College Access Counseling

My firm, College Access Counseling, Ltd., works with adults and organizations who counsel and support first-generation and minority students on the way to college. I teach the ins and outs of the college process, helping them build social and cultural capital for their students. Click here for more information. I also write for NACAC's blog, Admitted. You can read my entries as well as some of my colleagues', here. Click here to read one of my entries in the New York Times's blog, The Choice.

April 12, 2007

The Frankenstein Parents' Handbook

Review and Commentary on What Colleges Don't Tell You (and Other Parents Don't Want You to Know): 272 Secrets for Getting Your Kids into the Top Schools, by Elizabeth Wissner-Gross

I seldom have the urge to hurl a book across the room (anything that's "magical realism" comes to mind) but recently I've read one that I want to hurl directly at its author's head. It's one of the most repulsive books related to college admission I've ever read, and its author, Elizabeth Wissner-Gross, proud of having essentially manufactured her two sons' lives and (supposedly) their entry into Ivy League colleges, comes across as a monstrous harridan unafraid of inserting herself into any and all aspects of children's lives in order to get the results she wants out of them. She makes the idea of the "helicopter parent" seem benign; she's more like Victor Frankenstein, assembling her (and others') kids into "perfect" specimens out of freshly dead but highly desirable body parts. Although there's some decent boilerplate advice about college admission in the second half of the book, this is really a child-rearing primer for parents who think we're in a Hobbesian war of all against all. They're the kind who will hold their child back from kindergarten so that when he finally gets there he'll be bigger and faster and (maybe) smarter than the others, casting his shadow over the weaklings and winning every race.

Wissner-Gross has no real interest in anything but making sure the kids she works with get ahead of everyone else's, a premise she demonstrates by an insane overinvolvement in her own children's lives. Ridiculing the idea that high school students applying to college can be thought of as independent beings, she insists that parents must be "cheerleaders" and "team captains" for their children in order to get them into the best colleges and, by extension, "success." Early on she writes, "If you want to help manage your kids' education, you need to have an understanding of what your children are up against in the greater world. Who are the students competing against your son or daughter for a spot in their dream college?" Only by carefully crafting a master(race) child, she says, can you ensure your success as a parent. Your child's success depends on how much you as the parent are willing to do for him or her. Wissner-Gross does everything but suggest hiring a hit man to eliminate the poor saps in Junior's way.

The book's basic premise is that parents must take charge of every aspect of their children's lives in order to get them into a top college, which is the sine qua non of the rest of one's life. It is their responsibility to do everything for their children, from monitoring their grades to getting them "interests" to putting them into every "educational" situation possible (this includes having their birthday parties at science museums if they show an interest in science). There is no ambiguity about this tenet; it appears many times throughout the book. In her first chapter, "The Shoo-In Kid," she writes,

"The vast majority of parents of successful students [i.e.,
those at most-competitive colleges] can take credit for helping
their kids get into the school of their choice, often investing
hours to do so." (p.2)

All well and good, but Wissner-Gross isn't talking about parents who have lovingly and supportively reared their children to value education, learning and maturity by reading to them, enjoying their company, talking and singing with them, encouraging to try new things and teaching them to value others. Far from it. In fact, she finds those qualities to be impediments to getting into college, setting the stage by insisting that a child can't do anything on his own:

"...not all parents are equally capable of helping....Others claim
to want to encourage independence (which is not achieved, I should
emphasize, by ignoring a child's needs)....[B]ut don't be fooled
into thinking that some of the most successful kids just make it on
their own. Very, very few do nowadays---no matter how independent
their parents claim they are. Your extremely competent, deserving
high school student needs your help." (p.3)

For Wissner-Gross, a child's "independence" is bunk and a child's "needs" are infinite; parents must take charge of everything from developing opportunities outside of school for their children to exploit to pre-screening recommendations when the college process finally gets into full swing. Other qualities like "sportsmanship" also fall by the wayside in the process of clawing one's way to the top: Secret 25 is "Create out-of-school opportunities for your children, and don't teach your children to accept positions that are not challenging or interesting." She says that your child shouldn't take anything less than he or she (or you, the parent) thinks she deserves: "While that may sound like you're teaching her good sportsmanship, patience, or values, this is a case where 'nice guys finish last.' Instead of teaching a child patience, teach your child the importance of not wasting time, a most precious commodity."

