tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73691732024-02-07T15:37:32.170-06:00COLLEGE COUNSELING CULTUREObservations about college admission and its intersections with American culture.Willard M. Dixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15740983536934342703noreply@blogger.comBlogger110125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7369173.post-9795718619832674262010-09-10T09:24:00.002-05:002010-09-10T09:24:13.122-05:00New Crabby Post!Check out the Crabby Counselor's new post about stress and the college application!Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276431235780032142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7369173.post-38627436342750559942010-08-19T20:21:00.000-05:002010-08-19T20:21:13.358-05:00The Crabby CounselorHi! If you're looking for The Crabby Counselor, click on this post's title or go <a href="http://funnyhamlet.wordpress.com/">here</a>. He'll be commenting on college admission and all it inspires every week or so! Enjoy.Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276431235780032142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7369173.post-58056158365521905862010-07-16T11:33:00.002-05:002010-07-16T11:33:53.501-05:00Helicoptering, ContinuedSee my new post on Wordpress <a href="http://funnyhamlet.wordpress.com/">here</a>.Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276431235780032142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7369173.post-40443461716459037762010-07-13T09:32:00.000-05:002010-07-13T09:32:54.178-05:00Migration to WordpressI am migrating my blog to Wordpress, which you can get to by clicking on the title above or <a href="http://funnyhamlet.wordpress.com/">here</a>. It has a cleaner layout and more options. If you've been following my entries here, I hope you'll visit me there.Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276431235780032142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7369173.post-69497280722105926642010-07-12T14:36:00.000-05:002010-07-12T14:36:25.268-05:00College Night at the Field MuseumLast Wednesday was the date of an extraordinary college fair: Nearly sixty colleges displayed their wares and made connections with over 200 charter school counselors and administrators as part of the National Charter School Conference held here in Chicago. The fair itself was organized by the <a href="http://www.incschools.org/">Illinois Network of Charter Schools</a> and was held in the great hall of the <a href="http://www.fieldmuseum.org/">Field Museum</a>.<br />
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As far as I know, it's the first major event specifically bringing together college admission officers and charter school personnel. INCS and I put together a small "Meet the Charters" event at a local public library last year, which was very successful, but this year was way beyond that. The Field's hall was elegant (with Sue the T. Rex looming over the participants), and there was great food and wine served by waiters and chefs--a far cry from the usual gym or cafeteria college fair.<br />
I'm pleased that the program I brought to INCS three years ago, College for All, has given rise to greater connections between charters and higher education institutions. Because they're small and idiosyncratic, charters can sometimes get lost in the shuffle, so enabling schools to meet them increases the opportunities for their students.<br />
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So far, feedback has been great on both sides. I'm not sure how or whether we'll top this event though. The charter conference is in Atlanta next year, so we'll see!Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276431235780032142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7369173.post-19451823283297761882010-07-07T21:09:00.000-05:002010-07-07T21:09:22.033-05:00Out of Control ParentingThe "helicopter parenting" phenomenon seems to be getting nuttier by the minute and it's easy to harrumph over the latest anecdote about a mother calling the academic dean of a college to ask why her child got a bad grade. As a college counselor at an "elite" private high school I often had to deal with mommies (seems like it's more often mommies than daddies) who wanted to know how their child could get an A instead of an A- so he or she could get into Brown. Or who basically ran the college process while the children lazed about in blissful torpor. These stories tend to validate our feeling that the current generation of college-aged students has become way too pampered for its own good.<br />
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Unfortunately for us, Margaret K. Nelson has written an interesting and level-headed book on the topic called <i>Parenting Out of Control: Anxious Parents in Uncertain Times</i>. Rather than gleefully narrating the various misbehaviors of these over-involved parents, she approaches the topic from a sociological perspective. (Nelson is a professor of sociology at Middlebury College in Vermont.) Using class divisions and technological innovation as prisms, she looks at why parents might behave the way they do and provides some clear, if incomplete, insights about why parents these days do the things they do.<br />
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Nelson bases her conclusions on a relatively small sampling of individuals she divides into "working class," middle class," and "professional middle class" parents. As a result, her brush paints a rather broad picture of child-rearing practices in each group. She writes that WC and MC parents "are...less interested in intimacy and engagement [with their children] than they are in clear rules of authority within the family." In contrast, the PMC parents she describes have "a lengthy perspective on children's dependency without a clear launching point for a grown child," and "put child rearing front and center: even in the midst of extremely busy lives, they highlight the significance and meaning they find in this activity, and they avoid shortcuts (such as playpens) that could make the job easier."<br />
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But more interesting is how Nelson contrasts the WC/MC and PMC views of their children as individuals in a way that puts most of the helicoptering onus on the PMC parents. Less privileged parents, according to Nelson, "insist that by the end of a comparatively short educational career a child should be ready to pick a career, find a job, and begin the next stage of life as a fully formed adult." They "want to encourage their children to grow...But their role involves acceptance of the particularities of their children and does not rest on a view of <i>unlimited</i> potential, of children who can become 'the best.'" Especially in relation to college, WC/MC parents want their children to do something productive, not play around for four years.<br />
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In contrast, PMC parents see their children as ongoing projects with unlimited potential. As a result, there's no end to the work of seeing them develop, which is why they insist on being "present" so constantly. For them, college isn't a "vocational training ground," it is a place for personal self-development: "...in lieu of job preparation, elite parents talk about the important opportunities colleges might provide for self-discovery and for gaining self-confidence. Rather than viewing college as a launching pad to independent adulthood, parents see it as a time for their children to acquire the necessary cultural and social capital to be able to seize any opportunities for status that may arise." No wonder my students' parents wanted them to go to Brown and not Tufts!<br />
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If you perceive your children as "out the door" when they turn 18, there's no need to keep a continual eye on them. As a parent, you've done your job and what results is what you've got. PMC parents have created a never-ending process that needs continual tweaking and adjusting. They see their children as extensions of themselves and their parenting, and so must always be involved. College is a place to refine their projects in the never-ending drive toward "perfection," whatever form that may take.<br />
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Nelson makes the case that technological devices such as baby monitors, security bracelets, and cell phones have changed the ways parents connect with their children, often making them more fearful, not less, and promoting a sense of needing to be continually in touch with their offspring. She notes, however, that PMC parents are less likely to rely on technology to monitor and control their children than are MC/WC parents because of their commitment to molding their children's "potential" and being intimately involved with every detail of their lives. PMC parents make calls, write emails, and so on as a natural extension of their involvement with their children; MC/WC parents are less likely to do so because they see their children as already on their way to independence.<br />
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<i>Parenting Out of Control</i> does a good job of delineating some of the possible sources of helicopter parenting even while it remains frustratingly shallow. It relies too heavily on Nelson's small sample and seems to lean too much on stereotypes of privileged versus non-privileged parenting and family life without offering real three-dimensional analysis. However, using class as a way to talk about families' expectations for their children and college is a fresh way to talk about the subject, and readers attuned to the relationship of college attainment to status consciousness will find <i>Parenting</i> a good source for further discussion and observation.Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276431235780032142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7369173.post-91845379575748741562010-02-25T13:21:00.004-06:002010-03-10T22:01:17.520-06:00YouTubing the Admissions River<div style="margin: 0px;">Just because we <b><i>can</i></b> do something doesn't mean we <b><i>should</i></b> do it. Cloning afghans (the dog not the blanket), building half-mile high buildings, teaching chickens to count--we just don't need em. The same is true, I think, for inviting students to submit YouTube-style videos as part of their college applications, as <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/education/23tufts.html">Tufts</a> and as at least one <a href="http://videos.masonmetro.com/">other college</a> have done in the last few days.</div><div style="margin: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin: 0px;">There's no question that the challenge of creating a video, even a simple one, can be exciting for someone who has grown up with pocket-sized video cameras and iMovie. Capabilities and equipment that were once confined to studios and labs have become commonplace and people have taken full advantage of them, sometimes to great effect. It's useless to pretend they don't exist or that students haven't grown up with them.</div><div style="margin: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin: 0px;">But is it appropriate to invite YouTube-style videos as part of a college application? </div><div style="margin: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin: 0px;">Well, why not? Will it give better-heeled applicants an advantage? Probably. Will it induce migraines and binge drinking in admission officers who have to watch them? Definitely. But the big question is, what will the criteria for evaluation be? I've already read one comment that said an under-produced video seemed more authentic, and therefore more credible, than a slick one. Is that fair to the slick one? And wouldn't USC or NYU see the situation quite differently? Is a slick clip the equivalent of an essay that's been worked over by Joyce Carol Oates? Or is it just evidence of a real talent that could energize a campus? Does a student who uses a production crew get points for leadership or slammed for having others do his work for him?</div><div style="margin: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin: 0px;">I don't buy the argument that students may one day regret sending a clip into a college. They have grown up watching people, famous and ordinary, voluntarily humiliate themselves--sometimes as part of "rehabbing" their careers--in ways that we could only speculate about before. It's a hallmark of every reality show, from "American Idol" to "Jersey Shore" and shows no sign of abating. (Who's the breakout star of "Shore?" Snookie, the most embarrassing member of the group, who now makes highly anticipated appearances seemingly everywhere, and is planning her own handbag line.) It seems normal to confess egregious thoughts and behaviors to millions--think "Hoarders" or "Celebrity Rehab." And to think that only yesterday we were wondering if admission officers trolled social internet sites for dirt about applicants. Why go through that trouble when they'll send it themselves?</div><div style="margin: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin: 0px;">People are perfectly capable of humiliating or even incriminating themselves if there's a chance they'll be stars. (Recently in Chicago a group of students filmed themselves beating up another student and posted it on YouTube. What's the thought process there?) And who knows, there may be some pretty interesting things to come out of a video, but my guess is more often than not, not. When I was at Amherst in the far away 90s a transfer applicant sent in a 6-minute VHS videotape (remember them?) of himself in jacket and tie seated behind a desk telling us why he thought he was a good candidate. His final line was "And by the way, I'm not wearing any pants." This might have been amusing except for the fact that when he got up to turn off the camera, he <b><i>was</i></b> wearing pants. So, double fault. Presumably, kids are better editors today.</div><div style="margin: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin: 0px;">Students have been sending tapes of their auditions, their dance recitals, and other performances as part of their applications for a long time, so maybe YouTubing is just the next incarnation, with the problematic addition of self-conscious production values instead of dad's shaky and unfocused videography of an actual deed. The big difference is that the latter is a record of something; the former is of supposed value in and of itself. We're in an age where "broadcasting yourself" makes everyone a potential star, but is that what it all comes down to in a college application?</div><div style="margin: 0px;"><br />
