This is an announcement for the paper "Estimation of the Szlenk index of reflexive Banach spaces using generalized Baernstein spaces" by Ryan Causey. Abstract: For each ordinal $\alpha< \omega_1$, we prove the existence of a separable, reflexive Banach space with a basis and Szlenk index $\omega^{\alpha+1}$ which is universal for the class of separable, reflexive Banach spaces $X$ such that the Szlenk indices $Sz(X), Sz(X^*)$ do not exceed $\omega^\alpha$. Archive classification: math.FA Submitted from: rcausey@math.tamu.edu The paper may be downloaded from the archive by web browser from URL http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/1308.5416 or http://arXiv.org/abs/1308.5416