AI is Changing Higher Ed

Speaker A: When you think about liberal arts college, being able to critically think, assess various things and how they're interconnected and how to make decisions, like those things are going to be important no matter what field you go into. Being able to talk to people, right? Like, being able to, um, take a lot of information and make good decisions with it. That's. That's going to be important.

Speaker B: So, I don't know. I think liberal arts colleges, um, really have a unique opportunity at this moment.

Speaker A: Um, I think that students coming out of those colleges, um, will be very well prepared for a variety of career

Speaker B: fields to go into.

Speaker C: Building great experiences. Revolutionize your business. Building great experiences, Innovative strategies. Building great experiences. Elevate for your customers. Like, comment and subscribe.

Speaker D: Hey, folks, welcome to another episode of the Building Great Experiences podcast. I've got my friend and client, uh, Michael Trivett. Thanks for coming on, man.

Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Speaker D: Yeah. Um, super excited for the conversation. Um, Mike and his, uh, fellow founders run a company called College Transitions. Um, they work predominantly with, uh, students, rising high school students who are getting ready to go into college. Um, they've been doing this for a long time, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, almost 15 years.

Speaker D: Yeah. So, you know, very, very, uh, deep expertise and just, um, training the next generation.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker D: Helping them to get into schools and, uh, things like that. So the topic of today is going to be, um, what does higher, Higher education look like in the age of AI and, um, how do you, uh, the kind of rising generation, next generation prepare for it.

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker D: So anyway, Mike, welcome to the show.

Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it's good to be here.

Speaker D: Yeah, man. Uh, fun fact, I just learned this right before we got on. Um, uh, Mike has a broadcasting, uh, sort of background, so we're gonna see if you will pull out some old tricks.

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker A: Yeah, man.

Speaker B: Uh, it's hard to believe I was in that, that space at one point. It's very different than it is, uh, now. I mean, I look at this setup

Speaker A: and, yeah, you couldn't do this with those size cameras.

Speaker D: Yeah, right.

Speaker A: 25 years ago.

Speaker D: 20 years ago. I know, I know. Back then it was like, yeah, you'd have these mega cameras that are D

Speaker A: tape and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker D: Yeah, Right. Um, so, Mike, I always start with origin story, right? Um, maybe give a little bit of background about you and then how you got into this and maybe like, what. A little bit more about what College Transitions is.

Speaker B: Yeah, background about me. Um, grew up thinking I wanted to

Speaker A: go into broadcasting like you, uh, you led with.

Speaker B: And, um, really enjoyed my college experience. I was an undergraduate student, Appalachian State, North Carolina resident. So tuition benefit. Go Mountaineer. So the tuition benefit to stay in state. The appeal of the school, the high

Speaker A: country, the broadcast program which was very

Speaker B: unique um, for that school, um, it was, Couldn't pass it up and no regrets whatsoever because I went there. I had a great undergraduate experience um,

Speaker A: as a broadcast major. And I did a lot of things with, with the radio and TV there that were very fun, ah, a lot

Speaker B: of fun, um, but through being a student there, um, in the, in the university, a ah, master's comprehensive type institution where there was a lot of one on one interaction with faculty, administrators, um, and through some other programs that I

Speaker A: was involved with as an undergraduate student.

Speaker B: I just developed such um, personal relationships with uh, college faculty, my teachers, um, but the campus administrators and advisors, things uh, like that. And so um, I was also exposed to college admissions as an undergraduate student, as a student ambassador, doing campus tours,

Speaker A: working with the alumni office, the chancellor's office, the admissions office.

Speaker B: And so I had almost sort of

Speaker A: this backstage pass to higher education as an 18 to 22 year old.

Speaker B: And I don't think most people get

Speaker A: that sort of glimpse, that kind of view of a major university. Was fascinated by it.

Speaker B: I saw a career in it. But I was, you don't go to

Speaker A: college to major in college.

Speaker B: So I thought how can I do this? And so uh, I actually stayed at Appalachian. I did a master's degree in education and media literacy um, and really enjoyed that. And the thought was maybe I would go into K12. But simultaneously there were some things going on in athletics. The athletic program was building there.

Speaker A: Appalachian upset Michigan during the course of uh, my master's program.

Speaker B: And that kind of blew the top off in terms of really starting to

Speaker A: find an interest in how can I study it. And that led me to the University of Georgia to do my Ph.D. uh

Speaker B: M. And really trying to look at enrollment management, how that's impacted by athletics, how that impacts university mission goals, priorities for the institution. Um, and through being at Georgia I was studying a lot of various things, whether it was college finance, college access, all these different topics. Met uh, one of my partners who was my cohort, uh in the Sandra Belasco. And he came from a ah, counseling background, um, on the high school side but also the college side too.

Speaker A: Doing some things with the undergraduate school that he went to.

Speaker B: And um, yeah, he said hey, you know, I think I want to do

Speaker A: this after the program.

Speaker B: I don't know what that looks like. Maybe we Go and work at universities for a while, which is truly what

Speaker A: we thought we would do before we would step into this role full time.

Speaker B: He said, but if I do this, I don't want to be alone.

Speaker A: I want to build it with.

Speaker B: With talented people like yourself.

Speaker A: And I have another person in mind. That's Dave Burbin, uh, who he had

Speaker B: worked with in Philadelphia. And so three of us just came around at Dave's house and kind of formed up a plan, you know, and met at Jittery Joe's Coffee in Athens, Georgia in five. And it's one of those kind of, uh, those cliche stories of sitting around the kitchen table drawing things up on paper. But that's truly how it started. And, um, we were fortunate. We really hustled and grinded during those

Speaker A: years, um, as graduate students.

Speaker B: And, um, we're fortunate to be able to step into college transitions full time.

Speaker A: Um, Andrew was 2014, and I was just a year after him in terms of being full time. So, um, and then we just kind of went from there.

Speaker B: So that's how college transitions got its start. Uh, believe it or not. But, uh, I certainly didn't set, you know, set out on this path.

Speaker A: It just things happened that were beyond my control. And you just kind of let life happen, too.

Speaker D: Yeah, man. Great story. Um, I, uh. It's funny, I realize I should call you Dr. Michael, right?

Speaker A: Mike Michael, please. Yeah.

