Speaker 1: Pushkin. Our last episode was about an explosion, an explosion
Speaker 1: of coaching in modern life. All sorts of people are
Speaker 1: getting paid to be coaches in places that never used
Speaker 1: to have coaches, big corporations, wall street, trading floors, fire stations.
Speaker 1: People are declaring themselves coaches not just of skills, but
Speaker 1: of states of mind and getting paid to do it.
Speaker 1: So it's now more noticeable when you come across situations
Speaker 1: that cry out for a coach and no coaches around,
Speaker 1: when total amateurs who don't think of themselves as coaches
Speaker 1: are forced to coach for free because no one's doing
Speaker 1: it for money. Like this woman. I am Marsaparadan, author
Speaker 1: of several books and articles on banking and inequality, racial
Speaker 1: wealth gap, etc. Marissa came to the United States from
Speaker 1: Iran as a child. Her family were political refugees. She's
Speaker 1: now a professor at the UC Irvine Law School. But
Speaker 1: it's not her job that matters here. Mariss's brother in
Speaker 1: law is the sheriff of a small town east of
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. He called her one day to say he
Speaker 1: had taken in a high school student. She was his
Speaker 1: son's classmate and track teammate, and she was homeless. Her
Speaker 1: name is Kayla. Kayla kept getting kicked out of her
Speaker 1: home like on and off and finally permanently last year,
Speaker 1: and so their son told his parents and they just said,
Speaker 1: come live with us. Right, Marissa found Kayla totally striking,
Speaker 1: six feet tall, self possessed. But she's a seventeen year
Speaker 1: old African American girl in a poor white town, not
Speaker 1: just homeless, but working two jobs, just trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how to survive. I don't know exact date, but
Speaker 1: I think maybe around September. My mother kicked me out
Speaker 1: of the house. It was something that it happened before,
Speaker 1: but this time it was a permanent one. So I
Speaker 1: just tried to be prepared. But I mean, there's not
Speaker 1: what you can be prepared for when that happens. Why
Speaker 1: did she say she cooked you out of the house
Speaker 1: this recent time. I think it was just maybe I
Speaker 1: feel like a lack of appreciation. Maybe she didn't think
Speaker 1: I appreciated what she's done for me, because I think
Speaker 1: she felt that I was only there to finish my
Speaker 1: education and that I was using everything she gave me
Speaker 1: just to go to school. So yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: probably the main reason why she kicked me out. Are
Speaker 1: you still in touch with her? No, I don't talk
Speaker 1: to you at all. Okay, So I asked Kayla a
Speaker 1: bunch of questions, but her new friend, Marisa had asked
Speaker 1: her more. She learned that Kayla was a star long
Speaker 1: distance runner, a great student too, who'd somehow maintained a
Speaker 1: great point average of four point zero. Klea had managed
Speaker 1: to take the SAT too. She just walked into an
Speaker 1: SAT center and taking it cold without any idea of
Speaker 1: what it was. She got a score of twelve sixty,
Speaker 1: which was better than eighty three percent of the other
Speaker 1: people who took it. Marissa could see how badly Kayla
Speaker 1: wanted to go to college, and she knew from her
Speaker 1: brother in law that college was not the obvious next
Speaker 1: step for kids from kayla school. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: a high school, and I went to one of these
Speaker 1: high schools where the only recruiters that come to campus
Speaker 1: are like military and community college. If that so, most
Speaker 1: of these kids are not four year college bat. When
Speaker 1: she first tells you what she's doing to apply to college,
Speaker 1: the first time you sit down and talk to her
Speaker 1: about it, what does she say and what is your response?
Speaker 1: She says I said, well, what colleges are applying to?
Speaker 1: And she says, well, I applied to a couple of
Speaker 1: like UC schools. I think she'd applied to like three
Speaker 1: schools at the time. She'd actually applied to four schools
Speaker 1: state schools, because you could do that for free, never
Speaker 1: mind the eventual tuition. Kayla couldn't afford the application fees.
Speaker 1: So I just asked Kayla, I'm like, hey, do you
Speaker 1: mind if I look, I'll pay for the application costs
Speaker 1: and we'll just do it together. Would you be into that?
Speaker 1: And she was super into it, right, so she was
Speaker 1: like absolutely, I want to do this anyway. That's how
Speaker 1: Marissa remembers it. Kayla recalls hesitating before she said yes.
Speaker 1: She's like, what colleges you applying for? You're only applying
Speaker 1: to four? Well, you need to apply to more. And
Speaker 1: I was like, well, I can't pay for this, and
Speaker 1: she was like, well, you don't have to worry about it.
Speaker 1: I got it. I got it covered. And at first
Speaker 1: I was really like, I'm not the type of person
Speaker 1: that accepts money from other people. It was the first
Speaker 1: time that anyone had offered to help her, and the
Speaker 1: situation was as new to Kayla as it was to Marisa,
Speaker 1: you know, you could tell that she's hungry for the
Speaker 1: coaching and she wanted it, and so I could just
Speaker 1: see that. And you know, I don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of time either, right, Like I have a full time
Speaker 1: job and kids and all the other stuff. But when
Speaker 1: you see someone like that, You're like, Okay, whatever it takes,
Speaker 1: I'm going to help you with this, because who else
Speaker 1: is going to exactly right, who else is going to
Speaker 1: Kayla Saster's the kind of kid every elite school in
Speaker 1: the country claims to be looking for. Marisa had the
Speaker 1: same thought. She also thought, oh no, I'm too late.
