Out of Control Parenting

The "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.

Unfortunately for us, Margaret K. Nelson has written an interesting and level-headed book on the topic called Parenting Out of Control: Anxious Parents in Uncertain Times. 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.

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."

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 unlimited 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.

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!

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.

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.

Parenting Out of Control 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 Parenting a good source for further discussion and observation.

Center for Student Opportunity

I'm a big fan of the Center for Student Opportunity,  a nonprofit 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 NACAC and bought ten copies on the spot to give to the charter school counselors I've been working with over the past two years.


CSO has also created a strong website called College Center 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. 


Colleges can find out how to partner with CSO to reach underserved students by clicking here. With a contribution to CSO (based on Carnegie Classification), institutions can not only reach individual students but also community organizations. Everybody wins.


CSO's most recent addition is a blog 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. 


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 student blogger 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.)


If you are a counselor or community volunteer who works with first-generation, low-income, and otherwise underserved students, the Center for Student Opportunity can be a great help. Not only does the website have excellent resources, there is also a page where you can download free guides for helping high school students, parents/families, and others. Students also have the opportunity to be nominated as Opportunity Scholars; 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. 


If you are a college and want to expand your outreach to underrepresented students, be sure to look at CSO's Colleges Partnership Program. 


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.

Creating a Self: The Facts of Fiction

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.

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 NACAC colleagues recently to get their impressions and received a dozen or so responses.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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?"


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. 


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."

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.]

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?"

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.

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.

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.  


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."

If we agree that some of the greatest truths can be found in fiction, why not give college applicants the same consideration?

Thanks to everyone who responded to my question on the NACAC listserv. Here are some other comments I received:

“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?”

“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!”

“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.”

“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?”

“Isn’t the answer relatively simple? The student must designate a fictional essay as such…”

“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.”

“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.”

Never Assume

A remarkable story 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.
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." 
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.
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. 
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."
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 hubris.
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). 
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. 


Edit, Oct. 23: I was so taken with the story that I forgot I had met Derrius through Scholarship Chicago, 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. 

Elephant in the Room

The Choice, 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. 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.

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. 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, Fitzsimmons, 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 questions 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A version of this essay appears on the NACAC blog, Admitted.

Random Pleasures

Surprise! Harvard, Princeton, and Yale top the U.S. News 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.

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 random, let’s get some chairs, boards, barbed wire, and beer and get a real contest going. If you’ve seen Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, 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 The Chronicle of Higher Education until there’s only one left standing (presumably the one who used the issue with the Almanac tucked inside).

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!

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.

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.

We fool ourselves if we think we can eliminate randomness from college choice, or, indeed, from many of the choices we make. Today’s Chicago Tribune 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.

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…

A version of this blog entry appears in the NACAC blog Admitted.

Keeping Secrets

I’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.

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.

“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:

“What do you think about Gabbler College?”
“Should my kid use that Common Application? What is that, anyway?”
“Can a middle class family get financial aid anymore?”
“If my kid plays women’s soccer, will that help her get into Bigbucks University? My uncle-in-law went there, will that help?”
“I heard that Pyrex College is a real party school. Is that true?”

Personally, I’d rather take out my own appendix than have one of these interactions. I found a kindred spirit while on vacation recently. In her excellent novel, Admission, 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).

Portia has been introduced as an associate dean of admission at Princeton, so there’s no escaping the grasp of her clueless fellow guest:

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.

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:

“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.”

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….

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.

A slightly different version of this blog entry appears in Admitted, the blog of the National Association for College Admission Counseling.

Fun Fashions in the News

The only thing funnier than Dolce & Gabbana fur hats and white pants for men are the "fashions" recommended for college interviewing by a private college counselor in New York . The show couldn't be more hilarious, not the least for featuring fashions that The Preppy Handbook loved to mock. It personified the fever dream of those who wish they could "summer" on the Vineyard drinking 'tinis and discussing their plans for the new yacht. Education? Not an issue; just the label, please.

The show was featured in Jacques Steinberg's NY Times blog, The Source, and you can read the whole thing here. He's already made fun of it, as have the two admission deans he asked about it, so I won't pile on too much here. You have to read it to believe it.

