Episode Transcript
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[00:01:11] Speaker B: Welcome to this week's edition of in the Clubhouse with EMD Baseball. I'm Andy Kittes, joined by my wonderful co host Keith Glasser. How we doing?
[00:01:20] Speaker C: Great. How are you?
[00:01:21] Speaker B: Good.
We're going to cover a topic today that is a little bit less baseball related than we typically have on this podcast, but I think it's an important one to cover as it's come up in conversation multiple times over the last couple weeks.
And I think what we're going to softly title this one is don't judge a school by its acceptance rate.
What do we think of that, Coach?
[00:01:48] Speaker C: I think it's great we're back. We've had like a two week hiatus here. So back and, and talking dugout dish in the clubhouse.
[00:02:01] Speaker B: This is, this one's an interesting one for me because me and you have both been involved at the highest levels of academic institutions, right? Elite engineering school, elite liberal arts colleges.
And it's, it's interesting to talk about this topic because I, I think that there's a little bit of a misunderstanding on the quality of the education being tied to the acceptance rate. And I understand when you start talking about these elite colleges in the country, the Ivy Leagues, Stanford, University of Chicago schools with that kind of name recognition and that type of reputation, the acceptance rates are low. Mit, Caltech, you know, schools of that nature where you're talking single digit acceptance rates and it comes with a lot of lore and their educations are incredible, right? The, the bar to get in those schools is, is incredibly high. But I think sometimes people are so fixated on the wrong metric when they're trying to find the best fit or the right school.
And the acceptance rate can be really blinding in terms of what are you actually looking for?
And are you, are you trying to find a school because you're able to go out and say, hey, I got into a school where they only accept 10% of the people, or are you trying to find a school that's a really good fit for you and not digging deeper past the acceptance rate and really starting to understand what a school actually offers?
Right. I know you have some great examples, so I'm not going to steal your thunder about specific programs at different types of schools, but I think sometimes people fixate on that acceptance rate as the metric that makes a school an elite institution.
But peeling back that onion a little bit deeper, starting to understand what type of opportunities are there when they're on campus. Are there specific programs at specific schools that are incredibly well known or have your reputation of getting kids to where they want to go when they graduate? Whether it's a, you know, maybe it's a nursing school, maybe it's engineering specifically.
But taking a look at metrics and information that go just beyond that acceptance rate, I think is something that parents and players need to do and not get stuck on that bumper sticker. But get down to the nitty gritty of what is this degree going to do to me? And doesn't match with what I'm looking for.
Sure.
[00:04:39] Speaker C: You know, I think there's.
[00:04:44] Speaker B: There'S something.
[00:04:45] Speaker C: To be said about wanting to go to and being accepted to some of these institutions.
That said, just because you, you know, may not be admissible at some of them doesn't mean that you still can't go to a really good school.
You know, I coached at one of the best engineering schools in the country, and they had a. You know, I want to say it was around 28% acceptance rate, but that's the entire school.
[00:05:10] Speaker B: Right.
[00:05:10] Speaker C: Like, you know, you have, you have a business school, you have a humanity school, you have an architecture school. You know, I would argue that it's harder to get into the engineering school and the science school than it is to get into the other three. Not that they're less of a caliber of school.
It's just there's less applicants that are applying to them, and they're all strong. So the likelihood of you being admitted is a little bit higher.
Right. You know, and I think it's. This is probably the same. I don't know this for sure, but this is probably the same across a lot of the engineering schools. Like you can't skirt the system at an RPI and get in as a business major and then show up day one and be like, hey, I want to be a nuclear engineer.
That's not going to happen.
You know, they're, they're very protective of it for good reason. It's one of the best engineering schools in the country. It's the oldest technological university in the English speaking world. For those of you that are out there who used to listen to my info sessions when I was a, a young buck doing admission stuff. But, you know, I, I think that you can find certain, certain programs within schools that also, that are, you know, maybe not necessarily elite, but also can lead you to where you want to go and ultimately what you want to do in life, right? Like, you know, hey, if you want to be an engineer and you want to go work in California and you're from Maryland, like, yeah, maybe RPI and U of R and RIT and Bucknell or Lafayette. Like, maybe those are all schools that you should be focused in on. But if you're a New York kid who wants to be a nurse, like, maybe Brockport or, you know, Binghamton or Stony Brook are all great options for you because they have nursing programs that are really good. If you're not going to leave the state or you want to be a teacher, go to a state school. You got to be state certified anyways, you know, there's nothing wrong with it. And I think that there's, you know, surrounding what it is that you want to do. And look at 15, 16, 17, you don't have to know what you want to do, but if you have a pretty good idea, there's a lot of different schools out there that can get you to where you want to go. And I listen, I was a history major, right? Like, there's not a whole hell of a lot that you're going to learn at Harvard that is different from a history standpoint than I learned at Marist. Like, I will die on that hill. Like, it's history.