Speaker 1: I'm Michael Lewis, and this is against the rules. A
Speaker 1: show about various authority figures in American life. This season
Speaker 1: is about the rise of coaches, and this episode is
Speaker 1: about a place in American life where there should be coaches.
Speaker 1: Columbia asks what exhibits, lectures, theater productions, and concerts have
Speaker 1: you liked best in the last year. I'm tempted to
Speaker 1: write Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera. Psych My town doesn't
Speaker 1: even have a movie theater. Kayla Sassar's deadline for college
Speaker 1: applications was less than a month away. There wasn't time
Speaker 1: to hire an essat coach and retake the test or
Speaker 1: anything like that. So her new friend Marissa just starts
Speaker 1: grabbing applications to elite schools off the web. Now she
Speaker 1: and Kayla have to figure out how to decode what
Speaker 1: they're really asking the kids who apply. I ask her
Speaker 1: what kids do for entertainment, and she says drugs. Another
Speaker 1: school asks her what her favorite periodicals, newspapers, and websites are.
Speaker 1: She doesn't have access to a computer except when she
Speaker 1: does homework on a school computer. She doesn't get the
Speaker 1: New Yorker. She's never traveled outside her town. It just
Speaker 1: seems like anyone who can answer these questions has got
Speaker 1: to be coached. Kayla obviously needs a coach, and Marissa,
Speaker 1: just by chance and temperament, is the right person to
Speaker 1: coach her. But right away she's seeing the bigger issue.
Speaker 1: And then I'm looking at these questions and I'm like,
Speaker 1: you clearly don't get it right. You don't underst stand
Speaker 1: what it's like to grow up in a rural town
Speaker 1: and not have resources like you know, elite Americans do.
Speaker 1: So she helps Kayla with the application questions, is best
Speaker 1: she can. Then they get to the big one, the
Speaker 1: personal essay, the place where you let all these college
Speaker 1: admissions officers know who you really are. Rich kids get
Speaker 1: all kinds of help doing this. They write about their
Speaker 1: week long service trip to some poor Guatemalan village as
Speaker 1: a transformative experience in which they overcame something or other.
Speaker 1: Marisa looks at an essay Kayla already wrote the one
Speaker 1: for her University of California applications. So here she is.
Speaker 1: She's African American, you know, homeless, works two jobs, and
Speaker 1: I mean just every obstacle you want to put in
Speaker 1: someone's path, she's had it. And her essays were on,
Speaker 1: you know, like how she stopped bullies on the cross
Speaker 1: country team, which my goodness, I mean, she's a hero.
Speaker 1: But like there wasn't a lot in there where she
Speaker 1: was explaining to them the circumstances that she's overcome. Kayla
Speaker 1: has like zero perspective on her own life. This doesn't
Speaker 1: surprise Marisa. I'm a war refugee. I immigrated to America
Speaker 1: when I was ten. My mom spent my entire childhood
Speaker 1: in political prison. I saw, you know, bodies hanging in
Speaker 1: Iran and I wrote my college application on you know
Speaker 1: how Alice Walker's the color Purple changed my view of literature, right,
Speaker 1: So there was nothing in my eighteen year old college
Speaker 1: application about my background because I couldn't put it into
Speaker 1: words at the time. And when you're eighteen or seventeen,
Speaker 1: or at least when I was, and when Kayla is
Speaker 1: where she's at, you don't want to put that front
Speaker 1: and center. You don't want to be a victim. You
Speaker 1: are a survivor. You're just like everyone else. You're normal
Speaker 1: and you should be. It's not like Marisa wants Kayla
Speaker 1: to relive her trauma for the benefit of college admissions officers,
Speaker 1: but she does her to get her situation across to
Speaker 1: them because it matters. It matters that she overcame so
Speaker 1: much just to get to this point. Applying to college,
Speaker 1: she wanted to write an essay about international relations in Spanish,
Speaker 1: like why you know she wants to do foreign languages
Speaker 1: and that's her thing, And she wrote a lot about that,
Speaker 1: and I said, why you know, tell me more about
Speaker 1: what got you interest in Spanish. And it took like
Speaker 1: maybe ten questions to get to. When she first got
Speaker 1: kicked out, the family that took her in was Spanish speaking.
Speaker 1: They spoke limited English, and she felt like she really
Speaker 1: wanted to communicate with this family and she couldn't because
Speaker 1: she didn't speak Spanish. So she, you know, started listening
Speaker 1: to podcasts and books on tape just to learn Spanish
Speaker 1: so she could communicate with this family that was taking
Speaker 1: her in. That's the story, right, yes, And for her
Speaker 1: it was just I'm really interested in languages and I
Speaker 1: want to go study abroad and see how the world
Speaker 1: is and all of this stuff. Marisa went to a
Speaker 1: high school just like Kayla's. She knows Kayla because she
Speaker 1: was Kayla once and now she's her college application coach
Speaker 1: multiplied this story by thousands, and you never know, maybe
Speaker 1: it changes the world. The decline of social mobility, it's
Speaker 1: a desperate problem, and no one seems to know how
Speaker 1: to solve it. But when you hear the story of
Speaker 1: Kleis Sasser, or at least when I hear the story
Speaker 1: of Kleis Sasser, I wonder is this partly a coaching problem?
