Admissions talk and campus road trips from two counselors.
Chris Reeves, an independent college counselor, and Joel Ford, a school counselor in Erlanger, Kentucky, talk through admissions questions in loose, friendly conversation. Their 'Goes to Campus' episodes send one of them out to colleges from Berea to Blacksburg, and he comes back with notes on what might draw a student there.
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The Reeves and Ford Podcast is college admissions talk from two counselors who work with students on their way to college. Chris Reeves introduces himself as an independent college counselor. Joel Ford is a public school counselor at the Ignite Institute at Roebling Innovation Center in Erlanger, Kentucky. Mostly it is just the two of them, sometimes with a guest. The tone is warm and teasing. Joel addresses his colleague as Mr. Reeves, and the small talk covers grandchildren, a camper trip to Maine and a good cup of coffee. None of that crowds out the substance. In 'Is the scholarship search really worth it?', the question is whether a student should pour effort into awards with long odds or into local and regional ones where the chances are better. They don't reach a tidy consensus. An exchange about a parent who wants every application filed ends in an agreement to disagree, and someone asks whether no-essay awards are really data collection devices. 'College Transfer with Jaime Smith' brings in a guest whose book gathers many kinds of transfer stories, so that families come to see transfer as normal rather than something to keep quiet. The campus episodes, branded 'Goes to Campus', are where the show feels most its own. One of the pair makes the trip and the other asks the questions. Joel's Kentucky visit reaches Berea College, a small-town campus about half an hour south of Lexington whose history he traces back to 1855, and he admits he wishes he had looked at it himself. Chris's Virginia trip is split into two episodes, 'Virginia College Tour Part 1: Public Colleges' and 'Virginia Colleges Tour Part 2: Private Colleges', with stops that include Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. The notes are practical: Virginia Tech gets credit for agriculture, engineering and neuroscience, and for being within reach of Kentucky students. Detours count too. A chili dog from the route gets a layer-by-layer description, and a very small all-women's college is reached unannounced. The rough edges stay in, including a sign-off interrupted over a proper welcome back to Kentucky. A live episode from KYACAC, recorded at the historic Brown Hotel, shows the professional network behind the advice. In it, a counselor describes calling a trusted contact to sort out a problem with a student's legal name, a relationship built through years of conferences and college fairs. The show also calls itself a founding member of the NACAC podcast network. What a listener gets is two counselors' candid impressions of actual campuses and actual trade-offs, told like colleagues catching up.
Made for: Suits a student or parent building a college list who wants counselors' firsthand campus impressions, especially with a Kentucky starting point. It also suits a counselor who likes hearing colleagues think out loud about scholarships, transfer and professional relationships.
What sets it apart: Both voices are practicing counselors, one independent and one in a public school, and they do the legwork themselves: the 'Goes to Campus' episodes are firsthand visit reports that keep a Kentucky student's travel distance in mind. Casual banter, food detours and unpolished moments sit right alongside the practical advice.
Chris Reeves and Joel Ford are high school counselors who spend a lot of time on college admission. They have both served as presidents of the Kentucky Association for College Admission Counseling. Chris also served a 3 year term as a Board Director for the National Association for College Admission Counseling, while Joel served on the NACAC CEO Search Committee that ultimately led to the hiring of Angel Perez. We have been podcasting about college admissions for the past several years, and The Reeves and Ford Podcast is our new version! With new music, new format, less scripting, we hope you enjoy feeling like we are hanging out talking college admissions.
The scholarship jackpot gets a reality check before you spend another weekend chasing it.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A central Kentucky campus tour where Berea College's history gives college-visit advice real weight.
Joel Ford's central Kentucky college tour treats the Bluegrass region as more than a backdrop, using each stop to show how a campus develops its character over time.
A candid conversation that makes college transfer feel normal, discussable, and sometimes right.
This single-episode review frames transferring as a reasonable response to changing circumstances, not proof that college planning failed. By tying family experience to studies and transfer stories, it gives the topic a human scale while staying focused on how quickly teenagers'…
A grounded look at scholarship odds, application effort, and the sales machinery behind some search sites.
Scholarship hunting gets a clear-eyed pass here, with Chris Reeves and Joel Ford weighing whether students should pursue every award they can find.
