A Slice with 'Dice

Students and families often obsess over acceptance rates, GPAs, and test scores as though college admissions exists on one giant national leaderboard. But before admissions officers evaluate the student, they first have to understand the school behind the transcript.

Corey Alderdice, a national voice on talent and transformation, explores the overlooked role of the school profile in selective college admissions and why contextual evaluation matters so deeply in holistic review. From grading systems and course rigor to academic ecosystems and local opportunity, this episode examines how admissions offices interpret achievement relative to environment — and why numbers alone rarely tell the full story.

For additional thoughts from Corey, visit coreyalderdice.com.

You can also follow him on Twitter/X, LinkedIn, BlueSky, YouTube, Instagram, and Threads.

Families earning $200,000 a year are increasingly being told they qualify for significant college financial aid. That’s both a sign of progress in expanding access — and a startling reflection of just how expensive higher education has become.

Corey Alderdice, a national voice on talent and transformation, explores the growing “messy middle” of paying for college: families who make too much to feel poor, but not enough for $75,000-a-year tuition bills to feel comfortable or sustainable. The episode examines how rising college costs, changing financial aid policies, and prestige-driven admissions culture are reshaping the emotional and financial realities of higher education for middle and upper-middle-income families.

The conversation also offers practical guidance for students and parents navigating these decisions, including early financial transparency, distinguishing admissibility from affordability, evaluating long-term return on investment, and recognizing that preserving flexibility and financial stability may ultimately create more opportunity than chasing prestige alone.

For additional thoughts from Corey, visit coreyalderdice.com.

You can also follow him on Twitter/X, LinkedIn, BlueSky, YouTube, Instagram, and Threads.

The undergraduate minor once served a simple purpose: it gave students a structured way to develop depth beyond their primary field of study. As universities move toward more flexible, workforce-oriented degree models, that raises a larger question about what may be lost when intellectual breadth becomes optional.

Corey Alderdice, a national voice on talent and transformation, explores the changing role of undergraduate minors, the tension between workforce preparation and liberal education, and why interdisciplinary study may matter even more in an era of rapid technological change. Drawing on his own experience in English, his wife’s background in Communications and Women’s and Gender Studies, and the questions his family is beginning to ask as their son approaches college, Corey considers whether higher education should prepare students only for their first job—or for a lifetime of learning, adaptation, and seeing the world through more than one lens.

For additional thoughts from Corey, visit coreyalderdice.com.

You can also follow him on Twitter/X, LinkedIn, BlueSky, YouTube, Instagram, and Threads.

A political fight over an optional Gender Studies minor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock raises questions that go well beyond one program or one campus. When legislators use the appropriation process to press universities toward particular curricular outcomes, the issue becomes not only what students study, but who gets to decide what belongs in a university.

Corey Alderdice, a national voice on talent and transformation, explores the curriculum behind UALR’s Gender Studies minor, the legislative pressure that preceded its elimination, and the decision to discontinue 39 undergraduate minors through the UA System’s governance process. Drawing on his own experience within the University of Arkansas System, Corey considers program viability, political leverage, and the gradual erosion of institutional autonomy—and asks whether an optional field of study became controversial because too few students pursued it, or because some policymakers objected to the questions it allowed students to explore.

For additional thoughts from Corey, visit coreyalderdice.com.

You can also follow him on Twitter/X, LinkedIn, BlueSky, YouTube, Instagram, and Threads.

It is possible to like the school your child attends and still distrust public education. A new Gallup survey reveals the gap between local confidence and national dissatisfaction—and asks us to consider what people can actually see.

Corey Alderdice, a national voice on talent and transformation, explores how parents form opinions from the schools they know while judging public education through distant headlines, political narratives, and assumptions about work happening elsewhere. He considers what happens when national distrust enters local schools, and why rebuilding confidence may require reconnecting everyday school experiences to the larger public purpose of education.

For additional thoughts from Corey, visit coreyalderdice.com.

You can also follow him on Twitter/X, LinkedIn, BlueSky, YouTube, Instagram, and Threads.