Speaker 1: That is, is it a problem that coaches might help
Speaker 1: to solve? This idea isn't original with me. Dave Eggers
Speaker 1: had it back in the year two thousand. He had
Speaker 1: recently published his first book, which was called a heartbreaking
Speaker 1: work of staggering genius, and he'd also started tutoring kids
Speaker 1: who'd fallen behind in school. When I heard about Dave
Speaker 1: doing this back then, I remember thinking he's just looking
Speaker 1: for even more ways to make other writers feel inferior.
Speaker 1: But Dave was actually into it. He could see that
Speaker 1: his tutoring had a big effect, and a thought struck him.
Speaker 1: The teachers here in San Francisco that I knew might
Speaker 1: have one hundred or one hundred and fifty students a day,
Speaker 1: and they just didn't have enough time to reach and
Speaker 1: bring every student up to grade level, especially on their
Speaker 1: English writing and reading. And so they kept saying, if
Speaker 1: I could clone myself, I could give all of these
Speaker 1: kids the time that they needed. And that just sort
Speaker 1: of sunk in and rattled in my brain for a
Speaker 1: few years, and finally we thought, well, maybe we could
Speaker 1: use all of this available time among the writers, editors, freelancers, journalists,
Speaker 1: graduate students that we know and have them become this
Speaker 1: clone army, helping the students bring each student up to
Speaker 1: grade level by giving them that hour or two of
Speaker 1: one on one attention every day after school, and it worked,
Speaker 1: and it grew kind of rapidly. Dave rented a building
Speaker 1: for his Clone Army. It was in the Mission District
Speaker 1: of San Francisco. He named the organization for the address
Speaker 1: eight twenty six Valencia. In the back was the McSweeney's
Speaker 1: publishing offices and the front was all going to be
Speaker 1: the tutoring center. But that's when the landlord told us
Speaker 1: that the front was zoned for retail and we had
Speaker 1: to sell something in the storefront. What about. That's when
Speaker 1: we came upon the idea of selling buccaneer supplies to
Speaker 1: working pirates. Twenty six Valencia became both tutoring center and
Speaker 1: pirate gear retail store. Yeah. Soon Dave opened another tutoring
Speaker 1: center in Boston, which sold Bigfoot themed merchandise, and yet
Speaker 1: another in Brooklyn, which sold superhero equipment. But as Dave's
Speaker 1: organization encountered and helped more kids, he started to see
Speaker 1: another problem. You know. The kids started aging up, and
Speaker 1: we had a lot of high school kids come in
Speaker 1: for various programs, and I started writing college rex for
Speaker 1: these kids and realizing that depending on whether or not
Speaker 1: their family their parents had gone to college, they had
Speaker 1: a drastically different levels of preparation. Dave's tutors were working
Speaker 1: mostly with kids from families in which no one had
Speaker 1: ever gone to college. He saw that the society was
Speaker 1: saying one thing about social mobility but doing another. It
Speaker 1: had structured itself to keep these kids in the class
Speaker 1: to which they were born. The kids that had family
Speaker 1: members had gone to college might be applying to twelve
Speaker 1: or thirteen colleges all over the country because they knew
Speaker 1: the landscape their parents had sort of told them the
Speaker 1: wider national college landscape. And the kids that were first
Speaker 1: in their family, they go into public schools here in
Speaker 1: San Francisco generally applied to two colleges, City College and
Speaker 1: SF State, and they did not generally know about all
Speaker 1: the other opportunities. It surprised you that the public schools
Speaker 1: that they were in didn't have college counseling departments that
Speaker 1: had done this work for them. Well. In California, the
Speaker 1: last statistic I saw said that in among public high
Speaker 1: school students in California, the ratio of students to counselors
Speaker 1: is nine hundred and forty five to one. And that's
Speaker 1: not just college counselors. That's all counselors. So I keep
Speaker 1: on meeting counselors. They would say, I'd say, what are
Speaker 1: your goals this year? And she would say, my goal
Speaker 1: this year is to meet the students in my cohort.
Speaker 1: Just meet them, let alone spending maybe ten to twelve
Speaker 1: hours per student that you might need to properly prepare
Speaker 1: them for college. In twenty and ten, Dave created this
Speaker 1: whole other organization to do for a bunch of kids
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, essentially what Marissa had set out to
Speaker 1: do for Kayla, to help them find good colleges and
Speaker 1: to get into them. Dave called this new organization scholar Match,
Speaker 1: and it was indeed able to help a couple of
Speaker 1: hundred high school kids get scholarships and all seemed well,
Speaker 1: but all was not well. So Dave eggers in his
Speaker 1: scholar Match program, we're helping low income kids get into college.
Speaker 1: But once the kids got there, they had a bunch
Speaker 1: of problems that Dave hadn't anticipated. Stress about work, stress
Speaker 1: about planning an hourly schedule, stress about their families back home,
Speaker 1: health issues, and the kids started dropping out. Nationwide, the
Speaker 1: dropout rate for first generation college students is scandalous. Only
Speaker 1: about one in every nine of them actually finishes school.
