280: ENCORE: Dream School: How Do You Find the Right College for Your Teen?

0:00Dr. Lisa Damour: Friends, have you ever wished that you could get instantaneous answers to your toughest parenting questions? Well, now you can. I am thrilled to introduce you to Rosalie, my free AI-powered content guide that is designed to help parents just like you. So here's how it works. You go to my website, drlisademour.com, and ask Rosalie your question. Rosalie will give you a short answer based on my work and also guide you to the best resources from everything I've ever written and to the Ask Lisa podcast episodes that directly tackle the topic you're searching for. So whether you're wondering how to handle sibling rivalry or navigating a teen's screen time or just trying to figure out how to best support a child who's having a hard time with stress, Rosalie is available 24-7 for free to help you.

0:52Dr. Lisa Damour: Head to DrLisaDemore.com and try Rosalie today.

1:02Tell me a parenting issue everyone struggles with with tweens and teens, but no one talks about. Reena, I think a lot of people feel like they just don't know how to connect to their kid anymore. I'm Reena Nainan, and welcome to Ask Lisa, the psychology of raising tweens and teens. And I'm Dr. Lisa DeMoor.

1:20Dr. Lisa Damour: We bring you science-backed strategies for managing anxiety, discipline, intense emotions, and more. We decode tough parenting issues with tips you can use right now. So subscribe to Ask Lisa, the psychology of raising tweens and teens, and join our YouTube community today. Just Google Ask Lisa Podcast. We're here to help you untangle family life. Encore episode 280, Dream School. How do you find the right college for your teen?

1:55Dr. Lisa Damour: Okay, friends, if the college admissions process has your family stressed and fixated on a dream school, I want to offer you a new, much better way to think about this. Jeff Salingo, a dear colleague and a best-selling author who has actually studied what makes for thriving in college, talks with us about what he found out and what he learned might surprise you. It's not where they go. It's how they approach it. In this episode, we'll show you how to move beyond the rankings and find a school that your teen can genuinely learn and grow at. So I'm asking you this not as a psychologist, but as a mom who already has a kid in college.

2:35Do you really need to take 22 AP classes in high school to get into college?

2:41Dr. Lisa Damour: You do not. In fact, I have often said to my kid and to other kids, you know, you do intend to go to college. You don't have to do college in high school if you intend to go to college. Thank you for saying that. You're welcome. Because both of us have children in the ninth grade this year. Yes, we do. And this is my first child going into high school. And we had an argument this weekend, a heated discussion, where my husband and I were on opposite ends, where I was like, you should be – it's a tiger mong in me, Lisa. Like, you should be taking everything you can. Anyway, I am obsessed. How is your ninth grader doing, by the way?

3:14Okay.

3:15Dr. Lisa Damour: Well, we're not talking about that. I'll tell you exactly what we're talking about, Reena. And this is, you know how I love my teenagers and all of them. Okay, we're talking about ranch dressing. And she was killing us. She was killing us this weekend. She was telling us about a conversation she was having with another ninth grader, a boy. And somehow they got on the topic of how much ranch dressing is too much ranch dressing. And apparently the boy insisted that the cafeteria could be waist deep in ranch dressing and it would not be too much ranch dressing. So that's what we're discussing in my house.

3:43Well, school food, at least they're eating it. In my days, nobody ate the school food. It was so horrible. Yeah.

3:48Dr. Lisa Damour: Well, if it has ranch dressing, apparently they'll eat anything. Yeah. But I will tell you, in addition to school food, everyone's obsessed with college and what is going to happen. And I feel like every year since we started this podcast, it's been like a different standard for getting into school. So today, we're diving right into the book that every parent of teenagers needs to get right now. It's called Dream School, Finding the College That's Right for You by bestselling author and higher education expert, Jeff Selengo, a friend of the pod who we've had on before. And I'm thrilled to say the book is actually out today.

4:19We all know the pressure. You know, families obsessing over the top 25 schools, kids feeling like futures are determined by that one acceptance letter. But the thing about this book, Jeff flips the narrative on its head. He shows us that the real dream school isn't actually about the brand name or the prestige. It's about finding a college where your child can actually thrive academically, socially, and even financially. So let's welcome Ask Lisa podcast guest, Jess Salingo. Jeff is a New York Times bestselling author, award-winning journalist, and professor of practice at Arizona State University.