Part of the horror of this book is that it actually encourages parents not only to rear their children as if they were manufactured objects but also to do everything for them, no matter how "competent" their children may appear. (One would think having a "competent" child would obviate this need, but that doesn't occur to Wissner-Gross.) To Wissner-Gross, parents who strive to teach their children values like independence, patience, and good sportsmanship are chumps: "Parents who accept this line of thinking generally have children who are less successful at getting into more competitive colleges. More-involved parents tend to have more success." (p. 3) And by "more involved" she means everything from forcing children to audition for the New York City Opera (which she did with her own two boys) to, well, everything else: "The best resumes don't just happen--they're carefully planned. When should you start planning? Now....[Y]ou, the parent, should figure out the opportunities. You're the chief scout. Find that audition, science class, rocketry camp, or architecture competition. Inspire multiple interests and expose your child to multiple fields. The younger the child is when you start, the greater the resume and the more opportunities that will become available." (p. 4)

This book is a child-rearing manual written by an unreconstructed eugenicist with the moral values of Kenneth Lay. Only the end result is important; only "success" is valued, and that success is as much the parents' as the child's. And only "top" colleges will ensure this result. In this book the child is merely an extension of the parents' goals and desires. In Secret 50, Wissner-Gross writes, "You're a team. If your child gets a C, then you get a C as a parent. Invest yourself in this process." Secret 66 is: "Successful parents participate in homework--even in high school and even for (especially for) the most successful students." Secret 20 suggests that "The most successful parents are those who treat their kids' high school as a supplement to the home-school curriculum..." And if your child isn't good enough, you can always re-engineer her: When a student just misses a college "cutoff" for admission, "Jessica and her parents reinvented Jessica as a caring, energetic social activist. Her mother arranged for the girl to play violin at local charity events. Jessica performed at fund-raisers for cancer research, hospitals, and disaster relief."

It would be nice if this were the worst of the book's egregiousness, but such is not the case by a long shot. Parents should never leave anything to chance, so Wissner- Gross suggests that they closely monitor teachers' grading "rubrics" and challenge anything they see as wrong: "If your child is not earning the desired grades, you should take it personally." Secret 71 recommends that parents encourage their kids to drop courses they find too hard: "Colleges are not impressed with kids who 'tough it out' in courses in which they're not doing well...You may think this shows character. It doesn't. It shows bad judgment." Learning be damned, we need to get you to Ivy U., sweetheart! Secret 101 suggests that parents have their children "take standardized tests annually, starting in sixth or seventh grade for practice..." Continually and proudly, Wissner-Gross describes how to form your child like a bonsai tree, ceaselessly pruning and fertilizing it to get a perfect form.

No time period is to be left fallow. Secret 27 is "Summer is your child's chance to win the edge, to beat the competition." She demands that parents seek out "enrichment" so that "by fall, your son or daughter [will] possess an entirely new repertoire of abilities. Anything else is a waste....Don't let your children waste their summers 'hanging out.'" And there's more: "Before the summer, you and your children should set goals. What would your son like to gain by the end of summer? What will he get to add to the resume? Design your daughter's summer so that her days are crammed with activities and creativity." God forbid he or she should have a chance to breathe under the never-blinking Gorgon's eye.

Once the child has been twisted into submission, the actual application process begins. Normally, one would assume that it is the child's responsibility to do the research, write the essays, and fill out the applications. Again, according to Wissner-Gross, one would be wrong. Letting your child do things himself is for losers. Having gotten your child the best grades and positioned him for his shot at the Ivies, you the parent now must spend every waking minute with him to ensure that everything gets done. You should stay up when he does to do homework, take SAT practice tests when he does, and compare notes about what the tests are like. Chapter 7 is called "How You Can Help with the Application Forms," which practically tells you all you need to know about what Wissner-Gross's advice will be. Secret 171? "Before approaching your son to write his essays, make a written list of some of the events in his life that you think might merit a particularly interesting story." Then, "Tell your daughter that you did some brainstorming to make the application process easier, and these were the best ideas you could come up with." The message: Don't take a chance that your child might write some crappy thing that would be appropriate but not up to your standards or expectations. After all, your reputation is on the line, too.