Speaker 1: Scholar Match thought they'd anticipated this problem. I mean, they'd
Speaker 1: found the right school for the student and the money
Speaker 1: to pay for it, but still forty percent of their
Speaker 1: kids were dropping out. Like, what good is it if
Speaker 1: you go to a school with a full ride that
Speaker 1: you're going to feel like you don't fit in or
Speaker 1: like you're not welcome, and then it's you're going to
Speaker 1: struggle the whole way and not make it anyway. Her
Speaker 1: name is Diana Adamson. Dave Eggers hired her to run
Speaker 1: scholar Match, and Diana started keeping a mental list of
Speaker 1: all the snags their first generation students hit. A failed
Speaker 1: class and illness, the wrong major, a parent whose immigration
Speaker 1: status was called into question. These kids were being dealt
Speaker 1: crippling blows by things that privileged kids might treat us
Speaker 1: bumps in the road, and the blows could come before
Speaker 1: they even set foot on any college campus. The summer
Speaker 1: before the start of college was especially fraught. So there's
Speaker 1: two things that happened in that summer. One is they
Speaker 1: have to put in a housing deposit to reserve their
Speaker 1: dorm and it costs a couple hundred dollars, sometimes as
Speaker 1: much as four hundred. Most of our students have a
Speaker 1: little bit of difficulty of coming up with four hundred
Speaker 1: dollars in a week to send off to the school.
Speaker 1: But if you don't do that, then you run the
Speaker 1: risk of not getting put into dorm. And we've seen
Speaker 1: that happen. And so then a student gets the money,
Speaker 1: but it's late, and then they're not prioritized for a
Speaker 1: dorm plicement, and then they suddenly don't have a dorm.
Speaker 1: They have to live off campus as a freshman, and
Speaker 1: it just becomes the first step in the unraveling of
Speaker 1: oh what am I doing here? I don't belong here.
Speaker 1: First generation college students from low income families were in
Speaker 1: some ways incredibly robust. I mean, just to get into
Speaker 1: a college was an amazing achievement, but they could be
Speaker 1: derailed by problems that money alone couldn't solve. Even my
Speaker 1: family disagreed with going into Ohio. Meet Andy Saw of
Speaker 1: San Francisco, and your parents did not going to college?
Speaker 1: No dinning to fardest stag I was in high school.
Speaker 1: Were they born and raised here? They are all from China?
Speaker 1: Are they? Yeah? None of them speak English. Andy went
Speaker 1: through the scholar Match program and it introduced him to
Speaker 1: the world, especially the world of private colleges with full
Speaker 1: ride scholarships. Before that, he just assumed he'd go to
Speaker 1: community college and maybe one day, if he got really lucky,
Speaker 1: he'd transferred to a state university. I went over to
Speaker 1: Tramission District. I was like, any helped with my application?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what I'm really doing either. That's where
Speaker 1: Ohio Wesleyan came into the picture. How did it come
Speaker 1: into the picture? Because I told him, well, doubt like
Speaker 1: our community, the Asian American community, only thinks about UCSH.
Speaker 1: So like you see this, you see that that's like
Speaker 1: my only option. And then we have safety schools like
Speaker 1: state and City. For sure, I'll get and those, but
Speaker 1: UC is to reach right. Andy was talking with a
Speaker 1: guy named Noel Ramirez, the person at scholar Match. You
Speaker 1: helped him with his college application. And the thing with
Speaker 1: Andy is that we had many conversations, and I can
Speaker 1: recall with him that he had this exceptional interest in life.
Speaker 1: It was beyond getting the job. You know, I think
Speaker 1: it'd be letter recommendations I wrote for him that I
Speaker 1: said that he was the type of student that wasn't
Speaker 1: only interested in, you know, getting a job, getting married,
Speaker 1: buying house, having kids, buying a pet. So with that,
Speaker 1: I felt he would thrive at a place that would
Speaker 1: have those types of conversations, where he could take philosophy class,
Speaker 1: a religion class, where he would meet people from all
Speaker 1: over the world, where he would take a risk and
Speaker 1: go to a place that looks completely different from his world.
Speaker 1: So Noel and Andy focused on applying to Ohio Wesleyan.
Speaker 1: The school had a great biology program but also a
Speaker 1: strong humanities program. It not only accepted Andy, he was
Speaker 1: able to go there on scholarship. All Andy needed to
Speaker 1: do was to get there, and that's when things took
Speaker 1: a turn. Keep in mind, doesn't make my second time flying.
Speaker 1: I did not know what to do. Andy's only other
Speaker 1: time flying was when he was six months old. He
Speaker 1: had no real experience with travel, and at the San
Speaker 1: Francisco Airport his plane was fogged in. By the time
Speaker 1: he landed in Chicago for his connecting flight to Ohio,
Speaker 1: the flight was gone. What do you do? I walked
Speaker 1: around just following people who were like on the same
Speaker 1: planeful of us to going Ohio. Just listening to what
Speaker 1: everyone's saying somewhere like I just I'm gonna go to
Speaker 1: a hotel and sleep. And I'm like, I don't really
Speaker 1: notice neighborhood, Like I don't want to take that risk.
Speaker 1: He's now living in his head. So I walked around more.
