One of my favorite podcasts is The New York Times’ The Daily. Whatever your feelings about Michael Barbaro and his interjected hmm’s, it’s the perfect slice of current events and great journalism to listen to while I walk my dog. Lately, the majority of episodes have been about the pandemic, the economy, and the election. But one episode from earlier this month has stuck with me since I listened to it.
 
On August 7th, The Daily published an interview between Barbaro and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey titled, “Jack Dorsey on Twitter’s Mistakes.” There were a lot of different directions this interview could have gone in – Twitter has made all kinds of missteps in its 14-year history (like most companies). But one thing I never expected was for Dorsey to make a compelling case for the value of the liberal arts.
 
In discussing the origins of Twitter, Dorsey remarked, “It wasn’t something we really invented, it was something we discovered. And we kept pulling the thread on it.” There’s nothing wrong with this approach, of course, but Dorsey quickly begins to see that this passive approach can have massive implications when the product gets so big so quickly. In hindsight, he can see that there were steps they could have taken to design Twitter more thoughtfully, and in doing so, to prevent some of the harm the platform has enabled.
 
“The disciplines that we were lacking in the company in the early days, that I wish we would have understood and hired for were a game theorist to just really understand the ramifications of tiny decisions that we make, such as what happens with retweet versus retweet with comment and what happens when you put a count next to a like button?” Dorsey also mentioned the value of behavioral psychologists in better understanding how people would be likely engage with – and manipulate – a system like Twitter.
 
Game theory, behavioral psychology, economics, these are all the realm of the social sciences, the “soft” sciences, not something we tend to associate with the “brogramming” culture of Silicon Valley.  And yet, Dorsey’s admission is a crucial one. You can’t predict the future, and not even the best game theorist could have prevented all of Twitter’s mistakes; malevolence always seems to surprise us with its creativity. But when you aim to “move fast and break things,” you inevitably do damage, some of which was avoidable.

Last month, many of my colleagues and I were pleased to hear the news that the California State University system had approved a new required course on ethnic studies and social justice for all of their students. Considering that that CSU schools collectively enroll almost half a million students a year, this is a decision that will have a remarkable impact. The goal of this decision, according to Chancellor Timothy P. White, “is for CSU students, from every major and in every workplace, to be leaders in creating a more just and equitable society.”
 
This decision does not come without criticism, most notably that the resolution was passed without ever consulting the CSU Council of Ethnic Studies, the professors who will presumably be executing this requirement. But what I did not realize was that this ethnic studies requirement is actually the culmination of 51 years of protests.
 
In a recent episode of the podcast Code Switch, they tell the story of the San Francisco State Strike of 1969, when Black students organized to demand that more Black students be admitted to the university and that the school establish a Black Studies department. They were later joined by Latinx and Asian students who also wanted to see greater representation on campus. While initially peaceful, the administration and the police began to respond with greater force and violence, arresting, injuring, and threatening the activists until the strike came to an end after five months. But the university did agree to establish the College of Ethnic Studies that year, and that decision led many other schools to implement similar programs.         
 
I work primarily with students in California, and one thing I hear from many students and parents is the belief that the UCs are “good” and the CSUs are “bad.” I, personally, don’t believe there are bad colleges – maybe a for-profit school that charges you for an education you never actually receive. But in the context of nonprofit, public universities, every single one of these schools is equipped to provide you with a robust four-year college education that will help you achieve whatever you want to professionally.
 
In fact, the California State University system is nationally recognized as one of “top universities for social mobility,” according to the US News and World Report. This designation is given to schools that are exceptionally good at graduating Pell-eligible (low-income) students. In fact, 11 of the top 20 spots are held by CSU campuses including, Monterey Bay, Long Beach, and San Francisco State. This is particularly significant considering that half of the students who attend CSU schools are Pell-eligible, and almost a third are first-gen.
 
This is, to me, the most important work a university can do: helping people attain an education in order to meaningfully improve their lives. And in that way, not only are the CSUs “good” schools, they are actually great schools. So whether you’re a California student looking for a local and affordable option, or an out-of-state student dreaming of palm trees and sunshine, take a closer look at the California State University system.