It already happened. We're just studying it years later.
There's not that much difference in it, right? Like, I could be dead wrong, but I don't think I am. Like, you know, they read different books there, apparently, but, you know, what are we doing here, right? Like, you know, kind of a little Larry David here. Like, yeah, it's, it's kind of all the same, right.
You know, and I think that in some respects, like, it holds true in a lot of things, right? Like, you know, I could get behind, you know, engineering and science and some of those things of being on, you know, depending on whether or not, or with, with what you want to do, right. Do you want to be a science teacher? Do you want to do research? Do you want, like those types of things move the needle? If you want to go to an elite, you know, like RPI has research. If you want to do research as an undergrad, it's a great place for you to go to. And if that's what you want to do, you should research. Schools that have the ability for undergraduates to legitimately get hands on research, because some say that they do, but it's limited. Other times it's just going to be graduate students. So, you know, you want to look into that stuff. But I don't know, I wasn't a business major. You know, I think that there's a handful of schools out there that, yeah, are a step above the rest. But I would probably argue that your, your business degree from Marist isn't all that much different than some of the other nescac, you know, business degrees that are out there. You know, you, you majored in it, you have two MBAs, you, and you also work at a pretty good institution, if you will. Like, you're doing pretty well for yourself with a Marist degree. I mean, you know, it's, I think it's what you make of your degree and what you're going to do when you get out of college and what your real life experiences are going to be. You know, I would argue that you're probably going to want to look more for schools, especially in today's world, where you're going to get some real, real life, real world experience as an undergrad that prep you for what you're going to do upon graduation.
You know, and I think that it's, it's a little bit, it's a little bit easier as an athlete, regardless of the sport you play. You know, in my experience, the athletes are the ones that are sought after coming out of college because they have the ability to work within a team, they have the ability to time management. They can, they can handle adversity. They had, they know how to manage all of this stuff. Not to say that people who don't play sports don't. But generally speaking, the kids who have been able to do it for four years at a collegiate level are probably a little bit further along. You know, I spent 10 years at RPI, two guys who didn't have a job by graduation. They both had multiple offers like It's a lot of guys that had jobs well before they graduated. You know, they're sought after human beings. And that does, that's not just baseball. That's, you know, women's lacrosse and soccer and swimming and diving and football. And it's everybody who's there, right? So, you know, I think that there's, there's more to it than just kind of looking at the acceptance rate and saying, like, hey, this is an elite school. This is where I want to go. This will set me up. Like, you know, yeah, you could go there and you know, what happens if you go to that school and you knock down a two two, like, are you going to be hirable in the workplace? What if you went to a school that was a step down and got a 3.8? Are you more hirable then?
What's, you know, what's the difference? You know, So I just think that there's more to it than just the acceptance rate and what, you know, ultimately it is that you want to do. Because you can find a lot of these schools, you know, that have your major or area of study that you're interested in, research it on the interwebs and see where those students have gone. Like shoot an email to admissions or shoot an email to the school of Business at Marist and be like, hey, where are graduates getting hired? They have the list. They'll tell you they're very proud of it, right? So, you know, I, I think that there's, you know, I think this kind of misnomer that you can, you should go to an elite academics. Well, they're not saying that, you know, I'm not trying to foo foo that idea. I think it's a great idea if that's what you aspire to do, you know, But I think there's, you know, you can also look, view it through the lens of like, how is this, is this degree going to be able to get me to ultimately where it is I want to go, right? You know, and look, you go to a school and you can crush it academically and go get your master's somewhere at a maybe more prestigious school than you were at. It doesn't diminish your undergraduate degree. You belong there. You got in. You have that master's degree or mba, whatever it might be from Columbia, right? Like, you got there, you know, you could be Marist, Columbia. It doesn't, doesn't mean you're not, you're less smart than the person who went somewhere else, you know, So I, I just like, it's a weird kind of realm for me, I think sometimes, you know, and I probably talk too much about it, but, you know, I was not, admittedly I was not the best student when I was in college, nor was I in high school, but I got by. I did pretty good. I graduated with a like 3, 6.
