Right now, college applicants are anxiously waiting to hear back from the colleges they applied to, while legions of admissions counselors read their applications and those of anywhere from hundreds to thousands of their fellow applicants. That’s a lot of decisions to make. How are they made? What influences that process? What can research tell us about how to do it better so that we can be fair to students and their circumstances, while also being fair to the admissions counselors and their (physical, mental, emotional, marital) health? University of Michigan School of Education Professor Dr. Michael Bastedo has done research on exactly these questions, and I caught him at the NACAC conference in Columbus OH this fall to ask him about his research.