This week, I’m volunteering at a local high school, doing a virtual essay workshop for their new seniors. This is the seventh year I’ve been visiting this school, and I always look forward to reading their stories and talking to them about the qualities they’re trying to articulate in their applications.
 
One of the pieces I frequently share at this workshop are the Top Five College Essay Cliches:

• Playing sports taught me the value of hard work and commitment.
• Traveling to [insert foreign country here] broadened my horizons.
• Volunteering showed me how good and important it is to help people.
• How I overcame this challenge (that wasn’t actually very challenging).
• Anything that is solely designed to impress admissions officers.

 
But, for the most part, kids have gotten wiser in the seven years I’ve been working with students on their college essays, and less and less frequently do I have to gently nudge a student away from one of these topics. That does not mean, however, that teenagers have stopped relying on clichés in their stories. They’ve just found new ones. So today, I’d like to submit two new tropes to the college essay pantheon.
 
1. The stock market/statistics essay. This story often overlaps with kids who want to study business. They talk about how they got the idea from a parent or grandparent who gave them a little seed money to invest. They talk about choosing stocks based on their funny abbreviations or because it was a product they liked in real life. They talk about the thrill of seeing their portfolio grow, and how it inspired them to do more research and become more knowledgeable about their buys and sells. The statistics version of this generally overlaps with a love of sports, but from a data analytics angle rather than a playing angle. They like imagining themselves as the manager of a team, and they love to see how their decisions play out in real life.

2. The mom/therapist of your friend group. This story often overlaps with kids who want to study psychology. They talk about how they’ve always been the person in their friend group that people go to when they need advice. They are the one who keeps extra snacks in their locker, or brings sunscreen to a day at Six Flags, or is always available to give someone a ride when they need it. They talk about a meaningful situation where a friend was going through something especially difficult, and how they were able to be there for them and how good it felt. These essays often end by mentioning the student’s interest in studying psychology in college and possibly becoming a therapist professionally.
 
I don’t say this to imply that you cannot write a great college essay about one of these topics. You absolutely can, and I’ve seen many examples of them. I’m also not trying to tell a student that if they write about one of these topics, they won’t get into college. Many kids who have written clichéd college essays have absolutely gotten into colleges, and have thrived as students and in their professional lives. I say this to encourage students to dig deeper, to try to find something more personal and original to share, to take full advantage of this opportunity to speak in your own voice in your application.

Last week, I sent what is usually a low-key email to my students, letting them know that registration was now open for this fall’s ACT test dates. In a typical year, no one ever mentions this email to me. My students and their parents spend about 30 minutes online and sign up for one or two test dates and then move on with their day. As with everything else, this is not a typical year for standardized test registration. Instead, the website almost immediately crashed from the sheer volume of people trying to register for the September and October sittings.
 
Over a week later, some of my students have successfully registered for the ACT this fall. And I use the term “successfully” very loosely. One student got lucky enough to find a seat in California, but it’s three hours away from where he lives. His family is trying to decide if they should wake up at 4:00am and drive there and back on the day of the test, or if they should reserve a hotel room for Friday night. Another student couldn’t find a seat in California, so she’s taking the test in Oklahoma one month and Michigan the next. She has family she can stay with in each place, and high school is fully remote, so she doesn’t feel like it’s completely unreasonable.
 
And any juniors who have managed to get a seat for this fall are being asked to give up their seat for a senior who needs the test. But this is a confusing message to send next year’s seniors, considering that the only students who are not in a panic about testing this fall are the ones who signed up early and took their standardized tests at the beginning of their junior year.
 
You might be scratching your head as to why students are so desperate to take the SAT and ACT this fall when so many colleges have gone test-optional in response to this spring’s lockdown and subsequent canceled tests. Some students are responding to the tepid announcements from their top-choice college about going test-optional: that they would really like you to send test scores – any test scores – if at all possible. Teenagers can read between the lines and see that, if they want to be admitted, they’d better submit scores. Some students are recruited athletes who are still being required by the NCAA and member colleges to submit test scores with their applications. And the most depressing reason of all is that many of the colleges who have gone test-optional for their admissions decisions are still requiring test scores to qualify for scholarships.
 