Speaker 1: They gave us a food voucher and I got my
Speaker 1: food from McDonald's and I decided, like, it's not worth
Speaker 1: going outside. I should just sleep in the airport. But
Speaker 1: then someone told him he needed to go to the
Speaker 1: ticket counter to get on the first flight out in
Speaker 1: the morning, and Andy met his first gate agent. The
Speaker 1: airline person ripped up my ticket. He said, this ticket
Speaker 1: no longer works. We're gonna rip it up. He ripped
Speaker 1: it in front of my face and I was like, man,
Speaker 1: you can't do this to me right now, and I
Speaker 1: tear it up. So you thought he was taking away
Speaker 1: your ticket. Yeah, I was gonna be trapped into hair.
Speaker 1: I was like, why don't you do that? I started
Speaker 1: tearing out. I was like where first time crying so
Speaker 1: really well, like in front of people. Yeah, they ripped
Speaker 1: over your ticket. It's like they sent and seeing YouTube
Speaker 1: life in prison in O'Hare airport. Yeah, because what it
Speaker 1: feels like I was going to be trapped her Like,
Speaker 1: why'd you do that? I have no exit? Now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was pretty bad, and it was bad, but it
Speaker 1: got worse. Andy called home and his family reminded him
Speaker 1: that they hadn't liked the idea of him going so
Speaker 1: far away. Your family, your family thought it was a
Speaker 1: bad idea. It was a bad idea, like, look, well,
Speaker 1: look what you've been doing, Like you shouldn't not be
Speaker 1: going to this place. Look at all these negative outcome
Speaker 1: that happened. Andy tried to sleep that night on the
Speaker 1: floor of O'Hare Airport, but his parents' fears echoed in
Speaker 1: his head. It was a bad ideally, look on out
Speaker 1: negative outcome that happened. This far away college thing was
Speaker 1: a big mistake. And he comes back like with this
Speaker 1: terrible attitude about the trip, saying, I don't want to
Speaker 1: go anymore. It's not worth it. Noel Ramirez again, Andy's
Speaker 1: college coach. I just I couldn't believe it. That's something
Speaker 1: that I guess I wasn't prepared. I didn't know I
Speaker 1: should have prepared him in advanced mentally, what happens when
Speaker 1: you face these types of obstacles, But how would how
Speaker 1: would you ever have prepared him for it? I guess
Speaker 1: you could have taken him you simulate a flight, actually,
Speaker 1: you know, to be honest, after that incident, that's that's
Speaker 1: what I started to do actually for students that were
Speaker 1: going to taking a plane right away. We did develop
Speaker 1: kind of a training module for these students so that
Speaker 1: they know exactly what to do. This sort of thing
Speaker 1: was now happening all the time at scholar Match. Here's
Speaker 1: Dave Eggers again. Once there was an obstacle, or once
Speaker 1: there was a reason to quit, they often did. They don't.
Speaker 1: They don't have a set of assumptions like the set
Speaker 1: of assumptions that you and I grew up with that
Speaker 1: you just you're just supposed to go to college when
Speaker 1: you are the first It can be like heading out,
Speaker 1: you know, on a polar expedition to the North Pole,
Speaker 1: Like why why would you go do that when you
Speaker 1: could be home. Scholar Match had set out to connect
Speaker 1: smart and ambitious kids from low income families with rich
Speaker 1: colleges that had the resources to support them. But the
Speaker 1: colleges were in some ways ill equipped to educate kids
Speaker 1: who grew up without money or the assumptions that money
Speaker 1: allows you to have everything you've described about and the
Speaker 1: coaches have described about the relationship of this pool of
Speaker 1: kids to this process makes it feel like a catastrophic
Speaker 1: environment where there is there's so many things that could
Speaker 1: kill you in the environment. It's true. It's like if
Speaker 1: you could build a system against students that didn't have
Speaker 1: support navigating it, this is what it would look like.
Speaker 1: This is the director of Scholar Match, Diana Adamson. We've
Speaker 1: heard this from students before, where almost like they didn't
Speaker 1: know they were poor until they got there. And it's
Speaker 1: not so much that they thought they had all this money,
Speaker 1: you know, It's more like they were fine, like they
Speaker 1: were their life was adequate for them, and it's not
Speaker 1: until you get to this place where you realize like,
Speaker 1: oh wow, the ceiling is so much higher than you
Speaker 1: ever imagine and you just didn't even realize. It creates
Speaker 1: some complex emotions a bad grain on a paper or
Speaker 1: God forbid and f you can feel like the end
Speaker 1: of the world for a lot of kids in college.
Speaker 1: But it's so much worse when no one back home
Speaker 1: has any clue what you're up against. We had a
Speaker 1: student once tell us. I think she summed it up
Speaker 1: the best, where she was so excited that she had
Speaker 1: just picked her major and she didn't know how to
Speaker 1: tell her parents about it because she didn't know the
Speaker 1: word for it in Chinese and her parents don't speak English.
Speaker 1: So there was just this huge disconnect where she wants
Speaker 1: to go home and tell her parents all about this
Speaker 1: amazing things that she's learning, and she just doesn't have
Speaker 1: the words for it. They can't actually understand. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: that's a little metaphor for the whole exactly the whole problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Dave and Diana get the idea of hiring people to
Speaker 1: work with scholar match kids. It's after they get into college,
Speaker 1: but they need the right kind of person, the right
Speaker 1: kind of coach. So we would do a lot of
Speaker 1: role plays and just see could they empathize with the student.
