Brian Lehrer: Now it's time for college decision day call-in on the Brian Lehrer Show. Yesterday was May 1st, and that, for most schools, was the day that prospective college students, those who were admitted, needed to make their choices. It is finally here. High school students throughout the country are announcing their college of choice to friends and family maybe right now. Listeners, especially high school seniors and parents of high school seniors, call in for this final segment of the program today and tell us what school did you choose and why. Give us a call at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

Here's a winkle on it. If you or your child didn't get into your first-choice school, how did you choose among the rest? 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692, seniors and parents of seniors. Along those lines, were you disappointed with your personal college acceptance rate? How many did you apply to? How many did you hear from promptly? How many did you get into? Were you surprised? I know there are some stories floating around about highly qualified students who didn't get into any of their schools, things like that. Did you have any good or bad surprises along those lines? 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692.

If you've just made your choice, how much was money a factor in your decision? What else was a factor? What about the specific academics or campus culture at a particular place? If you got to tour, what swayed you in or out? 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. We see a stat that college undergraduate enrollment fell by more than 6% during the pandemic. That's according to research by the National Student Clearinghouse. On the other hand, it's reported that this was the most competitive year for college applicants to date according to many reports.

Maybe as other things are returning closer to normal, the same thing is true, and maybe there was even pent-up demand for going to college if a few people decided to sit it out rather than apply to be remote. Listener, did you feel these pressures when you applied to schools? What did you do to ensure that you would get your first-choice or a high-choice school? Give us a call, 212-433-WNYC, high school seniors listening right now, or parents of high school seniors, which I expect will be most of you who call in, 212-433-9692. Which school did you choose and why by yesterday's May 1st deadline? How did you celebrate? You can throw that in too. 212-433-WNYC, we'll take your calls right after this.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we're going to take your calls debriefing this year's college application process. Joining us to help take your calls and share a little bit of her own story, is Mitra Kalita, co-founder of URL Media, and CEO and publisher of Epicenter NYC, and a columnist at TIME Magazine and Charter. Last month, she shared her experience about not getting into the elite colleges of her choice when she was an applicant in the TIME piece titled, College Admissions Experts Explain the Merits of Not Getting In. Hey, Mitra, welcome back to WNYC.

Mitra Kalita: Hi, Brian. It's great to be here.

Brian Lehrer: You're right. In the spring of 1994, which is the year you were a high school senior, I cried over being denied admission at Northwestern and Columbia and three other elite universities. Three decades later, how do you look back on that week?

Mitra Kalita: I look back on that week and I think about the week seniors across the country are about to go through, where you have to wear your sweatshirt and say where you're going. In my case, my week was not a happy one 30 years ago. I felt like all of my other friends had sweatshirts they were really proud of and mine said Rutgers University. I was embarrassed about that. I've got to say, when they say things happen for a reason, I can't think of any greater aspect of my life that shaped who I am. It was an incredible experience, but also, I relate so much of what I do now to attending a diverse state university and to learn among people from so many different walks of life. It proved to be the best thing for me. It felt like the worst thing back then.

Brian Lehrer: So much of the story really is, so many people who are going to a state school, so many people who are going to CUNY, so many first-generation students who might be going to a community college, or a four-year school, or going part-time because that's all they can afford at the moment. On the selective schools, you write it's harder than ever to get into a selective college or university. Harvard admitted a record low, 3.19% of all who applied. Bowden admitted 9%. Why did selective schools have lower admission rates this year?

Mitra kalita: You see a few trends. One is that many colleges have gone what's called test-optional. Meaning, you don't need to submit your SAT or ACT scores, or even some of the subject scores within those standardized tests. It's allowed people who might not have scored as high to suddenly apply. They're flooded with more applicants, which of course, lowers the number of people they can let in.

You're also seeing something you alluded to earlier on the pandemic and the gap year, and people just maybe taking a beat or taking a year before they applied. That's obviously catching up to us. Then the third, I think, is just, and I'll take some ownership in this, parents like myself, My daughter's in the class of 2022. She's going to college next year as well-

Brian Lehrer: Congratulations.

Mitra Kalita: -have been, I don't want to say gaming the system, but it is a version of prepping your kid to get into an elite university. It starts as early as kindergarten because you prep your kid for admissions to get into kindergarten and then there's middle school. We've just now created a society that, for the elite universities, there are things said like, "Unless you get a 1500 on the SAT, you will not get into an elite university."

That is not true, but it's created a heck of a lot of tutoring and just coaching and cramming for upper middle class families and wealthy families to try to game the systems to get into those elite schools. That, I think, is really contributing as well to a lot of sameness in the application pool in terms of scores and GPAs, grade inflations, extracurricular activities they do. There's just no way that these elite colleges can admit everybody.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, time to hear your stories or your child's school acceptance rate this spring, and which school you've chosen. 212-433-WNYC. I don't see any self-identified first-generation college families on the board yet. Anybody in that position want to call in? I know that's such an important milestone in your family's life. 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692 for you or anyone else celebrating this milestone of the May 1st college acceptance deadline and which school you or your kids chose. Cliff in Oceanside, you're on WNYC. Hi, Cliff.

Cliff: Hi, how are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good. What's the news?

