Hey everybody! Thanks for subscribing — I’m glad you’re here for the debut of The Admission Letter!

I’ve been navigating the admissions and testing terrain with students, families, and young professionals for more than 25 years, and I think about it nearly every day — including more than once while climbing Kilimanjaro.

Fair warning: this newsletter is beginning raw and unvarnished. You’re going to get what’s on my mind: topics I think matter, things I’m noticing, questions I’m wrestling with, and ideas I think are worth sharing. Every Tuesday.

The most obvious place for me to start is with conversations I’m already having — with students, parents, school counselors, admissions officers, and yes, other admissions consultants. (Names and confidences stay with me.)

On any given day, I’ll come away with anywhere from zero to 15 things worth sharing — and I can confidently say the average is higher than two. Whittle a week of that down, and you’ve got a handful of fairly decent stuff.

I’m on the lookout for threads that deserve pulling and ideas that are too interesting — or perhaps too obvious — for me not to explore! And you’ll get to see them as they develop.

Over the weeks (years, if you decide to stick around) ahead, you’ll get a mix of undergrad and grad, newsworthy and evergreen, theoretical and practitioner-oriented.

Buckle in, my friends.

Let’s go.

In 2025, Syracuse made headlines for an unusual move. The school offered admission and a fairly limited aid offer to a student who opted instead to commit to Cal Poly.

Syracuse then came back with a sweeter offer.

$20k less. Per year. Offered after the May 1 commitment deadline.

This is not an isolated incident. Other reported offers have been as high as $50k per year, prompting frustration both from the families that received the late offers and the families who committed without such an offer.

Related, an actual quote from a former senior administrator at the school: “The problem with Syracuse is that the school thinks of itself as like an Ivy, but it’s not.”

While I’m not saying anything in judgment of Syracuse’s policies or actions or the university itself — I think Syracuse is a great school — I’ll point to this as an interesting window into the market for students.

It’s common for students and families to look at the high cost of college, the ballooning cost of college, and just feel a sense of overwhelm. Paralysis. Fear. Bewilderment.

They look at the rising price tag and wonder whether the value is keeping up with it.

And the truth is that, among the very top schools, there is still a very strong case to be made for the value proposition in dollars.

But for many other schools, it’s a much more mixed picture.

And that’s saying nothing about the schools themselves, which have, in many cases, improved considerably year over year, over the course of many years.

But it highlights what Jeff Selingo describes as the buyers and sellers in this marketplace.

There are schools whose positioning (think prestige and yield) allows them to sell their school at full sticker price.

And there are many schools that are willing to — and in many cases need to — attract talented students with merit dollars.

When you’re a student or a parent looking at a $90,000+ price tag, it’s easy to assume that the price . . . is the price.

Not necessarily.

The sticker price may be north of $90,000. The question is what your price is.

And that depends, in part, on how much the school wants you.

Admitted to the University of Alabama with a 1320 SAT, for instance? (Out-of-state, 3.50+ GPA) $10,000 a year scholarship!

Bump it up to a 1360? Now it’s $24,000 a year!

40 points . . . 56 grand.

That’s a particularly clear (and perhaps eye-popping) case. But in many cases, it’s still messy. Not strictly tied to test scores. And perhaps, as we’ve now seen with Syracuse, not even settled upon admission.

It’s a not-so-secret fact of the MBA admissions process that admitted candidates can request a review of their merit aid package. And it’s not uncommon for schools to respond with a more favorable offer. (Within reason – and how to make such a request is a whole other topic!) And there’s evidence that this is becoming increasingly common, particularly in U.S. MBA programs that have experienced a drop in their international student population.

So the dynamics we’re seeing at Syracuse are not entirely without precedent.

But one piece is new in the undergraduate world: a price that isn’t settled even after you’ve made your decision. For any family experiencing that directly for the first time (or even the third or fourth!), it sure can feel novel . . . and confusing? Frustrating? Exciting? Exhausting?

You tell me! (Shoot me a quick reply)

I’ll be going deeper on this one–more to come.

I had a GRE student recently bring four AI-identified weak topics and a week-long drilling plan to a tutoring session. “Tom, can you take a look at this study plan and tell me what you think of it? Does this look like how I should be spending my time?”

I appreciated her willingness to make use of the tools at her disposal to allocate her time intentionally.

The point I made to her, and the point I’ve made to countless students over the years, is that you have to study the right weaknesses — because your weakest topic might not be your biggest problem.

For every student who misses their target score because of a probability question or a sequence question, there are several others who miss their score goals because they misread a couple of word problems or mishandled a percent or ratio question.

For this student, probability was surely an area with room for improvement. But how many probability questions actually pop up on a given GRE? One? Maybe two?

Here’s the math behind that: what a topic costs you is how often it shows up times how often you miss it. Probability might be your weakest topic and still cost you less than a couple of misread word problems — because word problems are everywhere.

And every word problem is about something (percent change, unit conversion, overlapping sets, etc.) so you might be logging your errors incorrectly. You might get a distance rate word problem wrong and think, “I need to get better at distance rate.” Maybe. But in many cases, the real problem isn’t the math — it’s something in the broader process: reading too quickly, overlooking a critical detail, answering the wrong question. You can practice distance rate all week and never get to the core of the issue.

So we reworked her week, allocating some time to two of the content areas AI flagged — probability and sequences — with enough time to make meaningful progress without overloading her. The rest went to a steady mix of the most frequently tested skills, at a difficulty level that pushed her forward while preserving the gains she’s made in recent months.

If you’re leaking points on word problems, percentages, and the “meat and potatoes” of the test, it behooves you to focus your energy on those core competencies — and to be careful not to over-invest in the rare content areas.

Tend to your garden before you go chasing rabbits.

I probably have some more to say. 😁 But that’ll do it for today! Which one should I tackle first? Hit reply and let me know, or send me a topic of your own!

Tom