Speaker D: Um, yeah. So, um, a couple things I think are really cool about your story is to your point, right? The twists and turns and the. Maybe you thought you were gonna go here, but you ended up there. Um, I think it's a really interesting sort of way of thinking about education. Right. And, um, I think the world we find ourselves in now, right. Technology is eating up everything. AI is on the, you know, what is here and is like, continuing to, like, uh, you know, consume everything. And so I've had some really great conversations lately with folks who are like, what does this mean for my kid? Right. I mean, I'm a dad, I've got two kids, and I think about that a lot. Right. Like, I'm in this world where I'm working with technology directly, and I can see the good things about it, and I can also see the bad things about it.

Speaker B: Sure.

Speaker D: And, um, so I'd be really curious to hear your perspective. Right. You talk with students and parents and teachers all the time. Right. You all are, um. For more context on college positions, they provide currently counseling, coaching services for, uh, students as they're kind of looking to get into school. Um, and then they recently launched a new platform. Right. To help kids kind of do that in a more digital way.

Speaker A: Um, with your help, by the way.

Speaker D: Yeah, with our, yeah, you know, PS Stuff. X. Right. Um, but, uh, but yeah, like, you know, you, you are with these folks all the time. And so I'm sure like, you're hearing a lot of interesting themes and questions like what are, what are the maybe trends that are kind of emerging that you're seeing in the higher ed space?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's really interesting. You know, um, for the longest time it seemed like with the labor market, um, students going to college, they were

Speaker A: trying to get very niche in terms of their skill set and that, I mean you were rewarded for that, right? Like if you became like the expert and really skilled at this particular thing and there's a job for you. Like it's, it's there.

Speaker B: Well, as you alluded to, AI is changing things rapidly.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So maybe you don't want to pinpoint

Speaker A: yourself into any one particular thing and maybe you need sort of a diverse, sort of broad array of skills. Right.

Speaker B: And so, I mean a lot of this is sort of predictions and I'm

Speaker A: not in the business of doing that,

Speaker B: but just kind of speculating. Um, and I've talked with this, uh,

Speaker A: about this topic to my partners Andrew and Dave. We have these kind of conversations.

Speaker B: We, we still see a lot of students that we work with that are wanting to go into STEM fields like

Speaker A: computer science, like engineering.

Speaker B: Computer science. Bit scary right now.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Like we're reading about some of the

Speaker A: white collar jobs that are going away as a result of AI and certain

Speaker B: CS programs maybe not filling seats like

Speaker A: they were before when there was extremely high demand.

Speaker B: Computer science is fascinating because when there were students coming out of different college programs for so long, they had no problem finding jobs. Maybe not the case anymore right now.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, so we're seeing still a lot of students that want to go into those fields, but there are some hesitancies and reservations. Um, and there are students who are maybe changing things up or considering, you know, other fields. Um, I think the liberal arts colleges,

Speaker A: this is where they stand to gain right now.

Speaker B: I, um, think that being able to develop a, ah, skill set, um, and you know, uh, really be able to do a multitude of things and do them well.

Speaker A: You know, when you think about a liberal arts college being able to critically think, assess various things and how they're interconnected and how to make decisions like those things are going to be important no matter what field you go into, Being able to talk to people.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker A: Like, being able to, um, take a lot of information and make good decisions with it. That's, that's gonna be important.

Speaker B: So I don't know. I think liberal arts colleges really, um, have a unique opportunity at this moment.

Speaker A: Um, I think that students coming out of those, those colleges, um, will be very well prepared for a variety of

Speaker B: career fields to go into. But that's just me thinking, me speculating. Um, but in terms of. I think we actually had an article in the Admission Wire, which is that

Speaker A: weekly newsletter, um, that we had discussed with you a while back that's been

Speaker B: going for several months now. But we had an article, um, in this past, uh, newsletter that went out this Monday.

Speaker A: And we led with

Speaker B: college, uh, student

Speaker A: worries, um, and what they're most worried about, right. Finance, labor, market politics, like all the

Speaker B: big things, you know. And these are current college students that

Speaker A: were surveyed and interviewed as part of that.

Speaker B: So I don't envy high school students right now or students that currently in college that are, you know, at the school they're at or the transfer students that we work with. Like, it's tough for them right now. Um, but I also think they're in

Speaker A: a unique position to be able to

Speaker B: hopefully find, uh, a path that works for them. Um, and, uh, yeah, see where life takes them. I think the thing that I always tell students, even for those students who are adamant about engineering or business or pre med or whatever they go into, be open. As I mentioned, life takes you down these various paths.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Um, and you never know where you're going to be. And still the majority of students change

Speaker A: their major at least once.

Speaker B: So you might think that you want to go into a certain field for a particular reason.

Speaker A: Maybe because it's always historically paid well or your dad did it or cousin did it or whatever it may be,

Speaker B: but you may get there and also be exposed to other things and say, you know what this is, this seems

Speaker A: like something really interesting to me, or

Speaker B: this is my calling versus I thought I wanted to do this. It's not really that interesting to me. So I think just being open to sort of the, the twists and turns, the changes that happen to you as

Speaker A: a person, as a student, and see where that takes you.

Speaker D: Yeah, man, it's. I can't agree more with the liberal arts comment. Like, I think that the, And I've talked about this on the podcast before, the skills that are going to always be important are the people. Relationship, communication skills.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Soft skills are huge.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker B: You know?

Speaker D: Yep. So yeah. And being able to, uh, build trust, uh, build rapport, connect with somebody authentically, being able to clearly communicate ideas. Like, those things will never go out of style. Right, right. Uh, which is funny. Like, I remember, so I have a liberal arts degree, and I remember whenever I was coming out of school, uh, people are like, wow, liberal arts, we gonna do with that? Right. You can't be a this or this or whatever. You're not gonna be a doctor. And, uh, it's interesting how, like, it kind of like the shifting is starting to be like, hey, actually there's a lot of value in understanding, like psychology, you know, and sociology and those kinds of things. Right, the social studies.

Speaker B: Yeah. And Drew, to your point, I think one of the reasons why you're really

Speaker A: good at what you do as a

Speaker B: profession is because of that background that you have. Like, I. I remember on meetings we

Speaker A: would have with you, and I could see, like, your mind at work.