But it does once again demonstrate the insecurity and credulity of a certain group of people for whom designer labels mean something, even in college education. They are to be pitied more than scorned, I suppose, because in their desperation they deform their children to fit the mold they think will get them into Elitist University. They read all the "How to get in" and "Secrets of" books and then do everything they say, no matter what their children want or are capable of. I imagine grasping parents poring over those books and planning out little Heather's day from the time she's in kindergarten. They are like the nouveau riche capitalists in the late 19th century who married their daughters to penniless European aristocrats for the titles and the lands (which were mortgaged, of course--the aristocrats were no fools). Henry James would have a field day.

Finally, it all shows how anyone with even a tangential relationship to college admission can make a fortune (up to $15K at a time, not counting the DVDs--$45.00) soaking rich rubes. We can complain about them but as long as people have too much money (hard to believe these days) and not enough sense, these independent counselors will continue to embarrass themselves and their "clients." Shannon Duff enters the Hall of College Admission Indignities with this foray into ridiculous fakery.

Being Someone Else

I read "Being and Nothingness" one summer for a theater course at Northwestern (Sartre wrote "No Exit") and was fascinated with his image of a servant looking through a keyhole at some unspecified but vaguely naughty activity going on behind the door. While he's focusing on that activity, Sartre says, he's totally in a state of "being," simply "himself." Suddenly, however, he hears footsteps in the hall and becomes a self-conscious "actor," not truly himself.

We've all had the experience of being caught at something we shouldn't be doing. The more we try to behave "normally," the more we twist ourselves into behavioral knots. The same is true when we ask high school students to write their college application essays. We're asking them to "act" and not "be." More often than not, we get essays that are weird fun house mirror images of the applicant as he or she tries to be "authentic." and we complain that the essays end up being artificial.

In trying to help students, we often advise them to "relax" or "have fun" with the essays, which they hear as "I'm lulling you into a false sense of security before we reject you." So they frantically try to suss out what colleges really want, losing themselves in the process. The most often prescribed advice is "Just be yourself," which, as far as I can tell after reading thousands of them for Amherst College in the 90s, has no appreciable effect on the essays but doesn't stop us from giving it out.

Believe it or not, I don’t blame the applicants; I blame the advice. After years of prescribing "Be yourself" myself I think it’s probably the worst thing you can tell a kid under pressure to write for an unknown audience. It requires a self-understanding beyond even a 40-year olds’ and is most often interpreted as “Talk about yourself,” which, if you’ve ever been stuck in a conversation like that, quickly makes you want to gouge your eyes out with a pencil. But it also requires the writer to run smack into himself as he tears himself away from the keyhole and tries to "be himself."

I've never known what else to say but the other day I thought, well, why not have them write about what's going on beyond the keyhole instead of having them try to explain what they're doing looking through it? We should really say, “Be somebody else.” Placing the focus overtly outside themselves can free them from having to construct a "self" for us, acting instead of being. We can see how this works when we ask students to introduce each other rather than themselves; it's always easier to talk about another person than feel exposed yourself. (Of course, some can do it without problem or effort, but most can't, especially not in writing.)


The things we do tell as much about us (and may even be more revealing) than what we say we do. I might say I love the opera and Russian novels, but I may actually watch "The Real Housewives of Orange County" religiously and have a shelf full of Danielle Steele. But even if we ask an applicant to, say, write in a voice other than her own, we can learn a lot about whom she chooses and how the essay goes. Over the years I’ve advised a lot of students that their essays about other people or books or events are very good, but they’ve been brainwashed to think that unless they talk explicitly about themselves the essays won’t help them get into college or tell the admission people about themselves.

One of my students several years ago wrote about his Jewish grandfather, who spent World War II selling mattresses in Shanghai. It was wonderful, memorable (see?), and gave me a glimpse not only into a part of history I had never heard about but also revealed how much he cared for this man, who had survived the war and made it to the United States. (Unfortunately, his parents were horrified that he wasn’t “being himself” and vetoed the good essay in favor of a tedious one.)

I’ve written elsewhere about the existential issues surrounding the college application process, including the problem of imposing an overwhelming self-consciousness on 17-year old applicants. But asking students to be or focus on someone or something else can relieve them of that burden. If application readers are careful readers they sense the writer’s personality no matter what he or she writes about. A focus on an external person, object, or concept without worrying about "being yourself" might actually accomplish the thing we want most--creation of a window into the applicant.


