A Slice with 'Dice

Who gets to excel depends partly on whom our schools choose to see. Turning overlooked potential into achievement requires intentional choices—and a commitment that continues well beyond admission.

Corey Alderdice, a national voice on talent and transformation, explores how excellence gaps challenge schools to rethink whom they reach, recognize, and support. Drawing on national assessment data and his leadership experience, he examines what it takes to expand advanced learning opportunities for rural, low-income, and first-generation college pathway students.

For additional thoughts from Corey, visit coreyalderdice.com.

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

A student’s accomplishments tell us what they’ve had the chance to demonstrate. How much potential remains beyond what we can see?

Corey Alderdice, a national voice on talent and transformation, explores why talent is more broadly distributed than opportunity—and what that means for recognizing gifted students from rural, low-income, and first-generation college backgrounds. Through the distinction between transitional and transformational learners, he considers how educators can recognize promise and create the conditions for it to grow.

For additional thoughts from Corey, visit coreyalderdice.com.

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

Families often sort colleges into reach, target, and safety categories based more on reputation and instinct than evidence. But those labels aren't judgments about the colleges themselves—they describe the relationship between an individual student and a particular admissions landscape.

Corey Alderdice, a national voice on talent and transformation, explores how families can use admissions profiles, acceptance rates, and tools like Naviance to build a more realistic college list. He also considers what makes a true safety school—confidence in admission, financial viability, and a place the student would genuinely be willing to attend—and why having that foundation can give students greater freedom to take ambitious swings elsewhere.

For additional thoughts from Corey, visit coreyalderdice.com.

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

Some of America’s leading universities are outgrowing the idea of calling just one city home. Their expanding campus networks are redrawing the map of higher education—and the opportunities that come with it.

Corey Alderdice, a national voice on talent and transformation, explores why institutions like Carnegie Mellon, Vanderbilt, and NYU are building beyond their traditional homes. From attracting talent and philanthropy to connecting with new industries, he examines what universities gain when geography becomes a strategy for growth.

For additional thoughts from Corey, visit coreyalderdice.com.

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

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.