Speaker B: You're like, connecting the dots before we even know how the dots are even somewhat related. And that is a unique skill set.

Speaker A: Um, it.

Speaker B: I think you can develop it over time. But I think that's where the liberal arts schools really stand to shine because they help people do those things.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, so.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker D: So, uh, I appreciate the compliment. Yeah, thank you.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, yeah, I think that, you know, those schools really have a unique opportunity and hopefully more and more students will

Speaker A: be receptive to considering those types of schools versus thinking, you know, I need to go to this school to major in X, you know.

Speaker D: Yeah. So I'm curious. So, um, academia is not known for its, uh, speed, we'll call it. We'll say. Um, are you seeing any changes in how universities are adapting for this kind of like, AI wave?

Speaker A: That's a really good question.

Speaker B: Um, I don't know if I'm. To be honest. I'm not sure because there's so many things happens. Happening simultaneously.

Speaker A: M. Right.

Speaker B: Like the political environment in which institutions find themselves, particularly public schools right now is.

Speaker A: Is very different than maybe at any point in, and certainly in our lives.

Speaker B: Um, so I think institutions are changing various things related to that very quickly,

Speaker A: while this other sort of, you know, thing that's happening. The big elephant in the room is the AI stuff. Right. So.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: Um, I don't know how much of

Speaker A: it can be attributed to any one particular thing.

Speaker D: Sure. Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, but I think I, uh, think

Speaker A: a lot of institutions are certainly grappling with. With how to, you know, deal with AI and, um, you know, I. I mean, we read articles all the time about um, you know, certain colleges, maybe professors in English who are, you know, seeing like warning bells are going off in terms of quality of writing and maybe students are level a little too

Speaker B: heavy handed on certain AI tools, um, for various tasks. But yeah, I can't say to which,

Speaker A: um, what institutions might be, uh, changing things drastically in response to AI.

Speaker D: I heard an anecdote recently I thought was pretty interesting. Um, there's a professor that was actually sort of embracing the fact that like kids are going to write their papers with GPT or whatever. And this particular professor basically was like, I know you're going to do it.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker D: That's fine.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker D: Here are the things that you need to do though, in order to demonstrate that you have the critical thinking skills and the sort of competencies that you need to pass this class. And, and it was almost like they were getting graded on critiquing, uh, the whatever GPT generated. Right. And um, explaining like why or why not. And I thought that was a really interesting approach because it's, it's, it's almost just instead of like, you know, uh, trying to swim upstream, which is very hard. Right. And like the water is coming this, to this direction, you're like, go with the, go with the flow. Right. And then say like, how do we now. Because the flow's going this direction. How do we still teach kids to like think critically, ask um, good questions, those kinds of things. And so I think there's actually a pretty tremendous opportunity for um, schools.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker D: To say, all right, like the paradigm is moving, the stream is the turn, you know, tides have turned or whatever. Um, how do we still teach kids to do these things, to have these kind of critical skills and not be like, well, you're not allowed to use GPT, you know.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker D: Instead of it being like a mandate, it's more of a lean into it, you know.

Speaker B: Yeah. And there's been, on the college admission side, there's been some schools that have

Speaker A: done some of those things.

Speaker B: Uh, so in a similar way, there's been a few schools out there that have embraced, um, addressing AI in a college admissions essay. You know, what does this mean for your future? How are you going to use this tool?

Speaker A: If you were going to write a college essay with AI, what would you do?

Speaker B: Give us a little preview of it, you know. So, um, there's been, you know, kind of the same sort of maybe visionary, uh, approach or um, people who embrace it from the college admissions side of things and say, hey, we can't this is here. It's not necessarily going away. We should maybe fold it in and

Speaker A: see what students can make of it.

Speaker B: So, um, but you have the older folks, um, or maybe not all older folks, but people who are more resistant to change, um, who are saying, no, we don't want to necessarily do that. So I think every institution in various ways is grappling with sort of how

Speaker A: do we, how do we deal with this and how we make sure that students are still learning, faculty are not, you know, beside themselves in terms of their ability to do their jobs and do it well.

Speaker B: So, yeah, um, as with all things, time will tell.

Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, that's a good way to put it. Yeah. I, um, I think that there is a tremendous. You mentioned computer science is one that's kind of currently people are like, questioning. Um, I've had a lot of conversations on the podcast and with just friends and, and folks that, um, it's just there's this interesting, like, moment where everyone's like, whoa, coding is actually not as valuable or whatever, right? Because like, AI can generate code. What's interesting is those engineers are moving. The ones who are doing it well are moving upstream. And they're saying, like, you still need to be able to critique the code of the, you know, what are these different AI tools? Um, and you still need to be able to kind of think critically about like, what's the sort of best architecture, best security practices, best governance or whatever. So I think there's actually going to be this interesting surge. Like, we're kind of, it's like a little bit of a pullback and then we're going to like, go, it's going to be another boom because you're going to be like, oh, crap, AI generating like way more code than we could ever generate before. Like, we need people who are to actually address, to like, make sure that we're double checking and cross checking. Right?

Speaker A: 100%.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker B: So I think there's going to be, there's probably opportunities that we don't even know of, um, that will exist, um, probably in short order for that very specific reason. So, um, I think the beautiful thing about humans though, is that we have

Speaker A: the ability to adapt and face challenges

Speaker B: head on and say, hey, this is a new opportunity that has risen as a result of this thing we've created. Um, you know, let's, let's tackle it. So, you know, we're certainly doing that

Speaker A: with our organization, with college transitions.

Speaker B: I mean, the Internet's a weird place. And I was thinking about it on

Speaker A: the way over here.

Speaker B: Um, uh, there was actually a segment

Speaker A: on, on NPR that was. Seems like every day you can hear a segment on NPR that's talking about AI or something related.

Speaker B: And they were talking about these massive amount of content that's going into various

Speaker A: language learning models and, uh, algorithms or whatnot. And, um, how, you know, a lot of that content's being scraped from various, uh, publishing entities, producers, content creators.