4:51He's written extensively about higher education for more than two decades and is a special advisor to the president of ASU. And now with this book, Dream School, he's giving parents a roadmap to approach the college search with a little less stress. And you know what, Lisa, Jeff is actually a guest that we've had on before because he's so good as an expert with colleges. Welcome, Jeff. Jeff, welcome. We are so thrilled to have you back. It's great to be here again for both of you.

5:18Dr. Lisa Damour: Well, and this book, Jeff, I, you know, as someone who has worked in this space for so long, I am so grateful for this book. And I actually had the honor of blurbing it. I got to read an early copy. And what I said about it, and I really mean it, is Dream School is the desperately needed, level-headed college guide we've been waiting for, absolutely waiting for. How are you feeling about it? I'm feeling pretty good about it. I really want to create a movement among parents to give them permission to think more broadly about what defines a good school, that it doesn't have to be in the top 25. It doesn't even have to be in the top 50.

5:58And what I hope to do with this book is to break some myths that we have about those top 25, top 50 schools, but also then give them the tools to make sense of what to many people are just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of colleges that don't make sense to them. So how do I find a good school? How do I find that kind of needle in the haystack as a result?

6:21Dr. Lisa Damour: I love it. Now you open the book with the story of a boy named William, who is a high achieving student who goes to Columbia, right? A lot of kids dream outcome. He realizes pretty quickly, it's not the right fit. And he leaves. What is the biggest mistake that this story tells us about what families think about when they're thinking about a so-called dream school? Well, in many ways, we begin the college search kind of midstream. What do I mean by that? We just start putting names on a list. Those names are often what we hear in our communities, which shows up on Naviance or SCORE, which are those guidance programs that are used in many schools, many high schools.

7:03We don't think about what we want out of college, what the learning environment that we want out of college, what are the activities that we want to do in college. And so for William, it was about getting into the most selective college he could get into. He placed a bet in early decision on Columbia and he got in. And as he said, it was like winning the lottery. But the high of that win, once he arrived on campus, disappeared pretty quickly. and things he didn't think about during the search or things he didn't consider that he wanted out of college during the search started to appear. Those were things like, for example, he wanted to get into this really popular class at Columbia and his advisor said, yeah, well, that probably will never happen.

7:44Maybe you'll get in junior or senior year. He really wanted to do undergraduate research. He had a chance to do research in high school and he wanted to do research. And basically his advisor said to him, yeah, most of these professors, they only want to work with grad students. And then among the students, he just found this competition. It was always around to get into the next club, to get into the next class, to get that A. There was this achievement culture that just kept pushing him in directions that he couldn't really find friends. He couldn't find his kind of group of people as a result.

8:17And so he came home at winter break and he told his mom he thinks he wants to transfer. And his mom said, well, you're going to have to come up with a story then because not many students transfer from Columbia. And I give him a lot of credit for doing that because he did at the end of the year, he transferred to the University of Minnesota. Good for him. Yeah. No, I mean, that's an amazing story. I love how you open with that. Jeff, what's Naviance and Score? So Naviance and Score are popular software programs that are used in high schools that help students understand kind of where they fall into the ecosystem of higher education.

8:53So for example, the most popular feature of them are these scattergrams that show students who have a particular SAT score or particular GPA and how students from that high school fared in previous years applying to these different colleges. Great. So tell me a little bit more about what the research is that you found on Prestige. Because as a parent, Jeff, you know what I want? By the time I'm done fronting this bill, I want them to get a high paying job. I don't care anymore what the name of the university is. I'm sick of paying the bills, Jeff. So there are two things that I think are important about prestige, right?

9:28When we surveyed more than 3 ,000 parents for this book, what did they want for their children at the end of the day from college? They wanted two big things. One was they wanted a job, right? They didn't want their kids moving back home, living in their basement. Second, they wanted those connections that they're going to get at college with friends, with mentors, with faculty members. So they wanted kind of engagement. So let's look at the data then on engagement and on outcomes. First, let's think about outcomes. David Deming, who is at Harvard, is part of the Opportunities Research Group there that Raj Chetty and a bunch of other economists work on.

