After words interviewed top nonfiction authors and other leaders work. Even sometimes surprising read, i really grateful and happy to be talking about this book with you. One of the things i like about the book, you spent time with students and their families and we know today students are so different from the students who used to attend college, into calling them real college students. Im curious about your take on students today based on the reporting. I think the demographics are different, the age are different, i mostly focused on students who were right out of high school, and the experience i wanted to focus on is what the changes soon as out of high school into the workforce. That does not capture all of the college population, but i wanted to understand how the pathways to verged after high school for different students. In most of the ways i found were by Family Income students had a lot of Family Income were going down traditional pass is students without Family Income had many more obstacles. Can you start by telling us of getting into the issues, a little of your own path . I had a rocky. So i started right after high school a group in canada and after finishing high school in toronto i came to Columbia University and survived for one semester. [laughter] and then dropped out and then bicycled around the Southern United States for a few months and ended up a half year later at the university in montreal and have been there for three semesters and dropped out again and did an internship at harpers magazine and started my journalism crew. And when i left and did that i thought i might go back to college but i ended up i was never a fan of the College Experience and i felt what i was getting out of journalism is what i was looking for an exciting intellectual conversation. I tried to figure out if i stay and i did. I can tell in this book its not like you had a traditional path where everything came up rosie in your wine is not happening for other folks. Part of the reason you went through a lot of different places and you talk about a wide variety of students, they may all be out of high school with their all not cut from the same class. How did you decide as you embarked on the project, you went through a Broad Spectrum of colleges, how did you decide where to go . I looked all over, i would to 21 different states and talk to hundreds of students. The point of that was to try to get the lay of the land and understand and hear from a lot of different students, i feel like that would inform me. But at the same time i was looking for a number of students who i wanted to follow over time and eventually i found a few characters that i really connected with, one in North Carolina, one in new york and in d. C. And together the representatives felt like together i can tell a portrait of what it was like for a broader number of students. Retrying to make sure that you are spending time at the top 70 versus the other 4000 plus colleges and universities . One of the things about the way that a ended up at the university i started with students in high school, some i met were in high school and there were a few including the two main characters in my book who were lowincome students and i was not surprised that the ended up at the institutions but it wouldve been interested in their path to matter where they ended up. Those institutions, i ended up at the university of texas in a few institutions in austin and that was happenstance but it turned out to be an institution that interested me so i kept coming back to over the course. The great public school. So lets dig into a few of the students, some i think a lot of people will find shannon in particular to be a heartbreaker and a fairytale. How did you meet her . We met through program called leadership enterprise for diverse america which is a remarkable Scholarship Program the select 100 lowincome students in junior year from across the country, all super high achieving academically in the summer after junior year on the princeton camp, its every Week Summer Program that is the high achieving college a boot camp. [laughter] and move into most of whom who are at a lowincome school among a few super high achieving students or they are one of the few students of color in a high academic track and more diverse type school. But in either case is they dont have a lot of students like them and then they get to be surrounded by young people like them and they love it. So thats where i met shannon. She becomes the opening character of the book and i know from having to choose among students who youve got to know really well, that decision is a big decision. Its a content decision. What is it about her story . You think they will start waiting their way into this and the person i want to meet shannon . I have to confess as a writer, i wrote to completely different drafts from the first chapter. Now when i look at the first chapter who took me four years of failure to realize that. But i feel there was two reasons that is not making sense as initial character print one is, i happened to be with her on this really moment to stay in her College Experience where she was finding different institutions and gutfeld a great stroke of luck. But i feel like more than any other student who i met was at the beginning a real true believer in the idea of Higher Education for social mobility in the idea that select college omissions was real where her hard work would earn her real consideration. So gutfeld like the right place to start. She was at a point to figure out whether she bought felt the or not. To think shes unusual in approaching College Admission with a general belief that it is about your talent and hard work. I think she is. Shes unusual enough and i think we as a nation still half high ideals that how they work but maybe its more so a among young people. Including in people that they feel its a game and so they think of it if they can figure the rules