Speaker B: We're not immune to that. You know, if you're a small blog

Speaker A: or website, maybe you're only just posting like kitchen recipes, but you had a certain amount of traffic, maybe that has been reduced. You could be a major publication that's

Speaker B: generating hundreds of millions of viewers per month, and that's more than likely been

Speaker A: reduced as well, just like what we've seen.

Speaker B: So as a result, we're doing other

Speaker A: things to, you know, build our brand and uniquely position ourselves.

Speaker B: And I think, um, that's the challenge

Speaker A: that a lot of different types of organizations in various industries are exploring.

Speaker B: It's like, how do we adapt to

Speaker A: this new sort of world and market that we're in and really build for the long haul, you know?

Speaker D: Yeah. So I think, um, to that point, like, the adapting to these different market forces and being comfortable with the fact that it is uncomfortable right now.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker D: And being like, okay, you know, the, um, large language models are ingesting all this information and now like, what was once driving a lot of traffic is no longer doing that. What was once, you know, making, uh, educators and tutors and counselors. Like, a lot of that knowledge is getting kind of like, oh, you can just go to bed and ask it to do stuff for you. I think what's going to probably become a new sort of like, role, responsibility, new jobs is going to be around like the sort of training those models. Right. As well as, like, uh, there's this term, uh, being used called like, evals. It's like you're evaluating the response quality and like, making sure it's good.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker D: There's also going to be proprietary data. Like, you guys have proprietary data. A lot of organizations do. It's a different shift in like, business thinking there. You're like, hey, instead of us monetizing on the services that we provide or on the products that we provide, it's like, what's the proprietary data or knowledge that we have that no one else has? Right. And it's like a, it's a different monetization, go to market strategy.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker D: Um, and I. So I think there's just in general, like, if student you know, bringing it back to higher education. The students who can lean into that, I think will probably be tremendously successful because they're going to be at the forefront of figuring it out 100%.

Speaker B: I mean, it's really easy to get

Speaker A: comfortable in something that works for a long time.

Speaker B: And I will say for us in particular, AI was this thing that I remember when it first came out and

Speaker A: you heard about tools like ChatGPT and

Speaker B: before Google was Gemini, it was, I

Speaker A: think, Bard or something like that, Right?

Speaker D: Yeah, right.

Speaker A: And we kind of fought it. Right. Like, I think probably like most people,

Speaker B: we're like, ah, it's like a flash

Speaker A: in the pan kind of thing. And, uh, all of a sudden it became really clear that it wasn't, you

Speaker B: know, it's like, okay, what does this mean going forward? It pushed us to make decisions that I think maybe we were hesitant on at first, but we just embraced it and said, you know what, this is the direction things are going. This is, you know, we have this. I think one of the things that you talked about earlier, the sort of

Speaker A: how these like, pendulum almost swings on various things and how other opportunities arise

Speaker B: and where did we benefit for the

Speaker A: longest time of doing this for 15 years?

Speaker B: Well, we had personal relationships with a lot of people for a long time. And that word of mouth generation is huge. And you know that with your business as well. And so on the counseling side, we benefited from that and we still benefit from that. So we feel strong about the services

Speaker A: we provide, the brand that we've created,

Speaker B: what we do for the families with whom we work. Um, so in a way, we're, we're kind of set. We're not protected.

Speaker A: Of course, you know, there are competitors in our industry just like any other

Speaker B: industry, but at least that offers us the freedom and flexibility to explore these new avenues and these new goals and

Speaker A: challenges that we're trying to face head on.

Speaker D: Yep.

Speaker B: And that's the exciting part because, I mean, we love helping students and families. I mean, I love it when this is a fun time of year. We get past November 1st, a lot of early applications are in.

Speaker A: Decisions will be coming back in the coming weeks and months. That's when we get rewarded because our, our families and students come back to us and say, hey, you know, this is the school into.

Speaker B: This is where I'm going.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, you know, I was so intimidated

Speaker A: by this process a year ago and

Speaker B: gave me a lot of confidence.

Speaker A: That means everything, right?

Speaker D: Yeah, right.

Speaker B: And that's, that's cool. Um, but at the same Time we're able to spend some time saying, hey,

Speaker A: these are new exciting projects or avenues that we want to go down. And how do we face this challenge? How do we grow this, how do we build this? How do we leverage everything that we've been doing for so long to make

Speaker B: a new product or new tool that

Speaker A: is in a space that we never

Speaker B: thought we would be.

Speaker A: And that's, I think that's the fun part.

Speaker B: And especially when you work with a small team like our team, um, uh, of just a few full time people

Speaker A: and, and you're with each other all the time and you're growing something very organically. That's fun.

Speaker D: Yeah, you said, um, something that I think is really important and something that I fundamentally believe is going to be most important as we enter this AI sort of age. Um, it was the focus on the relationships and the brand. And like one of the big things that I say a lot is, you know, as, as the, uh, as everything gets faster and easier.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker D: You can get like instant gratification all the time. Uh, the thing that's going to stand out is differentiated brand experience. Right. And um, that's one of the things that I think for companies who are kind of like unsure of what do I do, what do we invest in? What should we focus on? It's like relationships, community, brand and experience are going to be a moat. Right. They're going to be the thing that kind of gets you from where you are to where you want to be. And um, you know, I love that you guys have like built these really strong relationships. People where they're just naturally kind of referring other people to you.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker D: Because they're like, oh, college transitions, like, they do such a great job. They helped us do this, whatever. And like that a lot of, there's been a lot of like, discussion about like, well, that's not scalable. Da, da, da, da. I think that actually like, a lot of what businesses are gonna have to invest in are things that are not traditionally viewed as scalable. You know, like, you're gonna, we're, we're gonna have to change our model from. In the, you know, recent history, you could run paid ads, you could do a lot of like blogging and SEO, you could, you know, post content. But now it's just like noise. There's so much out there. Right. Uh, and so everyone's going to have to think differently about like, how do we reach our target customer, how do we reach our audience? And it's, it's likely going to be things that probably at least in the near term, will feel like not scalable, not sustainable.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And listen, there is a project we invest in heavily from a time standpoint,

Speaker A: resources standpoint, every year that on face value, it doesn't seem scalable. It's not a, uh, massive revenue generator for us at all.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker A: Um, but it's that college guidebook.

Speaker D: Yeah, right.