A warm conference episode shows how admissions relationships can steady a student crisis.
The Reeves and Ford Podcast follows Chris Reeves and Joel Ford through the 2025 Kentucky Association for College Admission Counseling Annual Conference at Louisville's Brown Hotel, where the talk moves easily between colleagues, first-time connections, sessions, karaoke, and the…
A practical counselor's take on Virginia Tech's scale, spirit, academics, and appeal for a college search.
Virginia Tech comes through as a useful stop on Chris Reeves' Virginia road trip, seen through a counselor's practical lens. Speaking with Joel Ford, Reeves explains why he headed east from Kentucky: he wanted to hike in Virginia, and he also had students considering Virginia…
A Virginia campus visit where first impressions, small-college texture, and one chili dog make fit feel tangible.
Virginia's private-college swing works best as a scouting trip in motion, following Chris Reeves from the wooded suburban feel of the University of Richmond to the wide-open scale of Sweet Briar.
Calm guidance for the college search.
Dominion High School, in student voices.
Tactical coaching for competitive college admissions.
Georgia Tech admission, made clearer.
Student life, recorded from inside King's.
College admissions, from the student side.
["Chris Reeves and Joel Ford map a Bluegrass college tour across Center College, Berea College, Georgetown College, Kentucky State University, and a drive-by at Midway University.", "Joel Ford says Center College in Danville pairs a 200-acre Greek revival and Georgian campus with 45% undergraduate research, 85% study abroad or study away, and 98% on-campus housing.", "Berea College is presented as the first integrated coeducational college in the South, then as a school that charges zero tuition and asks students to work on campus.", "Georgetown College shows a T-shaped campus under pressure from age and maintenance, while Kentucky State University in Frankfort uses low tuition, aquaculture, and HBCU identity as its main markers."]
["The Reeves and Ford Podcast episode on college transfer brings on Jamie Smith, author of The Complete Guide to College Transfer, after a long opening stretch about Joel Ford's 241 seniors, a new camper, and recent college visits.", "Smith says transfer is not a niche path: she points to a third of all undergraduates and 40 million American adults who have some credit but no degree.", "She argues that community-college transfer still has a stigma because many community colleges were originally built to \"keep out the riffraff,\" and she says the pipeline to a bachelor's degree is leaky.", "The practical center of the interview is credit evaluation, transfer-friendly databases like Transferology, and advice to treat roommate problems or major mismatch as fixable before assuming a transfer is necessary."]
["Chris Reeves and Joel Ford ask whether the scholarship search is worth the time, anxiety, and effort after comparing their own students' results.", "Reeves says Craft Academy's 87 graduates were offered more than $5.1 million, but only $51,930 came from outside scholarships, while Ford says Ignite's outside awards were under 1%.", "John Marcus of The Hechinger Report says most grant money comes from Pell, with about $44 billion in federal direct grants, plus $15 billion from states and $83 billion from colleges.", "The conversation ends on scholarship displacement, where a $500 Garden Club award can cut a college's own aid package in August."]
The Reeves and Ford Podcast's live 'LIVE from KYACAC' session records at the Crystal Ballroom of Louisville's Brown Hotel during the 2025 Kentucky Association for College Admission Counseling annual conference.
Chris Reeves and Joel Ford visit University of Richmond, Hampden-Sydney College, Sweet Briar College, Washington and Lee University, and Virginia Military Institute during a Virginia campus road trip.
Chris Reeves and Joel Ford use "Goes to Campus" to compare four Virginia public colleges across five days of travel, then promise a private-school follow-up episode.
The Reeves and Ford Podcast examines Colleges That Change Lives, an organization founded around Lorne Pope's 1996 book highlighting 40 student-centered liberal-arts institutions.
The Reeves and Ford Podcast’s “College Admissions Warrior #1” features Chris Reeves and Joel Ford interviewing NACAC CEO Dr.
Chris Reeves and Joel Ford discuss college admissions topics, aiming to inform listeners about processes and current issues in post-secondary education.
Chris Reeves and Joel Ford interview Angel Perez, CEO of NACAC, about college admissions and the organization's future.
Two high school counselors discuss college admissions and play a game called Name That College, where one describes a college and the other guesses from four choices.