</div>I don't see any reason not to look if students send a video (shouldn't we call it something else now? Or do we and I just don't know it?), but I'd exercise caution before making it even an optional part of a college application. At a College Board Forum session I attended last weekend here in Chicago about using new media to communicate with students, YouTubing wasn't even mentioned. If it does become a fixture, I hope at least that admission committees will figure out just what they'll be looking for first.<br />
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">A version of this post also appears on the NACAC blog, <a href="http://www.nacacnet.org/PublicationsResources/Admitted/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=95">Admitted</a>.</span></i>Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276431235780032142noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7369173.post-85036599091597971002010-02-08T10:28:00.004-06:002010-02-08T22:23:12.335-06:00Child Exploitation at USCJust when you think you've heard it all there comes another shocker, this time about USC's committing one of its football scholarships...to a 13-year old. That's USC's Class of '19. According to a report in <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/">Inside Higher Ed</a>, the USC coach made a similar signing when he was at UT--Knoxville, and has continued his kiddie recruitment at USC. Here's an excerpt from the IHE article:<br />
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The University of Southern California's football team has committed one of its football scholarships for the 2015 entering class to David Sills, a 13-year-old quarterback at a middle school in Delaware, The News-Journal of Wilmington reported. Sills told ESPN that Southern Cal has always been his "dream school."<br />
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You can read the full notice <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/02/08/qt#219541">here</a>. The newspaper article is at <a href="http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20100206/SPORTS14/2060318">Delaware Online</a>.<br />
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How many things are wrong with this picture? Preying on a 13-year old boy is one. This sounds like child trafficking to me; if it had been done over the internet by a skeevy 45-year old we'd be prosecuting him. But out in plain sight, where the context is "education," (and by that we mean "sports"), it's being presented as something amazing. What does USC hope to gain by trolling middle schools for future football recruits? Do middle schools want older men in "coach" getups to start showing up at their games? I don't think so.<br />
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I volunteer at a national teen crisis line (<a href="http://www.1800runaway.org/">National Runaway Switchboard</a>) where I get calls from kids who have been lured away from home by "friends" they've made on the internet. They get sent airline tickets and instructions, and leave with promises of wonderful relationship with ideal partners, only to be greeted at the airport by an overweight, balding perv who loves young men/women. Blinded by what looks like love and affection from someone who understands them, they're trapped by someone who wants them only for his/her own purposes.<br />
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Aside from the ethical issue of subjecting an adolescent to the pressure of college recruitment while he's still in 8th grade, how is he going to live a normal life for the next five years, knowing that if he breaks a leg or tears a tendon, USC will toss him out with the trash? Is it remotely fair to put a child, however talented, in this position? And even though David Sills says USC has always been his "dream school," how does he know that it will still be his dream when he's old enough to vote? How developmentally inappropriate is it to lock him in to USC (in theory) with blandishments of scholarships and visions of sugarplums when he should be having fun playing football in school and awkwardly starting to date? How are his teachers going to cope with a young man who seems to have his life already set? What's the point of learning English or algebra? I hope his parents are not so starry-eyed that they'll roll over for this, but I wonder.<br />
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What is USC's coach thinking? And what does USC plan to do about it? One can hope that it repudiates this ridiculous and totally inappropriate stab at building a child army as soon and as publicly as possible. If I were president, I would fire Lane Kiffin immediately. But with the power college football coaches have these days, that's probably not going to happen. Shame on you, USC. Fire Lane Kiffin and repudiate this insanity.<br />
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And just so you know, I'm not the first one to wonder what's going on here...See <a href="http://bootleggersports.com/archives/3203">this post</a> on Bootlegger Sports from last June. And evidently USC has done some damage to other 13-year olds: See <a href="http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketball/blog/the_dagger/post/USC-disses-13-year-old-recruit-again?urn=ncaab,186742">this article </a>at rivals.com. And know also that the NCAA doesn't seem to have any <a href="http://www.ncaa.org/wps/portal/ncaahome?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/ncaa/ncaa/legislation+and+governance/eligibility+and+recruiting">guidelines</a> for recruiting anyone before freshman year of high school, much less make a commitment to same.Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276431235780032142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7369173.post-87933122388813011402010-01-29T11:56:00.001-06:002010-01-29T11:59:04.227-06:00To Tell or Not to Tell?<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">Recent postings on the NACAC elist have weighed in on the merits or demerits of posting college admission results in a public place like a bulletin board. At some schools, it’s nobody’s business; at others, it’s a celebration of community spirit. A lot of that seems to depend on the social/economic situation of each school, which makes this activity an interesting barometer of college outlooks at both the school and the individual student level.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">For privileged schools, the competition is so intense it’s dangerous to post all acceptances, especially when there’s always the chance of hearing, “Why did Jimmy Smith get into Nirvana U when my Susie didn’t?” and worse. The can of worms here is very large and smelly. Despite what we’d like to think and how we try to present it, privileged families often see college admission as a contest to be won and, even more insidious, as a zero-sum game: If your kid wins, mine loses. (As if not getting into Nirvana means you end up having to attend Hollywood Upstairs Medical College.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">On the other hand, less-privileged schools like charters and others serving low-income and first generation students, are justifiably proud when their students are accepted to post-secondary institutions. They have to work many times harder than privileged schools to bring their students into striking distance of four-year colleges, so a success there is a major event, even if the college isn’t “top tier” or “most competitive.” The point is to have students attend and finish well so they can help create the critical college-going culture schools need. And the challenges aren’t just academic; they have to address social, cultural, and other challenges not as prominent with their better-off peers.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">I like to see the map of the U.S. with pins showing where students are when I visit a school. That tells me a lot about how widely the school has asked its students to look, which also tells me that they’ve really encouraged their students to think broadly about what they want. In a low-income school, that can be quite an impressive display (think not only acceptances, but good scholarships, financial aid, and an ability to see the world), providing inspiration for future graduates. It’s a community as well as an individual achievement.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">As far as posting acceptance letters (all or just the final one) is concerned, I always feel uncomfortable. It looks like scalp collecting at privileged schools, which promotes the competition we try to tamp down. The “wall of shame” where some students post rejection letters (always a student idea, as far as I can tell) can be cathartic but a better idea to me would be to have a bonfire where students could consign these negative spirits to cleansing flames without having to reveal anything specific. (Maybe they could throw in some of the piles of mail they’ve gotten from colleges over the year as well. I’ve also advocated a collective scream along with all this—an atavistic release of all the tension that’s built up throughout the process.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">Parents and schools at all socio-economic levels can be justifiably proud of their students’ accomplishments. If we’ve done our duty as counselors we’ve also communicated the fact that the importance of the college experience is less about where you go than what you do when you’re there.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i>A version of this post also appears on <a href="http://www.nacacnet.org/PublicationsResources/Admitted/default.aspx">Admitted</a>, the blog of the National Association for College Counseling.</i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276431235780032142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7369173.post-51165440139271473662010-01-19T10:13:00.000-06:002010-01-19T10:13:53.988-06:00It Does Not ComputeLike many large ideas that once had meaning, the term "paradigm shift" has been trivialized to mean any time a group of people change their outlook about something. But as originated in Thomas Kuhn's <i><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=sWScX_aduGMC&dq=The+Copernican+Revolution&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=19ZVS9mQMoToM_Gt1JkJ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false">The Copernican Revolution</a></i>, it actually is a powerful concept. Kuhn demonstrates how the shift from an Earth-centered to a sun-centered concept of the solar system not only revolutionized science, it also completely changed the ways humans perceived themselves and their relationships to the world. A paradigm, in this sense, enables us to filter our perceptions according to a rational-seeming model. It also influences our behavior. When it is challenged or destroyed, we have to rethink who we are.<br />
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On a slightly less complex level, we also organize our world experience with metaphorical constructs, depending on and influencing our behavior. If we think human society is a cesspool of sin, we act one way; if we see it as a cradle of civilization, we act another way. For very complex manifestations like the brain, we rely on metaphors (think of them as mini-paradigms) as explanatory devices, even though they don't actually explain anything, but instead simply give us something to visualize.<br />
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Here's where it gets complicated: How we act as the result of our metaphorical constructs may be appropriate for the metaphor but not for the metaphor's object. So, for example, with the rise of the idea that the brain is a "computer" we have created ways to treat it as such. I don't think it's a coincidence that as computers have become more powerful and complex, the ways to test and collect data on students in every grade have become more complicated and intrusive. Our faith in and dependence on computers have lent credence to the metaphor that the brain is a computer, and therefore can be treated as one and in fact be thought of as separate from the body, a programmable thing that simply tells its holder what to do.<br />
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In his new book, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Not-Gadget-Manifesto/dp/0307269647">You Are Not a Gadget</a></i>, Jaron Lanier, the computer scientist who gave us the term "virtual reality," rebels against the prevalence of the brain/computer metaphor because it threatens to dehumanize us. An excerpt in <a href="http://www.harpers.org/media/pages/2010/02/pdf/HarpersMagazine-2010-02-0082805.pdf">Harper's</a> this month starkly outlines the problem:<br />