Speaker B: Like we were on the, uh, I

Speaker A: think the seventh edition now.

Speaker D: Wow.

Speaker B: Six. Six edition.

Speaker D: Sorry.

Speaker B: Um, but Bloomsbury just, uh, assumed the publishing rights for that and they're a

Speaker A: massive entity and we feel honored to be with them. But in terms of the money that we take home, at the end of the day, you don't necessarily go into writing a book or producing a copy,

Speaker B: but from that differentiated brand standpoint. When we were first talking about this a long time ago, we didn't see many organizations like ourselves in the educational

Speaker A: consulting, counseling space that were producing things like this.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker B: How do we leverage the skill set that we've built as researchers, um, who

Speaker A: know how to harness this data, know

Speaker B: a lot about these colleges to provide maybe a better tool that currently exists in the market. Yeah, listen, there's, there's several college guidebooks

Speaker A: that are massive that are out there.

Speaker B: I put our guide up against any one of them. Um, you know, I was thinking about

Speaker A: that earlier, um, where I looked at one of these guidebooks and think there's a category for like social life has a picture of coffee cups. I don't know how much I can tell from just looking at, you know,

Speaker B: whether it's got three coffee cups versus four versus two. But then I think about things that

Speaker A: we provide within our book, within the write ups themselves.

Speaker B: And we talk about the campus vibe,

Speaker A: the cultures and, or the clubs and organizations, the culture of the campus.

Speaker B: Um, but also the breakdown in terms

Speaker A: of how many students live on campus. You know, what is the Greek, the Greek life balance, uh, there with, you know, fraternities, sororities, athletics, all these different things. Right.

Speaker B: Like that give you more of a,

Speaker A: of a window into what truly that campus life is like.

Speaker B: Um, and so I think our guide

Speaker A: is just, it's awesome.

Speaker B: Uh, it's not as well known as

Speaker A: some of the other big players that have been out there for, you know, 40 plus years.

Speaker B: But, um, you know, that was, that was a product that we wanted to build because we knew it was going

Speaker A: to be valuable for the families with

Speaker B: whom we work, but also the folks who pick up the book inside of

Speaker A: a library, um, and learn about colleges.

Speaker B: Uh, and that's somebody that we're never going to touch. We're never going to talk to them. But in many ways, that's a big

Speaker A: reason why we also did this while we went into the space doing projects like that, writing articles on the website.

Speaker B: Because we can touch so many more

Speaker A: people through that work that we generate,

Speaker B: um, that content that we put out there to help people make ultimately one of the biggest decisions in their life,

Speaker A: uh, about whether to go to college,

Speaker B: where to go to college, um, that return on that investment that we always talk about, like, it's a huge deal. And so we want people to be

Speaker A: better informed, uh, consumers, customers in the higher education space.

Speaker B: And so doing that sort of differentiated, you know, brand experience, product with the

Speaker A: college guy, that was something that, for

Speaker B: us, we didn't go into it with the sole intentions of making a lot of money from it.

Speaker A: It was about, you know, building our business and making it successful. And we think that's a huge part of it, believe it or not.

Speaker D: Yeah. I think, um, what you're kind of pointing at is there's this great term called brand equity. It's basically, um, to your point, there's a lot of things that we can do as companies or as business leaders where it's like, short term, like, I spend X and I get Y. Right. That's how a lot of people think about kind of roi. And then there's this other concept of, like, brand equity, which is, like, you're making these intentional investments in things that at the moment feel like. Like, that we're not gonna. It's not a lot of money. Right. But it builds this tremendous brand equity that now you're, you know, sixth edition.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker D: People now expect it. They're looking forward to it. They know they're getting a certain level of quality. Like, I think those are the things that if I'm, you know, if I'm a business leader today, I'm thinking about, like, how do I make investments in those types of things like brand equity? Because that's what will separate the sort of, like, transactional knowledge, commodity thing that, like, everyone else is trying to play that game. Like, oh, we got to run ads to quickly convert to, like, get roi. Oh, uh, we got to generate enough content to be able to get the. It's like, no, no. What's gonna, like, build your brand and build equity in your brand where, like, nobody can hold a candle to you.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's. I think about my partner, Andrew, uh, Belasco. Um, a phrase that he'll say. I hear him m. Say it several Times each year.

Speaker A: It's stacking bricks.

Speaker D: Yeah, that's right.

Speaker B: You know, it's, it's stacking bricks is laying a foundation.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Like those kind of projects, those kind of tools. For us, it was, it was about,

Speaker A: hey, this is not short term gain right here. This is long term building for the future.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker B: You know, and with some of those

Speaker A: projects that we've been doing for a long time, whether it's the blog, the

Speaker B: data verse, the book, um, everything was intentional. It was about making something that can be sustainable long term.

Speaker A: That's going to be something that people

Speaker B: expect, that they come to, that they look forward to. I can't tell you how, um,

Speaker D: just,

Speaker A: uh, awesome it was, um, in many ways confirming to go to like some of these college counseling conferences that we attend.

Speaker B: They hear high school counselors that come up to our booth and they say, you guys, like, I have your dataverse bookmarked on my page. And you know, when we put things out there, sometimes we don't know how it's received. We don't know how valuable it might actually be. And so sometimes we have internal conversations like, is this really worth it? You know, and then we go to something like that. We're like, we can't, we can't stop doing this. Like, we have people come up to us and they say, I have this page bookmarked and thank you so much. It's a great resource. There's nothing like it on the Internet that's important.

Speaker D: Yeah, right.

Speaker B: Like, uh, and so you can't buy that. You can. And so those are things that again, it wasn't, we didn't set out to

Speaker A: do it to for the purposes of making money.

Speaker B: Like, that was something that truly we wanted to help ourselves have a resource

Speaker A: that we could point to and point families to and students to.

Speaker B: But we knew that the counselors that

Speaker A: we were talking to at these conferences,

Speaker B: they would more than likely find that to be pretty valuable too. Yeah, many of them had confirmed that

Speaker A: time and time again.

Speaker B: So I think that's the challenge for, um, business leaders is just not necessarily being afraid to explore something or pursue something that you know is important to you but is also going to be important to that, that long term, um,

Speaker A: brand equity that you're talking about.

