, sitting on his twin brother’s shoulders, holding a handmade sign that read:

We Have Overcome.

For a moment, I stopped listening.

Of all of the honky tonks in Nashville ...

...why this photo?

I don’t remember much of the rest of the presentation.

I remember wondering something else entirely.

What story was Vanderbilt trying to tell?

Looking back, I think that was the moment I started visiting colleges differently.

I’ve visited enough campuses to know that colleges tell on themselves if you pay attention.

Not in the rankings.

Not on the admissions tour.

Not even in the strategic plan.

They tell on themselves in the stories they choose to tell.

The buildings they proudly walk you past.

The students they celebrate.

The questions they answer before anyone asks them.

The problems they acknowledge.

And, sometimes, the things they quietly stop talking about.

One of the unexpected gifts of spending more than twenty years in admissions is that I’ve stopped asking whether I like a college.

Instead, I find myself asking a different question.

Who does this college think it is?

That question has followed me through hundreds of campus visits.

It’s why I notice which building becomes the centerpiece of the tour. Why I ask what happens when a student begins to struggle instead of asking about the newest residence hall. Why I pay attention to what colleges celebrate—and just as importantly, what they don’t.

Yesterday, after client meetings and somewhere around the twelfth text telling me to read Anne Helen Petersen’s latest Culture Study, I read it.

Anne was interviewing journalist Claire Suddath about Vanderbilt University’s transformation over the past two decades.

On the surface, it was the story of one institution.

A university that deliberately transformed itself from a respected regional institution into one of the country’s most sought-after private universities.

Applications exploded.

The admit rate dropped below five percent.

The student body became more geographically diverse.

The university invested heavily in financial aid, research, athletics, and even new campuses beyond Nashville.

It’s an extraordinary story.

But somewhere in the middle of the interview, I realized I wasn’t reading about admissions anymore.

I was reading about identity.

Claire’s reporting kept circling the same question.

Not How did Vanderbilt become more prestigious?

But Who did Vanderbilt become?

That question surfaced over and over again.

In the decision to recruit nationally instead of primarily across the South.

In the decision to remove “Confederate” from the name of a residence hall despite enormous backlash.

In the redesign of financial aid.

Then I reached one sentence from Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier.

I stopped.

“When you say, ‘We’re going to be a national university,’ now your identity is up for grabs. You have to know who you are.”

You have to know who you are.

I spend my days drinking too much coffee and asking seventeen-year-olds versions of that same question.

Who are you?

How have you changed?

What matters enough that you’ll carry it with you?

What parts of yourself have stayed remarkably constant?

Students often think college essays are about accomplishments.

They’re usually about identity.

The activities list tells me what you’ve done.

The essay tells me who is doing it.

One of the biggest mistakes students make is trying to become the applicant they think colleges want.

The strongest applications rarely work that way.

The students I remember most aren’t the ones who reverse-engineered an admissions office.

They’re the ones who understood themselves first.

Reading Anne Helen and Claire’s conversation, I found myself wondering whether colleges wrestle with the same temptation.

Every strategic plan seems to promise more.

More applications.

More prestige.

More research.

More national recognition.

Growth is easy to measure.

Applications.

Acceptance rates.

Rankings.

Endowment.

Research dollars.

Those numbers matter.

They’re also the easiest part of the story to tell.

Identity is harder.

You can’t chart it on a spreadsheet.

You hear it in the language a college uses to describe itself.

You see it in the choices it makes when those choices are unpopular.

You recognize it in what an institution refuses to give up—even when it would be easier to do so.

Every decision to become something is also a decision not to remain exactly as you were.

Those are strategic decisions.

They’re also identity decisions.

Last night, I was meeting with a student who was debating whether Vanderbilt belonged on her college list.

We started to talk about Vandy’s supplement.

I’ll admit it: I have a soft spot for Vanderbilt’s motto, Crescere aude.

Maybe it’s because I like the sentiment.

Maybe it’s because, after years of the Jesuits teaching me Latin, I was irrationally pleased to realize I could still recognize enough of it to know what it meant.

Dare to grow.

Vanderbilt’s supplemental essay literally asks applicants to reflect on how an aspect of their identity, culture, or background has shaped their personal growth and how they will contribute to the Vanderbilt community.

I smiled. Because I’d spent the last hour asking Vanderbilt the exact same question.

Then, almost as if the universe wanted to underline the point, another student and I found ourselves talking about Stanford.

In December 2024, the Stanford Review interviewed Stanford’s new president, Jonathan Levin, and asked him what he thought was the most important problem in the world.

His answer?

There isn’t one.

There are simply too many important problems to name a single most important one.

The interviewer responded:

“That’s an application question that we have to answer to apply here.”

I snort laughed.

Not because Stanford had contradicted itself.

Because it reminded me of something I spend a lot of time trying to explain to students.

The question is almost never the question.

Vanderbilt isn’t really asking students to write about growth.

Stanford isn’t really asking students to identify the single most important problem in the world.

They’re asking something much harder.

How do you think?

How do you wrestle with complexity?

How do you make meaning?

How do you understand yourself well enough to explain why you believe what you believe?

Maybe that’s why I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that photograph from 2014.

Not because it was my best friend.

Because Vanderbilt chose it.

Out of every photograph available that could have somehow connected to presidential rhetoric, that was the story the university wanted a room full of educators to see.

I’ve come to believe colleges are always answering supplemental essays.

Not with words.

With the stories they choose to tell.

Sometimes it’s a campus tour.

Sometimes it’s a strategic plan.

Sometimes it’s a motto.

Sometimes it’s a photograph projected onto a screen.

The question has never really changed.

Who do you think you are?

It’s a good question for a seventeen-year-old.

I suspect it’s an even better one for a university.

Dear reader, they never serve good coffee.

Instead, I’ve started looking for something much harder to see.

I want to understand how a college cares for its students after the admissions brochure is closed and the decision has been made.

Today, that brought me to Illinois Wesleyan University.

