Admissions Beat
Admissions Beat
Lee Coffin • Vice President and Dean of Admissions & Financial Aid at Dartmouth College
Discovery Starts With Program
54 minutes Posted Feb 3, 2026 at 9:00 am.
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An effective college search starts with discovery. “Start your discovery with the fundamental thing about college,” AB host and Dartmouth Dean Lee Coffin advises. “You are going to college to study, and four ‘Ps’ should guide the first phase of the search. Focus on program, place, people, and price as the building blocks of discovery for each campus." Senior admission officers from Brandeis, Cornell, and Saint John’s of Annapolis join Coffin with tips on how to explore academic programs, classroom types or formats, and general education requirements. They also discuss how place shapes academic majors from campus to campus. “Understand how every institution offers its course of study in its own distinctive way,” Cornell’s director of undergraduate admissions counsels. “And focus on what gets you excited—what learning environment lets you do your best work?,” the Brandeis dean asks.