Speaker 1: So we we had a couple of scenarios that we
Speaker 1: knew would come up, and we would have a staff
Speaker 1: member play the student and hear how they and they
Speaker 1: didn't have to hit do it perfectly. You know, there
Speaker 1: was give me an example, I mean, so put me
Speaker 1: in the position. Okay, So, um, do you do you
Speaker 1: want to be the coach? Yeah, okay, so maybe I'm
Speaker 1: applying for the job. Okay, So the scenario is, um,
Speaker 1: you're doing a check in call with me, and I
Speaker 1: just got my grades back and I'm um, failing a class,
Speaker 1: and so I want to leave and go home because
Speaker 1: you're failing a class. Yeah. Is it your first year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's my first time. It's my first investor, what did
Speaker 1: you fail? Doesn't matter? Um, I feel chemistry and I
Speaker 1: want to be a doctor. You want to be a doctor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I'm supposed to say something now. Yeah, so you're
Speaker 1: calling for what you've seen my grades, but we haven't
Speaker 1: talked to my own kid would be what the fuck
Speaker 1: are you doing? What are Yeah, so that's already I'm
Speaker 1: I'm already disqualified. So I've got to get into a
Speaker 1: different space. It's a different kind of child. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: first thing I'd say is when I was your age,
Speaker 1: I failed a class too, actually, and I took it
Speaker 1: past fail, so it's even it's even less forgivable. So
Speaker 1: just for starters, that f is not the end of
Speaker 1: the world. Okay, that's a great first step. You're normalizing
Speaker 1: the experience. It's a it's a it's tone at the
Speaker 1: end of the world. In fact, I did quite well
Speaker 1: in college after that. So it was just it was
Speaker 1: just a bump on the road and I had to
Speaker 1: figure out what it was I was doing that I
Speaker 1: needed to change. In my case, I needed to stop
Speaker 1: going to squash play squash instead of going to the
Speaker 1: physics labe. But but but that was but it took
Speaker 1: me a while to figure that out. So but in
Speaker 1: your case, I mean, let's talk about what how did
Speaker 1: you feel like it when you were in that class?
Speaker 1: Did you? Oh? I felt terrible. I couldn't understand the lectures.
Speaker 1: I couldn't keep up with it. I feel like everyone
Speaker 1: else in the class had taken chemistry in high school
Speaker 1: and so they just knew the stuff and they didn't
Speaker 1: even have to study. And that's probably true. It's probably
Speaker 1: true that you came into that class. It's some kind
Speaker 1: of disadvantage because you're not used to failing much. You've
Speaker 1: been a great student your whole life, and it's really hard,
Speaker 1: really hard to start off behind everybody in something. And
Speaker 1: if you'd been this, if, if if those kids had
Speaker 1: been in your situation, they probably would have failed too.
Speaker 1: So so maybe the first thing we need to talk
Speaker 1: about is how you decide what classes you're going to take.
Speaker 1: So we so we don't put you in this situation
Speaker 1: again because it's not a fair situation. You're questioning it.
Speaker 1: Maybe we would hire you. Yeah, well, actually the first
Speaker 1: thing I say is what the fuck are you doing?
Speaker 1: So you got you throw me out of the room.
Speaker 1: So I'm probably not built to be a college coach,
Speaker 1: but Diana finds plenty of people who are and they
Speaker 1: start coaching, and the coaching pays off. Scholar Matches started
Speaker 1: out almost as a technical advisor for kids on how
Speaker 1: to apply to college, how to apply for loans and grants,
Speaker 1: but in short order it became something else, a place
Speaker 1: where students could be coached as they tried to move
Speaker 1: from one social class to another. The new coaches became
Speaker 1: deeply involved in the lives of the students, and they
Speaker 1: had astonishing effects. The graduation rate for scholar Match kids
Speaker 1: went from sixty percent to eighty one, which beat the
Speaker 1: national average for all college students, never mind first generation ones.
Speaker 1: Coaching these kids all the way to a college diploma
Speaker 1: costs scholar Match rough thirteen thousand dollars a student. The
Speaker 1: expected lifetime earnings of a person with a college degree
Speaker 1: is one point two million dollars more than a person
Speaker 1: who doesn't graduate from college. But it's not only that
Speaker 1: a college degree in a family that it's never had
Speaker 1: one that has even more ripple effects. For instance, it
Speaker 1: makes it a lot more likely that younger siblings will
Speaker 1: go to college. But the scholar match coaching was also
Speaker 1: having effects that were harder to measure. I didn't really
Speaker 1: see myself going to college. I don't. None of my
Speaker 1: friends that I grew up with did. This is Lewis Mendez.
Speaker 1: It wasn't something that was possible for me, giving my
Speaker 1: academic background, given to things that you know I was into,
Speaker 1: and if you want to get a picture, you know,
Speaker 1: I grew up here in San Francisco. We grew up
Speaker 1: doing what teenagers in the city do, you know, vandalizing, smoking,
Speaker 1: we drinking, you know, and all that. Lewis got himself
Speaker 1: thrown out of high school his junior year and he
Speaker 1: went to work doing odd jobs. When I was sixteen
Speaker 1: or seventeen, I started reading books right my stepdad. He
Speaker 1: was incarce rated for about eight to ten years. He
Speaker 1: knew all the classic books. He had read them all
Speaker 1: while incars rated right. He started passing them down to me,
Speaker 1: Napoleon Hill, thinking girl rich, rich dad, poor dad. All
Speaker 1: these books they're saying, you know, if you think it,
Speaker 1: if you believe it was all the cliche stuff, right.