The visit was arranged by Carin Smith, someone I’ve known and absolutely admired since 2004.

When I first started in admissions, our colleges happened to be next to one another alphabetically at college fairs.

If you’ve never worked a college fair, it’s hard to explain the strange little community they create. The same admissions counselors travel the same circuit for 12 weeks … and potentially 12 years.

You see the same faces four nights a week.

Relationships are built one folding table at a time.

I had inherited a territory from one of the people I most admire in admissions and life.

Counselors would walk up to my table looking for Chris.

Instead, they got me. Carin took the time to make sure they met me.

She answered the questions I was too embarrassed to ask. She shared what she knew, encouraged me when I needed it, complimented my shoes more than once, and quietly helped me find my footing.

She didn’t have to.

She simply believed that’s what you do.

As I walked Illinois Wesleyan’s campus today, I realized I recognized that feeling.

Not because everyone was exactly like Carin.

But because every conversation reflected the same instinct.

Students.

Not just how to recruit them.

How to know them.

How to challenge them.

How to notice when they’re struggling.

How to help them become the people they came to college hoping to be.

Every conversation reflected a genuine commitment to the students who choose Illinois Wesleyan—not just getting them to campus, but walking alongside them once they arrive. That’s the kind of student support you can’t capture in a brochure or a ranking, but you can feel when you’re there.

I left genuinely excited for the students who will have the opportunity to experience it firsthand.

On the drive home, I couldn’t stop thinking about Carin.

Twenty-two years ago, she welcomed a nervous young admissions counselor into a profession that felt beyond intimidating. Today, I realized I experienced that same spirit all over again.

It made me wonder if institutions begin to reflect the people who bring decades of experience with them when they choose to dedicate the next chapter of their careers to building something new.

Families spend a lot of time trying to figure out whether a college is the “right fit.”

We look at majors.
We look at rankings.
We walk through dorms.
We sit in on football games.
We ask about study abroad.

All of that matters.

But at some point, every student has a week that doesn’t go the way they hoped.

A bad exam.
A roommate they can’t quite figure out how to live with.
A stretch of homesickness that hits harder than expected.
A phone call from home that changes everything.

And in that moment, the question isn’t about programs or brochures anymore.

It’s simpler than that.

Do I feel like I belong here?

That’s the moment a college stops being a place you’re visiting and becomes a place you’re living.

And that’s when you start to see what a campus is actually made of.

Every college has tutoring.
Every college has counseling.
Every college has advisors.

But student support doesn’t look the same everywhere.

What separates colleges is how that support actually shows up in real time.

When a student starts to slip, does someone notice? Or does help only arrive after the student has already decided to raise their hand?

That difference is small on paper. It’s enormous in real life.

So I always come back to a simple question for families on campus visits:

“What does it look like here when a student starts to struggle?”

Not the directory.
Not the list of services.
Not the slide deck.

The story.

Who notices first?
What do they do next?
How long does it take before someone shows up who actually knows the student’s name?

Because every college can talk about support.

The ones that stand out are the ones that can describe it without sounding like they’re reading it off a website.

They can tell you what they do when no one is watching.

And maybe that’s the real test.

Not how a college recruits students.

But how it shows up for them once they’ve already said yes.

“The Common App opens on August 1.”

Students nod.

Parents nod.

Then someone asks the question they really want answered.

“So...when should I submit?”

My answer always disappoints them.

“Not August 1.”

There’s usually a pause.

“Really?”

Really.

August 1 has never been my favorite day in college admissions.

Part of that is practical. I’ve been doing this long enough to remember October 31, 2013, when the Common App crashed and students couldn’t submit. Parents couldn’t refresh fast enough. Counselors everywhere were fielding frantic phone calls at 11:30 pm in their timezones.

I still have the occasional stress dream about it.

But that’s not really why August 1 makes me uneasy.

It’s what happens after the website opens.

Students stop reflecting.

They start racing.

Group chats fill with screenshots. Parents wonder if their student is behind. Social media convinces everyone that someone, somewhere, has submitted six applications before lunch.

Maybe it’s because I’m the oldest daughter. Maybe it’s because I’m a Capricorn. Either way, I have very little patience for preventable chaos.

College admissions has enough real deadlines. We don’t need to invent new ones.

Suddenly, a process that has taken four years feels like it should be finished in four days.

Think about everything you’ve done to get here.

Four years ago, you walked into high school with a backpack that was probably too heavy and no idea who you would become.

You weren’t supposed to know.

Over the next four years, you took classes that stretched you. You joined teams and clubs. You worked, volunteered, succeeded, failed, found mentors, discovered new interests, and let go of others you once thought would define you.

You weren’t preparing an application.

You were preparing a life worth writing about.

For four years, you’ve been busy becoming.

Now, for the first time in the process, you’re being asked to stop.

Not to earn another grade.

Not to add another activity.

Just to look back and notice.

That may be the hardest assignment of high school.

One of my favorite moments happens every essay season.

A student comes into a meeting convinced they know what their essay is about.

We talk. I ask a few questions.

Then they stop.

“Wait...I don’t think this is actually about swimming.”

A few minutes later:

“I think it’s really about my grandfather.”

I never get tired of that moment.

Not because we found a better essay.

Because a seventeen-year-old discovered something true about themselves.

Students think they’re writing for a college.

Most of the time, they’re discovering themselves first.

That discovery doesn’t happen because a website opens. It happens in conversations, messy drafts, long walks, and the fifth version of an essay that finally sounds like them.

The Common App isn’t where that work happens.

It’s where that work gets recorded.

Every essay in this series has challenged a myth about college admissions.

Here’s another one.

The application isn’t asking you to prove who you are.

It’s asking whether you’ve taken the time to notice who you’ve become.

So when should you submit?

Submit when your application sounds like you.

Not the version of you that you think a college wants.

The version four years of high school quietly shaped.

Because despite everything that differs from one college to the next, every college is asking the same question:

Who did you become?