It's futile to continue this tirade because there's so much to loathe in this book. In its portrait of raw ambition and Darwinian struggle to survive, it turns almost everything most people value about child rearing on its head, all for the sake of getting into "the Top Schools." Every non-essential element is shorn away: delight, pleasure, investigation, serendipity, curiosity, even the capacity to make mistakes and perhaps learn from them. It is the ugliest manifestation of top-college mania I have yet encountered. It sent me back to Marilee Jones's and Kenneth Ginsburg's book, Less Stress, More Success, which takes a totally opposite view of rearing children and approaching the college process. They write in the Introduction: "When overly involved parents take charge and increase the pressure, they send their kids the message that they aren't capable or independent. The consequences are clear: Young people are disempowered and lose out on opportunities to learn to trust their own instincts and abilities. Parents unwittingly deprive them of a chance to grow up, take chances, perhaps fail at a few things, and learn to deal with adversity and bounce back." (p. xiv) A little later they write, "As long as we focus only on a short-range goal (college admission), we undermine the real goal: creating a generation of young people who will thrive and be prepared to live productive, joyful, and satisfying adult lives. This is true success." (p. xvii)

Reading Jones and Ginsburg after Wissner-Gross is like taking a vacation in northern Wisconsin after fifteen years in a steel mill. But there is a clear choice for parents: They can manage and control their children to within an inch of their lives, grooming them for the "best," or they can let them be themselves with a healthy dose of loving guidance in preparation for a future on their own. I don't think it takes too much thinking to know which one is the better way.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I saw this book in the bookstore, and just in paging through was appalled by everything I saw. I was interested in learning just how good it could be, but I refused to buy the book. I don't want to encourage this author or others like her by giving her my money!
Thanks for the review - I now know that the entire book was as bad as the first few chapters I read in the bookstore.

Anonymous said...

Lighten up. There is good information in this book. Take and use the ideas you like and ignore the rest. There are lots of families who don't know where to start with the application process and this book offers specific suggestions. You are a little TOO angry with this author. Your defensiveness makes me wonder about your background. It's OK. It's just a book.

Will said...

"Mein Kampf" was "just a book," too, and look where that one got us. This is not the book for families who "don't know where to start" in the process; it's a book for grasping, desperate parents to learn how to treat their children like bonsai trees starting when they're small so they'll grow the way they want them to. My anger comes partly from my own frustration at having seen parents who have. wittingly or unwittingly, adopted an outlook similar to the author's and made stunted little personalities out of what might have been very decent kids. I am also angry at the way upper middle-class parents have come to treat the world as something to be conquered and their children as accessories, both of which are key aspects that permeate this book. It's not a college advice book, it's a how to teach children to be utterly inauthentic and shallow book. And that's not good.

What about my background? I don't see what that has to do with my review. But I can tell you this: I come from a middle class background, went to a large public high school in New Jersey and have degrees from Amherst College, Princeton University and Northwestern University, as well as course credits from Teachers College (Columbia University), Tulane University and the University of Chicago. And I did it all without a harridan for a mother.

Anonymous said...

For a parent (who knows if you are even one), I despise the way you talk. First off, the way you write is ingenuine; I can sense that you don't want other parents to grab this book. Second, you reiterate the same point over and over again-- the fact that parents should take over everything. You take something minute and change it into a overinflated balloon ready to pop. STOP OVERSTATING WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS BECAUSE THE BOOK IS NOTHING LIKE THIS. (Since I've read the book myself.) LOSER. -_-

Will said...

I don't know what "ingenuine" means so I won't comment on that. But you're right, I don't want people to grab this book. It's a despicable piece of crap that appeals to the worst instincts of otherwise reasonable people. It assumes that life is a race that you either WIN or LOSE and that your children can either validate your life by being WINNERS or they can disappoint you and be failures because they don't get into a "prestigious" college. It appeals to sad, status-conscious egos and social climbers who see their children as accoutrements not as individuals.
If the book is nothing like what I've said it is, perhaps you can offer an alternative theory instead of wasting time calling me a loser and inventing new words.

Anonymous said...