Speaker 1: But I bought into it at the time, like, hey,
Speaker 1: like it is possible for me to grow and and
Speaker 1: do something with my life. And Lewis turns a corner,
Speaker 1: gets a ged, goes to community college, gets a variety
Speaker 1: of part time jobs, and gets himself into UC Davis
Speaker 1: on his own. And then I was walking into the
Speaker 1: neighborhood in the mission, in the mission, right in the
Speaker 1: Mission district of Valencia. And it was the summer before
Speaker 1: I started school that UC Davis Lewis had spotted the
Speaker 1: scholar Match office. He'd already gotten himself into a good
Speaker 1: college and you'd already figured out how to pay for
Speaker 1: it up to some point, or had you not. I
Speaker 1: figured that there is going to fall into place. I said,
Speaker 1: we'll figure it out. All Lewis needed at the time
Speaker 1: was access to a computer so he could take his
Speaker 1: UC Davis placement exams. Scholar Match let him use a computer,
Speaker 1: and so Lewis kept coming back and they grew so
Speaker 1: fond of him that they offered to help him out more.
Speaker 1: He hadn't gone through their program, so they couldn't give
Speaker 1: him money, but they could give him a coach. What's
Speaker 1: the coach's name? Kate. Lewis had zero sense at that
Speaker 1: point that he was going to need Kate, but as
Speaker 1: it turned out, UC Davis was a shock to his system.
Speaker 1: The campus was only an hour or so away from
Speaker 1: where he grew up, but it was the first time
Speaker 1: that he felt like he was in another world. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: did you have trouble making friends? Uh? Did you? You You
Speaker 1: don't seem like camp president is gonna have trouble making friends.
Speaker 1: Well my story. I don't want to blame it on
Speaker 1: the campus. I don't want to blame it on the
Speaker 1: population or you know, the design of the program or
Speaker 1: anything like on demographics. But for whatever reason, I did
Speaker 1: have a challenge of going deeper in my relationships with
Speaker 1: students on campus. I would see students that were like
Speaker 1: the best of buds and me, you know, as the
Speaker 1: guy everyone knew it, and I was cool with a
Speaker 1: lot of people, but I don't think I ever got
Speaker 1: to that deep, consistent connection with other ways my peers huh, yeah,
Speaker 1: because you felt different. Lewis tried going to a frat party,
Speaker 1: didn't like it. I actually found my place in the
Speaker 1: Christian community, but on a day to day basis, it
Speaker 1: just it wasn't a deep connection. I guess with my peers.
Speaker 1: That's unusual. That strikes me as odd that you were
Speaker 1: so in meshed in the Christian community and it didn't
Speaker 1: yield deep relationships. I would think it would, right, because
Speaker 1: that's the idea behind it, Right. Did you feel vulnerable
Speaker 1: or exposed or like did you were you scared or
Speaker 1: did you did you feel insecure? I was scared and
Speaker 1: I was at this point, I remember it clearly. Um.
Speaker 1: I was in tears because I thought to myself, if
Speaker 1: if I can't make solid friendships and deep connection on
Speaker 1: the college campus when it's like geared for that for socialization,
Speaker 1: how am I going to make connections and deep friendships
Speaker 1: post college when everyone's just everywhere and it is not
Speaker 1: as structured, right, and it isn't this the place where
Speaker 1: everyone meets their best friends, like where's my so? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was a little scared about that, um, but quitting
Speaker 1: and dropping out just wasn't an option for me. Still,
Speaker 1: Lewis didn't think to turn to his college coach Kate.
Speaker 1: So this is where Lewis wandered in. This is exactly
Speaker 1: what where Lewis came when he was working for Uber.
Speaker 1: This is Kate Mueller. At the time she met Lewis,
Speaker 1: who was driving an uber to make ends meet. She
Speaker 1: was also coaching fifty other students, but she paid enough
Speaker 1: attention to Lewis to see that he was struggling and
Speaker 1: trying to hide it. So she tells him, we're going
Speaker 1: to have adult relationship and honesty is a big part
Speaker 1: of that, and we're going to be accountable to each other.
Speaker 1: And I am here to guide you and making sure
Speaker 1: you grow as a person. And when I feel like
Speaker 1: there's a missing part of that story, I asked, you
Speaker 1: know this isn't totally adding up. Around this time, Louis
Speaker 1: did something that caught his coach his attention and would
Speaker 1: have caught no one else's. He was late for a class.
Speaker 1: I missed calculus exam. I'll walk in and everyone's turning
Speaker 1: it into Scantron's. I had to check in with Kate
Speaker 1: later that day and she asked me about it. She said, Louis,
Speaker 1: how did the exam go I said, well, what happened
Speaker 1: was I thought the class started at eleven. You really
Speaker 1: started at nine thirty. But I talked to my professor
Speaker 1: and it's fine, he said, I still passed the class.
Speaker 1: I just cannot miss another one, right, and had this
Speaker 1: very relaxed attitude, no guilt, no regret. I got under
Speaker 1: the control. Kate. I'm like, whoa, whoa, there's more to
Speaker 1: this story, right, There's more to this story about missing
Speaker 1: exam that isn't just thinking it's all going to work out.
Speaker 1: And my goal then is to have authentic conversation of
Speaker 1: don't you think that you should not be half asking
Speaker 1: this thing that you've worked for your whole entire life.