The Common App opens tomorrow.

Don’t rush your answer.

In ours, Cheetos are called beach carrots.

My Aunt Mary Beasley, my namesake, started calling them that some what recently.

She doesn’t discriminate. Puffy, crunchy, baked...if it’s a Cheeto, it’s a beach carrot.

No adult has ever believed they were carrots.

My niece, Molly, and her brother, Benny, however ... I’m shocked they didn’t turn into Beach Carrots this weekend. 

But Aunt Mary Beasley has no intention of stopping.

Some traditions don’t need to make sense.

I spent this past weekend at Country Cousins Camp in Carlinville, Illinois. It is the most treasured weekend on my calendar each year.

It looked like every other summer weekend I’ve known there: kids running from the beach to the raft and back again, too much food, too much laughing, stories that somehow get funnier every year they’re told.

On the drive home—the first time I’d been alone in more than three days—I listened to a podcasts with Olivia Wilde.

At one point she started talking about the house she grew up in.

She said there was so much curiosity. So many questions. There were always interesting people around the table challenging one another. As a kid, it wasn’t, “Be quiet.” It was, “What do you think?”

I laughed.

Not because it sounded unusual.

Because it sounded ordinary.

It sounded like the weekend I had just left.

Since driving home on Sunday, I’ve been trying to figure out why that part of the interview has stayed with me.

I don’t think it’s because my family looked anything like hers.

It’s because I recognized the feeling.

The picnic tables at CCC have always been full. Someone pulls up another chair. Someone wanders over with a drink. Someone starts a story with, “You know, that reminds me...”

Conversations meander the way summer afternoons do.

Someone brings up an article they read.

Someone else sees it differently.

A conversation about a trip to Dublin for a cousin’s wedding somehow becomes a discussion about parenting. A story about a neighbor turns into one about grandparents. Twenty minutes later, you’re wondering how you got there.

Nobody planned it.

Nobody was moderating it.

Nobody was trying to win.

Looking back, I don’t remember what we talked about nearly as much as I remember how we talked.

Questions were welcomed.

Disagreement wasn’t dangerous.

People changed their minds.

Kids lingered at the edge of the conversation until someone inevitably looked over and asked,

“So...what do you think?”

Not because they needed another opinion.

Because they actually wanted to know.

I don’t remember anyone announcing that kids belonged at the table.

We just did.

I never realized how unusual that was.

When you’re a kid, you assume every family works the way yours does. You assume every table is a place where people can disagree without getting angry. You assume curiosity is ordinary.

Maybe it isn’t.

Near the end of the interview, Olivia said something else that has been rattling around in my head all week.

She said that the older she gets, the more she realizes how little she knows. Every year, she finds herself thinking,

“Maybe I’m wrong.”

I love that.

Not because I like being wrong. (I’m a Capricorn. And the eldest daughter. Trust me—I do not enjoy being wrong.)

But because the people I admire most are the ones who can say those three words without feeling diminished by them.

“Maybe I’m wrong.”

There’s humility in that.

There’s confidence in that too.

It means you’re secure enough to keep learning.

I wonder if that’s what those picnic tables were teaching us all along.

Not how to argue.

How to wonder.

The older I get, the more convinced I am that every family has traditions that shape them.

Some are obvious.

Holiday dinners.

Annual vacations.

Family recipes.

Others are quieter.

The way people talk to each other.

The questions they ask.

Whether kids are invited into the conversation or told to wait until they’re older.

Beach carrots are new.

The table isn’t.

The table has been there for as long as I can remember.

It took a podcast somewhere between Lake Beasley and Western Springs for me to realize that not every family gives their kids that gift.

I’m awfully glad mine did.

It’s about becoming someone who chooses challenge over comfort.

It’s about learning to raise your hand.

To ask the extra question.

To stay after class.

To do hard things before someone makes you do them.

If that’s true—and I believe it is—the next question almost asks itself.

Where should that person go next?

For most families, that’s when the spreadsheets come out.

Campus tours.

Acceptance rates.

Dorm rooms.

Dining halls.

Reddit threads.

Hours spent trying to answer one impossible question:

Which college is the right fit?

I’ve spent fifteen years helping families answer that question.

I still don’t think it has the answer they’re hoping for.

I grew up four houses from the best family in all of Beverly/Morgan Park.

I know everyone says that about their neighborhood. I happen to be right.

When my mom was writing her first book, she needed a few uninterrupted hours every afternoon.

Unfortunately for her, I had absolutely no interest in naps.

So almost every day, one of the four kids would come down the block, collect me, and disappear with me for three hours.

Sometimes their mom took a turn.

Once, Grandma did.

My mom got time to write.

I got an extended family.

At three years old, I thought this was completely normal.

Of course another family would rearrange their afternoon because my mom needed help.

Of course older kids would let a little girl tag along.

Of course this is what neighbors did.

Looking back, I realize how extraordinary it was.

A few Christmas Eves ago, I was planning to spend the evening watching a movie.

Instead, I got invited to their family Christmas celebration.

I looked around the room.

The four kids who used to take care of me were parents.

And somewhere along the way, I’d helped each of their children navigate the college admissions process.

I remember sitting there thinking,

God, I’m really old.

When my mom asked for a little help all those years ago, she wasn’t choosing lifelong family friends.

She wasn’t choosing Christmas Eve invitations forty years later.

She certainly wasn’t choosing the families whose children I’d someday work with.

She was just trying to finish a chapter of a book.

Everything else... just happened.

Or maybe it didn’t “just happen.”

Maybe it happened because good people kept showing up for each other.

Parents ask me all the time how to know if a college is the right fit.

I always understand the question.

I just think we sometimes ask colleges to promise something they can’t.

A college can offer opportunities.

It can create an environment.

It can introduce you to people.

What it can’t do is tell you which professor will change your life.

Which roommate will become family.

Which conversation after class will send you in a direction you never saw coming.

That’s why I still believe deeply in fit.

Thoughtful college lists matter.