and figure out how to play. One thing i was struck by, you introduced ned who in some sense teaches people to be cynical, teaches people how to play the game and that would suggest, even among those who were raised relatively wealthy, that there is some real, reason to believe that is it measuring your intelligence in the offices are making adjustment but you as a human. I think a cement johnson is is in washington, d. C. Who runs his own company and charges 400 an hour for his tutoring service and bills more hours at anybody else than his company. He is very good and successful. And i think its an interesting question, the actual students who come to him do have a sense of Higher Education omissions and they have already been thinking about extracurricular activity since middle school and going to college tours. I think they are wise to that side of it but what he picks up on is a still think about the sat and act as a measure and i think thats because in their communities and in college omissions its given so much weight and they walk into his office believing that this number will not only determine the future but determine who they are and their sense of selfworth and value to the family and to school and is that pressure he feels. You right that when you help someone do better by 100 points, one of the things fascinating you quantic enter quantitativ. This could change your life, i appreciate the way and whether he tried to wrestle and whether it would change your life. You actually wrestle with the researchers. Tell me about the effort to make heads or tails of what we actually know in the flame of going to a more selective college. Among economists, there is an ongoing debate of whether the institution makes a difference, theres a paper from the researchers, and it says it does not matter that much prethe debate is an actual data debate in ways of use using what numbers correctly and also a religious debate among americans in general and especially parents who despite their competitiveness, dont want to believe that it matters as much as it does. And i dont think some prints want to believe because they fear the kids will not get in to the schools and they care about their kids and others want to believe it doesnt matter so much because we want to believe this advantage that the students are getting is not really something that matters and just to forgive us luxury. So the competing study that takes on the paper that the institutions increase your life by billions of dollars more and also spend much more money and so where i come down, i think it does for any individual student i still think its not a lifeanddeath decision. I think what we tell our students, theres a right school for you and that is still true. But i think the fact that these institutions on average have different effect on the earnings of the their graduate especially given the fact that the student bodies of those institutions are number graphically so different. I found interesting the part that gets so much attention is the effective test scores and getting in and less Attention Span on with the school consents. The School Spending matters in the fact that we had close disparities on what kind of money who has an endowment, who doesnt. Its a little of the attention. And theyve only grown. And it shows not that long ago the different between the institutions and how much they were spending was 4000 4000 10 and also 250,000. And in so many ways of American Society that those affluent institutions and individuals have pulled away from everyone else to be dated community. This is happened because of intense decisions that are not publicly debated not a matter of Public Policy for example, the states need to be funded public higher head while the wealthier institution shield themselves with the endowment. And the open publics in the Community Colleges which do not get as much attention. And they claim they dont even have adequate support to educated student. I think youre right, its their individual decision because we have public and private position. Some of the decisions are being made by politicians and not bias. We have cut the student funding on public art education, the number i see is by 16 by students since 2001. So thats a huge and devastating effect on public Higher Education, at the same time a small number of super affluent individuals are donating hundreds of millions of dollars to a small number of institution of Higher Education and those individual decisions by the wealthy individuals are making a huge difference. It is dark to say the least. One of the people who you talk about, kiki goes to one of his schools to explain that princeton receives more taxpayers than in new Jersey Community college which is probably the reverse of what most people would imagine. The results are fairly intense. As a nonprofit, we dont even have to pay taxes on its land although it has voluntarily done so. Most people would think that not being added new Jersey Community college would find life extremely easy and you do not find that. Talk to me about what you saw happening. It was really complicated and i did my best to try to understand, i think mostly it was her freshman year and i was talking to her and sat with her and canvas. So she is a lowincome African Americans student and lived a chaotic upbringing but spent the last three years of her k12 education of high school at affluent Public Institution in charlotte, North Carolina. But she was fantastic, she left her school at the preparation, which she got to princeton, academically her first paper she got to see and got nothing but as after words. I think a lot of us are hesita hesitant, a young student without a lot of money to place like that can struggle academically, not true for her. But she was struck even had a lot of experiences in her life of being a lowincome person into height income people and lots of white people. She was so struck by how she was socially