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An effective college search starts with discovery. “Start your discovery with the fundamental thing about college,” AB host and Dartmouth Dean Lee Coffin advises. “You are going to college to study, and four ‘Ps’ should guide the first phase of the search. Focus on program, place, people, and price as the building blocks of discovery for each campus." Senior admission officers from Brandeis, Cornell, and Saint John’s of Annapolis join Coffin with tips on how to explore academic programs, classroom types or formats, and general education requirements. They also discuss how place shapes academic majors from campus to campus. “Understand how every institution offers its course of study in its own distinctive way,” Cornell’s director of undergraduate admissions counsels. “And focus on what gets you excited—what learning environment lets you do your best work?,” the Brandeis dean asks.

It's time for the high school class of 2027 to step into the college search spotlight. As juniors kick off their college search, AB resets its narrative spotlight to the discovery phase. In the ninth season premiere, Dartmouth's Lee Coffin welcomes recurring co-host Jacques Steinberg, a former higher ed reporter at the New York Times and the best-selling author of The Gatekeepers and The College Conversation, and Kate Boyle Ramsdell, director of college counseling at Noble and Greenough School in suburban Boston, for a wide-ranging primer on the college search. The trio outlines key milestones in the search calendar; shares tips on identifying criteria and "non-negotiable" factors; advises the development of an exploratory list as an opportunity to discover; and recommends a family's financial capacity as an essential list shaper. "Let's give you a toolkit to move from discovery to applying with a sense of purpose," Dean Coffin says.

In a preseason bonus episode, Admissions Beat cross-shares a YouTube conversation about financial aid from the parenting website Grown & Flown featuring AB host and Dartmouth Dean of Admissions & Financial Aid Lee Coffin and AB contributor Jacques Steinberg, former New York Times higher education journalist and bestselling author of The College Conversation. As G&F notes on its YouTube channel: "In this essential conversation…Steinberg and Coffin break down what families really need to know about paying for college. This is not about negotiating like you’re buying a car—it’s about understanding how colleges calculate affordability, how financial aid works behind the scenes, and how families can make informed, realistic decisions without panic." You can learn more about Grown and Flown’s video offerings here.

For the high school Class of ’26, the first college admissions milestone is at hand as early decisions—some binding, some not—land. In AB's season finale, a trio of deans and a college counselor unpack those decisions, offering guidance on the etiquette of an early acceptance as well as reassurance for those with an early outcome that extends a search into regular decision.

From Grey's Anatomy to Bridgerton, Shonda Rhimes is television's storyteller extraordinaire. The Emmy winner visits AB for a lesson on how to channel main-character energy in an essay or interview. "What would you say to a teenager staring at a blank page, afraid their first draft won’t be good enough?," Dartmouth's Lee Coffin asks her. "Don't overthink your story," Shonda advises. "Just be you."

"Getting in" is the clear goal for almost every applicant, but a college search also yields valuable lessons for the road beyond the admissions process itself. Angel Perez, CEO of the National Association for College Admissions Counseling, returns to Admissions Beat for a Thanksgiving week conversation with Dartmouth Dean Lee Coffin that plumbs the lessons of his career in admissions as strategies for the road ahead. "These are the things I wish I knew," Perez notes.

For many students around the world, college presents a rare opportunity to change the arc of a life, to pursue the fabled “American Dream,” where anything can happen for anyone. But for those who are first in their families to attend and graduate from college—a cohort known as “first gen”—the promise of upward mobility means navigating what, for some, can be a mystifying admissions process. “I didn’t know what I didn’t know,” Dartmouth Dean Lee Coffin remembers about applying as a first-gen to college. Three veteran counselors from access-oriented schools and organizations in Boston, Los Angeles, and Kentucky join the AB host, sharing stories and tips about how to celebrate a unique life experience throughout an application and, later, on a college campus. As one observes, “It is time to showcase your tenacity, grit, and a desire for more.”

The media's admissions beat is a very active feed each fall as application deadlines approach. Headlines invite clicks, shares, chatter...and often anxiety as students and parents consume newsfeeds that brim with content. But every admissions-themed article is not "news you can use," and some advice columns need a dose of interpretation. This week, AB host Lee Coffin and producer Charlotte Albright have a conversation about several recent admissions articles from The New York Times and Forbes—and the headlines that sometimes accelerate applicant angst—as they ponder what these posts really highlight. “I want to offer a forum for explanation,” the Dartmouth dean observes, "and what nuggets of information are worth adopting as valuable guidance."