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<i>Information systems need to have information in order to run, but information underrepresents reality. Demand more from information than it can give you and you end up with monstrous designs. Under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, for example, U.S. teachers are forced to choose between teaching general knowledge and "teaching the test." The best teachers are thereby disenfranchised by the improper use of educational-information systems.</i><br />
<i>What computerized analysis of all the country's school tests has done to education is exactly what Facebook has done to friendships. In both cases, life is turned into a database. Both degradations are based on the same philosophical mistake, which is the belief that computers can presently represent human thought or human relationships.</i><br />
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Lanier's description here can be seen as elasticizing the brain/computer metaphor: If the brain is a computer it should be easy to collect data from it; if that data is collected and analyzed, it distances us from the individuals we got it from, and enables us to see them not as individuals but as data points for the larger "computer" that uses them as data. While collections of data as well as metaphors can direct our behavior, they shave off the rough edges and anything that doesn't fit. They are designed for generalities, not specifics. When we mistake the latter for the former, when we take the metaphor as reality, we can go seriously off course.<br />
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I'm spending time on this topic because more and more I see children treated like data in schools I visit and spend time in. Schools are oriented toward getting higher test scores, not better education (no, they are not the same thing...); they are forced to aspire toward artificial goals laid out by computerized systems that analyze and crunch numbers instead of genuinely reaching out to and helping the flesh-and-blood students in their classrooms. These imperatives suck all the pleasure out of attending school and out of teaching, for that matter. Even at small charter schools I work with, emphasis on score improvement seems to overshadow the possibilities of enjoying reading or math or history.<br />
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Upper and middle-class kids should not be the only ones getting real enrichment programs; their underserved counterparts should be getting them, too. If anything, underserved kids should get more of them because even though they have a lot of catching up to do, they have historically been deprived not only of educational opportunities, but also of ways to associate them with the genuine pleasure of reading something great or learning something wonderful. Thinking of students as little data points and their brains as little computers that just need "inputs" strips them of their essential humanity and renders their educations moot. They obey but do not learn; they accede to our demands but have no intellectual strength by which to make their own worlds richer. To substitute one metaphor for another, students should be seen as hungering for knowledge, not waiting for data. There's a universe of difference.Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276431235780032142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7369173.post-75974998435520869302010-01-05T13:09:00.000-06:002010-01-05T13:09:32.690-06:00Underserved Students and the Politics of the PracticalOne thing that's bothered me for a while is how often low-income and first generation students are steered pretty hard toward "jobs" rather than "education" when it comes to college. I can't argue with the imperative to earn money and support yourself and your family after college, not to mention paying off student loans, but I worry that with all best intentions we may be developing a laboring class to the long-term detriment of American intellectual and national life. It may be better educated than earlier working classes, but it still smacks of a division between the privileged and non-privileged.<br />
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<a href="http://books.google.com/books?as_auth=Jonathan+Kozol&source=an&ei=6ItDS6mWBovANcDJlfkI&sa=X&oi=book_group&ct=title&cad=author-navigational&resnum=9&ved=0CCUQsAMwCA">Jonathan Kozol</a> wrote, "Childhood is not merely basic training for utilitarian adulthood. It should have some claims upon our mercy, not for its future value to the economic interests of competitive societies but for its present value as a perishable piece of life itself." His compassion for children is well-known, but what strikes me here is the phrase "utilitarian adulthood." Much is made of ensuring that students are able to get jobs when they graduate from college. That's well and good, but it seems to me that Latino, African American, and low-income/first-generation students are seen more in that "utilitarian" light than their more privileged white counterparts. Working to change that outlook is one reason I do what I do.<br />
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If you are a well-off white student from a good high school, it's relatively easy to consider a liberal arts education without thinking about post-college work. You may want to be a doctor or lawyer or CPA, but you are comfortable knowing that you can still major philosophy, anthropology or English, any of which ignite the old jokes like "What are you going to do, open a philosophy store?" as Mark Slouka writes in his <a href="http://www.harpers.org/media/pages/2009/09/pdf/HarpersMagazine-2009-09-0082640.pdf">Harper's essay</a>, "Dehumanized: When math and science rule the school." But you still can afford to explore, take your time, or even think about going to graduate school to be an anthropologist or a historian because you're relatively sure you'll be employed at something after college. (Recent history aside.) You can major in theater because you know you'll eventually work for an investment bank anyway or if you do go into theater can rely on parents for support, at least for a little while. (I realize what a huge generalization that is, but I believe it's justified in contrast to underserved students' experiences.)<br />
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But first-generation kids get pushed toward the practical: Even if they're being encouraged to go to college, they're steered toward curricula that will end in a job right out of college. They're NOT steered toward the arts or history because the payoff isn't nearly the same. Most college advising programs I've seen advising low-income students emphasize the income-enhancing aspects of college attendance, not the intellectual stimuli or the opportunity to see well beyond one's own borders. Again, while I can't argue with more income, I can wish that we attended more to these students' minds instead of seeing them just as future laborers with BAs. Otherwise we risk their continued marginalization.<br />
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A young African American colleague recently told me about her own experience coming up through the Chicago school system. Although she is extremely good at math and was taking advanced courses at an early age, she was pushed to take a basketball scholarship at an obscure Florida college because she is also extremely tall. Even though she had demonstrated her brainpower, it was obscured by her height. Luckily she left her original college and transferred to one more appropriate to her talents, but my guess is that's more an exception than a rule. She was seen as a body, not as a mind; as a laborer, not as an intellectual.<br />
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One result of the emphasis on college as job preparation rather than life or even career development is that we continue to have a dearth of African American, Latino, and other artists and intellectuals from out of the mainstream. I've met many bright underserved students for whom the idea of "liberal arts" is a non-starter; they have to be sure they can make money right out of the gate so they can't waste time with "frills." It's hard to be comfortable studying Hispanic or Victorian literature when you feel the hot breath of necessity on your neck. But no one seems to have told them that they can live intellectual lives and have careers, and that's a shame.<br />
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Michael Roth's recent passionate <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-roth/liberal-arts-education-fr_b_360803.html?view=print">defense of the liberal arts</a> in the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/">Huffington Post</a> seems archaic in this context: "The cosmopolitanism of curricula at America' best liberal arts colleges is in tune with the wonderful diversity of student life. The thirst for experimentation, the ability to cross disciplinary or cultural borders, the scale of residential life -- all of these factors extend to learning outside the classroom and create vibrant communities that students remember and value throughout their lives." My guess it would leave a room full of low-income parents and students laughing bitterly--these ideas all sound like airy luxuries most people can't afford, and they'd be right. About the affordability, anyway.<br />
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But Roth (who is the president of <a href="http://www.wesleyan.edu/">Wesleyan University</a> in CT) touches on some of the things that make higher education in the United States so vital and essential even without a direct link to jobs. He says "The key is that the students at these schools are developing skills, learning how to learn, in ways that will serve them for decades." They are the things that help make going to college worthwhile not just as preparation for one's working life but also for one's mindfulness of life in the world, including being a citizen in its widest sense. The differences between training for a "job" and embarking on a "career" (one implies simply laboring at a task; the other implies vocation, growth, and mobility) include developing one's ability to be imaginative, to see beyond surfaces, to make connections or see patterns among seemingly disparate things, and to be flexible. Why shouldn't underserved students be able to develop these capacities the same as their better served peers?<br />
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Of course, Americans have long been suspicious of non-practical education, going back to long before the days of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. Sitting around reading just doesn't look like work (sorry, Mr. Lincoln), so what good is it? But as we move more and more into being a nation of ideas and services rather than muscular production, we need to be sure that brainpower is valued wherever it shows up. Education is a down payment on the possible: we can't know what will happen from moment to moment much less in a year or a decade. (Not to mention how many jobs will evaporate or come to be in the next few years.) All our students need encouragement to be well-educated, not just trained.<br />
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I was surprised to learn years ago that the Olympics were once confined to amateurs because that kept working class competitors out. Only the leisure class had the time and money to train for the contests, while workers had to, well, work. Colleges have been doing their best to enable "working class" students to overcome a similar barrier but current economic and social conditions are making it hard to justify college attendance as a social good in and of itself. But practicality and ratiocination (my favorite word from an undergraduate course in American literature) can coexist and even support each other. It's not an either/or situation. If we are to have a strong and multi-varied American culture now and in the future we need to create scholars, artists, and thinkers from every corner of American life. Enabling everyone who wants it to be an "amateur" for a few precious years can immeasurably expand our collective ability to live useful, thoughtful, and adaptable lives.Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276431235780032142noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7369173.post-32208500470831454402009-12-05T12:20:00.000-06:002009-12-05T12:20:13.748-06:00There Will Be Grades: Oilman's Son Goes to CollegeI've been reading <i>Oil!</i> by Upton Sinclair, the book upon which the movie <i>There Will Be Blood</i> is based. So far, it's not much like the film. It's told in a deceptively folksy manner by a narrator who sometimes speaks directly to the reader. The main character is not John Ross, the father (in the book he's called "Dad" and in the movie he was Daniel Day Lewis), but Bunny, his son (who is John Ross, Jr.). "Dad" is an industrious oil man who ensures his success with some casual swindling and genteel bribery, while looking out for his men and his son. Unlike in <i>The Jungle</i>, there's nothing horrific here yet, although one man falls in an oil well and can't be pulled out in one piece. The focus isn't on the horrors of the oil field but the subtler machinations of accumulating wealth.<br />
