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No, and Amherst College doesn’t care. The selective school in Western MA announced that its admissions office will no longer play favorites when considering the applications of children of alumni. In other words, preference for second-generation Mammoths—which account for about 11% of each class—is going extinct.

Other elite colleges that don’t factor in applicants’ family trees include Caltech, MIT, and any school that starts with “University of California.”

But that’s far from the norm: 43% of private, nonprofit universities and 14% of public ones consider legacy status in their admissions decisions, according to a 2019 study conducted by a national admissions group. 73% of the most selective schools—ones with a 25%-or-less admission rate like Amherst—do the same.

Pressure to change that is building

This fall, students launched #LeaveYourLegacy campaigns at Harvard and Brown, asking alumni to boycott donations until the schools stop caring about your last name. And just last week, Colorado passed a bill banning preference for applicants with alumni relatives at all public schools in the state.

Critics of legacy admissions argue the practice disproportionately favors white, wealthy applicants and takes admissions spots away from those who are less privileged, but academically more deserving.

• At Johns Hopkins University, which started phasing out legacy preference in 2014 and completely nixed it in 2019, the proportion of accepted students whose parents were alumni more than halved from 2013 to this year, while its share of first-generation students more than doubled.
• In a civil case that accused Harvard of discriminating against Asian American applicants in 2018, an economist hired by the plaintiffs said that Harvard accepted legacy applicants at a rate 5x higher than it did nonlegacy applicants. Over one-third of Harvard’s Class of 2022 had alumni parents.

Proponents of legacy admissions keep their reasoning simple: It’s smart financially, encouraging alumni donations and continued engagement with the school.

Looking ahead…Amherst’s change will go into effect for the 2022–2023 school year.—JW

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More than 500,000 fewer students enrolled in college in 2020 compared to 2019, about a 3% drop, and an additional half-million are expected to have torn up their applications this year, according to preliminary data. That would be the biggest two-year enrollment decline in over 50 years, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

It’s not the Harvards of the world that are hurting for students:

• 10% fewer students enrolled in community colleges—which have more low-income students and students of color than four-year schools—in 2020 vs. 2019, and community college enrollment is projected to have dropped another 5.6% this fall.
• That bucks the typical trend: Normally when the economy is doing poorly, all enrollment, but especially community college enrollment, rises as people skip out on the job market to level up their education.

Zoom out: Undergraduate and graduate enrollment has been sliding since 2012, but fell off a cliff when the pandemic kicked everyone off campus last year. Fewer students enrolling now = fewer grads seeking higher-paying jobs later.—JW

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Respected architect Dennis McFadden recently resigned from his post at the University of California, Santa Barbara, because the new dorm UCSB is constructing is “unsupportable from my perspective as an architect, a parent, and a human being.”

What McFadden calls a “social and psychological experiment” is the brainchild of 97-year-old billionaire Charlie Munger. The Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman and Warren Buffett’s BFF donated $200 million for the dorm…with the stipulation that his blueprints be followed exactly. But those blueprints are wacky:

• Housing 4,500 students in 1.68 million square feet, the building would be the world’s most populous dorm and the eighth-densest neighborhood globally.
• But it would have just two exits, and 94% of students wouldn’t have windows.

Wth, why? Munger—who is not a trained architect but has designed other university and residential buildings for funzies—envisions Munger Hall, as he named it, creating a “close-knit” living experience for undergrads.

“Everybody loves light and everybody prefers natural light. But it’s a game of tradeoffs,” he told Bloomberg.

Zoom out: UCSB is scrambling to resolve a student housing shortage that’s led to campus protests. It’s a problem many universities across the US are facing, as undergrads log off Zoom and head to in-person class.—JW

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Charlie Munger, the 97-year-old billionaire and Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman, donated $200 million to the University of California, Santa Barbara, for a new dorm. But just like that surprise $300 Venmo with “feet pics” in the comment, it comes with a lot of catches.

Munger, who has no architectural training, said his dorm, Munger Hall, must follow his blueprint which includes housing 4,500 students—94% of whom wouldn’t have windows—with only two exits for the entire building. Proving that if you’re a billionaire, anything can be your hobby.

Here’s how we think some of your fav billionaires would design the rest of the campus to match Munger’s dorm.