Cliff: Longtime listener. Love your show.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Cliff: My daughter ended up going to Ithaca. She got accepted to BU and to Syracuse and a bunch of other really great schools, but they were just so prohibitive financially. We couldn't allow her to go into the world and then come out with so much debt. Ithaca is such a fabulous school. We went there twice and it fits our personality, the price was right. It was just perfect.

Brian Lehrer: That's the compromise school, is Ithaca?

Cliff: Well, I don't want to say compromise. Her advisor listed it as a safety school, but I think it was just a perfect fit. BU and Syracuse, they have the notoriety. I think the education she'll get at Ithaca is going to be the same, if not better, because all the fluff is just peeled away.

Brian Lehrer: Was the actual listed tuition so much higher at those other schools, or did Ithaca offer you more money?

Cliff: Ithaca did offer us money. They gave us a lot of money, but the other schools were significantly higher. I can't see coming out of college with a mortgage, over $300,000, I would say, to go to BU after four years.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. Crazy.

Cliff: $83,000 a year. That's insane.

Brian Lehrer: There are so many parents and students in your position, making decisions based somewhat on those kinds of considerations. By the way, my senior producer just wrote me a chat that said, I know a few Ithaca grads who are super cool and successful. [chuckles] Encouragement.

Cliff: Thank you so much for that. I hope my daughter's listening because that was one of the things. It's like, "You've got to go to these schools that--" No, you don't. It's her talent that's going to drive her, and I'm convinced, but thank you so much for that. Ithaca is a fabulous place.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, cliff. Good luck to you and your daughter. Let's talk to a college advisor calling in. Robert in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Robert.

Robert: Hey, Brian, thanks for taking my call. It was a really busy last week or two with parents and kids and trying to figure out where to go. What complicated things, I think a little bit more for them was, if they didn't get into their first or second or third choice school, and they ended up having to decide between some schools they hadn't visited or didn't know well or did visit, but couldn't get an official tour.

It's a lot of arranged marriages that they're not sure, is Wash U going to be great? Is Rice going to be great for me? I ended up introducing a lot of kids to each other, which I do a lot, and I don't know if I should.

I had one kid who couldn't decide between UCLA and USC, so I introduced her to a couple of other kids I had worked with who were at UCLA and they're getting great, great, great advice and support that way from other students who also had similar troubles last year with another competitive year. I'm not sure everyone I worked with who made a last minute decision is going to be really happy where they are, but that's what it was this year.

Brian Lehrer: Most people are happy once they get there. That's really interesting about the process and what you were seeing. Let's go next to Arnov, a high school senior in Plainview on the island. Hi, Arnov. Thanks for calling in.

Arnov: Hello. How are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good. Congratulations, I presume.

Arnov: Thank you. Thank you. I committed to UT Austin last week. Very excited.

Brian Lehrer: Such a great school for so many people. How did you decide on UT Austin? Where did it stack up for you and your first choice, second choice? How did you wind up going from Long Island to a state school in another state?

Arnov: It was pretty up there as far as their quality of education, because I'm going for engineering. I definitely wanted to be somewhere that had a nice environment for when I'm at college because I don't want to be somewhere that's in the middle of nowhere and there's nothing for me to do while I'm there for fun. I thought Austin would be a really nice place. The cost did come out to be a little bit more than some of the other schools that I got into per year. I had a family friend, five years ago, who was in the exact same situation that I am, and he ended up moving to Texas eventually and got in-state tuition and that made it way cheaper for him.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe you can do that along the way.

Arnov: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Arnov, thank you. Congratulations. Good luck out there. Mitra Kalita, I'll come back to you. The end of your 1994 story, if I've got this right, is after you were disappointed not to get into Columbia or Northwestern, you wound up going to Rutgers. Were you growing up in New Jersey at the time?

Mitra Kalita: I was. I was raised in Puerto Rico and then I did my high school in New Jersey. It was only a half an hour away from my parents, which I think the caller earlier just alluded to there is a desire to leave and go a little further away sometimes. I did not do that. However, it was so perfect because of the campus itself and the diversity of the-- So much of the work I do now, I can literally trace back to those days.

The other piece of it, Brian, is that the rejections set me up for what would come for the rest of my life. We apply to a lot of things in life, whether it's formally or informally, or even when we're dating or when we're trying to get jobs or trying to get homes these days, there's just so much rejection that you will encounter in life. For me, that was just such a foundational experience in how, yes, I got rejected, things turned out okay.

Things turned out okay because I also worked really hard to make it so. It was, again, a really important lesson. I'm very glad it came so early. My own daughter got into school early decisions, and I'm elated for her, but I did say to her congratulations, but what I can also hope for you in life is a heck of a lot of rejection, because it will build so much character for you. I hope the people listening who are in that boat eventually learn to embrace that.

Brian Lehrer: S. Mitra Kalita's Time Magazine essay from a few weeks ago was called College Admissions Experts Explain the Merits of Not Getting In. Thank you for sharing some of that with us, Mitra.

Mitra Kalita: Thank you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, thanks for your calls and your stories. Congratulations to all you high school seniors and all you parents of high school seniors, good luck over the next four years or however long it is.

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