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I'm only halfway through so I'm guessing things are going to get ugly, but I've just begun Chapter 10, "The University," and I was struck by the opening paragraphs. They seem to encapsulate very efficiently the relationship among money, power, ideology, education, and ambition that can often be seen in American higher education culture. Sinclair's voice here is very sly and indirect, but the implications are unmistakable; he describes a prominent university built on questionable foundations and seems to delight in telling us how Ross enters the picture. Here is the description of the university and its founding around the time of World War I:<br />
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<i>Southern Pacific University had been launched by a California land baron as a Methodist Sunday school; its professors were all required to be Methodists, and it features scores of religious courses. It had grown enormous upon the money of an oil king who had bribed half a dozen successive governments in Mexico and the United States, and being therefore in doubt as to the safety of his soul gave large sums to professional soul-savers. Apparently uncertain which group had the right "dope," he gave equally to both Catholics and Protestants, and they used the money to denounce and undermine each other.</i><br />
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When Ross visits campus to see Bunny, he also meets the university's president:<br />
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<i>Still more reassuring was his meeting with President Alonzo T. Cowper, D.D., Ph.D., LL.D. For Doctor Cowper was in the business of interviewing dads; he had been selected by his millionaire trustees because of his skill in interviewing trustees. Dr. Cowper knew how a scholar could be at the same time dignified and deferential. Our Dad, being thoroughly money-conscious, read the doctor's mind as completely as if he had been inside it: if this founder of Ross Consolidated is pleased with the education his son receives, he may someday donate a building for teaching oil chemistry, or at least endow a chair of research in oil geology. And that seemed to Dad exactly the proper attitude for a clergyman-educator to take; everybody in the world was in the business of getting money, and this was a very high-toned way.</i><br />
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The transformation of ill-gotten wealth to "high-toned" educational pursuits seems perfectly sensible to Dad and Bunny, the idea being that the ends justify the means:<br />
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<i>Both Dad and Bunny took the university with the seriousness it expected. Neither of them doubted that money which had been gained by subsidizing political parties, and bribing legislators and executive officials and judges and juries---that such money could be turned at once into the highest type of culture, wholesale, by executive order.</i><br />
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Some time into his first year at SPU, however, Bunny realizes that his English course<br />
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<i>was cruelly dull, and that the young man who taught it was bored to tears by what he was doing; that the 'Spanish' had a French accent, and that the professor was secretly patronizing bootleggers to console himself for having to live in what he considered a land of barbarians; that the 'Sociology' was an elaborate structure of classification, wholly artificial, devised by learned gentlemen in search of something to be learned about; and that the Modern History was taught from text-books which had undergone the scrutiny of thousands of sharp eyes, in order to spare the sensibilities of Mr. Pete O'Reilly [a rival oil baron], and avoid giving any student the slightest hint concerning the forces which control the modern world</i>.<br />
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Sinclair presents university education as a veneer as well as a money-laundering scheme. But Bunny is also exposed to a professor who insists that students "think for themselves" and talks to Bunny in secret about the various aspects of the Bolshevik Revolution (on peril of losing his job). Bunny, already a character who tries to see beyond the surface, is highly influenced by these conversations, which disturbs Dad and also results in a file being kept on him by mysterious agents and informers.<br />
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In the book, nothing is pure, nothing untainted by corruption of some kind. What interesting about Dad is that he wants and respects money but doesn't seem interested in it as an end; it's great to have but his pleasure seems to be the wheeling and dealing as well as the hard work that are needed to get it. We'll see what happens as Bunny makes his way through college and brings his moral compass (already compromised) to bear on his father's life and business.Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276431235780032142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7369173.post-3115798402799870512009-10-30T12:06:00.000-05:002009-10-30T12:06:48.091-05:00Center for Student Opportunity<span style="font-family: inherit;">I'm a big fan of the <a href="http://www.csopportunity.org/index.aspx">Center for Student Opportunity</a>, a n</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">onprofit organization with a mission to promote college access and opportunity among first-generation and historically underserved student populations. They've produced a very fine guidebook of colleges that focuses on information particularly appropriate to these students, including what support is offered, scholarships and so on. It also has essays and tips from experts in the front. I saw the first edition last year at <a href="http://www.nacacnet.org/">NACAC </a>and bought ten copies on the spot to give to the charter school counselors I've been working with over the past two years.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;">CSO has also created a strong website called <a href="http://www.csocollegecenter.org/index.aspx">College Center</a> that lets students search for college access programs, ask experts questions about the college process and search for colleges offering advising, mentoring, transition programs, and so on. I expect them to continue adding to the list as they go on. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;">Colleges can find out how to partner with CSO to reach underserved students by clicking <a href="http://www.csopportunity.org/college_partners/partnership_program.aspx">here</a>. With a contribution to CSO (based on Carnegie Classification), institutions can not only reach individual students but also community organizations. Everybody wins.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;">CSO's most recent addition is a <a href="http://csopportunityscholars.org/">blog</a> section where ten students from minority, low-income, and first-generation backgrounds are sharing their stories or high school and college. The initial entries have the energy of a new project, projecting optimism and immediacy. Although there are only a few from each student so far, I hope they continue to record their thoughts and experiences for the benefit of their peers about to go through the process themselves. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;">Their situations reflect the concerns that many first-generation students have, such as having to be an example for their younger siblings and communities. They are also poignant in their forthrightness--one <a href="http://csopportunityscholars.org/tereza-ponce-de-leon/">student blogger</a> talks about how she discovered she was pregnant while she was applying to colleges. This forthrightness can help students who think that personal circumstances make it impossible to think about continuing their educations. (They blog as part of their having become Opportunity Scholars--see below.)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;">If you are a counselor or community volunteer who works with first-generation, low-income, and otherwise underserved students, the <a href="http://www.csopportunity.org/index.aspx">Center for Student Opportunity</a> can be a great help. Not only does the website have excellent resources, there is also a page where you can download <a href="http://www.csopportunity.org/whatwedo/counseling_outreach.aspx">free guides</a> for helping high school students, parents/families, and others. Students also have the opportunity to be nominated as <a href="http://www.csopportunity.org/comm_orgs/oppscholars.aspx">Opportunity Scholars</a>; if selected, they receive college counseling support from a network of volunteer counselors as well as a chance for a $1,000.00 renewable scholarship in college. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;">If you are a college and want to expand your outreach to underrepresented students, be sure to look at CSO's <a href="http://www.csopportunity.org/college_partners/partnership_program.aspx">Colleges Partnership Program</a>. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;">There's plenty more to explore on the site, and I expect it just to get better and better as more and more individuals and institutions connect to it. It is a welcome and necessary resource for the students we serve.</span><br />
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</span>Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276431235780032142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7369173.post-75657405976339580922009-10-25T19:47:00.003-05:002009-10-27T11:07:05.753-05:00Creating a Self: The Facts of Fiction<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: small;">The reasons many colleges give for requiring essays include getting to know more about the student, giving him or her a chance to explain something in the record, or providing a writing sample. Fair enough, but do they have to be “true?” More than one student has asked me, "Is it OK to write an essay that isn't factually accurate as long as it's good?" Answering questions like "What is your most significant experience?" or "What person, real or fictional, has had a major influence on your life and why?" or "Topic of your choice" tend to frazzle students attempting to impress the mysterious admission Inquisitors they imagine gathering in dank basements to determine their futures. They’re not talking about lying, exactly, but the bare-bones facts don’t quite do it, either.</span><br />
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As long as you aren't claiming club presidencies or social service you haven't really done, is there anything wrong with saying Thomas Jefferson is your most influential hero instead of Bono, your real hero? Is there a problem if you exaggerate an incident that "changed your life" even if it didn't so much, really, or if the situation was more mundane than you present it? I brought this topic to my <a href="http://www.nacacnet.org/">NACAC</a> colleagues recently to get their impressions and received a dozen or so responses.</span><br />
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Most of us, including me, opt for "honesty" and "truth," but those are slippery concepts when you're really asking someone to essentially create a character in 500 words or less. Asking a student to include subjective narratives about relatives, experiences, or outlooks in an application introduces an element that, no matter how it turns out, I'd have to call "fiction," with the “fact” being what lies beneath that essay.</span><br />
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Let's distinguish between "fiction" and "falsehood," and the purpose of the essay. One colleague wrote that "If the goal of an essay is for the student to provide insight about himself or herself, and if that insight is authentic, then maybe it doesn't matter if the person didn't exist or the experience never happened." We teach novels and short stories even though they aren't factually true because they reveal important "truths" about human existence. If it works for Hemingway and Oates and David Sedaris, why not for Sally or Billy in their applications? That whale wasn’t just a whale, was it?</span><br />
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Some said that it was important to hear the applicants' authentic "voice" and that it wouldn't come out in a "fictional" essay. But we hear and value authors' "voices" constantly in fiction. Even when they're not writing about themselves, they are by virtue of what they choose to observe and the stance they take toward it. I tell students that constantly--no matter what you choose to write about, you're writing about yourself. (Many parents do not like to hear this: At his parents' insistence one student substituted for an excellent and fascinating essay about his Jewish grandfather, who sold mattresses in Shanghai during WW II, a boring one that was all about himself.) We draw conclusions about Hemingway from his writing, why not about Billy?</span><br />
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Most of the colleagues I heard from said they expected students to be "truthful" and "honest" in their essays, but I think their reasons for doing so could as easily be answered by fiction if we are willing to look below the surface of the writing: "the essay helps us get to know the student better," it "reveals something about themselves that the rest of the application doesn't," it is designed to "communicate the living breathing person to assist admissions deans in putting together a diverse class with varying personalities, interests, and accomplishments...," "it reflects his genuine beliefs," it "shows the college who you are--both in the voice of your writing and in the content. Therefore it is essential that the content be true” and so on.</span><br />