weird and how concentrated that privilege was. In one of the things that struck her among the africanamerican students, she would find her community and feel more of a connection with them but their backgrounds were different than hers in were likely to be from private school then where she was from generational poverty in the United States. I think all that was confusing her and made her feel like she did not belong and made her anxious. I feel like she is an interesting case because i feel at the same time when she got to princeton, academically intellectually, she loves philosophy and this is what i was meant to be doing. So i think thats why her freshman year was so complicated for her. On the one hand she raped at the place shed been looking for her whole life and all the other it was difficult for her to feel at home. I appreciate so many different parts including you dissected the black is not black is not black. And what that means, especially around her family to be very intense. I think a lot of people probably exhume for her being as lowincome she was she was taken care of financially. I noted that you said something that very few of us have said out loud which is that she was not just trying to finance herself when she was in college, she was sending money home to her family and always wondered if he could say more about what you saw, that issue is so silent, it feels like its not allowed, useful to have an expected family contribution and not the family except your contribution. So that was true of taking her family to new jersey about an hour away. And so she suddenly had enough money for the first time in her life. She was not rolling in money into like to survive and get a cheeseburger when she wanted to. And her family was still struggling financially and so she felt pressure within herself and from her family with her aid to them a few times. And i said, i feel like its a subject, those of us who are not from the situation can often be really judgmental about that and judgmental towards her family and feel that the terrible thing that her mom would do to expect that money from her. And i absolutely understand her point of view in her moms point of view, i mention it but i felt uncomfortable dwelling on it too much. I think theres ways that people who would read my book would be more judgmental then certainly she was. It was one of the hardest things for me too write about. Its one of the things that weighs on her while shes there and you have to wonder, wouldnt that have been away to help them, i dont know. It seems something that you mentioned. It seems like, you said it was doing the more impressive job of keeping the students on on track for success for any other institution in the kind of place where they would know more that that was happening with her students in a social psychological approach to education. And they recognize students basic needs. I was struck that you noted that every student with breakfast and lunch everyday and the set a time when close to wanted to. What do you think it is about this place that makes them attend to the students basic needs and see the whole person. And did they see any of that princeton . The college is a twoyear institution in chicago thats associated with the university which is a fouryear catholic private institution that enrolls highscoring, high income white students. Their admission is different, it enrolls lack in latino Chicago Public school of graduates, lowincome, and the highscoring ect. That has very low College Outcomes who dont graduate for two years, colleges of any impressive rates at all. When i say i thought they were doing the more impressive job of any other institution is not that the Graduation Rate is skyhigh, but they were working with student population for whom there was no. The approach they took was a student at jesuit priest from Higher Education folks. You know a lot of the basic call estate under call juscolleges. But when you know students like ones enrolling that they will struggle. So there is so much going on in the lives of the students not academically but financially and working jobs and family trouble, Food Insecurity and that he needs to be to thinking about all those different points. Why he does it, i think it goes to the model, its a religious duty for him which means its a little interrupted as Higher Education as a whole but i thins him and where he gets his concept of what a college should be in canby but i dont think its a necessary part. I think that culture and karen culture existed within institution as well. A desperate ive seen it, ive seen in the panhandle of texas and amarillo college. It is so striking me that you are right that the language was intrusive and not as though the student at princeton who dont have people who are leaning into their lives, it is their parents and the parents higher who helicopter over them but when the school does it, they might say that the parents are involved and they dont know how to be or the resources with the princeton part. I wonder, does it change their ability to get the education. The students ability that she wants so badly, if someone is able to leaning more or care, do you think she wouldve gotten even more from a . I think, kristen has and spends a lot more money and counselors and advisors and mentors and therapist and like you can get every kind of help you need and kiki was aware of that. But its not intrusive in the same way and not caring and thats the way that they perceived it. She perceived that its there and im grateful for and it can be there if i need it but she did not have the same feeling that someone is looking after me and someone really cares about me. And i think on an emotional level that makes a huge difference. Theres another writer that has a book out, and he lived this as well. And going off to an elite school where they see the care and you come to understand what is in is not in the domain of what you been given a