Demonstrated Interest

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After we finished our tour of the college campus, the admissions officer asked if there were any questions.

“How long do you spend evaluating each application?” one parent asked.

He paused for a second and you could tell he was hesitating because he knew it wouldn’t sound good. He decided to plow ahead anyway.

“About three to five minutes,” he said.

That put the whole process into stark relief. 

A decade of studying, taking tests and accumulating extracurriculars are compressed into a five-minute window.

It didn’t seem like a lot of time.

You could see the parents in the room doing the mental math: five minutes divided by all the money and time spent on consultants and trips and tours and essays and letters.

In defense of admissions officers, the volumes are huge, so they have to move fast. Each school also has a pretty clear idea of what they want. 

(For perspective, venture capitalists take on average just over two minutes to review the pitch decks submitted by startups.)

The admissions officer we met with said his team evaluates more than 16,000 applications for about 1,200 spots each year. They read every submission.

He joked that the best way to improve your chances was to move to North Dakota since it’s rare to get an application from there and schools want every state represented.

It’s hard not to feel like your future rides on being admitted to the school of your choice.

Of course, it’s impossible to predict how things will turn out.

During the drive up to visit schools in Massachusetts, my son and I listened to David Senra’s excellent Founders podcasts about the life of Warren Buffett. 

Senra recounts how Buffett was crushed to be rejected by Harvard Business School. 

Looking for other options, he realized two professors he admired, Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, were teaching at Columbia University.

The deadline to apply for Columbia had already passed, but Buffett wrote a letter to Dodd in mid-August of 1951 entreating him to consider his application. 

He was accepted.

Buffett learned from Graham the investment skills that would make him a fortune.

He later said getting rejected from Harvard was the best thing that happened.

BRIEF OBSERVATIONS

YO TED: Every day I get direct messages on Twitter from people who want to sell me things and too many begin with “Yo!”

EVERYONE STARTS SOMEWHERE: It’s such a mystery how Freddie Mercury — or any of us — become who we become.

STUDY STEM, THEY SAID.: A few years ago, everyone was supposed to study STEM. Now, not so much.

THE VALUE OF AN EDUCATION: It’s hard even for experts to compete with someone who has done the research on the Internet.

GRAMMAR: I am struggling to process this ad painted on a wall in Chelsea, NYC. WASHING CARS. BIKES. Why is there a period after cars? Why does it begin with Washing? Shouldn’t it be, “CAR, BIKE WASHING” with a comma, instead.