Speaker B: That's a very important thing to us. I think it's fascinating too, because the three of us don't come from like

Speaker A: a marketing, you know, background. We didn't, the three of us didn't even major in business.

Speaker B: But it was one of those things

Speaker A: that Was very inherent.

Speaker D: It was very intuitive.

Speaker B: Yeah. It was to us early on is like, we, we want to make ourselves

Speaker A: a little bit different.

Speaker B: Um, and how do we make this

Speaker A: a, uh, unique organization that stands to benefit? Like I said earlier, just a lot of people that are going to come

Speaker B: across us and maybe never talk to

Speaker A: us directly, but you can still benefit from what we have.

Speaker D: There's a former client of mine, um, a commercial real estate company. And um, they're more like boutique ish.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker D: And this great quote, I use it all the time. It's decades, not deals. Right. Um, which is, you know, these folks had been doing it a long time and I remember they said that to me in like 2019. I was like, dang. Yep, that's it. There it is. You know, it's like, you gotta think about the long term. Oh yeah. And not sort of just transactionally trying to do a deal or whatever. Um, so we've covered tons of ground. Man, you're doing this is great. Um, I would love to, uh, dig into like, who's doing it well. Right. Um, whether higher education, like a school or university that you think is like leaning into, um, the sort of next era, uh, or perhaps other like companies or organizations that are, you know, doing new things in new ways that you think would be cool to highlight.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, maybe come back to the colleges because I think, I think there's a,

Speaker A: there's a number of really, really good schools that do good things in various arenas.

Speaker B: Um, in terms of tools, um, that can be tricky too, because truthfully, I

Speaker A: think there's a lot of noise out there.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker A: And there's a lot of things where people can get distracted and thinking that

Speaker B: this is a really good tool.

Speaker A: And turns out maybe it's not so good.

Speaker B: I, um, think some, that people would probably recognize, um, at least a lot

Speaker A: of high school students and families would be things like the Common app M.

Speaker B: It's a platform that is now widely

Speaker A: accepted by many colleges where it kind

Speaker B: of streamlines the application process. Um, where colleges, the admissions office signs on to use it.

Speaker A: And now it's their, maybe their source of truth for getting applications from applicants. But it's a great platform.

Speaker B: It's been around for a long time.

Speaker A: They just kind of released a new user version, um, which for us, for people like myself, like counselors, I know school based counselors, we're always like, you know, when those things happen, you're kind

Speaker B: of like, hey, the last one was working really well.

Speaker D: Yeah, don't mess with this.

Speaker B: Um, but actually Looking at this year's,

Speaker A: I mean, it's gotten better.

Speaker B: They've been really good about taking feedback from counselors, uh, counseling organizations and implementing

Speaker A: that within the platform itself. So the Common app is fantastic because it's a great user experience.

Speaker B: Um, but there's been others that have struggled.

Speaker A: You know, there's been other application market or platforms that have come to market that some don't even exist anymore.

Speaker B: Some sort of still do exist, but not really.

Speaker A: And they're not as widely accepted by colleges as they once were.

Speaker B: Score, uh, is another platform that I

Speaker A: think is um, uh, really, really good.

Speaker B: Um, so it's kind of this

Speaker A: high,

Speaker B: um, school sort of online counseling platform that's typically used by counselors. There's other tools like Maya Learning and Naviance.

Speaker A: They all kind of compete in the same.

Speaker B: But basically like a high school would

Speaker A: sign on to it and their counselors have access to it to help manage like high school transcripts, letters of recommendations,

Speaker B: but other things in terms of like high school scheduling and things like that. But on the college, on the student side, they get sort of like this

Speaker A: dashboard where they can investigate, you know, various, uh, materials that are required for their application, you know, send out recommendations

Speaker B: to their teachers or whatnot, even research some colleges and stuff. So SCORE has been a good platform.

Speaker A: I think they're actually doing some stuff with AI now.

Speaker C: Cool.

Speaker B: Um, which looks pretty good, pretty useful, at least from what I've seen so far. So that's a pretty good platform. Um, so there's a couple, I think that are working. There are other websites that I think that do things pretty well in terms

Speaker A: of trying to make information available to students and families.

Speaker B: Surprisingly. I know the government gets a lot of heat for things that they put out there, but um, uh, one of the tools that I think can be really easy to use for anybody who

Speaker A: comes across it, and I think it's really informative is College Scorecard.

Speaker B: And so basically you can get a

Speaker A: lot of information about an institution, but one of the more valuable pieces I think you can get is actually you can get really granular and go into

Speaker B: specific, uh, programs at a college, even

Speaker A: specific majors, and find out median salary, data, things along those lines. So if you're really curious about maybe that return on investment piece and you're thinking about, I want to go into

Speaker B: X field, here are some of the colleges I mentioned that you could go there and sort of see, you know, as opposed to the aggregate that gives

Speaker A: you just maybe the average salary coming

Speaker B: out of that college.

Speaker A: You can learn More about a particular industry that you're interested in at that specific school.

Speaker B: Um, so. And they made that really easy, uh,

Speaker A: to navigate from the user interface side of things. So surprisingly, again, I think a lot of government tools can be, um, burdensome, you know, a little bit challenging to navigate from the student side or the user side of things if they're not familiar with those tools. But that's one, I think that does,

Speaker B: uh, a really good job in terms of colleges. I mean, like I said earlier, there's

Speaker A: so many schools out there that I think do things in all different types of ways, um, that make them really unique for what they are to students.

Speaker B: Um, uh, in the system.

Speaker A: In the North Carolina system, obviously we have, um, flagships like UNC Chapel Hill. We um, have land grants like Kansas State. These are really good schools. But we have UNC Charlotte down the street. It's fantastic school. Um, especially when you look at things like architecture, engineering, nursing. I mean it's a really good school. And oh, by the way, there's a, ah, massive finance city. And the school of business also benefits from that too.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: In the cs, students I've met there, tech, uh, students.

Speaker A: They're great. Um, there's liberal arts college right up the road. UNC Asheville. I think it's one of the better liberal arts schools in the country.

Speaker B: They're, it's challenging year for them because they came out of Hurricane Helene.

Speaker A: Right. And they're actually the one school of the entire system that had negative enrollment growth this past year, but that was

Speaker B: largely attributed to the hurricane.