Ok Will... First of all, I wasn't talking to you. If you don't know what ingenuine even means, I would rather give up those degrees and programs you went to beacuse if you don't know that means why don't you ask an eighth grader what it means. Because he/she will know... Anyway, I was talking to the author of this post beacuse all the people here are being hypnotized by a bunch of crap even though they haven't read the book. So much for having all those degrees, Will. -_-

Will said...

OK, so just to let you know I'm the author of the post and "ingenuine" is not a word, which I'm sure any eighth grader could tell you. And you're making less sense now than you did before. You seem far angrier than anything here would call for, so what's your stake in all this? My guess is you're a relative of the book's author.

Anonymous said...

I think it's ironic that you recommend Marilee Jones's book about admissions, which advises that everyone should just relax about the admissions process...let's remember that Marilee Jones was fired from MIT for lying on her resume and claiming degrees she did not earn.

Will said...

I assume from your tone that you're the same "Anonymous" who wrote the previous Anonymous posts. It's not ironic that I recommended Marilee's book and she lied on her resume. It would be ironic if she had written a book about not cheating and had been found to be a cheater or if she had written this book and was a nervous wreck herself.
And just FYI, I reviewed the book before the scandal broke; second, I see no reason to change the review because of her situation. It's still a good book with plenty of good advice for students and parents. Plenty of authors have had terrible personalities or have done things even worse than what Marilee did; their books can still be read and valued for themselves without reference to their writers' infidelities, drinking problems, etc.
I don't know what the bee in your bonnet is, but perhaps if you were more direct about it we might have a decent discussion. If you're still mad about my review of the Frankenstein book, well, I can't help you with that. It's still a rotten book that touches on just about everything bad in childrearing and college admission today.

Blog Archive

Books About College, Teens, and American Culture

  • A History of American Higher Education
  • A Hope in the Unseen
  • Admission
  • Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic
  • African Americans and College Choice
  • Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture
  • Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men
  • Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers
  • Campus Life
  • Class
  • College Access & Opportunity Guide
  • College Admissions and the Public Interest
  • College Admissions Together: It Takes a Family
  • College Gold: The Step by Step Guide for Paying for College
  • College Knowledge: What It Really Takes for Students to Succeed and What We Can Do to Get Them Ready
  • College Unranked: Ending the College Admissions Frenzy
  • Colleges that Change Lives
  • Consumed
  • Contradictions of School Reform: Educational Costs of Standardized Testing
  • Doing School: How We are Creating a Generation of Stressed-out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students
  • First in the Family
  • Fiske Guide to Colleges
  • Going to College: How Social, Economic, and Educational Factors Influence the Decisions Students Make
  • Harvard, Schmarvard
  • Higher Learning, Greater Good: The Private & Social Benefits of Higher Education
  • Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood
  • I Am Charlotte Simmons
  • Increasing Access to College:
  • Less Stress, More Success: A New Approach to Guiding Your Teen Through College Admission and Beyond
  • Leveling the Playing Field: Justice, Politics, and College Admissions
  • Life: The Movie: How Entertainment Conquered America
  • Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams
  • Looking Beyond the Ivy League
  • Panicked Parents' Guide to College Admissions
  • Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class
  • Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes
  • Race and Class Matters at an Elite College
  • Rescuing Your Teenager From Depression
  • Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher Education
  • Sophomore Guide to College & Career: Preparing for life After High School
  • Standardized Minds: The High Price of America's Testing Culture and What We Can Do to Change It
  • Status Anxiety
  • Taking Time Off
  • Tearing Down the Gates: Confronting the Class Divide in American Education
  • The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy
  • The Bond: Three Young Men Learn to Forgive & Reconnect with Their Fathers
  • The Case Against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools
  • The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton
  • The Culture of Narcissism
  • The Gatekeepers: Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College
  • The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in American Life
  • The Little College Handbook: A First Generation's Guide to Getting in and Staying In
  • The Naked Roommate: And 107 Other Issues You Might Run Into in College
  • The Pact: Three Young Men Make a Promise and Fulfull a Dream
  • The Pressured Child: Helping Your Child Find Success in School and Life
  • The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges--and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates
  • The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids
  • The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager
  • The Secret Lives of Overachievers
  • The Unintended Consequences of High Stakes Testing
  • Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education
  • What Color Is Your Parachute? for Teens