Warren Buffett Dining Hall

Yes, architects begged him to name it the “The Buffett buffet,” but just like his pal Munger, he didn’t listen. This dining hall will only serve the McDonald’s Buffett meal and frozen Omaha Steaks.

You’ll be required to read the complete collection of his annual shareholder letters while the steaks thaw in your bare hands.

Elon Musk Research Lab

Full of state-of-the-art equipment that no one asked for. This lab has one goal: Solve a global problem in a really sexy, roundabout way.

Zuckerberg Fraternity Row

Commemorating some of his fondest college memories, Mark Zuckerberg’s frat row will be a testament to the kindness, generosity, and grace that he is remembered for in his college years at Harvard. But at the first sign of trouble, the buildings will be bulldozed and turned into a Beat Saber lounge.

Rihanna Performing Arts Center

No one’s been in there since 2017, so you’ll have the whole place to yourself.

Anonymous Shiba Inu Investor Pourhouse

This place opens and shuts down with no notice and it’s pretty hit or miss if you’re going to have a good time there. Nobody checks IDs, the floor is covered in beer, and on Wednesdays there’s a great Red Bull-Long Island/stale churro special for $4. If you own dogecoin, expect spit in your drink.

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Mike Bloomberg Journalism School

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The only building on campus with a paywall. And to make matters worse, the vending machines only have 3 oz. sodas in them. The department does have a tradition of hosting elections every year where the person with the least number of votes gets to be the following year’s Mr. News.

Kim Kardashian Student Union

Pete Davidson has started lingering there.

Jack Dorsey Lawn

The most zen area on campus. But you have to get there by 5am to snag a spot and they haven’t mowed the grass in years.

Whitney Wolf Herd Agricultural Center

The only place where women get first dibs on seats, but it’s also full of Bumble bees.

Oprah Winfrey Library

No key card needed to enter the building—just whisper your daily affirmations of “I am worthy of love” at the doors and they’ll open. A shocking amount of copies of American Dirt are still in there, though.

Bezos Residence Hall

The former Amazon CEO will offer high ceilings, minimal privacy, and homework quotas for everyone living in the most efficient dorm on campus. The goal of this dorm is to provide shelter to as many students as possible whether they feel comfortable there or not. Amenities include:

• Your very own cowboy space suit
• A research lab that isn’t quite as good as the Musk Research Lab
• A total ban on Bo Burnham
• Education credit

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Delegation is risky.

When you give a task to someone else, you run the risk of errors or delays—it may not even get done at all. And when things go wrong, your reputation’s on the line. It’s no wonder delegation trips up managers old and new.

But delegation is a vital part of management. Sure, it takes a task off your to-do list, but it also helps to develop and push your team.

I’ve coached hundreds of professionals who suffered through the delegation dilemma. Their pain is your gain: I created a simple, four-step framework to help even the most delegation-averse of you take the risk and reap the rewards.

Wait! Before you even start delegating, your relationship with your delegatee needs 3 elements:

• Demonstrated competence (I know you can get this done)
• Trusted reliability (I know you will get this done)
• Effective communication (I can relay the necessary information to make you successful)

Ok, now let’s break this framework down.

Step one: Task selection

When choosing a task for your report, make sure it’s meaningful enough that it will feel like a challenge, but not so significant that the stakes are wildly high.

Remember, you are taking a first step on the path to successful delegation – a path you usually avoid at all cost and/or you don’t already have a long reliable history with the person you are delegating to – if you did, you wouldn’t need to think this hard about it.

Step two: Task assignment

Assign the task to the individual you have decided to take the leap with (ok, not that leap, but you get the point). This step can be formal or informal depending on the relationship and the nature of the task. But however you do it, it needs to be done very, very, carefully.

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Some tips to get you started:

1. Communicate. State as clearly and concisely as possible what the exact task is. Expect questions and ask if the recipient of the task understands or needs further clarification.
2. Set them up for success. Draft (preferably in writing) and walk through a “success outcome” statement—tell a story about what it will look like if this task is successful. This helps make sure your description of the task and the outcomes are clear and provides further opportunity for the other person to get more clarity.
3. Talk through logistics. Share a detailed timeline, final due date, and communication expectations (like how often you expect updates).