Speaker A: It's not any one particular thing they were doing wrong. I think they'll obviously bounce back from that, but it's a fantastic liberal arts school.

Speaker B: Um, so I'm, I'm kind of honing in on, on our system because North

Speaker A: Carolina public higher education is, is, is incredible. Um, but there are a lot of schools across the country that, that are fantastic colleges.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker D: I wish, uh, common and score were available when we were going to college. Right.

Speaker B: Yeah, but, but there's, there's downsides to that.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Like one of the, the problems, I think from an institutional side of things,

Speaker A: when I'm a college and I'm, I'm evaluating my applicants is now all of

Speaker B: a sudden it's really easy for students to apply. Whereas before you and I were.

Speaker D: Sure. Yeah.

Speaker B: When you and I would go to apply, maybe we. I remember.

Speaker D: Yeah. Oh yeah, you wrote it down.

Speaker A: My application to App State was on paper.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker B: You know, um, there were some online platforms and tools that you could use, but you would largely go to that

Speaker A: specific college and fill out their form,

Speaker B: which could be very different from the

Speaker A: other college that you, you were applying to.

Speaker D: Sure.

Speaker B: Overnight.

Speaker A: Well, not really overnight, but over the

Speaker B: last couple of decades.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Common App has built to where you

Speaker A: can build a main sort of profile. You have these individual questions for specific

Speaker B: colleges, but with a few clicks of

Speaker A: some buttons you can send out a vast number, an incredible number of applications.

Speaker B: In fact, they limit it to 20, which is smart. But certain students try to go around that. Um, but now uh, it becomes very challenging from the institution side of things

Speaker A: to predict, well, who's likely to enroll. Right. Like we have a lot of students.

Speaker B: The interesting case to follow next year

Speaker A: is going to be Georgetown University.

Speaker B: So Andrew's alma mater.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Like they, they've been very resistant to

Speaker A: joining the Common app for a very, very long time and they've already announced that in the fall of 2026 they're going to join.

Speaker B: Well, Georgetown's a very selective school.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: What's going to happen in terms of their application totals? How is that going to differ from the previous years?

Speaker A: Because their application platform is known for being very challenging. Uh, yeah, it's like almost like a

Speaker B: two part application and the interface is not the best.

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker B: Um, but uh, being on the Common

Speaker A: app is, is likely to change things in a very big way.

Speaker D: Yeah, it's, it's interesting you say that. Um, so we, we uh, are in the process of hiring some roles. Um, and I. LinkedIn is like, I think where most people post jobs now and we post, we posted some roles and they've got some AI features that make it like extremely easy. Right. It'll generate a job description, do some stuff, whatever. We, we wrote our own job description. But uh, it was crazy because in a matter of like 24 hours we had 175 applicants. Just like that.

Speaker B: 24 hours.

Speaker D: 24 hours. And I was like, oh wow, this is way more than I expected. And then I let it go for another 12 hours and we had like over. I was like, uh, I think 200 something. 220 was like our final total. And I was like stop, stop, stop, stop. Like too many.

Speaker B: I was gonna ask like now are there tools that are also built in to help you evaluate that or maybe set certain parameters to where you say

Speaker A: if they don't have this, it's automatically.

Speaker D: Yeah. So you could. And this is where uh, I think there's like an ethical question. Right, right. We, so we had all these applications and We're a small team. So, like, going through all these applications is a lot of time and effort. Um, LinkedIn now has this ability where you can set, like, hey, these are the criteria that we care about most, basically, like, screen out everybody that's like, not checking these boxes. So then it has these, like, AI capabilities are going and looking at the resume, the LinkedIn profile, and it kind of evaluates, like, do they have these, you know, um, criteria? Well, frankly, because I just was like, I'm. I want to. I don't want to, like, not even look at those. So I went through and actually, like, scrubbed through each one of them, was trying to figure out, like, how well did it do on the criteria matching? And I would say, like, it did pretty good. But there was at least, like, I don't know, probably 10 or so people that I was like, uh, I'm gonna move these into the, like, short list. Right. And so anyway, all that to say, like, I think it's gonna be to your point with, when you're talking about job applications, you're talking about college applications, um, it's getting so much easier for anybody to kind of apply to anything. And then on the other side, you've got probably, presumably schools are doing what businesses are doing where they're like, large volume of applicants. How am I supposed to. It's not humanly possible to look at all these things. You're going to use AI, uh, tools that are going to start screening people out. So there's going to be, I think, this really interesting dynamic where people who are very qualified, very capable, maybe on paper, don't look like they check all the boxes, but they're extremely sharp people. They're going to get completely overlooked because they're just going to get screened out by AI.

Speaker B: Right, yeah, that could happen. And I actually was thinking about those

Speaker A: 10 people that you moved from the initial discard over to your. To your short list.

Speaker B: It'll be interesting to see if you track that.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker A: What if you end up hiring one

Speaker D: of those ten, Right.

Speaker A: Like, yeah.

Speaker D: Uh, and that person would have been

Speaker B: AI could have had a massive negative

Speaker A: impact on their potential.

Speaker D: Yeah, right.

Speaker A: To reach you, you know, and through

Speaker B: no fault of their own.

Speaker D: Sure.

Speaker B: There was nothing about them that was

Speaker A: inherently less than what you were looking for, just whatever the mechanism was that was in place for AI to kind of screen them out. So.

Speaker B: Yeah, that is interesting. Um, yeah. Uh, from the college admission side of things, we know certain colleges are using

Speaker A: AI tools to, uh, evaluate applicants. Many of them have actually been Very transparent in that. Telling students and families that we are in fact using AI to screen. Yes.

Speaker D: Filter.

Speaker B: A lot of that happens at the very sort of initial stage of just whether you're self reporting certain things about you. Like obviously the school you attend, the GPA that you have, maybe a class

Speaker A: rank, if that's um, provided there are

Speaker B: some of these things that, speaking truthfully, I think AI can probably do a pretty good job of evaluating that, especially

Speaker A: if it's at a very selective institution. Right.

Speaker B: Like an example that I think of

Speaker A: um, as a college that could really benefit from something like this would be like University of Michigan.

Speaker D: All right.