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Don't all these responses describe the best fictions? Poe said that every short story should focus on creating one unified effect in the reader. Isn’t that what we’re asking our students to do? No one expects “The Tell-tale Heart” to be “true” but it sure is scary, because it taps into our basic fears. Shouldn't we give our young authors the same respect we give those we expect to show us truths through "lies?"<br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: small;">One colleague compared non-factual essay writing to phony reporting, but there's a difference--we expect reporters to give us the facts; to do otherwise gets you fired (unless you work for Fox News). Do we expect students to meet reportorial standards? I don't think so. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: small;">Conversely, we can blast the author of "A Million Little Pieces," not because he had actually written fiction, but because he lied to us about what he had done. We read memoirs differently from novels, as one colleague noted, distinguishing "between fiction and deception....If you read a 'real life account' of an adventure that was later revealed to be made up, you'd feel cheated--even if you continue to acknowledge the skill of the writer."</span><br />
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I think we may simultaneously place too much and too little responsibility on applicants and their essays. One colleague thought of the college essay "as less of a measure of writing talent and more of a glimpse inside the applicant's soul (his judgment, his perspective, his sensitivities, and his sensibilities." I'd still have to say that a fiction can do that maybe even better than "fact.” Expecting a look into an applicant’s “soul” may be way more than the exercise will bear. [I once read an application from a student whose essays were about his suicide attempt and his recovery. (Verified by a call to his counselor.) They were well written and the student was admissible, but his truthfulness sank him. That was a glimpse into a soul I’d rather not have had.]</span><br />
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If we want "just the facts" how can we rely on imaginative constructs like essays? If "it is essential that the content be true" what do we mean by "true?"</span><br />
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I believe that whatever a student writes about reveals something about him or herself, so the factual truth is less important than the arrangement of facts to arrive at a "truth" that points to something about the author. If a student writes a touching essay about a relative who may not exist, can't I appreciate the author's ability to express compassion and empathy? Is that any less "real" or "truthful" than if the relative were real? I know the student has the capacity to express those qualities, at least. (Yes, that person may be a cold-hearted bugger in real life, but it's not the fictionalizing that makes him so.) And will I ever know the facts in any case? Probably not.</span><br />
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So if students "made up their feelings and included actions/results that never happened, they are lying about themselves?" I don’t think so: they're creating a reality they know to be fictional. And maybe they have a clear understanding of what needs to be said.</span><br />
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Let's be honest: Every college admission essay really is a creative writing assignment. We should not expect rock-hard reportorial fact from seventeen-year olds under pressure to "reveal" themselves; it's not fair. We should broaden our sensibility to understand that what we receive is the "fact" and what we do with it is the result. If we read every essay as “literature” instead of reporting we might not only encourage better writing but also enjoy it more. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: small;">One colleague put it best: "I think if the essay is a vehicle for illustrating some important value/realization/personal motto that the kid really believes in, it's okay to stretch the truth or create a scene through which to convey the message."</span><br />
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If we agree that some of the greatest truths can be found in fiction, why not give college applicants the same consideration?<br />
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<b><i> Thanks to everyone who responded to my question on the NACAC listserv. Here are some other comments I received:</i></b><br />
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“We tell our students quite firmly that the college application essay is not a creative writing assignment!...It needs to be seen as an opportunity for the college to get to know the student more deeply than it could from a transcript and a set of test scores. How could that possibly happen if a student were to write about ‘truthy’ rather than truthful aspects of his/her life?”<br />
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“I think truthiness is where most essays fall. Does everyone have that one moment either while hiking the Grand Canyon or fishing with their grandpa where they learn some important life lesson before their 18th birthday? My life has never worked like that!”<br />
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“I have always called those fantasy essays…I simply tell my students that at some point they must clue their reader in that this is fiction.”<br />
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“The essay should all be true and real, just like when the student signs the application indicating the work is his/her own true and original work, it should also be real—otherwise what’s to stop them from adding activities and embellishing their apps in other ways?”<br />
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“Isn’t the answer relatively simple? The student must designate a fictional essay as such…”<br />
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“It would be nice if the point of the essay were more explicitly outlined on the application. If the point is to judge writing skills and creativity, I think the sky is the limit in terms of the truthiness of it all. But if the point is to learn more about the student’s life, and to gauge his thoughtfulness or self-awareness about his experiences up to now, then the actual truth is absolutely warranted.”<br />
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“The admission committee can glean information from an honest essay, regardless of topic, to help us put a student’s academic and leadership career into context…They may not be the most entertaining essays but if an essay offers insight that helps us make an informed decision it’s far more engaging. I can read good fiction on my own time.”<br />
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</span>Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276431235780032142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7369173.post-54972468458917862372009-10-06T15:26:00.003-05:002009-10-23T12:07:50.344-05:00Never Assume<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A remarkable </span><a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-million-dollar-kid-04-oct04,0,6324913.story"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">story</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> appeared in the Chicago Tribune last Sunday. It's about a remarkable young man named Derrius Quarles and his determination to get somewhere and be somebody. A foster child whose father was stabbed to death when Derrius was four and whose mother struggled with drugs, he had the strength of character to overcome the vagaries of his life and end up winning scholarships to excellent colleges all over the country, including Morehouse, where he now attends.</span><br />
<span style="color: #292727; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 15px;">Derrius's outlook can be summed up here: "You can't go around thinking you are inferior just because you didn't have parents," he says. "For me, it's about knowing where you are from and accepting it, but more important, knowing where you are going." </span><br />
<span style="color: #292727; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 15px;">At 17, he was living on his own, keeping himself together and focusing on the future. He budgeted his money and when he did the grocery shopping he avoided junk food in favor of fruits and vegetables. He never took his eyes off his goal.</span><br />
<span style="color: #292727; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 15px;">Derrius was fortunate to have someone see his potential. As often happens and as studies have shown, sometimes just one person can have an immense effect on a young person. For Derrius, that person was his summer biology teacher, Nivedita Nutakki, who told him he shouldn't waste his talent. Arriving as a freshman with a 2.5 GPA at Kenwood Academy, Derrius was taking three AP classes and earning a 3.6 by his junior year. </span><br />
<span style="color: #292727; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 15px;">In the middle of this amazing story is a passage that made me angry: "Even his oversize ambition couldn't get Quarles past one roadblock. He dreamed of attending Harvard, until one college adviser told him his 28 ACT score was simply not high enough. He abandoned his plans."</span><br />
<span style="color: #292727; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="line-height: 15px;">Regardless of whether Harvard or Morehouse (or any other institution) would be the best for him, no college adviser should have told him not to bother applying to Harvard or anywhere else. It is not for that person to say. I always tell students that it is their right and privilege to apply wherever they want so long as they understand clearly what the odds are. In this case, it's a shame that someone assumed Derrius wouldn't get into Harvard on the basis of that score. And it's almost criminal that Derrius was convinced to abandon his plans as a result. Any college adviser who thinks he or she can or should make that determination suffers from a bad case of <i>hubris</i>.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #292727; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="line-height: 15px;">The truth is, we cannot know what the future holds for our advisees. We don't know what colleges and universities will decide, even though we can come up with some pretty accurate guesses if we've had enough experience. We don't know how or when a student will suddenly "take off" and make us proud. But all you have to do is read Derrius's story to know that no matter where he went he'd make good, and that as a result the test scores say very little about him (and even so, they are miles above the average scores of someone from his background). </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #292727; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="line-height: 15px;">Again, I'm not saying Derrius should have gone to Harvard or anywhere else or that he's deprived as a result--clearly not. But no one should have told him it wasn't possible. Anything is possible, as this young man has already shown. While we may think we know a lot, the future always confounds us and we should always be humble in its presence. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #292727; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><i>Edit, Oct. 23: I was so taken with the story that I forgot I had met Derrius through </i><a href="http://www.chicagoscholars.org/"><i>Scholarship Chicago</i></a><i>, a program that provides help and mentorship throughout the college process and in college as well as financial assistance during college. When I met him he had already received several admission offers from colleges and was racking up scholarships. I would never have guessed at the hurdles he was going through he was so poised, confident, and focused. </i></span></span><br />
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</span></span>Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276431235780032142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7369173.post-55474447029678859112009-09-22T09:54:00.001-05:002009-09-22T09:55:35.375-05:00A Little RecognitionI'm pleased to report that my blog entry "Elephant in the Room" was <a href="http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/harvardquestions/#comments">featured</a> at the New York <i>Times</i>'s blog, The Choice, on Monday, Sept. 21, 2009, along with several others. Times reporter Jacques Steinberg wanted to publish some observations about the many questions people asked Harvard's dean of admission Bill Fitzsimmons. These and the reactions to the reactions (and will it ever stop??) can be read there, as can many other entries about college admission issues.<br />
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I'd be happy to hear your reactions and comments.Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276431235780032142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7369173.post-34209375653029306912009-09-17T13:39:00.002-05:002009-09-17T18:42:17.606-05:00Class of Luxury<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Have I just become an old crab or does the thought of a college dorm (sorry, residence hall) with a "heated pool, a hot tub, a sand volleyball court and four tanning booths" make you kind of cranky? Today's Chicago </span><a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/chi-purdue-posh-dorms-17-sep17,0,1040772.story"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tribune</span></a><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> reports on several luxe facilities featuring everything from walk-in closets to maid service, "communal" 47-inch flat-screen TVs to computer-linked washers and dryers. (The tanning beds, inexplicably, are at Arizona State.) <br />