Set and commit to a regular cadence of touch points throughout the process. This will look different based on the type of task you’re delegating:

• For complex and formal tasks, you may set weekly stand-up meetings, written reports, or outlined decision points where the person will seek a specific decision from you before proceeding.
• For more informal and less complex tasks, it may mean that you seek this person out casually (i.e. walking by their desk at least once a week) and ask for an update.

Whatever strategies you employ, make sure to stick to them.

Feel like this is taking a lot of time? Maybe, but the time invested now will pay dividends later when you don’t have to redo work.

Worry you’re being a micromanager? You already set up this communication expectation in the task assignment step, and you’ve approached this as a way to stay in the loop and remove obstacles to success. You’re not micromanaging, you’re more…well…managing.

Step four: Debrief & express gratitude

Once the task has been checked off the to-do list, do an after-action review:

• Provide feedback on the process and the outcome using the lens of both recognition and learning.
• Where appropriate, remember to express gratitude. A little thank you goes a long way in building a successful collaborative relationship that you will be able to rely on time and time again to help you achieve mutual goals.

That’s it: Four simple steps to delegating that will minimize the risks and maximize your impact.

The post Why delegating doesn’t have to be terrible appeared first on Buzz Badger.

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You don’t need to be self-obsessed to build up your personal brand.

One of the biggest hurdles to strategic personal brand development that I have experienced in work with my clients and students is the near-allergic reaction to the idea of taking personal branding seriously.

Many people believe that thinking about themselves, and even more shocking, talking about themselves (gasp!), is counter to their desire to appear humble and demure.

After all, personal branding is just a self-promoting, ego-enhancing exercise that is only necessary if we aren’t competent or if we’re self-obsessed, right? We can all think of the person in our lives whose lack of humility has been off-putting. Who wants to be that jerk?

The good news is that effective personal branding and boastful self-absorption aren’t even compatible. Boasting and all its related behaviors negatively impacts personal brand.

Need proof? Just remember back to a moment ago when you visualized that person who lacks humility. My guess is that you don’t think terribly highly of this individual, right? Their brand is not strong however great they may think they are.

The convenient truth is that a high degree of self-awareness and accompanying appropriate levels of humility and compromise are keys to successful personal brands in the vast majority of cases.

Here are three ways to build your personal brand without boasting:

1. Start from a position of giving. Think of your personal branding efforts as ways to give to others, not as a self-serving act. Select a skill or strength that you want to be known for and demonstrate your effectiveness by giving it away with no expectation of return. It will expand the network of individuals who know this is a strength of yours as you add value. Those who benefit are happy because you helped them, and you are happy because by doing so you showcased an area of strength.
2. Ask for advice. I know this one sounds deceptively simple but it works. Ask for information, input, or advice from influencers and people you know you could learn from. By seeking out others who can share their knowledge, you also are expanding your network, and showing others what you care about and perhaps even where you shine.
3. Step up and take a risk. One of the best (and most humble) ways to build your personal brand is to take a risk. Put yourself out there in some way that may push your boundaries a little. For example, you may volunteer for a project that is outside of your comfort zone. You are likely going to have to stray away from your existing strengths, but these opportunities provide a chance for you to develop new ones. They also often broaden your network by exposing you to individuals you don’t usually work with.

Developing your personal brand isn’t an exercise in vanity. It is key to driving your professional trajectory, achieving your goals, and developing relationships of mutual value.

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Careers must be managed and no one is going to manage your career for you.

Let that sink in. No one is going to manage your career: Not your boss, not your company, not your mom (though she may try).

OK, stop panicking: We’re not talking about having a detailed 10-year plan for your career, where every misstep or missed promotion is a failure. Instead, career management looks like building a strategy for yourself based on your skills, your impact, and your desired trajectory.

The first step on your path to career management is a career narrative.

Building a career narrative is simply the process of taking your differentiators, those strengths that really set you apart, and shaping a story and a strategy around them. This will highlight:

• Where and how you have had the biggest impact at work
• How to more easily articulate the value you bring
• Where you have gaps, or areas you want to develop so that your career narrative continues to develop and strengthen over time

Great career narratives have three main components:

• Impact statements
• Associated skills and attributes
• Proof points

Create 3-5 impact statements. To develop an impact statement, look inward. What are you most passionate about? What is the outcome of your most important work?