10:07They looked at the outcomes of highly selective, highly elite colleges versus everyone else. And what they found is that we tend to over-index on the elite colleges. Are the outcomes better at elite colleges? Sure. Do you have a better chance of working on Wall Street or working for one of the big consultancies or going to Harvard Law School or one of the Ivy Law Schools? There's no doubt about it. But we tend to think about the outliers there as the average. And what he found is that the average outcomes of somebody from Harvard are no different than Ohio State or UCLA or many other public flagships or other less selective private colleges.

10:50So that's number one on the outcomes. Number two - That is earth shattering, Jeff. What you're saying is shocking to me. Most parents don't know this about college. They don't. And I also think we believe that, well, you have to get that job on Wall Street or in a consultancy or things like that. And to be honest with you, I'm not sure that every student really wants to do that anyway. But second, and this was really more surprising to me, and by the way, we did it for the book. We did this research for the book. So every year for the last 20 years, Indiana University has been doing a survey called the National Survey of Student Engagement.

11:26They survey first-year students and they survey seniors at more than 900 colleges about their engagement in day-to-day life on campuses. That includes with peers, but it also includes with faculty in classes, in the residence halls and activities and so forth. And I asked, they don't release, unfortunately, they don't release individual results for colleges and universities. But I said, okay, if I send you selectivity for 1 ,400 colleges and universities in the US, could you match them with the 900 colleges that participate in your survey? So we know the difference between colleges who accept fewer than 20 % and colleges that accept 40 % and colleges that accept 80%.

12:06And what we found was fascinating. First of all, that student satisfaction, there was not that much of a difference between students in the top 20 % in terms of selectivity and the bottom 20 % in terms of selectivity. Okay, that's huge. Yeah, it's huge.

12:22Dr. Lisa Damour: I'm just going to pause on that for a minute, right? Everybody thinks you get into these super elite colleges and you will be more satisfied and happier than students who get into schools that accept a much bigger percentage of their applicants. And we didn't see much difference. And one other thing was around student-faculty interaction. There was actually more interaction with faculty at institutions that accepted between 20 % and 40 % of their applicants than there were at those institutions under 20%. more faculty interaction. The only thing that the highly selective colleges were way out in front on were internships, students who add internships, because they really focus on that.

13:06And students who go to highly selective colleges usually have both the financial resources and the social capital to get those internships. But there were very few differences between the highly selectives and everyone else on so many other measures of student engagement.

13:22Dr. Lisa Damour: That's remarkable. You know those things that feel like they're too good to be true, but you try them and you stick with them and it turns out they're every bit as good as you thought they were? Okay, that's how I feel about every single thing I've ever purchased from Quince. So I'm hugely reliant on their silk buttoned-up shirts. I wear them constantly. And I also wear a lot of their 100 % Mongolian cashmere sweaters, which in addition to being incredibly soft, start at around$50. They don't just have clothes, they have incredibly lovely items for your home from hotel quality bedding to bath and kitchen essentials, and even our favorite scented candles have been consistently coming from Quince.

14:06Dr. Lisa Damour: Find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was the Ask Lisa podcast. It's the best way to support the show. Okay, so one of the things you write about in this book is the panicking class. It's such an incredibly useful and I think apt phrase right now, which are basically kids who are worried they're not going to be able to replicate their parents' lifestyle.

14:46Dr. Lisa Damour: And of course, we're in a phase of economic uncertainty. So this has probably become even accelerated in the time since you submitted this book to your editor. But this is putting a lot of anxiety on kids and making them anxious about this process, making them anxious about identity, affecting their confidence. What do we want to say here? What do you find to be a useful way to approach this question? Well, I think first of all, Lisa, is that life is long and there's so much turmoil in the economy right now that even a degree from a highly selective college, as many of the parents I met during the reporting process said, well, they said it's insurance for the changes in the job market.

15:27Well, the thing about, you know, I think everyone's worried about AI, especially eating those early career jobs right now. I don't think AI is going to worry about whether you have a degree from Harvard or Ohio State, for example. It's going to impact students no matter where they go. Really, what's going to be most important is what are the skills that you're going to get as an undergraduate? Both those soft skills, the ability to communicate, ability to work in teams, the ability to write and communicate, but also those very specific hard skills that might be necessary for particular jobs. For example, you want to do data visualization as a history major or things like that.