Speaker 1: The coach had noticed a tendency inner player. It wasn't
Speaker 1: about him getting a C in that class. It wasn't
Speaker 1: about getting a It was more how does he move
Speaker 1: through life and actually push himself to learn and hold
Speaker 1: himself responsible when it makes sense. Up to this point
Speaker 1: in his life, Lewis Mendez had never really had a
Speaker 1: lot of people who believed in him. How did you
Speaker 1: decide she was someone you trusted? That's a good question.
Speaker 1: I think I'd been waiting for such a long time
Speaker 1: for an authority figure, because growing up from just my mom,
Speaker 1: my mom being stretched super thin by all five of
Speaker 1: us in work and everything, I never had anyone to
Speaker 1: tell me what to do. So it's almost as if
Speaker 1: Kate finally answered or met this need or this longing
Speaker 1: of having someone to tell me to go to class.
Speaker 1: Right when you grow up in a privilege environment, you
Speaker 1: kind of take that voice for granted, you forget just
Speaker 1: how powerful it can be. And she made you aware
Speaker 1: of essentially a lower expectation you had for yourself exactly.
Speaker 1: You might not even put it into words. I was
Speaker 1: unconscious of it. I was unconscious. I figured, you know,
Speaker 1: when I get to my career, that's when I really
Speaker 1: come alive and turn up and really throw myself into
Speaker 1: this work. But I just need to get through this first.
Speaker 1: But she said, no, start now, don't wait. And the
Speaker 1: reality is, at first he hears my voice saying, but
Speaker 1: you know, time, he just hears himself saying, your coach
Speaker 1: won't let you give up, even when that's all you're
Speaker 1: trying to do. Andy saw hit a snag in the
Speaker 1: O'Hare airport and then flew back home. He just wanted
Speaker 1: to give up, but he didn't return just to his family.
Speaker 1: He had to explain himself to his coach, Noel Ramirez
Speaker 1: and got on the phone with Noil like, hey, I
Speaker 1: can't do this. I'm gonna stick the safe route, not
Speaker 1: the risky route. So I talked to Noel. I was crying,
Speaker 1: like I can't do this. No I know you think
Speaker 1: it's better, but I don't think it's better. It's not
Speaker 1: possible for him me to go to Ohio. Noel, here's
Speaker 1: Andy's say that he's already enrolled in a local community college.
Speaker 1: He then says, you can do this, go back to
Speaker 1: Ohio Wesleyan. It's worth it. What's more, I will go
Speaker 1: back with you. I'll get on the plane, fly with
Speaker 1: you to Ohio and stay there until you feel happy.
Speaker 1: And I was like, okay, I'll trust like I will
Speaker 1: trust you like one hundred percent. This is the best option.
Speaker 1: I believe you. Noel spends five days on campus, sleeping
Speaker 1: on various couches. He introduces Andy to his new life.
Speaker 1: After five days, he leaves and Andy stays. A bit later,
Speaker 1: Andy's parents finally visited. They went there and they're like,
Speaker 1: what does this place? There's no one here. Do you
Speaker 1: have any like our Asian food? There's no rice, so
Speaker 1: it's a coach of shock for them too. But I
Speaker 1: trust everywhere Downie said, I just one hundred percent trusted it.
Speaker 1: Andy Saw graduated from Ohio Wesleyan four years later in
Speaker 1: two and eighteen with a degree in microbiology. Was it
Speaker 1: a good experience? Best four years of my life. I'm
Speaker 1: Michael Lewis. Thanks for listening to Against the Rules. Against
Speaker 1: the Rules is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. The
Speaker 1: show's produced by Audrey Dilling and Katherine Girodo, with research
Speaker 1: assistance from Lydia Jane Cott and ZOOE Wynn. Our editor
Speaker 1: is Julia Barton. Mio o'bell is our executive producer. Our
Speaker 1: theme was composed by Nick Brittell, with additional scoring by
Speaker 1: Stellwagen Sephonette. We got fact checked by Beth Johnson. Our
Speaker 1: show was recorded by Tofa Ruth and Trey Schultz at
Speaker 1: Northgate Studios in Berkeley and thanks to bb Dio San
Speaker 1: Francisco for providing audio for this episode. As always, thanks
Speaker 1: to Pushkin's founders Jacob Weisberg and Malcolm Gladwell. Oh I
Speaker 1: almost forgot La Sasser the high school senior we began with.
Speaker 1: I checked in with her after her acceptance letters started
Speaker 1: to roll in. So tell me since we last talked,
Speaker 1: which you've heard? Um, So I've gotten into a think
Speaker 1: about eleven schools. Um, do you want me to list them? Yes? Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: you got, you got. You got into eleven schools. Yes,
Speaker 1: c SU Sanbardino, c SULA, and CSU Long Beach. Um.
Speaker 1: I got into CBU, UM, University of Redlands, Whittier, UM
Speaker 1: UC Riverside, UC San Diego UCLA, which was really awesome,
Speaker 1: and NYU. Oh. I also got into San Diego State University,
Speaker 1: but I didn't apply to that one, so that was
Speaker 1: like really surprising. I didn't know how that worked. So
Speaker 1: you got into ten schools that are in California and
Speaker 1: one in New York. UM, that's fantastic. Congratulations, thank you,