Programs matter.

People matter.

Culture matters.

Those things shape the place where the next four years will unfold.

But they aren’t the whole story.

The rest belongs to the student.

The student who raises their hand in high school usually keeps raising it.

The student who stays after class usually keeps staying after class.

The student who introduces themselves to new people usually keeps introducing themselves to new people.

College doesn’t replace those habits.

It gives them somewhere new to grow.

Every Thanksgiving and Christmas, former students come home.

We grab coffee.

We catch up.

Almost nobody talks about rankings.

They don’t tell me about acceptance rates.

They tell me about people.

A professor.

A roommate.

A mentor.

A research project.

A conversation that changed everything.

I’ve started to notice that the stories people carry with them aren’t the ones they could have predicted at seventeen.

They’re the ones they lived.

That’s what I think about when families ask me about fit.

Not rankings.

Not brochures.

Not dorm rooms.

I think about a little girl walking four houses down the block because her mom needed a few hours to write.

Nobody involved had any idea what those afternoons would mean forty years later.

Not because they weren’t thoughtful.

Because life doesn’t work that way.

You make the best decision you can with the information you have.

Then you spend the next several years making that decision matter.

I think college works like that, too.

I remember her becoming my coach at eleven.

I remember having brunch last week.

I remember decades worth of phone calls on my birthday.

Somewhere in between, she became one of the most important people in my life.

Yet, I can’t pinpoint exactly when that happened.

I’ve tried to figure it out.

Was it the first birthday phone call?

The first time we had dinner instead of practice?

The first time I called her with good news?

Or bad news?

I honestly don’t know.

Maybe that’s because the most important relationships in our lives rarely change overnight.

They become important one ordinary conversation at a time.

Laura coached me in water polo when I was eleven.

One of the first things she taught me was how to V-out.

Dear reader, I never really understood the concept.

If you’ve never played water polo, a V-out is simple. Before you make your next move, you stop. You lift your head. You see the whole pool.

At thirteen, I thought she was teaching me a water polo skill.

At forty-four, I’m pretty sure she was teaching me how to live.

Pause.

Look around.

See more before you decide what comes next.

If that isn’t life advice, I don’t know what is.

Her coaching never really stopped.

It just stopped looking like coaching.

When a close friend passed away, Laura was one of the people who called.

When I wondered if I was ready to build something of my own, she challenged me to trust myself.

She encouraged me to speak when I needed courage.

She reminded me to listen when I needed humility.

She celebrated the wins.

She sat with me through the losses.

Not because she had to.

Because that’s who she is.

Somewhere over the last thirty years, I stopped thinking of Laura as someone who coached me.

I started realizing she was one of the people who raised me into the adult I became.

On Sunday, we met for brunch.

For two hours we talked about Manchester City, Pep Guardiola, Erling Haaland, work, family, and life.

Water polo barely came up.

Driving home, I realized something that somehow hadn’t occurred to me before.

Laura is still coaching me.

Not because she’s telling me what to do.

She almost never does.

She asks thoughtful questions.

She notices things other people miss.

She remembers.

She has an incredible ability to zoom out and see the whole picture before everyone else does.

I realized that’s probably why the V-out has stayed with me all these years.

It wasn’t just something she taught.

It’s how she lives.

Some people meet the version of you that exists today. Others spend their lives in conversation with the version you’re still becoming.

I thought that was about coaching.

But it was about Laura.

She’s known almost every version of me.

The awkward eleven-year-old.

The college student.

The admissions counselor.

The college counselor.

The entrepreneur.

The woman whose life has included far more joy—and far more heartbreak—than either of us could have imagined standing on that pool deck thirty+ years ago.

She never expected me to stay eleven.

She just kept making room for whoever I was becoming.

We spend a lot of time thanking teachers.

We celebrate great coaches.

We talk about mentors.

What we don’t talk about enough are the people who quietly refuse to let a relationship end.

The coach who becomes a lifelong friend.

The mentor who becomes chosen family.

The person who keeps showing up long after the original reason you knew each other has faded into the background.

There aren’t many people whose presence in my life matters as much as Laura Coffman’s does.

That’s an extraordinary sentence to write about someone who started as my coach.

But it’s true.

I don’t remember becoming friends with Laura Coffman.

I remember her becoming my coach.

Everything that mattered happened afterward.

Turns out, the most important thing Laura Coffman ever taught me wasn’t how to V-out.

It was how to become the kind of person who never really leaves other people’s lives.

That’s the album most people point to. The reinvention. The moment she became a global pop star.

Over the weekend, I read Kevin Evers’s There’s Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift, and one idea has stayed with me long after I closed the book.

By the time 1989 arrived, the transformation didn’t feel surprising.

It felt inevitable.

Evers argues that one of Swift’s greatest strategic advantages wasn’t simply reinvention. It was reinvention without losing her identity. She didn’t wake up one morning pretending to be someone else. She didn’t chase the next trend. She kept choosing the next challenge, stretching just beyond what she’d done before. Each album prepared listeners for the next one.

She hadn’t abandoned who she was.

She had become more completely herself.

I closed the book and immediately thought:

That’s the clearest definition of academic rigor I’ve ever heard.

Every August my inbox fills with some version of the same question:

“Should she take one more AP?”

Sometimes it’s AP Chemistry. Sometimes it’s AP U.S. History. Sometimes it’s AP Physics. Sometimes it’s a parent wondering whether dropping orchestra, journalism, or art for another AP will make the difference.

The question always sounds simple.

It never is.

Before I can answer it, I usually have to ask another question.

What do you mean by rigor?

If you’ve spent more than five minutes researching college admissions, you’ve probably heard the advice:

“Take the most rigorous schedule possible.”

It gets repeated so often that it starts to sound like a law of physics.

The problem is that nobody ever defines it.

Does “most rigorous” mean the student taking six AP classes? The student taking three APs while working twenty hours a week? The student whose high school only offers four APs? The student who chooses orchestra over AP Physics because she’s spent the last ten years becoming an extraordinary musician?