A shorter version of this essay (as well as other entries) originally appeared on the Admitted Blog at the NACAC website.

What $40,000 gets you

If you think the amount I've listed in the title is what a year of college costs these days, guess again. It's the price that Michele Hernandez charges for a full-bore course of college admission preparation. On her website she indicates what this includes, starting in 8th grade:

All packages include unlimited time for parents and students from start (collecting materials and writing an in-depth evaluative report) to finish, culminating with completion of college applications and acceptance letters. Dr. Hernandez oversees everything from a customized reading list, help with all writing assignments in high school to course selection, testing schedule, summer activities, etc., all designed towards giving students that critical edge in the competitive admissions process.

From her comfortable perch in Weybridge, VT, Hernandez has managed to parlay a measly four years in the Dartmouth admission office into books and a ridiculous parody of college guidance, aimed at the well-heeled and foolish. One has to wonder who can afford this nonsense, especially now. Among other things, Hernandez says her counseling packages include "unlimited" personal college counseling, but I doubt this means she's going to turn up at your villa to cozy up to your future collegian and stay the week. Even more oddly, I have to wonder why anyone who could afford her services would bother--I imagine that most of those people are already sending their young Elis and Tigers, already as genetically engineered as collies, to the kinds of private schools that cost enough to have a decent college counselor or ten on staff. So what's the deal?

It seems beyond rational, frankly. I suppose part of me wishes I'd thought of this way to soak the rich first--it's a no-brainer, a very high-end version of hucksterism. And with twice her experience on the college side (Amherst) and six more on the high school side, I could easily charge three times as much, right? But can anyone really justify that price tag for advice and counseling that you can get rather easily with a little energy and self-determination, even without a college counselor at your high school? (But of course we're not talking about those kinds of people, the ones who have to rely on their high schools, public libraries, and other dreary prole resources...)

Well, let's face it, she's drawing on the same psychic insecurity that leads people of a certain income level to buy $8,000.00 handbags or $35,000.00 commodes (not a toilet in this instance, by the way, but the money's flushed away just the same). Her clients are "needy" all right, but in the pathetically insecure way that leads them to focus on name brands and price as substitutes for authenticity, quality, and, in college admission parlance, "fit."

Hernandez foregrounds as fact that she has "the highest success rate of any college admissions consultant in the country. Last year 100% of my clients were accepted to the Ivy League Schools or top colleges like Stanford and Middlebury." This is like shooting fish in a barrel--when you can pick and choose your clients and charge them a year's college tuition in advance to boot just for your handholding, what are the chances they won't get into so-called "top" schools?

The phrasing here is also somewhat misleading. It implies that all her clients were accepted to "top colleges" and also implies (read: baits clients' status-driven lust) that she can make a Gatsby out of a Gatz. Not so fast, I say. Her list of where clients have been accepted is far broader than the "Ivy League" statement implies. It includes:

Amherst College
Boston College (Honors program)
Boston University
Brandeis
Bucknell
Carnegie Mellon
Citadel
Clark
Colgate
Columbia
Connecticut College
Dartmouth
Dickinson
Duke
Emory
Georgetown (Foreign Service)
Hamilton (Bristol scholarship $20K 50%)
Lafayette
Marquette
Miami of Ohio, Honors College
MIT
Mt. Holyoke
Northwestern
Notre Dame
NYU:Tisch School
Oxford University (England)
Rice
Rollins
Rutgers (full scholarship)
Skidmore Honors Program
St. Andrews University (Scotland)
Stanford
Swarthmore
Syracuse
Tufts (Neubauer Scholar $10,000 stipend over four years)
Tulane
University of California University of Chicago
University of Maryland (College Park Scholar)
University of Miami

Now you may say that all of these schools are "top colleges" and I say, fair enough. But I suspect that anyone who ponies up the dough expects to be able to slap an Ivy sticker on the car tout de suite. After my years in high school college counseling I can claim at least as good a list if not better, and I did it for 70 kids at a time on a decent salary (But I also worked with kids who for the most part had two-PhD parents or lawyer/doctor parents, etc.). Now I'm really ticked as I calculate what I might have earned if I'd counseled the Hernandez way.