16:06And those types of opportunities you can get at a wide variety of schools. And I think that's most important for families who think, well, this insurance policy I'm going to get, it has to be that degree from this highly selective college. It doesn't matter as much anymore. That's so important. So I want to ask you as a South Asian kid whose parents constantly compared, I love this in your research. You say that 61 % of parents think other parents in their community prioritize prestige. How do we break the cycle? We're comparing. We want to be able to say our kid went to so-and-so school and this school.

16:44Do you have advice for parents who just can't break out of that? I need the brand name to be able to brag about this to my friends. I wish I could answer this question easily because I run into the same issue in my neighborhood here outside of Washington, D.C. Even the premise of this book, when I would talk to parents in my neighborhood or at my kid's school, the premise of this book is just really hard to kind of get over that hurdle that prestige matters, that you're going to parties or you're in school communities or on the Instagram pages that students put out where they're going to school.

17:19That signal says so much in your own community. And so the advice I have is to perhaps talk less about it, talk less about where your kids are going to school or where they're applying to during the process. I'm not a huge fan of those Instagram pages, advertising where everybody in a high school goes. I know high schools love them. And I know students often do this without the school. You know, the school doesn't necessarily endorse it all the time. But I don't know when you all went to college, but when I went to college, it was like, you know, we talked about it among our friends once in a while, but it wasn't this every day throughout senior year.

17:58Where are you going? Where are you applying? Where are you touring? And then once you get in kind of these, you know, these large posts that go to the rest of the world advertising where you're going. If we could kind of reduce that conversation, I think it could have a huge impact on not only where students are applying, but where they're going.

18:20Dr. Lisa Damour: I love that. And it's fun. As someone who's around teenagers and cares for them and is in this environment so much, I really try to hold back on asking kids where they're going. And I try to hold back on asking their parents where their kids are going. And it's hard because I think underneath it, it often feels like, did they get into some fancy school? I want to know. But sometimes you're just like, your kid's moving to another state. I'm interested in that, the state they're going to, which happens to be attached to the college they're going to. But I have found myself, and I agree with you, adults can actually have some influence here about not chasing that question, not asking that question, and instead saying, how are you feeling about going to college?

18:57Dr. Lisa Damour: It can fill in, I think, that space. Okay. So in terms of how we feel about going to college, one of the things you talk about that is so important, and I agree, is around a kid's sense of belonging on campus. And I've had the honor of working at a few different universities, big ones, small ones. And belonging is a big deal. Walk us through why it is so important that a kid finds a sense of belonging wherever they land. Well, Lisa, I think it's really interesting right now because in all the parent groups I'm on, whether it's in Facebook or Reddit, there's so many parents from the class of 2025.

19:34So their kids just graduated from high school. They just landed on campuses all across the country. And the parents are posting within a couple of days, their kids are unhappy with their choice, right? That's not the right place. And I just, first of all, I want to say, give it time. You know, that sense of belonging doesn't happen in the first three days. And there are, and I also ask them, do classes start yet? And in many cases they haven't. So we have this sense of belonging that has to happen in the residence hall. Our roommate has to be our best friend, or we have to meet our best friend in our hallway.

20:09And as I write in the book, the sense of belonging happens in three different dimensions on college campuses. One is in your residence hall. One is in the activities that you decide to pursue, where often you're going to kind of find your people. But it's also in the academic setting. And I sometimes think we forget about that. And indeed, we know from studies that students who just show up to class the first couple of weeks of college are more likely to not only be retained and stay in college over the long term and get their degree, but they have that sense of belonging that other students don't.

20:47So, you know, one of the most simple things that students could do is, first of all, wait for class to start and show up, connect with other students in that class and connect with the professor. And that's the other thing that's really important here are office hours and using them and utilizing them. Because I think a lot of students come out of high school not realizing what office hours are for college professors. And they think, well, I only have to go see the professor if I'm in trouble. That was me. That was my belief. I didn't know what they were.

