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• David gives his bio, and he shares his current role
• I introduce our topic: What does the research show about how colleges make decisions? We look at Factors in College Admissions
• David explains the history of the development of the NACAC, State of College Admissions Report
• David talks about how they gather the admissions data for the report
• David talks about what the number one factor is in how colleges make decisions, and he breaks the number one category into three categories
• David explains how the top three categories overwhelmingly test as the things that matter the most to colleges, and David shares the numbers to back this up
• David shares the factor that comes in at number 4 of factors colleges rate as considerably important and which factors are moderately important. David points out that they just recently started adding this factor in their survey, and it has already shot up to number 4
• David introduces the next most important factor that colleges rated as considerably important and moderately important after the big four we discussed last week
• We have a robust conversation about the factor that came in at number 6 in the State of College Admissions Survey
• David introduces some more factors and where they came in, and David and I have a robust conversation about why class rank has dropped so much from their past studies to where it is now
• David shares where standardized testing comes in, and we also talk about why testing ranked so high in the past and why it has fallen so far in the recent State of College Admissions Report
• David walks through the final factors that showed up as essential but not in decisive numbers
• David shares the links to the articles, and they are in the Show Notes
• David talks about the first ever high school NACAC has authorized to survey high school students about their experience in college admissions and college in general
• Dave shares some of the main takeaways from the student survey when it comes to things like diversity and the value of college
• Dave talks about a half dozen of the questions that they asked the students
• Dave talks about whether they will do the survey again
• Dave talks about who provided the funding for this survey
• Dave talks about some of the key findings in the survey
• David talks about one surprising finding that emerged from the survey
• David shares more results from students about what the students overvalued and undervalued
• Dave and Mark editorialize some of the reasons why the perception of the admission factors that students think matters is so different from what the survey research reveals colleges value
• Dave and Mark talk about how confusing holistic admissions is. They postulate that this is one reason why college admissions is confusing
• Dave talks about how students are experiencing high anxiety
• David continues talking about the anxiety students are experiencing
• David talks about what the students thought about the communication from the college and Mark and Dave have a robust conversation speculating why the students feel the way they feel
• David talks about what the students shared about the pressures they are feeling
• Dave talks about the selectivity fallacy
• Dave talks about conspicuous consumption
• David goes on the hot seat in our lightning round

You can also listen on Episode 478, Episode 480, Episode 482, Episode 484, and Episode 486