It's college decision season

Also: My sister's death led me to my running sneakers [Donate ❤️]( [View in Browser](  April 21, 2024 Dear Cog reader, When my oldest son, Ned, started looking at colleges, I suggested he might want to look at art school. “You’re a creative guy,” I told him. “I think you might really enjoy that.” He responded that he wanted to go to a big school with a football team. I found this curious because Ned had never, ever watched a football game. “Interesting,” I said, pretending not to be the skeptical parent he knows I am. “Which one is football?,” I asked, “The World Cup, World Series, or Super Bowl?” “I thiiiiink the answer is Super Bowl,” he replied. Here’s the thing, Ned explained: He’d gone to a “weird” high school — an exam school without a football team — and he didn’t want to attend a “weird” college. “I just want to go to a normal place,” he insisted. Fair enough, I thought. When Ned and my husband began planning college visits for spring break of Ned’s junior year, they built an itinerary around a handful of “not-weird” schools with football teams that they thought Ned could get into, based on his grades and SATs. Just for good measure, my husband added one bonus school — the Savannah College of Art and Design — to the itinerary.  SCAD ended up being the first school they visited. And after they attended the admissions session and tour, Ned turned to his dad and said, “Mom was right. I want to go to art school.” (For the record: There is no football team at SCAD, the school where Ned studied film for four years before moving to Los Angeles.) My second child had a very different high school experience. The COVID-19 pandemic struck during her junior year, the same year she transferred into a new high school. She also had [several brain surgeries]( between her junior and senior years. In fact, she received her first college acceptance notification right before the anesthesiologist wheeled her away for her final surgery. Next year, I’ll go through this process one last time with our third child. You might think I’d be confident about all this by now. But you know the real estate saying, “Every buyer is a first-time home buyer”? That’s how I feel about college admission. Each kid and each admissions “season” is so different that every parent of a college applicant is a first-time parent of a college applicant. The current college-admissions season, which [a recent Intelligencer article]( called the “craziest ever,” certainly isn’t helping. “Figuring out how to navigate this all can leave applicants and their families feeling like they need a Ph.D. in game theory just to get into college,” the author wrote. It’s hard to ignore U.S. News & World Report rankings and acceptance rates, but the young adults I know who are the happiest are the ones who abandoned sophisticated spreadsheets and data dashboards to listen to their hearts. Viktoria Shulevich, who wrote for Cog this week about [choosing Boston University]( was one of the latter. “Visiting BU felt indulgent, like stepping into someone else’s life,” she writes. “A life of an outgoing and confident person who took risks and went on adventures and didn’t just read about them in books.” BU wasn’t where Viktoria thought she’d end up, but it became her dream school after her visit — just like SCAD became my son’s, once he realized that art school was actually a better fit for his interests. May 1 is the day many high school seniors who are continuing their education commit to a school. I hope their dreams come true, too. But if I could talk to them personally, I’d tell them what I used to tell parents and prospective students when I gave tours at my alma mater 30 years ago — or, as my daughter likes to say, way back in the 1900s: It’s college. You’re gonna love it. Thanks for reading, Kate Neale Cooper Editor, Cognoscenti Support the news  Must Reads [It's college decision season: Take the leap, get the rollerblades]( Viktoria Shulevich emigrated from Moscow to New York when she was 11, then graduated from a tiny high school in Brooklyn. When she visited and fell in love with Boston University, she writes, it felt wildly rebellious and indulgent, like stepping into someone else’s life. [Read more.]( [It's college decision season: Take the leap, get the rollerblades]( Viktoria Shulevich emigrated from Moscow to New York when she was 11, then graduated from a tiny high school in Brooklyn. When she visited and fell in love with Boston University, she writes, it felt wildly rebellious and indulgent, like stepping into someone else’s life. [Read more.]( [‘Chasing joy’ with Maggie Rogers and 400 strangers]( For the longest time, joy felt like a ghost of the past, writes Nina Sharma. Then we took a collective deep breath, and began to sing. [Read more.]( [‘Chasing joy’ with Maggie Rogers and 400 strangers]( For the longest time, joy felt like a ghost of the past, writes Nina Sharma. Then we took a collective deep breath, and began to sing. [Read more.]( [After my sister died, I found refuge in my running sneakers]( After Abby Salois’s sister died by suicide, she just wanted to hide. But with a career and young children, she couldn’t. Instead, Salois writes, “I learned to hide inside a fresh pair of Size 8 Brooks Adrenaline running sneakers — navy with gold accents.” [Read more.]( [After my sister died, I found refuge in my running sneakers]( After Abby Salois’s sister died by suicide, she just wanted to hide. But with a career and young children, she couldn’t. Instead, Salois writes, “I learned to hide inside a fresh pair of Size 8 Brooks Adrenaline running sneakers — navy with gold accents.” [Read more.]( What We're Reading "It’s not just seafood and Italian. There’s great Vietnamese, omakase, Peruvian and even bagels worth seeking out. (Don’t worry, there’s also great seafood and Italian.)" "[The 25 Best Restaurants in Boston Right Now]( The New York Times. "What [Atlanta Falcon's owner] Arthur Blank didn't say was that he and his top lieutenants had voted on the team's next head coach, ranking each candidate. Bill Belichick didn't even finish in anyone's top three. The greatest coach of all time hadn't come close — and that was as close as Belichick would come in 2024." "[Voted off the island: Inside Bill Belichick's failed job hunt]( ESPN. "Longevity has become a concrete problem, just as it was for my grandparents: I wake up with aches in long-ignored joints and tendons; I calculate, with dismay, the age I’ll be when my children graduate from college or start their own families. One day, we’re going to die. What should that mean for how we live today?" "[How to Die in Good Health]( The New Yorker. "'Light On' is a stark and personal reminder that I’ve left the light on for all the wrong men for roughly 30 years." — Nina Sharma, "[Chasing joy with Maggie Rogers and 400 strangers]( ICYMI [The Boston Marathon is every runner's dream, including mine]( Barbara Moran, 53, has run five marathons, but the last one was 20 years ago. She gave up running regularly when arthritis began eating away at her knees. What if she could run one more? When Barb started training for Boston, she thought she was trying to hold onto her younger self. Instead, she grew. [Read more.]( [The Boston Marathon is every runner's dream, including mine]( Barbara Moran, 53, has run five marathons, but the last one was 20 years ago. She gave up running regularly when arthritis began eating away at her knees. What if she could run one more? When Barb started training for Boston, she thought she was trying to hold onto her younger self. Instead, she grew. [Read more.]( If you’d like to write for Cognoscenti, send your submission, pasted into your email and not as an attachment, to opinion@wbur.org. Please tell us in one line what the piece is about, and please tell us in one line who you are. 😎 Forward to a friend. 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