21:14Dr. Lisa Damour: And I was like, you're never going to catch me in those office hours. Right. And I didn't know that. And I tell the story about my first year at Ithaca College, right? I didn't do very well on my first macro economics exam. And I thought I was the only one like that because I heard all these students talking around me who had macroeconomics in high school and I didn't. Who had macroeconomics in high school? Who had that? Exactly. Right. And I remember a professor who unfortunately just passed away. And I told this story to us folks in my alumni group that that professor reached out to me and said, Jeff, why don't you come by and talk to me in the office?

21:50And we'll talk a a little bit about how you did on the exam and why and things like that. And I thought, oh my God, I must be in trouble. And I realized in going to him that that's what office hours are for. It's to have those conversations. And that one act of him inviting me into his office to talk about this particular exam opened up a range of possibilities, not only with that professor, but so many of my professors over the years. And that's the thing. And that's the belonging research that I talk about in the book is that most teenagers get to college thinking they're the only ones who are feeling like this.

22:28And so there's a lot of work that colleges are doing around that first year experience to show students that they're not the only ones, that other students are also experiencing these issues of not finding their people immediately. And it's okay to feel that way. You know, you tapped into something, mentorship there. I know when I chose and went to George Washington University for journalism, what transformed my career was I had a fabulous mentor, Steve Roberts, the husband of the late Cokie Roberts. It just truly transformed my career. He's the one lunch I have every time I come into Washington.

23:03And you actually mentioned in the book that mentorship is a marker of a good school. But how can you tell that when you're applying to a school? It's a great question, because there's all these things just like William in the introduction didn't know or didn't know to look for. So how do I look for mentors? First of all, talk to other students in your major. See how they talk about professors. See how they talk about their activities. See how they talk about the advisors to those activities, right? That's where you're going to get a sense of how they feel about it. Then when you go to the school, you go on the official tour.

23:39but I think that we rush through tours too often. I understand you might have a limited time to see multiple campuses, sometimes in one day. I think that you should, after the tour, before the tour, during breaks, get a sense of what, especially if the school is in session, walk down the hallways with professors' offices. Are their doors open? If they list office hours, are they actually there? See if you could sit in on a class. Do students come early and does the professor come early to talk to students? What happens after class? Does the professor just rush off and students are kind of left on their own?

24:15You know, professors aren't the only mentors, but they are the people that you're going to spend most of the time with as an undergraduate. And by the way, they're going to be probably the first people that you meet in those first couple of days of college. And so looking at how much they care about spending time with undergraduates says a lot about a college.

24:35Dr. Lisa Damour: This is amazing. And I will tell you, I have a daughter who's a senior in college. and she has found this. She has an advisor who takes her out to lunch. I tell her, I'm like, that never happened to me. I'm not even close, right? I mean, so it's there. It can be found. All right. Well, you know, Lisa, that simple act of being invited to a meal with professors, whether it's like, and often now there's a lot of concern about one-on-one interactions between professors and students, and I get that. But even small group lunches or small dinners or dining halls, again, I went to school a long time ago and the professors used to invite us over to their house.

25:15That doesn't happen as much anymore. But that action we see in the research, students also feel more like adults and they feel like they could have these conversations with mentors in a way that they're going to have with mentors once they get into the workforce. That makes a huge difference in students' lives.

25:35Dr. Lisa Damour: I'm watching it. I am watching it with my kid right now. Yeah. Yeah. Steve Roberts would take every class out on a Friday to TGI Fridays for appetizers. No alcoholic drinks, but appetizers. And the conversation was amazing. And guess what? Everybody loves this man. Everybody loves this man. Yeah. Reena, I think I remember that TGI Fridays around that corner. Foggy bottom. I interned in DC. Yes, we used to spend a lot of time at that TGI Fridays. You know those things that feel like they're too good to be true, but you try them and you stick with them and it turns out they're every bit as good as you thought they were?

26:11Dr. Lisa Damour: Okay, that's how I feel about every single thing I've ever purchased from Quince. So I'm hugely reliant on their silk buttoned up shirts. I wear them constantly. And I also wear a lot of their 100 % Mongolian cashmere sweaters, which in addition to being incredibly soft, start at around$50. They don't just have clothes. They have incredibly lovely items for your home, from hotel quality bedding to bath and kitchen essentials, and even our favorite scented candles have been consistently coming from Quince. Find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com.