In my dream world, colleges would have decided to go test-optional this year because they finally recognized that these are flawed tests that privilege students who already have all the advantages in this process. But I was willing to accept this path through coronavirus if it got colleges to come to the right conclusion. I can only hope that seeing how unnecessary the tests are this year will lead colleges to move to test-optional - or better yet, test-blind! – long term.
 
But what I cannot understand is how colleges can simultaneously acknowledge that students cannot reasonably submit test scores for their applications, but that students should be able to supply scores for scholarships. It seems fairly obvious that the majority of students who will have scores to submit this year are the students who least need scholarships. These are the students who can get a hotel room the night before their test, who can fly to another state to take their test, who had tutors and independent counselors that encouraged them to take the test months before their peers.  
 
So if the tests are genuinely not feasible for applications, then they are equally infeasible for scholarships and sports. If colleges have made a decision to go test-optional this year, they should be test-optional for everything. And if they are not really test-optional, this is the time to say so, in clear language, at the top of their admissions webpage. This mixed message is not okay.

​When I was a little kid, I loved the Dr. Seuss poem, “Too Many Daves.” I even memorized it and performed it for my class in 5th grade. The characteristically irreverent poem tells the story of Mrs. McCave, who “had twenty-three sons, and she named them all Dave.” Seuss then goes on to explain what she could have named them instead. The list features prospective names from Moon Face to Weepy Weed to my childhood favorite, Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate. The consensus at the end of the poem is that Mrs. McCave made a terrible mistake, and the result is too many Daves.
 
The reason I bring this up is the terrible mistake that I see many seniors about to make: too many reaches. As we get closer to the beginning of the new school year, I’m starting to work with my students on finalizing their college lists. We won’t have everything nailed down for another month or so, but my students are beginning to identify their favorite schools in the reach, target, and safety categories. And I’m having the same conversation with almost all of them about the downsides of making your list too reach heavy.
 
The first reason I advise against applying to five or eight or ten reach schools is just the sheer amount of work involved. Reach schools for most students tend to be those highly-selective colleges that most of us can name easily (the ones that begin with Ivy and end with League). These schools also tend to require more supplemental essays, and their essays are more complicated. For instance, Stanford asks students to answer 11 additional essay questions. Many of those questions are quite short, but the topics are unique and don’t overlap with other colleges’ questions. The application fee is also $90, so applying to Stanford is not something to be done lightly.
 
Writing 11 essays for Stanford is a perfectly reasonable thing to do when Stanford is one of eight or nine colleges that you’re applying to. You can do a great job on those 11 essays, you can spend as much time as you need to brainstorm just the right topic, and you can do all the necessary revisions to get your tone and your wording exactly right. But when Stanford is one of 15 or 20 schools on your list, those 11 essays are going to get short shrift. And while the chance of getting accepted to Stanford is comically low, you will definitely have a better shot if you knock those essays out of the park than you will if you rush through them a week before the deadline.
 
So applying to fewer reach schools actually works in your favor by allowing you to do a better job on those applications and genuinely put your best foot forward. But it also benefits you months later when you get your admissions decisions. It’s very easy to underestimate how disappointing it feels to get a no from a college, even a college that you knew was a long shot.
 
In December, it feels like throwing another piece of spaghetti at the wall – it’s no big deal. But in April, every small envelope, every letter that begins “I’m sorry to inform you…” is painful. Getting two or three of those decisions is manageable; it’s just a part of life. But getting five or eight or ten of those no’s can feel crushing. And it can undermine the excitement you should be feeling about the schools that said yes to you, the schools that are psyched about you, the schools that want to give you scholarships and throw you a tiny parade.
 
So make a good choice for your future self and resist the urge to play admissions lottery, to buy just one more ticket, to apply to just one more school. Pick a smart list of schools with a manageable number of essays and do your very best on every single one of them. That way you’ll know, whether the decision comes back yes, no, or maybe, that you took your best shot.