In this episode you will hear:   Mark and Susan discuss the history of NACAC and Susan shares what stood out to her at the NACAC conference. Mark interviews David Hawkins of NACAC, about factors 5-15 of the things that matter the most when admission decisions are made.   Rank these from 1 to 30 according to what is most important to you in a college   1.       Area Surrounding the College 2.       Campus Beauty and Feel 3.       Career Outcomes 4.       Class Size 5.       Clubs, Sports and Extracurricular 6.       College Rankings 7.       College Setting (large city, small city, suburban, college town, remote) 8.       Cost/Affordability 9.       Distance from home 10.    Diversity 11.    Experiential learning (Co-ops/Internships, Study-Abroad, Research 12.    Facilities 13.    Financial Resources and Financial Wealth 14.    Food Quality 15.    Fraternities and Sororities 16.    Friendliness 17.    Graduation and Retention Rates 18.    Housing Options 19.    Name Recognition/Prestige 20.    Nature/Green Spaces 21.    Overall Academic Excellence 22.    Political Climate 23.    Religious Affiliation and/or Religious Culture 24.    Residential vs Commuter Students 25.    Safety 26.    School Size- 27.    Sports/ School Spirit 28.    Strength in my major 29.    Student Support 30.    Weather   Mark interviews David Hawkins Part 2-Preview ·         David introduces the next most important factor that colleges rated as considerably important and moderately important after the big four we discussed last week ·         We have a robust conversation about the factor that came in at number 6 in the State of College Admissions Survey ·         David introduces some more factors and where they came in and David and I have a robust conversation about why class rank has dropped so much from their past studies to where it is now ·         David shares where standardized testing comes in and we also talk about why testing ranked so high in the past and why it has fallen so far in the recent State of College Admissions Report ·         David walks through the final factors that show up as important but not in decisive numbers       Speakpipe.com/YCBK is our method if you want to ask a question and we will be prioritizing all questions sent in via Speakpipe. Unfortunately, we will NOT answer questions on the podcast anymore that are emailed in. If you want us to answer a question on the podcast, please use speakpipe.com/YCBK. We feel hearing from our listeners in their own voices adds to the community feel of our podcast.   You can also use this for many other purposes: 1) Send us constructive criticism about how we can improve our podcast 2) Share an encouraging word about something you like about an episode or the podcast in general 3) Share a topic or an article you would like us to address 4) Share a speaker you want us to interview 5) Leave positive feedback for one of our interviewees. We will send your verbal feedback directly to them and I can almost assure you, your positive feedback will make their day.   To sign up to receive Your College-Bound Kid PLUS, our new monthly admissions newsletter, delivered directly to your email once a month, just go to yourcollegeboundkid.com, and you will see the sign-up popup. We will include many of the hot topics being discussed on college campuses.   Check out our new blog. We write timely and insightful articles on college admissions:   Follow Mark Stucker on Twitter to get breaking college admission news, and updates about the podcast before they go live. You can ask questions on Twitter that he will answer on the podcast. Mark will also share additional hot topics in the news and breaking news on this Twitter feed. Twitter message is also the preferred way to ask q