Well, there's no real point in fulminating any more. If you're rich enough and stupid enough and pathetically status-conscious enough to hire Hernandez, I suppose you're going to, whatever a rational person might say. But I pity your kid, who is probably yearning to escape your clutches and spend four years hiding from you his or her search for true, authentic experience in the forms of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, just to feel a little less like a robot. My idea of a true college advising horror show would be to have Hernandez and Elizabeth Wissner-Gross, harridan of high schools, work on your kid together.

Why am I so cranky about this? Why do I care what Hernandez can get away with? Perhaps because there are so many amazingly talented and worthy kids who could really use a shot at decent colleges but have trouble getting access to the kinds of resources that middle-class kids take for granted or that Hernandez puts out of reach. Maybe because I work with wonderful counselors who work for peanuts trying to help poor and underserved students from urban schools get into "top schools" so they can enter the mainstream of American society. Maybe this kind of conspicuous consumption has always ticked me off. Ultimately, it offends my sense that attending college is a way to lift yourself up by your own efforts and feel that you earned something; it's not something that can be bought. But that's just me.

I know that the web is ideal for links but I'm not going to provide them here; if you want to see Hernandez's website you'll have to find it yourself.

Our Modern Choices: Engineered or Free-Range Kids?

A recent post on the NACAC listserv was shocking in its obtuseness and demonstrates how blind many of us have become as we supposedly try to be of service to students. The request to fellow listers was as follows:

I am working on college planning with two intellectually bright high school juniors who are very unmotivated about preparing for an SAT test. They come from very high income families and their parents have hired very expensive individual SAT tutors. I personally know that their tutors relate well to high school students and have remarkable records for helping students to significantly improve their SAT scores. These two students are extremely resistant about seeing the tutors on a regular basis and doing outside practice assignments. I have reviewed the student’s PSAT scores with each student and their parents, and the students have ideas about colleges they would like to apply to—and could easily be realistic--with SAT scores that are somewhat higher than their PSAT scores. Learning and emotional disabilities, and ADD have been ruled out. I see the above situation as more of a parent/discipline issue rather than a college planning issue, but at the same time would be most appreciative of any suggestions for getting these students more motivated.

To summarize: Two "intellectually bright" juniors from "high income" families are "unmotivated" about spending time prepping for the SAT with "very expensive" tutors. This resistance led initially to worries that they had "learning or emotional disabilities" or attention deficit disorder. The family is desperately seeking ways to get these non-conformists to submit to SAT prep.

Has it come to this? Are students who prefer not to waste their time on SAT prep now threatened, like refuseniks, with being branded as mentally unstable? Are they to be diagnosed by "experts" who classify them as unbalanced because of their refusal to submit to the idiocy of test prep? Has the execrable advice of writers like Judith Wissner-Gross, which basically demands that students be engineered by their parents for college (and not just any college, damn it!) from the time they can fill in a test bubble, finally taken over the college process? Will we start sending these nonconformists to testing gulags where they are re-educated to embrace the charms of the College Board?

I cheer these "intellectually bright" students and hope they get some support from the testing underground, which will provide them with safe haven and copies of "The Origin of Species," "Huckleberry Finn," Mozart's piano concertos, and "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit," to get them through this trying period in their lives. (To find out more about the testing underground, go to any public library and get lost in the stacks near the Byzantine history section. They'll find you.) If I were a college, I'd admit them right now simply for their audacity.

Contrast this insidious effort to "re-educate" these smart kids with an amazing story that appeared in today's Chicago Tribune. It is the story of two parents who sent six kids to Northern Illinois University, all of whom went on to receive Ph.D.s and all of whom are now leaders in their fields. How did this happen? What music did Mrs. Sereno (for that is her name) play to those babies in her womb? What tapes or tutors or special schools did she drive her kids to so that they would rise into the world of genius? How often did she drill them in their cribs to know their timestables and the capitals of the world? How many summer programs did she enroll them in? Did she write a book telling me how to do it all? Most important, how did she teach them to get past all the stupid kids who stood in their way to success? (One child, Paul, is a world-famous paleontologist at the University of Chicago who has contributed vast amounts of knowledge to the field; his brothers and sisters are all neurological researchers working for universities in England, Scotland, Oregon, Texas, and Kansas.)