They’re all rigorous.

They’re just rigorous in different ways.

Here’s how I define it.

I don’t define rigor by course titles. I define it by trajectory.

To me, rigor is the willingness to keep choosing work that stretches you. Sometimes that stretch is AP Calculus. Sometimes it’s Honors English because writing has never come naturally. Sometimes it’s continuing with a language when you could have stopped. Sometimes it’s taking one fewer AP because that allows you to captain the swim team, perform in the musical, edit the newspaper, work after school, care for younger siblings, or simply get enough sleep to do your best work.

Rigor isn’t about proving you’re exceptional. It’s about preparing yourself for what’s next.

Taylor didn’t skip from her debut album to 1989. She had to write Fearless, then Speak Now, then Red. Every album taught her something the next one required.

High school works exactly the same way.

Freshman year prepares you for sophomore year. Sophomore year prepares you for junior year. Junior year prepares you for college. Every step builds on the one before it. Every year earns the next.

When I was reading applications, one of the very first things we’d pull up wasn’t the transcript. It was the school profile.

Before we counted AP classes or looked at GPA, we wanted context.

How many advanced courses were offered?

Were there prerequisites?

Did the school offer AP, IB, dual enrollment—or none of the above?

How many advanced courses did students typically take?

Context wasn’t an afterthought.

It was the starting point.

Admissions officers aren’t comparing your transcript to every student in America. They’re asking a much more interesting question:

Did this student make thoughtful use of the opportunities available to them?

That’s a very different question than,

“Did this student take the most APs?”

Families hear,

“Take the most rigorous schedule possible.”

and translate it into,

“Take every AP.”

Those aren’t the same sentence.

One is advice.

The other is panic.

I’ve watched students overload their schedules because they believed admissions offices rewarded maximum difficulty. By October they’re exhausted. Grades slip. Activities they once loved become obligations. Learning becomes surviving.

That’s not rigor.

That’s panic.

And here’s something I wish more families understood.

Outside a relatively small group of extraordinarily selective colleges, we’re in something of a buyer’s market. Students today have more outstanding college options than they realize.

That means something important.

You don’t have to build a transcript that would satisfy every college in America.

You need to build a transcript that prepares you for the colleges where you will thrive.

Those are not the same goal.

Sometimes taking one fewer AP means you still have time to rehearse for the musical, lead the robotics team, write for the newspaper, work after school, swim every morning, or simply sit down for dinner with your family.

That isn’t necessarily a weakness.

It may be exactly the balance that allows you to flourish.

Taylor Swift wasn’t trying to become every artist.

She was becoming more completely Taylor Swift.

The audience followed.

Students make the same mistake every year.

They try to become what they imagine colleges want.

The strongest applicants don’t do that.

They become more curious.

More disciplined.

More resilient.

More thoughtful.

More themselves.

The colleges that value those qualities usually find them.

That’s why I named this series The Only Thing True About All Colleges Is That Nothing Is True About All Colleges.

Families want formulas.

How many APs?

How many leadership positions?

How many volunteer hours?

How many years of a language?

I understand why.

Formulas are comforting.

Context is messy.

Unfortunately, admissions is messy.

There isn’t one perfect transcript.

There isn’t one magic number.

There is only the story your choices tell.

That’s one of the reasons I keep telling students:

Don’t wish away the year you’re in.

The purpose of ninth grade isn’t to build a college application.

It’s to become the kind of student who’s ready for tenth grade.

The purpose of tenth grade isn’t to build a college application.

It’s to become ready for eleventh.

The purpose of eleventh grade isn’t simply to get into college.

It’s to become ready to thrive there.

Every year has work to do.

Every year earns the next one.

Kevin Evers argues that Taylor Swift’s reinvention worked because, by the time it happened, it felt inevitable.

That’s my hope for every student I work with.

That by senior year, the harder classes, deeper interests, stronger writing, and greater confidence don’t feel like a performance. They feel like the natural result of four years spent choosing the next challenge instead of the biggest one.

Taylor Swift didn’t become Taylor Swift by skipping albums.

Students don’t become college-ready by skipping years.

The best transformations are earned.

And when they’re earned...

They don’t feel dramatic.

They feel inevitable.

Which is why I’ll keep saying:

Don’t wish away the year you’re in.

“The only thing true about all colleges is that nothing is true about all colleges.”

It’s one of those deceptively simple sentences that becomes more profound every admission cycle.

Pete wasn’t interested in shortcuts. He was interested in understanding. He challenged assumptions, questioned conventional wisdom, and reminded me that context always matters.

He also had another piece of advice that I’ve probably repeated to hundreds of students over the years:

“Read. Read a lot.”

Not because reading will magically raise your SAT score.

Not because it will make you sound smarter.

But because reading teaches you to think. The more you read, the more comfortable you become with complexity. You stop searching for simple answers and start recognizing nuance. You learn to hold two seemingly contradictory ideas at the same time.

That’s college admissions.

And, if we’re being honest, that’s life.

Every year, I watch families desperately search for the answer.

Should my student apply test-optional?

Does demonstrated interest matter?

Is Early Decision worth it?

Do colleges care about leadership?

Is AI changing essays?

The frustrating answer—the one nobody wants to hear—is this:

It depends.

Not because admissions officers are trying to be mysterious.

Not because consultants enjoy making things complicated.

Because colleges are different.

Different missions.

Different institutional priorities.

Different enrollment goals.

Different financial realities.

Different readers sitting in different offices making different decisions.

The mistake isn’t believing a piece of admissions advice.

The mistake is believing it applies everywhere.

That’s why one family swears Early Decision was the best decision they ever made, while another says it would’ve cost them tens of thousands of dollars.

It’s why one student gets admitted with a 3.6 and another is denied with a 4.0.

It’s why one college couldn’t care less whether you visited campus while another carefully tracks every interaction.

The exceptions aren’t flaws in the process.

The exceptions are the process.

