Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:His major issue is a bias toward Research ECs because he himself worked in research. He isn't self-aware enough to recognize it.

All of his advice comes thru that research lens, when in fact, Admissions is focused on building a community and finding kids who will be employable, loyal and wealthy after graduation (both for fundraising reasons and because schools are ranked by US News on employment outcomes). This means athletes, class presidents, heck even prom king/queen can be more valuable to Admissions officers than the 600th applicant who did bio research with a random professor, if GPA, SATs and rigor are otherwise equal.

Athletes, no unless recruitable. Class presidents, yes each class only has one. No idea about prom king or queen.

Research.....I think these top colleges do like to look at research kids. It is not popular at our high school. Only 2 or 3% of the kids in any class are interested in doing the research program, so it's definitely not as common as a lot of other ECs.

That said, I don't recommend any kind of high level research program unless a student is really interested. Contrary to what you might read on here, it's many many hours of work over several years.

Anonymous wrote:His major issue is a bias toward Research ECs because he himself worked in research. He isn't self-aware enough to recognize it.

All of his advice comes thru that research lens, when in fact, Admissions is focused on building a community and finding kids who will be employable, loyal and wealthy after graduation (both for fundraising reasons and because schools are ranked by US News on employment outcomes). This means athletes, class presidents, heck even prom king/queen can be more valuable to Admissions officers than the 600th applicant who did bio research with a random professor, if GPA, SATs and rigor are otherwise equal.

Athletes, no unless recruitable. Class presidents, yes each class only has one. No idea about prom king or queen.

Research.....I think these top colleges do like to look at research kids. It is not popular at our high school. Only 2 or 3% of the kids in any class are interested in doing the research program, so it's definitely not as common as a lot of other ECs.

Anonymous wrote:omg what horror was today's podcast? wtf was that

Please summarize so the rest of us do not need to listen to it.

omg what horror was today's podcast? wtf was that

Anonymous wrote:His major issue is a bias toward Research ECs because he himself worked in research. He isn't self-aware enough to recognize it.

All of his advice comes thru that research lens, when in fact, Admissions is focused on building a community and finding kids who will be employable, loyal and wealthy after graduation (both for fundraising reasons and because schools are ranked by US News on employment outcomes). This means athletes, class presidents, heck even prom king/queen can be more valuable to Admissions officers than the 600th applicant who did bio research with a random professor, if GPA, SATs and rigor are otherwise equal.

This. So true. But I do like listening to him.

I kind of like him! But I do look at it through the lens of Top 10-15 schools.

Most of what he says doesn't apply to the rest of us. One thing I like about him is that he is straightforward no BS.

His major issue is a bias toward Research ECs because he himself worked in research. He isn't self-aware enough to recognize it.

All of his advice comes thru that research lens, when in fact, Admissions is focused on building a community and finding kids who will be employable, loyal and wealthy after graduation (both for fundraising reasons and because schools are ranked by US News on employment outcomes). This means athletes, class presidents, heck even prom king/queen can be more valuable to Admissions officers than the 600th applicant who did bio research with a random professor, if GPA, SATs and rigor are otherwise equal.

Download the pod audio file, have AI transcribe it and summarize it and the key points. Turn all of his episode transcripts into a custom GPT. Pretty easy to do. There are some good nuggets in there for pointy kid admissions but not worth sitting through hours of his non-sequiturs

^ be a disadvantage overall FOR the non-hooked applicant

Interesting to hear many common takes on the podcast. I too find him incredibly wordy and repetitive. I don't buy most of what he is 'selling', but I do recognize that he is speaking to a particular audience. He even says as much. He is targeting those that want a 'top' college and don't care which one - just a 'top' college. Thus, for those folks, he advocates for an approach strategically focused on differentiation and perceived relevance to the target institutions and argues that this strategy will have the greatest impact on admissions likelihood combined with leveraging ED at schools where this is a meaningful advantage. He is treating it like playing 'the game'.

I think his argument about sports is not against the sports per se, it's that unless it can be taken to the level of being recruited, it's not differentiating. Most kids applying to these schools play a sport or 2. He would probably argue that a private that requires playing a sport would be a disadvantage overall to the non-hooked applicant. Every student from the school will have this same item on their resume when a student could have had something more unique. He actually had an episode where he kinda cast some shade on Harvard-Westlake in that he was suggesting much of their 'success' in placing to elite colleges was due to hooks, if I recall.

His philosophy is to create a product (the student) that will appeal to selective schools based on his understanding of what they care about. He is not about taking a student and looking for the school that fits them.

He showed he is out of touch on a previous podcasts when he derided private schools with athletic requirements. AO are very familiar with this structure and do appreciate the skills learned through athletics, even at a normal, high school level. This episode he basically said that if your kid isn’t willing to stay home on Friday night to do a passion project to develop a hook and would rather be out at a party with friends they don’t deserve to get into an elite college. And he wants your kid doing this from 8th or 9th grade.

he talks waaaaayyyyy too much! dude doesn't know how to be concise with his content.

Anonymous wrote:This guy is insanely long-winded. I’m not sure he has said anything at all in the 45 minutes I have listened to.

Yes, and speeding it up to 1.25 or 1.5 speed makes the vocal fry even worse.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Another session dropped. Can’t find transcript yet.

Anyone?

Do you have the transcripts for past episodes?

Btw its posted now. Don't think its helpful sadly.

Where?

Anonymous wrote:he doesn't read or post here. his voice is worse than ever. he's def not taking notes from us

lol.
sadly he's not.