For example, if you are in marketing, do you craft stories that help people find a product/service that makes their lives better? If you are in human resources, do you cultivate and nurture a community where employees feel they can reach their potential?

These are big picture statements that speak to the ultimate impact of the work you do.

Identify associated skills. Next, look externally: Start to think about prior feedback and input from others on your performance. To determine the skills that help you have the impact from your statements above, look for themes in the feedback you have received in the past.

Perhaps you consistently hear you are good at translating technical concepts in ways non-technical people can understand. If that is a skill or attribute that is associated with your impact statement, you are on your way!

Seek to identify between three and five skills or attributes per impact statement.

Build out proof points. Finally, offer some proof of your impact statements and your associated skills by highlighting stories that demonstrate your abilities.

Think of these as mini case studies, no more than a paragraph or two long. They should succinctly demonstrate how you used your skill set to make a difference. The more evidence you can pack into this mini case study, the greater the value of the proof point.

You should offer at least one proof point for each impact statement.

That’s it! Once you have three to five impact statements, associated skills and attributes, and at least one proof point per statement, you have yourself a career narrative.

Careers need to be managed, but it doesn’t take much to get ahead of the pack on this front. Taking a step back, reflecting on your successes, getting to the core of the skills that enabled them, and having the evidence to back it up will put you leaps ahead of anyone still waiting for someone else to shape their career trajectory.

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The fourth-grade holiday party just isn’t the same from your kitchen table.

The number of US public schools closing due to Covid this week hit 646, an increase of 81% from the previous week, according to data service Burbio. The jump comes only days before most schools’ winter breaks were set to begin and as the highly contagious Omicron variant races across the country.

Some experts and politicians are urging school districts to keep their doors open. They argue that virtual classrooms are more harmful to students than the risk of developing severe illness from Covid (Covid hospitalizations for school-age children has been 1-in-100,000 throughout the pandemic).

• One report from McKinsey Insights found that online learning left students up to five months behind in math and four months behind in reading. And schools with a majority Black population suffered even more educational setbacks after pivoting to virtual classes.

Zoom out: Health officials are increasingly trying to avoid widespread quarantines for school children. Last Friday, the CDC endorsed a policy known as “test-to-stay,” which aims to reduce classroom disruptions by allowing students exposed to Covid to get tested and return to school.—MM

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After months of menacing “Don’t forget to set up autopay” emails from your loan provider, you can tell them to lose your address for the next 90 days. Yesterday, President Biden extended the freeze on student loan payments and interest accrual to May 1.

A moratorium on student loan payments has been in place since March 2020, but after receiving a number of extensions, it was set to expire on Jan. 31. Less than two weeks ago, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that there wouldn’t be any more extensions—but Biden said the still-raging pandemic changed those plans.

• According to a survey by progressive think tank Data for Progress, 49% of roughly 500 student loan borrowers felt “not at all confident” they’d be able to make payments that started on Feb. 1.

Big picture: Before he was elected, Biden said he supported canceling $10,000 in student loans per borrower. He’s facing growing pressure from students and progressive politicians to make good on that campaign pledge, but some members of his party, like New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have urged him to cancel student debt altogether.—MM

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If you thought yesterday was a calm first day back at work, you probably don’t have kids. Public schools in Cleveland, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Newark, and some districts in Michigan have all delayed their starts or switched to remote learning until at least January 10 because of skyrocketing Covid cases among students and staff.

And for schools that stayed open, safety precautions across districts are about as standard as women’s jeans sizing.

• Staff at LA County public and private schools will be required to wear medical grade masks indoors and in crowded spaces outdoors.
• On the other hand, Johnson County—the most populous county in Kansas—is considering ending its mask mandate for elementary schools as early as this Thursday.

Big picture: Local leaders who’ve vowed to keep schools open are being met with increased resistance from teachers groups.

In New York City, where Mayor Eric Adams has insisted that schools are the safest place for students, representatives of the teachers’ union aren’t so sure that simply sending 1.5 million rapid tests to schools is enough. And in Chicago, teachers have threatened to stop working in-person on Wednesday after a botched at-home testing plan led to a backlog of unprocessed student tests.—MM

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