Lectures on Tap - "Rejective or Selective: What Makes a "Good" School?"

📍 Location: Exact address given in confirmation email

🧠 Lecture: "Rejective or Selective: What Makes a 'Good' School?"

🎤 Speaker: Akil Bello

Before your child can walk, the anxiety begins. Which preschool feeds which kindergarten, which middle school, which high school, which college? Parents join lottery-length waitlists and treat acceptance rates as destiny, while rankings like U.S. News seem to define what counts as a “good” school. But when did exclusivity become our proxy for educational quality?

Drawing on three decades in education, admissions, and testing, Akil Bello unpacks how Americans came to equate scarcity with excellence—from elite nursery schools to highly rejective colleges and everything in between. He’ll examine the narratives, rankings, and incentives that drive school reputations and ask what we are really measuring, rewarding, and misunderstanding.

Akil Bello is a nationally recognized education policy and testing expert who challenges conventional wisdom about merit, admissions, and prestige. His work has informed universities, school districts, nonprofits, and policymakers nationwide, and his commentary has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, MSNBC, and Netflix’s “Operation Varsity Blues.”

Get a drink, connect, and learn at Lectures on Tap! 🙌

Agenda

6:30 PM – Doors open: find a seat (open seating!), order food & drinks, and expect a bar line—arriving early is key.

6:55 PM – Host introduction

7:00 PM – Lecture begins

7:45 PM – Audience Q&A

8:00 PM – Have 1:1 time with the speaker, mingle with fellow guests, and order another round

8:30 PM – Wrap up.