26:53Dr. Lisa Damour: Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was the Ask Lisa podcast. It's the best way to support the show. All right, cost here. Cost is often the giant, giant elephant in the room when we get to talking about college and kids' choices. How should parents talk with their kids about money in a way that's honest, not discouraging, not guilt-inducing? Like, how do you recommend families do this? Well, Lisa, this is another thing that we found in the research for this book. Well, first of all, parents and families should really talk about money early on and kind of set parameters, set budgets, set how much they're willing to take out in loans, how much savings they have.

27:43If they have multiple kids, how much money they're willing to spend. Having those conversations early on is important later on once those acceptances come and those financial aid offers come as well. But another important thing to remember here that we found in our research is that it's okay to think beyond prestige if you're going to get a deal on college. And that is one of the big changes, I think, over the last 30 years is that I found not only in my surveys, but in the data itself, so many families who are saying, you know what? I'm willing to pay for a certain amount of prestige. If my kids get into these five schools, I will pull out all the stops.

28:26But we're not going to do it just anywhere. We're not going to pay full price even if we can. Do you want to know why? Because we want to do other things with our money or we may need to do other things, right? We might have aging parents. We might have other children at home. Oh, and by the way, we know that students are sometimes struggling to launch after college. So we might want to help them subsidize a graduate degree, or we might want to subsidize moving to a city with higher expenses and things like that. So there's all these other things that you might want to do with your money, and that's okay.

29:00It's okay to say, you know what, we're going to look a little deeper in the rankings where there might be a public institution that has a great honors college that offers us lower tuition than a full-pay private. or there might be a lot of private colleges out there, and we know this for a fact, that are offering discounts to even people who can pay full price in order to entice them there. And that doesn't mean they're bad places. Education-wise, it just means they don't necessarily have the biggest brand name where they're getting inundated with tens of thousands of applications like the top of the rankings do.

29:36Dr. Lisa Damour: It's so important. It's so important. And I also just want to flag, we've had great conversations on this podcast with Ron Lieber around paying for college. So I just want to cross-reference that for families because he's done a lot of work on the question of who's willing to give big discounts and how do you get them? No, and I think I love Ron and I love Ron's work on this because it is, I think most people enter this process totally overwhelmed by paying for college. And it is, it's a huge price tag. It's probably the most expensive thing that you're going to pay for in life. But I think knowing your budget and knowing your parameters early on is important as a family, not just among the parents, but the parents and the teenagers, but also knowing, as Ron writes, that there are great places that offer great discounts.

30:26You know what? This phase is just so exciting, partially because it's like 30 years later, I'm vicariously living through my kid again. You know, you talk in this book about, we talk so much about plan A and everybody gets excited about plan A and you have lots of colleges in that plan A, but how do we talk about plan B in a way that doesn't undermine plan A, but also makes them excited about these other colleges that might be sort of tier two for them? Well, first of all, you need to have a backup plan. As I talk in the first chapter of the book, even since I wrote my last book, Who Gets in and Why You're Inside College Admissions, The admissions landscape has changed dramatically.

31:08Test optional admissions has meant that tens of thousands of more applications are coming to the most selective schools than ever before. Those selective schools are doing everything in their mind to get the right student that they think is the right fit. And you just may not be that student. And so I think a lot of students go into the process every year thinking, well, I'm going to be the one to get into Stanford or Chicago or Yale or Harvard. fill in the blank of a highly selective college. And I think that many people are surprised, especially if it's their first child, at how difficult it is to get into some of these places.

31:44And then they scramble in the middle of the process to find good plan Bs, good backup schools. And my take is that if you do that earlier on in the process, first of all, you might end up loving plan B more. And I interviewed so many students who did so because those colleges wanted them. And there was something about feeling wanted. And how did those colleges want them? They gave them, they had the opportunity to be in smaller cohorts that could be in an honors college. They had access to potentially getting special scholarships that gave them money to study abroad or to do undergraduate research, right?

32:23Those are opportunities that aren't just available at the most selective schools. And in fact, if you're a great student who has your eyes set on a selective school, you actually might get those opportunities reserved for you at less selective places. And by the way, get some money on top of it. So what's your final piece of advice, Jeff? You've written this incredible book. I really believe it's like the Bible for colleges, high school parents should be reading and possibly their teens as well. What is your final advice in all the research you've done? What's the takeaway you'd like to leave?