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<div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not too many years ago I visited a college in Massachusetts that had just built a residence hall of six-person suites where each student had his own room, there were two bathrooms, and a kitchenette. Purdue's $52 million (yes you read that right) facility also comes with a meal plan. Many living facilities are built with single rooms (some even come with private bathrooms), since most kids have grown up without having to share a room or even a bathroom, and why would they want to start now? My thought on seeing that dorm was, Why would I want to make my own food in college?<br />
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Although many of these luxurious accommodations come with a hefty premium tacked on to the regular room and board charge, they are being snapped up even in this economy. Nothing, apparently, is too good for current college students. As the Trib writes, "Tom Cheesman, architect of Purdue's $52 million First Street Towers, said the residence hall is 'essentially a hotel.' He said it is especially attractive to 'helicopter parents who want to send their son or daughter to college campus but give them all the luxuries of home.'"<br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's certainly a far cry from my freshman dorm at Amherst. I lived on the 4th floor (no elevator) with two roommates, neither of whom bathed much, in a room meant for one or maybe two. The fireplace and woodbox revealed the building's early 20th-century origins, but the former had been blocked up so we relied on the inadequate steam heat that barely reached us in the winter and blasted us finally when it started to get warm. In the depths of a New England January we had an eighth of an inch of ice on the inside of our bedroom window. At least we didn't have to cart our own wood for the fire.<br />
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Somehow, though, we managed to survive and do well. I had bought a new "record player" to bring (it also had an eight track player!) as well as an area rug, a desk lamp, and an electric typewriter I had gotten for graduation. A clock radio, too. Some books, and clothes, as well as some records came in a few boxes. My roommates brought even less. There were students who had a lot more than I did. One of my dorm mates had a huge stereo and a water bed; so I suppose those who had, brought. (One of the Purdue students has been "keeping 30 pairs of shoes at the ready and jamming the bookshelf with every episode of "The O.C." and "Dawson's Creek."" Really? For what?)<br />
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</span> </div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But then I suppose we had less to bring and fewer, or at least different, expectations, about what to bring and what to expect about living in a dorm. As a kid I remember thinking that a "dorm" meant I'd be in a barracks with a lot of other people, a prospect that scared me. But I did like the idea of living with a few other guys. We didn't share a lot but we co-existed pretty well. My living situations got slightly better over the years, but I wasn't in it for the amenities, and reading the Trib article I felt glutted, overwhelmed by the presence of things in an environment where ideas and relationships should be dominant.<br />
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</span> </div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Colleges have been in an amenities race for some time now, building massive "fitness centers" and other facilities to attract students, and new dorms are no exception. I wonder, though, what it means to try to replicate what students have at home rather than having them experience communal or semi-communal living. Negotiating a bathroom with 30 other hallmates can be exasperating, but it can also teach patience and, well, negotiation; having to clean up after yourself (or, more likely, not) gives you a sense of who you are and a taste of living on your own. Trying as hard as you can to stay in your individual bubble seems sad to me--like going to Paris and never leaving your hotel. <br />
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Everyone romanticizes their college experiences so I won't go on, but I do wonder what might have happened if Purdue had spent $52 million dollars on their labs and on faculty. Or if ASU had bought textbooks for low-income students instead of tanning beds. This kind of reckless consumption doesn't bode well for the future.</span> </div>Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276431235780032142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7369173.post-25193939411705161152009-09-11T11:14:00.008-05:002009-09-18T16:24:43.208-05:00Elephant in the Room<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica, serif;"><a href="http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/harvarddean-part1/#comment-21307"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Choice</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, a New York Times blog about college admission, has begun a series of answers to questions posed to Harvard’s Dean of Admission, Bill Fitzsimmons. </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Those of us who have worked in the field for more than a few days will probably know how to answer the questions from nearly 900 respondents. What’s remarkable is that even though there are dozens of books, articles, websites, counselors, and other methods purporting to reveal the “secrets” of college admission, the questions and assumptions are the same as they have always been.</span></span></span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The admission process is the elephant being discussed by the blind men: each one “knows” what he’s feeling—a tail, an ear, a leg—but no one knows the whole thing.</span><span style="font-family: Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Some insist that most spots in a Harvard class are reserved for wealthy donors or legacies; others believe that the deck is stacked against public school students (Interestingly, </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/fashion/06harvard.html?hpw"><span style="color: #0008ea; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Fitzsimmons</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, himself a Harvard alum, is from a blue collar background). Another demands to know that applying for financial aid will have no impact on a student’s chances, yet another asks how Harvard’s process can “reward diversity without committing a type of reverse discrimination.” The tone of the </span><a href="http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/08/harvarddean/#comments"><span style="color: #411478; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">questions</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> ranges from Harvard-induced bliss at having been accepted to outright skepticism, with some dark rumblings from fringy types about why Harvard “gives away” so many seats to “foreign born” students.</span></span><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Underneath all these comments are two questions that vary according to whether you have a child of college-going age or not: “How can my child reach the inner circles of wealth, connection and power?” and “Why can’t Harvard [or other appropriately big and powerful school] fix everything that’s wrong with our social system?” These are both unanswerable and mutually exclusive, which is what makes college admission so much fun.</span></span><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Ultimately, however, the pleas to Fitzsimmons add up to what used to be addressed to philosophers: “How shall we live our lives?” Parents of second graders want to know how to plan lives that will result in Harvard attainment; a high schooler worries that if she leads an “authentic” life she may be disadvantaged by someone who has polished and “created” hers; those without Harvard genes lambaste a policy that seems automatically to reward those who have them. We want answers that will assure us that life isn’t random but has some direction and meaning. But in expecting “Harvard” to provide those answers, we avoid the more difficult task of wrestling with them ourselves, which is why philosophy is so hard.</span></span><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Of course, one big mistake is to assume that only Harvard can address those questions. As college counselors and admission officers never tire of saying, the “best” college is the one that will challenge you appropriately, open your eyes to new ways of thinking, and help you develop and broaden your talents as you take your place in the world ahead. Plunging full-on into college life will be rewarding no matter where you are.</span></span><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">A true story: While I was in the Amherst admission office, one of our tour guides told us that her parents had pressured her mercilessly to apply to Harvard even though she wanted to attend Amherst. They had never heard of Amherst and insisted that Harvard was the place she’d go. After much haranguing, they finally prevailed upon her to visit Harvard and take the tour. At the end, a visitor asked the tour guide, “Is there anything you’d change about your Harvard experience?” The guide replied, “I would have gone to Amherst.” The rest, as they say, is history; hers, anyway.</span></span><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Despite our best efforts, college admission remains an enigma wrapped in a mystery stuffed in an elephant. We just need to remember that we’re dealing with flawed human beings and human systems. But Americans expect answers, not more questions: Socrates was executed for being annoying, remember--he wouldn’t last ten minutes in an admission office. And no matter what answers Fitzsimmons gives, they won’t be the ones questioners are looking for. Even Harvard can’t supply those.</span></span><br />
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</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">A version of this essay appears on the NACAC blog, </span></span></i><a href="http://www.nacacnet.org/PublicationsResources/Admitted/default.aspx"><i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Admitted</span></span></i></a><i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">.</span></span></i><br />
</div>Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276431235780032142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7369173.post-63616548665062287702009-08-30T09:51:00.003-05:002009-08-30T10:06:10.401-05:00Some National PressYou'll find me quoted in the Fall 2009 issue of Newsweek/Kaplan's <span style="font-style:italic;">Finding the Right College for You</span> issue. Reporter Catharine Skipp interviewed me back in the spring about the College Board's new "Score Choice" option. She wanted to know how it would affect the population I work with-- low-income and first generation students. Of course, it's irrelevant to them, and I said so: "It's a silly, ridiculous thing for the College Board to do." One more way to tweak its earnings and look like it's doing kids a favor. You can read the article <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/id/210873">here</a> or buy the whole issue for $11.95. I found it in the checkout line at the grocery store. (It's also available on the web <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/id/39282">here</a>.) <div><br /></div><div>If you're one of my friends or relatives and don't need any help with colleges, you can find me on page 29, bottom of the second column and into the third. By the time you read it your groceries will have been bagged and you'll have avoided any more "news" about the Gossleins. Enjoy!</div>Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276431235780032142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7369173.post-6358895690563363332009-08-20T10:52:00.007-05:002009-08-20T11:03:05.388-05:00Random Pleasures<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:documentproperties> <o:template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:revision>0</o:Revision> <o:totaltime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:pages>1</o:Pages> <o:words>585</o:Words> <o:characters>2927</o:Characters> <o:company>College Access Counseling</o:Company> <o:lines>47</o:Lines> <o:paragraphs>7</o:Paragraphs> <o:characterswithspaces>4097</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:shapedefaults ext="edit" spidmax="1026"> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:shapelayout ext="edit"> <o:idmap ext="edit" data="1"> </o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Helvetica;font-size:10pt;" >Surprise! Harvard, Princeton, and Yale top the <span style="font-style: italic;">U.S. News</span> university listings again, with Williams atop the liberal arts college list. I’ve suggested for a number of years that the perennial “winners” simply be retired and let the rest duke it out each year (no offense to Duke) so we can get a real contest going. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Helvetica;font-size:10pt;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Helvetica;font-size:10pt;" >If we’re stuck with the rankings, let’s make a cage match out of ‘em! Instead of a constant set of characteristics that give rise to virtually identical hierarchies each year, change things up so there’s some real suspense, like there is on the WWF or American Gladiators. Forget all this genteel bickering, or “reputation rankings” filled out more or less at <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/08/19/rankings">random</a>, let’s get some chairs, boards, barbed wire, and beer and get a real contest going. If you’ve seen Mickey Rourke in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Wrestler</span>, you know what I mean. Have colleges clash over stuff that matters: the square footage of their student centers; the pounds of tomatoes served in the dining hall; the average height of the faculty; the most expensive textbooks; the acreage per student. These are all concrete elements that can be objectively measured. For that matter, let’s include the amount of concrete on each campus. Have college presidents batter each other with rolled-up copies of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Chronicle of Higher Education</span> until there’s only one left standing (presumably the one who used the issue with the Almanac tucked inside). <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Helvetica;font-size:10pt;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Helvetica;font-size:10pt;" >Whether or not people actually use the rankings in any biblical way, the main impulse seems to be to eliminate randomness from the college selection process: If you look at all the factors and set them up rationally, you’ll have the “perfect” match!<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Helvetica;font-size:10pt;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Helvetica;font-size:10pt;" >This, we know, is totally impossible. Any time college counselors get together, we talk about how we came to our alma maters more or less by accident, not design. We took our tests, sent in some applications, and chose one of the ones that chose us. We seldom did doctorate level research before deciding where to apply; yet we managed to emerge as decent human beings.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Helvetica;font-size:10pt;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Helvetica;font-size:10pt;" >I applied to Amherst because my counselor tossed out the name in passing one day. I’d never heard of it but since it was a bus ride from New Jersey I went up and fell in love with it: it looked like what I thought college should look like. And luckily, they accepted me. (Another story.) When an Amherst professor once challenged me about why I had chosen Amherst, I couldn’t say anything that he didn’t counter with a variation of, “But plenty of other schools have good teachers and classes. What makes Amherst unique?” I was annoyed at the time but the exchange has stayed with me because the reality is I could have been just as happy anywhere else.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Helvetica;font-size:10pt;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Helvetica;font-size:10pt;" >We fool ourselves if we think we can eliminate randomness from college choice, or, indeed, from many of the choices we make. Today’s<a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-dorm-matchmakers-20-aug20,0,7095367.story"> Chicago <span style="font-style: italic;">Tribune</span></a> has a story on how some colleges are trying to use social networking to match up roommates. Students can see their future roomies and make decisions accordingly. But jettisoning randomness can make life duller and bring out our lesser instincts. One girl said she asked for a change when she saw the “shabby” house her prospective roommate lived in. Another college stopped using extensive matching questionnaires because it just led to people’s being more disappointed when things didn’t work out.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Helvetica;font-size:10pt;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Helvetica;font-size:10pt;" >So if we’re not going to have collegiate cage matches anytime soon, I suggest taking the rankings and getting some darts. You know where I’m going with that…</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;" >A version of this blog entry appears in the NACAC blog <a href="http://www.nacacnet.org/PublicationsResources/Admitted/default.aspx">Admitted</a>.</span></span><br /><span style=";font-family:Helvetica;font-size:10pt;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276431235780032142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7369173.post-28010857498194433802009-08-17T20:33:00.003-05:002009-08-17T21:25:15.449-05:00Just the Facts, Ma'amOn the El recently I saw a woman reading a Kindle. It was sleek and cool. She had strapped it into a pink leather case and she looked sleek and cool reading it. I tried to see what she was reading but the gray screen and dark gray letters were too dark to figure out in the bright light of the train. I was curious, but not about the book she was reading, as I often am. I was curious about the device. Sleekness and coolness were what drew me to it.<br /><br />I thought of Nicholson Baker's article in a recent <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/03/090803fa_fact_baker"><span style="font-style: italic;">New Yorker</span></a>. He talks about the Kindle. It gave me chills: "Here's what you buy when you buy a Kindle book. You buy the right to display a grouping of words in front of your eyes for your private use with the aid of an electronic display device approved by Amazon." Even worse: "You get the words, yes, and sometimes pictures, after a fashion. Photographs, charts, diagrams, foreign characters, and tables don't fare so well on the little gray screen." This doesn't sound like "reading," but more of a "content acquisition" where everything is sacrificed to the pragmatic task of "accessing" the "content provider's" words in order to "process" them.<br /><br />Stripped of its pleasures, including the tactile and visual, reading becomes a task, something to be gotten through as opposed to something that can offer real satisfactions. Pragmatism trumps delight. The same can be said for schools and school systems where standardized testing has become the yardstick for "progress" and the stand-in for "education. Students in grade school are drilled on test-taking skills instead of reading and writing; they are molded into good "units" so their schools can do well on their own tests. Is it any wonder they hate school?<br /><br />As we try to get students from disadvantaged backgrounds to look ahead to college, it's important to remember not to "process" them but to "educate" them. That means giving their minds something to expand into and grow on. Stripping education down to its pragmatics, the right answers on the test sheet, makes students passive consumers of data, not thinkers or doers. As with the Kindle, the pleasures of thought, of ideas, of detours, of visual imagery and inference, of "what ifs?" seem all to have been drained away so students face a gray screen designed just to deliver the basics so they can "perform." I can't imagine how dreary that must be to anyone with the slightest spark of intelligence and I can see why students are bored to death.<br /><br />Recently I gave a talk to a grade school faculty about ways to engage students in the college process. The school is located in a poor section of town, with groups of young men hanging out on nearby street corners. The student body is nearly all poor and African American; the school hopes to set them on a path away from poverty and crime into a successful life. They already take their 4th to 8th graders to a different college campus each year to give them an idea about what college can be like and what they can have if they try.<br /><br />Although these experiences may be impressive for the kids, I spoke to the faculty about creating an imaginative environment as well so they could ingest the spirit of college, not just the bricks and mortar. It's not enough simply to carry 4th graders to a college campus, they need a reason to be there. As a rule, 4th graders don't plan ahead ten years, but they can react to stories and ideas. I suggested teachers talk about their alma maters' mascots and have students write stories about them. I asked them to use their students' imaginative capacities as a way to plant seeds for college rather than focus on the pragmatics of how much more they'll earn with a B.A. Without a wishful, idealized basis, students won't get the pragmatics later on.<br /><br />Imagination precedes pragmatics, as anyone who was read to as a child knows. We imagine things before we understand them; we fantasize before we realize the reality that surrounds us. But these early constructs sustain us even after we discover that fairy tales aren't real or Wilbur wasn't a live pig. To grow up without fantasy is to grow up in a poverty much longer-lasting and brutal than physical poverty because it cannot be recovered later in life. For students who are growing up in the depths of poverty, imaginative and exciting schooling may be the difference between success and mere survival. We need to fantasize in order to think about creating a world that can suit us. Out of this comes the motivation to invent, challenge, go beyond "right now" to the future.<br /><br />Trying to help schools orient their low-income, first-generation students toward college, I want to add complexity, not strip it away. The Kindle, along with test prep, online education, and more-but-less activities like emailing and twittering, strips words and concepts of their beauty and elegance, impoverishing them. We make words just units of data, and that is a great shame. We need to set our students' minds on fire, not tame them, and I believe any student of any background can be brought to the liveliness of mind that will support him through college and beyond. But it can't be done if authors are merely "content providers" and teachers are merely "data processors."<br /><br />The more I work with underserved students and their teachers and counselors, the more I see that education without imagination is deadening, not enlivening. Only by addressing the ineffable can we help our students rise above their daily lives to conquer the world in their own ways.Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276431235780032142noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7369173.post-83365209315302262332009-08-03T19:02:00.000-05:002009-08-03T20:06:54.006-05:00College Access CounselingTo see what I've been doing over the last two years, follow this link to my newly designed website: <a href="http://www.collegeforall2.org">College Access Counseling</a>. I've had the pleasure of developing a comprehensive college counseling curriculum (say that three times fast) for <a href="http://www.chicagoscholars.org">Scholarship Chicago</a> and creating a professional development series for <a href="http://www.incschools.org">college counselors</a> in Chicago area charter schools. The big challenge has been to take what I've learned from my days at Amherst and as a college counselor and make it accessible to the adults who work with students from low-income and first generation college backgrounds.<br /><br />Working for myself has also been a challenge, really, but so far it's been rewarding. I keep saying I've been more lucky than smart, but as I've learned how to present myself I've started to create my own luck. That includes promoting my work more! So if you're a school or community organization that works with underserved kids and wants to help them think about college, you know where to reach me.Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276431235780032142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7369173.post-39806793254354326142009-07-24T13:04:00.003-05:002009-07-24T13:10:45.719-05:00Busman's Holiday Reading<span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">This entry also appears on the NACAC blog, <a href="http://www.nacacnet.org/PublicationsResources/Admitted/default.aspx">Admitted</a>.</span></span><br /><br />Heading for the hills at last, speeding to the shore or dashing to your <span style="font-style: italic;">dacha</span> for a few blissful weeks away from the office? Feeling guilty that you haven’t begun writing recommendations or finished your fall travel planning? Worried about not answering your BlackBerry or iPhone or being away from your laptop? (You <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">are</span> going to be away from your laptop, aren’t you?) Have no fear—here are some books about college and the college admission process you can take with you so you won’t suffer too much withdrawal. The best thing—you can read them when you want to.<br /><br />First off is Jean Hanff Korelitz’s novel, <span style="font-style: italic;">Admission</span>, which has Portia Nathan, a Princeton admission officer, dealing with the double helix of university admissions and admissions about her own past. It’s a well-written and sympathetic book that gets to the heart of the dilemmas admission officers face while also getting to the heart of its main character. And you’ll wonder about her final decision for a long time.