Author’s Note
Welcome to the ABCs of College, your baby’s unauthorized, unofficial, not particularly useful, and certainly not comprehensive guide to picking a college at an inappropriately young age.
It’s competitive out there and the winds of change are blowing. Traditional admissions metrics are falling by the wayside and there is great uncertainty about what will take their place. Your guess on the shape of the admissions process of the future is as good as mine, but I do know that it’s a crazy world and you need to prepare your baby to compete successfully in a rapidly shifting college admissions process.
In the words of John Wooden, the great UCLA basketball coach, “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.” Your choice today to focus your baby on tummy time, turning over, crawling, and saying ‘mama’ could cost your child a coveted admissions spot in 18 years. Instead of spending time on the basics, start focusing your baby on the type of advanced admissions prep that feels appropriate for the TikTok era.
You could give your child a leg up in the admissions process by angling for a trombone or fencing scholarship, but that seems like a lot of work…and who among us really wants to sit through all of those recitals and bouts? This book offers another way. A better way.
What would be better? Providing hard evidence that your child knew she wanted to attend a particular college before she could even talk. That would be better. But how do you prove that? By taking a time and date-stamped picture of your baby in a onesie emblazoned with the mascot of her college of choice.
But, you might ask, how will my baby know which college to choose for her onesie photo op? That’s where this book comes into play. The ABCs of College guidebook gives your baby everything she needs to efficiently make her college selection so that you can take an adorable, life changing, college-themed onesie photo before it’s too late. Remember, if your baby is already standing in the photo, an admissions officer will think she applied early elsewhere.
Parent readers will notice that I have only provided 26 school options and some of you may be disappointed that your alma mater was not included in the book. I apologize if the omission of your school upsets you. Unfortunately, there are thousands of colleges in the United States, but only 26 letters in the English alphabet. Something had to give. However, I hope you take comfort in knowing that (i) the selection of schools in this book is fairly random and mostly driven by my ability to come up with a pithy tag line and, (ii) as of the publication date, inclusion of a college in this book has no bearing on its position in the U.S. News and World Report rankings.
I got the idea for this book when my wife and I started preparing for the birth of our first child. As we built our Amazon baby book list, two things became clear: (i) there is an ABCs of just about everything, but no ABCs of College equivalent, and (ii) most baby books seem mind-numbingly boring for the parents who actually read them.
As a proud millennial steeped in the great American tradition of “well I can do that,” I had no choice but to tackle this gaping hole in the market (read: insignificant and certainly not lucrative market sub-niche of a sub-niche). I have attempted to do so with a book that operates on two levels:
Level One – for the Baby: the traditional letter sounds in the form of college names in school colors (including many unique shades of red and blue…) and funny mascot illustrations
Level Two – for the Parent: commentary that will either give the parent reader a chuckle or prompt an eye roll, mixed in with trivia – answers in the back – and fun facts (remember, you don’t have to read everything out loud to your baby…)
Each entry includes the college’s name, brief (silly) commentary on the college, an illustration of the college’s mascot (with the mascot name under the illustration), and either the English version of the college’s motto or a common saying associated with the college. For those of you who are reading this to your second or third child, I apologize in advance for making you explain what a keg is to the 6-year-old looking over your shoulder, but, to be fair, you should really blame Dartmouth’s frat culture for that.
Please forgive the cringy jokes and know that I mean no disrespect or harm to the alums of any school – all of the schools included in the book are wonderful institutions of higher education. Except for Amherst, which is relegated to an insult-ridden footnote – if you read all the way to the About the Author page you will understand why. Enjoy!
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