Like most professions, college admissions has its own internal language, and that distinctive style of communicating is especially true as an application is read and summarized. In a special "quiz bowl" episode that fuses NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me with Jeopardy!, four veteran college counselors—all former admission officers who've read thousands of applications themselves—match wits to decode and decipher the unique lingo and shorthand that admissions officers use as they read an application. For applicants, AB Quiz Bowl offers an inside peek at the many things an admission officer notices, as well as some tips about how to emphasize the points you most want to highlight in your own application.

Sticker shock is real. Perceptions of college affordability represent one of the biggest concerns that most families navigate as a college search unfolds, with a 2024 survey of US voters revealing that 77% of Americans see college as “unaffordable.” This week, the pod tackles that (mis)perception as Admissions Beat becomes “Financial Aid Beat.” Justin Draeger, SVP for Affordability at Strada Education Foundation in Washington D.C., and one of the nation’s leading advocates for college affordability, joins Lee Coffin and Dino Koff from Dartmouth for a primer on the ins and outs of financial aid. The trio reassures families that higher ed really can be affordable as they offer tips on completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and colleges' net price calculators, and they help translate some of the “jargony language” that muddies the financial aid conversation and causes unintended confusion.

Like so many things, a college search often looks—and feels—better in hindsight. Parents are important eyewitnesses to a search as it unfolds and concludes, and they have plenty of stories to tell. Two parents from suburban communities full of high-achieving, ambitious students share thoughts and lessons from their children's respective searches a year ago. From the parental POV, they reflect on managing their own expectations and worries, processing the "silent treatment" from a child while "keeping quiet" themselves as they formed opinions and impressions, navigating the chatter of suburbia as well as the instincts of an independent-minded applicant, and planning to do it all again—with lessons learned—as a second child begins an admissions journey.

A college application generates a lot of data. "The transcript is the heart of the application," Emily Roper-Doten of Brandeis notes, "and there's a story in that transcript." And while that story seems straightforward, admissions data is easily misunderstood, as a grade point average, SAT score, and class rank (when available) dance with the rigor of a student's curriculum, the teacher recommendations, and the achievement norms shared on a high school profile. In an updated encore episode from Season Four, the new Brandeis dean joins AB host Lee Coffin from Dartmouth and Jeremiah Quinlan from Yale for a dive into the high school transcript and the role of standardized testing, optional or required. The trio of deans offers a primer on what the numbers mean, which stats matter and why, and how digits or percentages or letters inform an admissions evaluation. 

Let your life speak. That venerable Quaker saying is great advice for any well-constructed college essay, but so many seniors wrestle with writer's block as the "perfect" essay eludes them. In a rebroadcast of a popular episode from Season 4, two veteran college counselors and AB host Lee Coffin from Dartmouth offer timely tips on composing an effective college essay in 650 words or fewer. “The essays that I love seem so effortless,” Ronnie McKnight from Atlanta’s Paideia School observes. “It is just an introduction of who you are.” Dean Coffin concurs: “What's the takeaway from what you shared?...And what is it about being a camp counselor, for example, that adds to my understanding of you as an applicant or as a member of the class I'm trying to build?” Adds Sherri Geller from Gann Academy in Massachusetts: “The questions and prompts are…things that 17-year-olds could answer. And if they were given this as an assignment in an English class…and just told to sit and write it without the pressure of thinking, ‘Is this going to affect my college admission decision?’ I think they really wouldn't find it to be that hard.”

From the annual conference of the National Association for College Admissions Counseling in Columbus, Ohio, an all-star cast of 12 deans and college counselors joins AB host Lee Coffin and recurring co-host Jacques Steinberg as they ponder the role of community in a college search and the ways an admissions committee "shapes" its campus vibe from the applicants it considers. "An applicant must suss out the institutional DNA," one counselor advises. Another adds, "and then help us see the person who will sit in the classroom or residence hall...and make the place zippy."

For decades, coming to America for university (or "uni," as it's known in the UK) has been the shared goal of students around the world. Today, that plan is less certain as geopolitical issues raise questions about the wisdom—and even the possibility—of coming to America for undergraduate studies. College advisors from the UK and India join AB host Lee Coffin to ponder the enduring value of an international student body as the classes of the 2030s queue up for their admissions journey.