It's history, you know, read some books, write some papers, give some presentations. Next thing you know, you know, you're. You're doing pretty good.
But I think that is ultimately you're going to get out of it what you put in. Right. And I think that's the case at all of these schools. Like, you're going to get out what you put in. Are you going to get your ass kicked academically at some of these schools? Absolutely you are. But again, you're going to get out what you put in. If you're just going to put in minimal effort, you're going to find yourself with minimal grades and, you know, be flirting with even being eligible.
Right. So, you know, those are things that you want to keep in mind too, you know, is. Is this will ultimately what you know, because you want to go play baseball or lacrosse or football or whatever, right. Like you, there's a GPA you're going to have to maintain in order to be able to participate in said program. And if that's important to you, then you're probably going to want to make sure that you're going to be able to do well academically so that you're not continually fighting an uphill fight for four years just to graduate and hopefully stay on the field.
[00:14:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I think at the end of the day, the big message here is that you got to dig deeper than the metric that validates whether you think a school is good or not.
You got to really start to understand what are some of those outcomes? What is that school going to provide you? Is it going to be a good fit for you from a social perspective?
Is it going to be a good fit for you for what you're looking to pursue post graduation?
And you hit the nail on the head. Like, you can find this information, you can find what outcomes are, what. Starting average salary is where people are doing internships, where people are getting jobs.
Some of that is easily researchable on the old Google machine.
Other times, a lot of these schools will have it on their own website.
Additionally, like, you can shoot those emails too.
You know, the admissions office to the, you know, the, the internship offices that these schools have where they're helping guys get. Get set up with jobs during the middle of the year, what the connections look like, what the alumni base looks like, how are they involved.
But this idea that the acceptance rate is the kind of the end all, be all metric. When you start to look at the quality of the school or the, you know, the world, the U.S. news & World Report rankings, well, well, this school is ranked higher than that one. I mean, when you start getting into those rankings, you're splitting hairs. You know whose opinion is really different between the school that's ranked 21st in liberal arts and the one that's ranked 44th. Like, yeah.
[00:15:37] Speaker C: The wild thing too is like, it depends on what rankings you look at.
Like one schools could be 20th on US World and News Report. And then you go to like niche.com and they're 40th and the school that was 35th is on niches 17th and vice. Like it, you know, we're just throwing darts at a dartboard at that point.
[00:16:02] Speaker B: Yeah. So dig deeper. Don't hang your hat on that metric. And I think it's important and you said it, but I'm going to, going to double down on it.
If you can get into these schools, great.
If you're good enough to get into one of these elite, extremely low acceptance rate schools and you can afford it and it's a good fit for you, awesome. Go get it. We're not saying don't do that, but what we are saying is do your research better. Understand exactly what you're going to get out of what you're looking for. College is super expensive and you want to make sure that you're getting your bang for your buck and you're setting yourself up for your future. Specifically, if you have a decent idea of what path you're trying to take, like you, the, the teaching one is a great example. Right. If you're a New York kid and you plan on living in New York and you want to be a teacher, going to a private school in South Carolina for twice the cost may not be the best decision for you in the long run.
So, you know, think about this stuff. You got it. You got to dig deeper. Just like a lot of the, the recruiting process, you have to go below the surface level.
You, you can't just focus on the things that validate whatever your opinion might be. And you need to dig a little bit deeper on this.
Anything else you want to add, Coach?
[00:17:19] Speaker C: No, sir.
[00:17:20] Speaker B: All right, thank you for listening to our TED Talk.
We'll talk to you next week.
[00:17:26] Speaker D: Thanks, everybody.
[00:17:27] Speaker B: Thank you for listening this week.
[00:17:29] Speaker D: If you're watching on YouTube go ahead and hit that subscribe button and smash.
[00:17:33] Speaker B: That like button for us. Check us out on Apple Podcasts, Google.
[00:17:37] Speaker D: Podcasts as well as Spotify. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram MD Baseball. If you want to find out what me and Keith do to help families and players navigate the recruiting process, go ahead and check us out on emdbaseball.com take a few minutes to check out our new online academy. I promise you'll get some good, good information out of that.
[00:17:57] Speaker B: Thanks again for listening.
[00:17:58] Speaker D: Check in with you next week.