I’ve spent years reading applications, working in admission offices, counseling families, visiting campuses around the globe, and talking with colleagues who all see different pieces of the elephant.

The longer I do this work, the less interested I become in blanket advice and the more interested I become in nuance.

So I’m starting something new.

Over the next several months, I’m going to tackle some of the biggest myths, assumptions, and half-truths in college admissions.

Sometimes it’ll just be me.

Sometimes I’ll invite admissions deans, financial aid experts, school counselors, researchers, testing specialists, and other people whose work I deeply respect.

Not because I want competing opinions.

Because I want context.

Because the best admissions advice usually begins with five words:

“It depends.”

But before I decide where to begin, I’d like your help.

What question keeps nagging at you?

What’s the piece of advice you’ve heard so many times that you’re no longer sure whether it’s actually true?

What admissions topic do you wish someone would explain without panic, politics, or marketing?

Leave it in the comments.

Email me.

Send a carrier pigeon.

Reach out on socials (and while you’re there, give me a follow).

Reply to this post.

If enough of you are wondering the same thing, it’ll probably become the first installment.

Pete gave me two pieces of advice that have never left me.

Read. Read a lot.

And remember:

“The only thing that’s true about all colleges is that nothing is true about all colleges.”

I’d like this series to honor both.

Let’s ask better questions.

Let’s embrace the nuance.

And let’s figure out what’s true—one college at a time.

Sophomore.

He explained that it comes from two Greek words: sophós, meaning wise, and mōros, meaning foolish.

A sophomore is, quite literally, a wise fool.

Someone who knows enough to think they’ve got it figured out...and still has an enormous amount left to learn.

I’ve never forgotten that class.

Because it perfectly describes adolescence.

Teenagers are supposed to be wise enough to try.

They’re supposed to be foolish enough to make mistakes.

That’s not a bug in the system.

That is the system.

Which is why an email that landed in my inbox this morning made me stop.

The subject line read:

“Ninth Grade Is the Cheapest Year to Fail.”

Now, before I say anything else...

The advice inside the email was good.

Really good.

The author’s point was that high school isn’t dramatically harder than middle school. The biggest difference is that the scaffolding starts to disappear. Teachers stop reminding. Parents have to step back. Students begin learning how to manage themselves.

I agree with almost all of it.

But I keep coming back to that subject line.

Not because it was wrong.

Because it was brilliant.

It made me open the email.

It also made my heart rate go up.

That’s what good marketing does.

Here’s the thing, though.

If you stripped away the subject line, I probably would have written almost the exact same advice.

High school does require students to take ownership.

Parents do have to resist becoming the new executive functioning system.

Kids do need the chance to make small mistakes while the stakes are still relatively low.

I believe every bit of that.

What gave me pause wasn’t the advice.

It was the packaging.

It was good advice wrapped in language that creates an unnecessary anxiety spiral.

And I think we do that far too often in college admissions.

We take ordinary developmental milestones and describe them like looming disasters.

Don’t fall behind.

Don’t waste freshman year.

Don’t make a mistake.

Ninth grade is the cheapest year to fail.

The underlying advice is often thoughtful.

The framing is what changes everything.

Because words don’t just communicate information.

They create emotion.

Read these two sentences:

A freshman will probably forget to submit an assignment.

Ninth grade is the cheapest year to fail.

The advice is almost identical.

Your nervous system has a very different reaction.

One invites reflection.

The other triggers fear.

And fear has a funny way of shrinking our ability to think clearly.

Parents stop hearing, “This is a normal part of growing up.”

Instead they hear, “My child is already behind.”

That’s the anxiety spiral.

It starts with one emotionally loaded word, and before you know it, a forgotten homework assignment has somehow become a referendum on college admissions.

I don’t think that’s what the author intended.

But I do think it’s what the language does.

And that’s where I think we, as an admissions industry, have to be more careful.

The goal isn’t to make parents afraid enough to listen.

The goal is to help them feel confident enough to step back.

Because here’s what I actually see every year.

A freshman forgets to submit an assignment.

They earn a zero.

They’re embarrassed.

They send an awkward email to the teacher.

They create a better reminder system.

They don’t make that exact mistake again.

That’s not failure.

That’s growth.

That’s a fourteen-year-old learning how to become fifteen.

I’d much rather see that lesson happen over one forgotten biology assignment than during the first semester of college, when every credit costs real money and Mom and Dad aren’t a phone call away from fixing it.

The advice is right.

Freshman year is the best time to learn these lessons.

I just don’t think we need to describe normal adolescence as a catastrophe before parents will believe us.

Sometimes a missed assignment is just a missed assignment.

Sometimes a zero is just information.

Sometimes a teenager is just being exactly what teenagers have always been.

Wise enough to try.

Foolish enough to learn.

And that’s exactly how it’s supposed to work.

Also, who ever redesigned Apple Photos deserves to go straight to hell.

It was a picture of me and my two best friends from college, Julie and Jo, covered head to toe in mud during Flunk Day at Knox College.

There we were.

Eighteen-ish years old.

Filthy.

Laughing.

Completely unaware of what life was about to hand us.

Yesterday was rough for me, and when the photo popped up, I sent it to Julie and Jo.

Julie wrote back:

“God, those three had no idea what the world had in store, did they?”

Without really thinking, I responded:

“I think they’d be super proud of us.”

Over the last 24 hours, I’ve thought about that exchange more than I expected to.

Because it’s true.

Those three girls had no idea.

We didn’t know about careers that would zig when we expected them to zag.

We didn’t know about heartbreak, surgeries, funerals, impossible decisions, friendships that would deepen, or the people we hadn’t met yet who would change everything.

We didn’t know where we would live or what our lives would look like or how many versions of ourselves we would become along the way.

And we certainly didn’t know that all these years later, we would still be here.

Still friends.

Still making each other laugh.

Still showing up.

Still knowing exactly when one of us needs the others.