<br /><br />Tom Wolfe’s <span style="font-style: italic;">I Am Charlotte Simmons</span> is breezy and archly critical as he tends to be, but it’s a sharp, funny novel about a girl from the other side of the tracks and her experiences at a Duke-like university down south. On the pre-college side, try <span style="font-style: italic;">Prep</span> by Curtis Sittenfeld. Its premise is similar—a girl from Indiana receives a scholarship to attend a prestigious East Coast boarding school, with all the transitions and awkward moments that entails. Both have some funny and poignant moments, with great characters all around.<br /><br />For a nonfiction look at being odd man out, try <span style="font-style: italic;">Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White Collar Dreams</span>, a memoir by Alfred Lubrano, a kid from Bensonhurst who ends up attending Columbia University, where his bricklayer father had helped build some of its buildings.<br /><br />Some hefty but eye-opening reading comes with Jerome Karabel’s <span style="font-style: italic;">The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton</span>. This exhaustively researched and well-written book weighs in at 711 pages but its revelations about how these universities conducted admission in the late 19th and early 20th centuries will curl your hair if sun and surf haven’t done that already. It’s less an indictment than a reality check: “golden age” of college admission? Not so fast! Who knew that the Ivies once tried very hard <span style="font-weight: bold;">not</span> to have too many smart kids?<br /><br />It’s been out for a while but it’s worth reading Jacques Steinberg’s <span style="font-style: italic;">The Gatekeepers</span>, if you haven’t already. Reportorial but empathetic (Steinberg writes about college admission topics for the New York Times), it provides a behind-the-scenes look at the admission process by focusing on one admission dean, Ralph Figueroa, at Wesleyan as he goes through an admission year.<br /><br />Thomas Hine’s <span style="font-style: italic;">The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager: A New History of the American Adolescent Experience</span> helps answer the question, Where the heck did all these kids we work with come from? Hine provides a fascinating contextual narrative that illustrates the evolution of the creature we now call a “teenager.” While teens once were expected to take on adult roles very quickly, they are today both courted and feared as a group, and, as Hine puts it, “School and university are simply a convenient place [sic] to store them until their talents are required.” Discuss! His final chapters ask us to perhaps redefine what being a teen means in our changing culture, and you may wonder a bit less about why they behave the way they do now. Or not—the book was written before the rise of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.<br /><br />So have fun wherever you go (or stay) and leave the guilt behind. Reading at least one of these books should inoculate you against out-of-office queasiness. See you in the fall!Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276431235780032142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7369173.post-33720340263309133782009-07-19T15:12:00.003-05:002009-07-19T16:03:27.002-05:00More Follies of the Striving ClassJacques Steinberg's New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/education/19counselor.html">article</a> and <a href="http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/counselor/?apage=2#comments">blog entry</a> about overpriced "independent college counselors" hit the paper/blogosphere recently. Although he's a day late and a dollar short, (they've been in business for quite a while) it's good to have his voice out there again about the absurdities of paying tens of thousands of dollars for college counseling.<br /><br />While it's fine, I guess, for rich people to spend their money any way they see fit, it does seem to belong in a category all by itself, especially when it gets to the point of putting on a fashion show to demonstrate what one counselor (who clearly believes Princeton is still living in Fitzgerald's Jazz Age) thinks students should wear to college interviews. It has an almost Borat-ish feel to it: Are these ambitious students being set up by an artful impostor?<br /><br />Not just cluelessness but arrogance are on display in the articles:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“It’s annoying when people complain about the money,” the Vermont-based counselor, Michele Hernandez says</span><span style="text-decoration: underline; font-style: italic;"></span><span style="font-style: italic;">. “I’m at the top of my field. Do people economize when they have a brain tumor and are looking for a neurosurgeon? If you want to go with someone cheaper, or chance it, don’t hire me.”</span><br /><br />I'm not sure what she means by being "at the top of her field" because as far as I know we don't have any ranking system that would quantify that, nor is there anything like the rigorous testing and qualifying hurdles that neurosurgeons go through. Kind of an insult to neurosurgeons, really. If she means she charges the most, well, that seems like a given. If she means because she gets her counselees into "top" schools, that's relatively easy when you can pick your clients, they can afford your fee (and presumably full tuition afterwards), and your definition of "top" covers a rather wide range of institutions.<br /><br />Some claims put forward by these independents are tenuous at best. One who says she worked in the Cornell admission office, had in fact been simply an alumni interviewer; another was an outside reader for Yale, which means that she helped with the overflow of applications but probably had little or no decision-making power. But these slight qualifications, exaggerated claims, and sometimes wildly inaccurate information don't seem to put people off.<br /><br />When I lived in Baton Rouge in 1989 there was a woman who called herself an independent counselor by virtue of having sent her own daughter to college. She told one of my students that the SAT was easier in Texas than Louisiana, and the student, despite evidence to the contrary (including a letter from the president of the College Board), rose at 4AM to drive to Houston and took the test there because the woman "cost $800.00" so she must be right. Perhaps we're dealing with that kind of psychology here. More recently, I knew whenever my students in Chicago were using one particular woman when their college lists were geared more to their egos than reality.<br /><br />Hopefully, the vast majority of independent counselors are decent people who provide a decent service at a decent cost. They take up the slack when students have no good school counselor or can't see one easily. I think things have improved since my days in Cajun country, but still, some people don't seem to mind that they're spending a fortune to get something they could get just as well if not better for far less.<br /><br />My question is, Why not? I could vent all day about independents, but what really interests me now is, Who the hell are the people paying the price? Can I assume that they're the same ones who pay $6,000. 00 for a handbag or $5,000.00 for a shower curtain? I'd really like to know who they are and what they hope to gain. I assume we're dealing with parents, of course; my guess is that their kids suffer through all the poking and prodding and planning and preening and strategizing, looking forward to the day they can get out of the house and be themselves, if they know who that is by then. The parents, meanwhile, get to brag about their new servant, uh, counselor, and how precious Gwen will get to Exlibris University as a result.<br /><br />I'd love to study this group and find out what motivates them, how they treat their children, how they themselves got to college, and why they'd try to buy something so dubious as an easy path to the Ivy League or similar. Have they read the dreadful guidebooks of Elizabeth Wissner-Gross? Do they contact all their Ivy friends to make contacts for Junior? Do they try to call the Dean of Admission themselves or do they just let the servant do that? Just wondering. As a former anthropologist I'd give a lot to study this culture and try to figure out how it all intersects with American education and class anxiety.<br /><br />In the long run, it doesn't really matter because we're talking about a fraction of a fraction of a percent of applicants each year, a number so negligible that when you step back it seems a waste to even bother writing about it. The huge majority of students are doing quite well without gilding their applications for the effect. But, like $64,000.00 commodes, $40,000.00 advice fascinates us. While 99.44% of the US gets along fine without the unnecessaries, the freakish .56% still exerts its power over those of us in the cheap seats.Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276431235780032142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7369173.post-74199308207663847702009-07-14T16:04:00.003-05:002009-07-14T16:15:55.891-05:00Keeping SecretsI’m not a sociable traveler. When I’m on a plane or a train I would really rather read or sleep than chat with the person next to me. It’s not that I’m antisocial generally, it’s just that these are times when I can focus on catching up on that biography of Edison or back issues of The Atlantic I’ve been meaning to read. I relish being out of touch. But even more, to be honest, I usually just can’t work up any interest in a stranger’s life, and can’t imagine why someone else would be interested in mine.<br /><br />This posture became particularly important when I was an associate dean of admission at Amherst and then a college counselor. Telling someone you’re a college admission officer is like revealing you’re a doctor—the other person always has something for you to diagnose right there in public.<br /><br />“Oh really?” he says, “My kid has a 3.2 GPA and a 28 ACT score. Where should he go to college?” He might as well ask to have his appendix taken out right in the exit row. And of course it doesn’t stop there:<br /><br />“What do you think about Gabbler College?”<br />“Should my kid use that Common Application? What is that, anyway?”<br />“Can a middle class family get financial aid anymore?”<br />“If my kid plays women’s soccer, will that help her get into Bigbucks University? My uncle-in-law went there, will that help?”<br /> “I heard that Pyrex College is a real party school. Is that true?”<br /><br />Personally, I’d rather take out my <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">own</span> appendix than have one of these interactions. I found a kindred spirit while on vacation recently. In her excellent novel, <span style="font-style: italic;">Admission</span>, Jean Hanff Korelitz puts her main character, Portia Nathan, through an excruciating dinner party where she has to defend the college admission process to a particularly aggressive and disbelieving guest (who, of course, has a child soon to be applying to college).<br /><br />Portia has been introduced as an associate dean of admission at Princeton, so there’s no escaping the grasp of her clueless fellow guest:<br /><br /> <span style="font-style: italic;">Obviously tipped off, [Diana] made for Portia immediately, taking the other half of a too-small sofa in the living room and leaning right in. Within moments, Portia was in possession of Diana Halsey Bennet’s entire resume, and John’s sister was already moving on to the unnaturally engorged resume of her daughter, Kelsey (field hockey captain, class secretary, treasurer of the literary magazine), who sat on the other side of the living room, looking—to her credit—horribly embarrassed.</span><br /> <br />The evening goes on like this for Portia as she tries to enjoy the meal with her lover’s family. Finally, she more or less gives up:<br /><br /> <span style="font-style: italic;">“Oh I’m sure your job is very hard.” Diana shrugged, looking as if she were sure of no such thing. She was also looking peevishly at her daughter, as if the looming social diminishment she anticipated were all the girl’s fault. “But let me ask you something. Why do you even ask, on the application, where parents have gone to college? I mean, if you’re going to penalize the kids for having parents who read the newspaper and take them to Europe. Isn’t it better not to ask at all? I mean,” she said, utterly missing the point, “the less you know, the more level the playing field. That’s what I think.” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Portia looked sadly at the now empty wineglass in her hand. She could not remember, really, drinking it, let alone how it had tasted, but she saw that it had been red, and she very much wanted more of it….</span><br /><br />How many times have we as admission officers or college counselors looked into that wineglass, hoping for a hailstorm or sudden pyroclastic flow to interrupt the moment? Particularly painful is the fact that we can see the other person’s point but realize that no matter how we respond he or she will be convinced we’re keeping the secrets to ourselves. The truth is out there, says our Mulderian seatmate...Better to say you’re a ventriloquist or a shepherd or a Mafia hit man. Then you can read in peace.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">A slightly different version of this blog entry appears in </span><a style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.nacacnet.org/PublicationsResources/Admitted/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=39">Admitted</a><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">, the blog of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. </span>Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276431235780032142noreply@blogger.com0