Mrs. Sereno's diabolical plan amounts to this: "We encouraged the idea that learning was exciting...I know how butterflies have sex, because we made a mating chamber for them so the kids could see all the stages of moth and butterfly life. We had slime mold growing upstairs. We had art in the house and a kiln for firing pottery. They all played instruments, though only two of them had any talent. I wanted my kids to go out and have their own adventures, to learn to fly on their own." So, her children were what we might call "free-range" kids, with plenty of support from mom and dad. There was lots of give and take, plenty of love, and what sounds like a happy chaos encircling the family.

Paul did not do well in high school and in elementary school teachers wanted to hold him back. Perhaps he was like one of those intelligent kids who know instinctively that SAT prep, endless worksheets and things like them are gigantic wastes of time and antithetical to everything that makes education interesting. As he says in the article, "I didn't do well with the structured way things are taught in school. I liked the more free-form, hands-on way of learning, like we did at home." Imagine that! Kids trying to learn on their own! Running around as their curiosity and interest lead them!

It scares people now when kids are like that--there's no way to measure "outcomes," no number that can be used to sum up progress, no "metrics" to gauge how each step is evaluated. You sort of have to leave things to chance, inspiration, and a love of learning (which test prep decidedly is not) and that's never going to get your kids into the Ivy League! They might end up at Northern Illinois, for God's sake! And then what would happen to them!!!!!

Back to the Future

Those of us who applied to college thirty or so years ago seem mostly to have tossed out a few applications, taken the SAT or ACT once, and then gotten on with the rest of our high school lives. We waited and hoped for the best. Some of us were lucky enough to have a counselor who casually mentioned a college or two we'd never heard of and encouraged us to apply, which we did. That was certainly my experience. Mr. Boulhouwer, counselor at West Morris Regional H.S. in Chester NJ is responsible for my applying to and eventually attending Amherst College in Amherst MA. He suggested I try a "liberal arts" college. After explaining to me what that was, he tossed out Amherst and I said I'd give it a shot. The rest, as they say, is history. (To this day I'm convinced that I didn't even know Amherst was all-male until I got there; I probably would have been a Williams alum if he'd said "Williams" instead.)

I've joked with any number of adults of about my age who have similar stories about how they got to their alma maters: the chance remark, the off-hand suggestion by a math teacher, or the casual observation by a respected neighbor or relative. There was no strategizing, no long-term planning, no multiple testing, no weighing the pros and cons of every school. At some level, we knew we'd be fine anywhere we went and we trusted that the schools would make good decisions (although not necessarily the ones we wanted). Once the applications were done we went about our business. And in fact we did turn out pretty well, most of us.

Having made the transition from working with the uber-strategic to the underserved, I've discovered many similarities between the latter and my generation of college-goers. Low-income and first generation students interested in going to college tend to be hard workers fully involved in their schools and communities, out of choice and necessity. They're not strategizers, they're young people who hope their talents and experiences will be enough to get them admitted to college; that is to say, they haven't been good students and participants in order to get into college, they're going to get into college because they're good students and participants. They're not multi-testers trying to break 2200, they're test takers because they have to be, and let it go at that. Most of them can't afford, literally or figuratively, to spend hours and hours parsing essay questions; they've got real things to do.

In these ways and others, I'm finding that the low-income and first-generation students I work with are very much like we were many years ago when it comes to college admission. Without romanticizing too much, I'd say that they have an authenticity that colleges and universities say they want, an openness to and desire for new experiences that can make them exceptional students in any classroom. Yes, many of them are rough around the edges and many have gone through things we wouldn't wish on anyone, but they have a resilience and even an optimism that make them wonderful to work with. They believe that college is going to help them live better lives and learn important things; they are honored to be chosen and pleased to have the opportunities to advance; they are grateful to be able to fulfill their hopes and dreams and those of their families. They don't see college acceptance as a right or a mark of innate privilege; they see it as the result of hard work and determination. And they're willing to bring these qualities to campus.

For these students, applying to college is an adjunct to their lives, not their purpose in life, as it seems to be for so many of their overprivileged peers. And in that way, they avoid the largely self-created stress we hear way too much about. Their lives are their own and if a college accepts them, that's great; if not, they'll try again. It makes me hopeful for the future.

