Takeaways From a Conversation With Collegewise Founder Kevin McMullin
September 8, 2026 • By Carl Lachman, MBA, CFP®
For nearly three decades, Kevin McMullin has been demystifying college admissions. The founder and chief education officer of Collegewise, which he launched in Irvine in 1999, has since helped more than 36,000 students find the right school through a team of more than 120 counselors nationwide. In a recent discussion with Carl Lachman, McMullin shared how the process has changed and what families need to know.
Want to get the full conversation? Listen to the audio or watch the recordings from our reception.
Most of Admissions Is Good News
McMullin started by challenging the doom-and-gloom narrative around college admissions. By his count, of the roughly 2,500 colleges and universities in the United States, only about 70 are “highly selective,” admitting 20% or fewer applicants. Everywhere else, most students who apply get in. “The answer to the question, ‘Are you going to go to college?’ is almost certainly yes,” McMullin said. “The only question is which one.”
That said, the roughly 70 highly selective schools operate by their own rules, and no combination of test scores, activities, or essays guarantees admission there. Applications nationally have doubled from about 5 million before the pandemic to 10 million now, he said, not because more students are applying, but because the same students are applying to more schools, disproportionately the most famous ones. That flood of applications forces selective colleges to lean harder on tools like early decision and waitlists to manage “yield,” the percentage of admitted students who actually enroll.
Ignore the Rankings, Mostly
McMullin was blunt about college rankings: “College rankings are a scam.” Publications rank schools using criteria, like how many applicants they reject, that have little to do with the quality of a student’s experience or career prospects. “Not one of the 36,000 kids we’ve helped has ever been asked in a job interview where their college ranked,” he said. His advice: Treat rankings as one small data point rather than a shopping guide, and define fit instead around personal factors such as intended major, campus size, location, community, and cost.
Start Early, but Don’t Overdo It
College planning should scale with age. Freshmen and sophomores need only take challenging courses, earn strong grades, and explore activities they genuinely enjoy. By junior year, families should get more deliberate: narrowing a list, understanding testing requirements, and, critically, discussing why the student wants to go to college at all, since that answer shapes everything else.
“Demonstrated Interest” Matters, Except Where It Doesn’t
Highly selective schools rarely track demonstrated interest; they already have more qualified applicants than they could ever admit. But many other well-regarded colleges do watch for it, since they must guess how many admitted students will actually enroll. Interest doesn’t require a campus visit. Engaging with emails, attending a rep’s visit to a student’s high school, or writing essays specific to that school all count. Colleges do notice recycled, generic essays and can read them as a lack of genuine interest.
Early Decision Isn’t a Secret Admissions Hack
Early decision, or ED (binding, apply to only one school, typically due November 1) and early action (nonbinding, can apply to multiple schools) both deliver earlier answers, but ED only makes sense when a student is genuinely certain about their top choice. Admission rates look higher in ED pools, though that reflects a self-selected pool of applicants confident enough not to wait for another semester of grades or another test attempt, rather than an easier standard. Notably, a significant share of ED spots go to recruited athletes, legacies, and other institutional priorities, so-called “flags and tags,” which can make the actual odds for other applicants lower than the published rate suggests.
Financial Aid: Know the Levers
Need-based aid is calculated the same way regardless of where a student applies, but colleges have considerable discretion in how generously they package grants and scholarships on top of that baseline. A student who’s an unusually strong match for a school outside the “highly selective” tier may receive “preferential packaging” as that school competes to enroll them. Applying early decision, however, removes a school’s incentive to sweeten the offer, since the student has already committed to attend if admitted. Families can also decline any part of an aid package they don’t want, such as loans, while keeping the grants and scholarships.
What Actually Impresses Admissions Officers
Rigor of coursework and grades come first. Colleges look closely at what was available at a student’s high school and what they chose to take. After that, McMullin emphasized impact over breadth in activities. Colleges look less for a checklist of clubs than for evidence that a student made something better wherever they showed up, whether that’s a varsity team, a part-time job, or a small handful of deeply pursued interests. As for essays, the goal is to sound authentically like a teenager rather than to impress by reciting a résumé with a manufactured “life lesson” attached. McMullin’s litmus test: Would the people who love this student recognize them in what they wrote? Parents, he added, should stay closely involved in the overall process but step back entirely from writing or editing the essays.
What Happens After Acceptance Matters Most
McMullin’s clearest message for anxious families: What a student does in college outweighs the prestige of the college itself. In his view, employers increasingly care about demonstrated skills and experience, including internships, leadership roles, and tangible projects, regardless of where they were earned. He also noted that colleges themselves are rethinking how they teach in response to AI, shifting away from single-right-answer instruction toward critical thinking, since routine problem-solving can now be automated. Prospective students, he suggested, should ask campus representatives directly how their programs are evolving in response.
His closing advice to students: Take ownership of the process. Seek guidance from school counselors and college representatives rather than rumors, and treat this as your decision to drive rather than your parents’. As McMullin put it, students who are actively engaged in their own planning don’t just end up with stronger applications; they end up more prepared for whatever comes after.