32:56I mean, I really want people to just open up the aperture on that lens. And that does not on the college search. And that does not mean that if you're looking at a top 25 school that you suddenly have to apply to a school ranked 200. And by the way, I hate the rankings, but I know we use them. So we'll just throw some of those numbers out there. All I'm asking you to do is if you're looking at a top 25 school, look at those schools ranked between 50 and 75 or 75 and 100. You might find some hidden gems. And I have a lot of examples in the book of these 75 new dream schools. A few of them might catch your eye.

33:31Go and take a look at them. See if those faculty members are great mentors, right? See what opportunities might be available to you that were closed off to the Williamses of the world at Columbia, right? You might get those opportunities to do undergraduate research, to study abroad. And you know what? As I saw in the book, right? We had one of the students that I met in chapter two ends up going, starts at a very small liberal arts college, not even the top 100. It was so small, I didn't even mention it in the book because she could easily be identified. And she ends up at Harvard Law School and ends up on the Harvard Law Review, right?

34:06The outcomes are there even for those students who go to colleges deeper in the rankings.

34:14Dr. Lisa Damour: Jeff, thank you. This has just been such a valuable conversation. I just love this book. I'm going to hold up my copy. I love this book. And I'm just really, really grateful that you have put so much thought and care into creating a fact base for, I think, what people intuit. I think a lot of people know that there are wonderful, wonderful schools that people don't talk about so much, but you've actually laid out the information that families need to lean into that intuitive understanding. And I just, it's a huge gift. It's a huge gift to families. Well, Lisa and Reena, I thank you so much for having me on and thank you for all that you're doing for teenagers and their families in particular.

35:04I think that this is, it's a hard message. I won't deny it. It's a hard message to get people to think more broadly about colleges. But my hope is that if we just open up that aperture, even just a little, the number of places that you're going to find that are even better fits, it's just going to be amazing. The book is called Dream School, Finding the College That's Right for You. Jeff Salingo, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. oh i just i am so happy lisa that we had jeff on so early in the season because as i know the tiger mom in me is is raging now i'm really focused on colleges and i feel like jeff really reframes everything in a way nobody else has quite put it this way no nobody's done this work i mean

35:52Dr. Lisa Damour: everybody talks about it he really did it and it's it's a beautiful beautiful guide it's a wonderful book. It is a major contribution. There's nothing like it that exists. So I'm thrilled. So what do you have for us for Parenting to Go? Well, you know, so there's this wonderful line, you know, how students go to college matters so much more than where. And I think it's really true. You know, one of the things that we've talked about and I really think about is the goal of college is to help kids grow. And some kids are ready to grow. Some kids are going to party. They're not necessarily ready for college.

36:27Dr. Lisa Damour: But to Jeff's work and to Jeff's point, what's the college that's going to help your kid grow, right? If they are going to benefit from really one-on-one interactions, maybe some giant university is not going to be the right place for them. Or, you know, I'm fascinated by what Jeff shared about there actually being so much less contact between students and faculty at the most selective colleges. So, you know, if we think about this, How you go is more important than where you go. What college is really going to help your kid grow? And I love that we're looking at that social component because I feel like that's not what I did when I looked for colleges 30 years ago.

37:07So acknowledging that is a big game changer. I love it. I think it's huge. Relationships, relationships, relationships. It always lands there. You always say that. I love that. Next week, Lisa, we are going to have two incredible authors and their new book that's just out called Talk to Your Boys. We're going to look at boys in this moment in the teenage years and the social issues they're facing that you might not be aware of. I'll see you next week. I'll see you next week. Thanks for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to the Ask Lisa podcast so you get the episodes just as soon as they drop. And send us your questions to asklisa at drlisademore.com.

37:47And now a word from our lawyers. The advice provided on this podcast does not constitute or serve as a substitute for professional psychological treatment, therapy, or other types of professional advice or intervention. If you have concerns about your child's well-being, consult a physician or mental health professional. If you're looking for additional resources, check out Lisa's website at drlisademore.com.

38:17Thank you.