Those three girls also didn’t know that one day my work would revolve around listening to hundreds of students nearly the same age as we were in that photo, celebrating with them, worrying about them, laughing with them, and becoming a small part of their stories, just as they would become part of mine.

Which brings me to something I’ve been thinking about.

I spend most of my days talking to seventeen-year-olds.

People are often surprised by that.

“How do you do it?” they’ll ask, usually with the same tone they’d use if I told them I wrestle alligators for a living.

The truth?

I love it.

Because every week, my students teach me something.

Some of this week’s lessons include:

Apostrophes are now affectionately known as “flying commas.”

Hootie & the Blowfish is considered a relatively new—and not very exciting—band.

And the phrase “burning a CD” now requires an explanation.

I’ll admit, that last one stung a little.

I realized I crossed into a new phase of adulthood when I found myself explaining not just how we burned CDs, but why we did it. Why we waited twenty minutes for one song to download. Why we agonized over the order of the tracks. Why making someone a mix CD was practically a love language.

The look on my student’s face suggested I might as well have been describing churning butter.

And honestly?

I kind of love those moments.

Not because they make me feel old.

Although...they do. I have a big birthday coming up.

But because they remind me that every generation grows up in a completely different world.

When Julie, Jo, and I were seventeen, our parents couldn’t track our locations. We memorized our friends’ phone numbers. I can still recite more than a few, along with Mrs. Macola’s answering machine message verbatim. We waited by the radio hoping we’d hit “record” at exactly the right moment. If someone called the house, you had no idea who was on the other end until you answered.

My students have never known that world.

Just as I’ve never known theirs.

And that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be.

The technology changes.

The slang changes.

The playlists change.

The college admissions landscape certainly changes.

But underneath all of that?

It doesn’t really change at all.

Every year, I hear students worry about disappointing their parents.

I watch them compare themselves to everyone around them.

I see them wrestle with failure, celebrate victories, question themselves, change their minds, discover passions they didn’t know they had, lose confidence, regain it, and slowly begin to understand who they are.

I don’t envy seventeen-ish.

I miss parts of it—the friendships, the optimism, the complete confidence that I could survive on cafeteria food and three hours of sleep.

And I miss the girls in that photo.

Not because I want to go back and be nineteen again. Absolutely not. Once was plenty.

But I miss how little we knew about what was coming.

We had no idea which things we worried about wouldn’t matter at all.

We didn’t know which ordinary days would become the ones we’d remember forever.

We couldn’t have known how many times life would knock the wind out of us—or how often the people standing next to us would help us get back up.

But I don’t miss wondering whether one test score, one rejection, one awkward conversation, or one mistake defined who I was.

That’s what I wish every teenager knew.

It doesn’t.

No matter how much the world changes, seventeen-year-olds are still trying to figure out who they are.

And that’s my favorite part of this job.

Not because I get to help them choose a college.

Because I get a front-row seat to watching them become themselves.

Each year, students log onto Zoom believing we’re going to spend the year talking about college.

We do.

But we also spend the year talking about confidence, disappointment, courage, curiosity, relationships, resilience, and the quiet realization that they’re far more capable than they think they are.

Maybe that’s why Julie’s text stayed with me.

When she wrote, “Those three had no idea what the world had in store,” she was right.

We didn’t.

We couldn’t have imagined the people we’d lose, the people we’d find, the detours we’d take, or the lives we’d build.

That’s why I answered the way I did.

“I think they’d be super proud of us.”

Not because everything went according to plan.

It didn’t.

Not because life turned out to be easy.

It hasn’t.

But because somewhere along the way, we became the kind of women those nineteen-year-old girls were hoping they’d grow up to be—even if we couldn’t have imagined what the journey would look like.

Kind.

Resilient.

Curious.

Still laughing.

Still showing up for people.

Still showing up for one another.

My students don’t know what life has in store for them either.

And I’m glad they don’t.

Some surprises are heartbreak.

Many more are joy.

The point isn’t to know what’s coming.

The point is to keep becoming the kind of person who can meet whatever comes next.

One day, years from now, a picture will pop up on one of their phones.

They’ll look at the seventeen-year-old version of themselves with far more grace than they have today.

And I hope they’ll smile and think:

I think you’d be super proud of me.

I tell them to set a timer.

If you’ve ever read Lauren Graham’s Talking as Fast as I Can, you may remember what she calls the Kitchen Timer Technique.

Set the timer for an hour.

Sit down.

Stay there until it goes off.

That’s it.

You’re not allowed to decide after twelve minutes that you’re “just not feeling it today.” You’re not allowed to reorganize your desk, clean your room, or suddenly remember you have three texts to answer.

Your only job is to keep the appointment.

I love this advice because it changes the goal.

The goal isn’t to finish the essay.

The goal is to spend an hour being someone who writes.

Ironically, once students stop worrying about finishing, they usually get more done.

A few years ago, I realized I give parents almost the exact same advice.

Only instead of scheduling writing...

I ask them to schedule college.

Pick one hour every week.

Put it on the calendar.

During that hour, talk about college as much as you want.

Read essay drafts.

Review the college list.

Ask about deadlines.

Talk through financial aid.

Celebrate finishing an application.

Worry about test scores if you absolutely have to.

Get every question out of your system.

Then...

When the hour is over, stop.

I know that sounds overly simple.

It isn’t.

After years of doing this work, I’ve realized something:

Students don’t mind talking about college nearly as much as they mind wondering when college is going to come up next.

Parents don’t mean for college to become the background music of the house.

It just...happens.

A question in the car.

A comment over dinner.

A reminder before practice.

An article sent by text.

A casual, “Hey, can I ask you something?”

None of those moments are a problem by themselves.

But together, they create something much bigger.

Students begin to feel like college could come up at any moment.

Every conversation starts to carry a little bit of suspense.

When Mom says, “How was your day?” is she just asking about my day?

Or is this leading to a conversation about supplements?

When Dad says, “Come here for a second,” is he asking for help carrying groceries?

Or did I miss another deadline?