Speaker B: Public flagship school. It's one of the most um, selective

Speaker A: public institutions in the country.

Speaker B: But each year now they're receiving 100,000 plus applications.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker A: Like it's, it's, it's crazy.

Speaker B: Um, but there's a lot of students that still apply thinking that they legitimately have a chance. And speaking truthfully, there are a lot

Speaker A: of applicants who quite simply don't.

Speaker B: You know, if you're applying to a

Speaker A: place like Michigan and you're not at or near the top of your, huh,

Speaker B: high school class or you don't have

Speaker A: mostly A's and rigorous courses, even the test score component, you know, like if you're not there with the ACT or sat, you may have very, very little chance.

Speaker B: And that's before they even get to

Speaker A: like your essays, your recommendation letters, you

Speaker B: know, certain, your activities list. Like so we always tell students and

Speaker A: families this, think of this as a

Speaker B: two stage process and whether AI is doing that initial review or it's a human. If you don't make that initial sort

Speaker A: of academic cut, that threshold, everything else doesn't even matter. You know, you might be wasting a lot of time focusing on things that ultimately aren't even going to be looked at. Yep.

Speaker B: And so that's where realizing sort of where you are and how you stack

Speaker A: up and fit with a certain school.

Speaker B: Um, you helped us as part of that tool.

Speaker A: You know, we put together a admissions

Speaker B: uh, calculator that basically tried to take all this information that you're feeding to the calculator and give you uh, an

Speaker A: assessment, a probability of admission, um, at those, at those colleges.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, it's not perfect. Those tools aren't, you know, it doesn't take into everything that you, does take

Speaker A: into account everything about your background, but

Speaker B: it gets a pretty good snapshot and it can give you a certain range

Speaker A: of, of what your probabilities may be at certain schools.

Speaker B: And so we're Trying to do more

Speaker A: of that to help students and families too.

Speaker B: Because we don't ultimately, we don't want

Speaker A: counselors and, or counselors, but students and

Speaker B: families to maybe waste their time in a college that, that might not be in play. Um, but at the same time, I'm

Speaker A: not going to tell any student to not apply to a certain school.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker B: You know, our job as counselors, and

Speaker A: I would say same thing if I

Speaker B: was a school based counselor, is support students.

Speaker A: You know, let them make those decisions.

Speaker B: You know, be honest, be objective as

Speaker A: you can be with the experience and

Speaker B: knowledge that you have, but make them feel, um, that they have the, the

Speaker A: agency to, to make these decisions where

Speaker B: they want to try.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Because ultimately, and we tell students all the time, we don't want you to

Speaker A: have any regrets when this process concludes.

Speaker B: Knowing that if you tried your best, you gave it your all in going through this process, you're going to end

Speaker A: up where you were maybe always supposed to be.

Speaker B: And hopefully you go there and thrive. For me, those students, they absolutely do. Um, so, you know, the college that's on your diploma is probably not going

Speaker A: to decide who you are in life,

Speaker B: but it's going to, it's going to

Speaker A: do some things in terms of giving you a good experience and hopefully connecting

Speaker B: you with people and shaping your life.

Speaker A: Um, but it's not the end all.

Speaker B: Um, but we want students to be

Speaker A: excited about the process and ultimately happy with how things play out.

Speaker D: Yeah, man, this has been an awesome conversation, Mike. I really appreciate it. I love the spectrum of kind of things we covered. Um, I would love for you to kind of tell folks where to find you online and maybe like parting words like what are some sort of things that you think people should keep in mind as they, uh, reflect on this conversation.

Speaker B: Yeah. So our main website is collegetransitions.com so

Speaker A: they can come there and learn more

Speaker B: about the counseling that we do. But also the tools and resources that we have.

Speaker A: The book, the dataverse, the blog, there's just a tremendous amount of resources that are there. Millions of people go to that site every year and we hope that continues.

Speaker B: Um, the gateway tool that you helped us launch. Can't thank you enough for that.

Speaker A: It's fantastic. It's getting better, um, by the week, really by the day, with us kind of formulating ideas on things that we want to do to enhance that.

Speaker B: So that's, uh, gateway.collegetransitions.com, but they can

Speaker A: get to it from the website. Um, but it's a Standalone platform that's free for users to create an account.

Speaker B: Um, so, yeah, they can come to

Speaker A: our website, meet us there. We're on social media and stuff like that.

Speaker B: We're not the best at social media.

Speaker A: I feel like our generation maybe is not the best at that. But, um, yeah, they can come to us and learn about our website and our organization.

Speaker B: Uh, in terms of parting words, um, I think, like we've kind of said

Speaker A: through the course of this conversation, um,

Speaker B: college admissions, like many things in colleges in general, it's sort of in a weird place right now. But maybe that was. Maybe it's always been a weird place. And, you know, we just didn't realize at time. But it's definitely changing, uh, now. Um, but just embrace the process. You know, um, if you're a student going through the application process, pick a suitable number of schools that align with you.

Speaker A: Your values, your goals, you know what you want to do, what you want out of your college experience. Give it your best shot.

Speaker B: Don't put too much pressure on yourself to say, I have to go to

Speaker A: this school if I'm going to be successful. It's not about that at all. Um, and, uh, yeah, um, enjoy college. You know, like, there's so many different schools that are out there, good schools that are out there, that you can go to any one of them and be wildly successful. So wherever you go, just get involved on campus.

Speaker B: That is my biggest piece of advice

Speaker A: to students is when you go to

Speaker B: college, meet people, find things that you enjoy doing.

Speaker A: You're going to make your group, you're going to build your. Your network, um, inform relationships with your faculty, your professors. These are great people.

Speaker B: You know, I.

Speaker A: They changed my life, the trajectory of. Of what I thought I wanted to do and the path that I went down. So go meet, you know, faculty during office hours and form those relationships.

Speaker B: And, yeah, see where college takes you.

Speaker A: But enjoy it. It's so much fun.

Speaker D: Yeah, man, that's good stuff. Uh, folks, you can find me online, drewburdick.com and drew, uh, hberdick on all social platforms. Fantastic conversation, man. Great advice. Appreciate you being on the show.

Speaker A: Thank you. Appreciate it.

Speaker C: Like, comment and subscribe.