The first month of school is often when the shine wears off and students begin carrying the real weight of routines, expectations, and belonging. For gifted students, the most important conversations may be the ones parents don’t force but make room for—about what is interesting, difficult, lonely, energizing, and still taking shape.

In this encore episode, Corey Alderdice, a national voice on talent and transformation, explores how parents can use the first-month checkpoint to connect with gifted students through open-ended questions and patient listening. He considers academics, friendships, stress, sleep, rest, and goals for the semester, offering a reminder that a check-in should feel less like an audit than an invitation to be seen and supported.

For additional thoughts from Corey, visit coreyalderdice.com.

You can also follow him on Twitter/X, LinkedIn, BlueSky, YouTube, Instagram, and Threads.

The annual National Merit Semifinalist list offers plenty to celebrate—but far less certainty than we sometimes attach to it. Geographic patterns can reveal real differences in access, preparation, and educational opportunity without serving as a reliable map of where talent—or school quality—actually resides.

Corey Alderdice, a national voice on talent and transformation, explores what the National Merit list can and cannot tell us, why familiarity with the PSAT/NMSQT system matters, and how family knowledge, test preparation, immigration, geography, and school resources shape who is positioned to appear on the list. At the center is a broader belief: talent is more distributed than opportunity is.

For additional thoughts from Corey, visit coreyalderdice.com.

You can also follow him on Twitter/X, LinkedIn, BlueSky, YouTube, Instagram, and Threads.

A school is always larger than the part of it we see most clearly. In the capstone episode of the series, the invitation to “see the whole school” becomes a concrete framework for understanding how the work actually fits together.

Corey Alderdice, a national voice on talent and transformation, explores the Proximity and Purpose Continuum for Schools—a model for understanding how student-proximate, program-proximate, institution-proximate, and stakeholder-proximate work all contribute to a school’s shared purpose. Framed as an adult-facing but not adult-centered framework, the episode argues that students remain the reason the continuum exists, even as the full spectrum of adult work must be connected through mission fidelity, institutional sustainability, stakeholder trust, and student flourishing. In this final installment, Corey examines how Executive Translation helps formal leaders connect the continuum in practice, building mutual respect across roles and helping schools move beyond isolated vantage points toward a more coherent understanding of the whole.

For additional thoughts from Corey, visit coreyalderdice.com.

You can also follow him on Twitter/X, LinkedIn, BlueSky, YouTube, Instagram, and Threads.

What if the next big reading trend isn’t a formal genre at all, but a certain kind of story built around competence, camaraderie, irreverence, and a surprising amount of heart? From Dungeon Crawler Carl and Project Hail Mary to Murderbot and The Expanse, “Guy-Fi Lit” may be giving new and returning readers a reason to get lost in fiction again.

Corey Alderdice, a national voice on talent and transformation, explores his wife’s theory of “Guy-Fi,” the earnestness concealed beneath the absurdity of these stories, and why we should be less precious about what counts as worthwhile reading. Along the way, he considers the decline in recreational fiction reading among men, the value of audiobooks as narrative experiences, and why anything that gets people away from endless scrolling and excited about characters, worlds, and what happens next is worth celebrating.

For additional thoughts from Corey, visit coreyalderdice.com.

You can also follow him on Twitter/X, LinkedIn, BlueSky, YouTube, Instagram, and Threads.

Healthy schools do not choose between the work closest to students and the work that sustains the institution. They learn how to translate between them within the Proximity and Purpose Continuum.

Corey Alderdice, a national voice in talent and transformation, concludes the Seeing the Whole School series by exploring the connective work that helps schools become less fragmented and more purposeful. This episode focuses on executive translation: the habit of carrying student experience into strategic conversation and carrying institutional purpose back into daily practice. Alderdice explains why school leaders must serve as interpreters between classrooms, families, boards, budgets, students, donors, public narratives, and long-term strategy. But he also argues that translation cannot belong only to formal leaders. 

In healthy schools, it becomes a shared discipline that helps every part of the institution understand the responsibilities others are carrying. 

For additional thoughts from Corey, visit coreyalderdice.com.

You can also follow him on Twitter/X, LinkedIn, BlueSky, YouTube, Instagram, and Threads.