It doesn’t take long before students start bracing themselves.

Not because they don’t care.

Because they never know when they’re “on.”

That’s what the timer accomplishes for writers.

And it’s what a scheduled college meeting accomplishes for families.

When students know they’ll spend an hour writing, they don’t have to feel guilty every minute they’re not.

When families know they’ll spend an hour talking about college, they don’t have to wonder if every drive to practice, every dinner, or every “Can I ask you something?” is secretly about admissions.

Parents don’t have to carry every question around in their heads.

If you think of something on Tuesday, write it down.

Bring it up on Sunday.

If your student finishes an essay on Thursday, wonderful.

Read it together during your meeting.

Instead of letting college leak into every corner of your relationship, you’ve given it a place.

And here’s the irony.

When students know there will be a time to talk about college, they’re often much more willing to talk about college.

The conversation feels intentional instead of constant.

Boundaries don’t mean you care less.

They mean you’re protecting the rest of your relationship.

Because your teenager still needs rides to practice that aren’t strategy sessions.

They still need dinners that aren’t application updates.

They still need to tell you about the funny thing that happened in chemistry without wondering if it’s somehow going to become an essay topic.

The admissions process deserves your attention.

It does not deserve every conversation.

Put college on the calendar.

Give it your full attention for an hour each week.

Then close the laptop, go for a walk, watch a baseball game, make dinner, argue about whose turn it is to unload the dishwasher, or laugh about something completely unrelated.

The essays will get written.

The applications will get submitted.

The decisions will come.

What I hope remains is a teenager who remembers that, even during one of the biggest transitions of their life, they never felt like they were competing with the college process for your attention.

College is important.

Your relationship is more important.

At least, that’s my working theory.

She has listening ears.

And she has decorative ears.

The listening ears are extraordinary. If I open the refrigerator and even think about taking out the cheese drawer, she’s by my side before I’ve made a decision. If someone pulls into the driveway, she knows. If I say the word “walk” a little too enthusiastically, she’s already spinning circles in the front hall.

Those ears work beautifully.

The decorative ears?

Those are reserved for me.

“Ruby.”

Silence.

“Ruby.”

More silence.

After years of living together, I’ve decided this isn’t a flaw.

It’s a life strategy.

Ruby has become remarkably good at deciding what deserves her attention. She isn’t ignoring the world. She simply refuses to give every sound equal weight.

The older I get, the more I think that’s a skill worth stealing.

Every summer, around this time, the volume starts to rise.

“I heard everyone at my high school is applying Early Decision to the same school.”

“My friend’s already finished her personal statement.”

“They said you need research.”

“My cousin told me colleges don’t care about test scores anymore.”

“Everyone’s applying to twenty schools.”

“I heard…”

Application season has a soundtrack, but it isn’t written by admissions officers. It’s written by group chats, TikTok, Reddit, neighbors, parents at soccer games, the student who somehow knows everyone’s GPA, SAT score, and dream school, and well-meaning relatives whose college advice expired sometime around the invention of the iPhone.

The voices keep coming. Some are thoughtful. Many are anxious. The loudest ones are rarely the wisest.

The problem isn’t that people have opinions.

The problem is that students begin to believe every opinion deserves equal weight.

They don’t.

I’ve watched talk excitedly about a college they discovered on their own. Then someone says, “I’ve never even heard of that school.”

Suddenly they’re apologizing for liking it.

I’ve watched students tell me they love history, music, or philosophy. Then someone reminds them what engineers make.

Now they’re questioning themselves instead of exploring themselves.

I’ve watched students who were perfectly happy applying to eight colleges become convinced they need 22 because that’s what everyone else is doing.

The students didn’t change.

The noise did.

One of the hardest lessons to learn—at seventeen or 44 or 70—is that attention is finite.

Every minute you spend worrying about someone else’s path is a minute you’re not walking your own.

Every rumor you chase pulls you a little farther away from your own judgment.

Every comparison whispers that your story isn’t enough.

It is.

Now, before you think I’m suggesting students ignore everyone, let me be clear.

Quite the opposite.

Some people have earned your listening ears: parents who know your heart, teachers who’ve watched you grow, counselors who understand both you and the admissions process, friends who celebrate your successes without making them about themselves, and the people who ask good questions instead of offering quick answers.

Listen carefully to them.

Give them your full attention.

They’ve earned it.

Everyone else?

Decorative ears.

The kid who announces where everyone is applying?

Decorative ears.

The rankings debate that somehow appears in every group chat?

Decorative ears.

The stranger on Reddit who guarantees they know exactly how admissions works?

Decorative ears.

The neighbor who insists there’s only one “right” college?

Decorative ears.

Not because those people are bad.

Because not every voice deserves a vote in your life.

That’s true in college admissions. It’s true in careers and friendships, in parenting, and in just about everything else that matters.

One of the great freedoms of adulthood is realizing you don’t have to attend every argument you’re invited to. You don’t have to absorb every opinion that’s offered. You don’t have to carry every expectation someone places on you.

You get to decide.

That’s discernment.

And I think it’s one of the most important skills we can teach young people.

Every July, I meet seniors who think the answer is more information.

If they could just listen to one more podcast, read one more ranking, scroll one more Reddit thread, or ask one more person where they’re applying, surely the path would become clear.

But clarity rarely comes from collecting more opinions.

It comes from learning which opinions deserve your attention in the first place.

That’s a very different skill.

Ruby still hears the things that matter.

She hears kindness.

She hears possibility.

She definitely hears cheese.

She just refuses to waste energy on the rest.

As application season begins, I’m pretty sure this is going to become a phrase my students hear over and over again.

When the group chat starts spiraling…

Decorative ears.

When someone insists there’s only one path to success…

Decorative ears.

When comparison starts getting louder than curiosity…

Decorative ears.

Because your future won’t be built by listening to everyone.

It’ll be built by learning whose voices deserve your listening ears…

…and whose deserve your decorative ones.

Decorative ears, everybody.