The Counselor's Dilemma

In early February I spoke to a group of low-income/first-generation college students about how to interpret their admission and financial aid letters. I began by asking if anyone had received an acceptance letter yet (assuming that few had). To my surprise, about a third to a half of the group raised their hands. After congratulating them I asked if anyone had any questions, and that's when the whole thing started.

One student said she'd been given until March 1 to respond and several others said the same thing. I asked if she meant May 1, the universal reply date. She said, no, it was March 1. (Another student said she had to respond by the week after our meeting.) Others nodded emphatically. I asked if they were being asked to make a housing deposit and whether it was refundable (the conditions that allow colleges to ask for money before May 1.) Not everyone was sure, but some were certain they were being asked to make a commitment by March 1. In my mind, even asking a student without a sophisticated knowledge of the college admission world is asking too much, but that's not the end of it.

After the initial flurry of questions, another student raised his hand and said that he'd been offered admission with a full, four-year scholarship but only if he committed to the institution by March 1. I wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't shown me the letter and the dayglo pink sheet full of legalese he was supposed to return by March 1 if he wanted the full scholarship. To put it bluntly, the institution was bribing him to commit to it. I call that unconscionable.

Now here's the dilemma, which would be more of one if I were still counselor at a school, especially one that depends on ingratiating itself with top colleges: Reporting the school to NACAC is crucial, since there is a clear violation of the SPGP, on top of which the institution is browbeating a student the way a used car salesman would ("This deal is only good today!"). While anonymity is promised, that's a risk. If a counselor's name is revealed, he or she can be accused by cowardly administrators of "damaging the relationship" between school and college. Even if the violation is clear, colleges can often get away with outrageous tactics because schools often feel they have to play ball no matter what. No matter how egregious the violation may be, the high school counselor is under a great deal of pressure to let it go in the interests of getting students into college.

I happen to believe that the vast majority of colleges and universities neither flout the rules nor punish schools who report SPGP violations. Often, violations are minor and easily cleared up with a phone call or an email. But not always. Several years ago it was brought to my attention that a certain midwestern school was encouraging students to apply as juniors. I thought this was wrong and tried to discuss it with the school, where I got only vague answers and evasion. I persisted until I evidently annoyed the director of admission enough that she wrote to the school's principal announcing that her school would no longer accept applications from my school's students. And of course I was called on the carpet for having the audacity to challenge what I thought was a clear violation not only of NACAC policy but also good educational practice. The fatwa against my students was lifted, but not before damage had been done to my position, even though I was acting in the overall interests not only of my students but others'.(Although I won't mention the name of the university, if I say "wait list" almost anyone on the high shcool side of the desk will know which one I'm talking about.)

This fight was not even mine, in that I had no students affected; it was brought to my attention by other counselors, for whom I was acting. Perhaps I should have kept my mouth shut. But to do so is to cut the legs out from under the SPGP. If no one reports violations, then what? We have lofty ethics, but is that only while anyone is looking or only as long as colleges agree to abide by them? What to say to the lowly high school counselor who sees something that needs correcting? And what to tell his or her principal, who cares more about the year's scorecard than some wispy ethics? NACAC has no power to protect a counselor at school, so what's he or she to do? These are questions that have yet to be confronted.

Taming the Testing Dragon

The coming new year for the Chinese is the Year of the Ox, so I'm going to go with that spirit and suggest it's time to tell students applying to college that they can take the ACT or SAT once and that's it. The current discussion about "score choice" and what colleges want versus what the College Board wants them to want versus what ACT is doing and how all the test prep companies figure into all this mess cries out for a Gordian knot solution (sorry to mix cultural references). I've said many times that the admission process is far too complicated, overgrowing students' educations and becoming more important than what they're learning in high school. So, to repeat: Limit students to taking the SAT or ACT once. Period. We'll all be better off.

I know many will shriek at this limitation of students' right to flay themselves in the quest for collegiate Valhalla, but let's think about some of the issues (and for the sake of argument I'll try to limit my own abhorrence of these tests):

Argument: Students should have the right to take the test as many times as they wish and report their best scores to enhance their applications. It's a free country!
Response: Many may see a one-time testing approach as too similar to the European all or nothing tests (and many people still think of the tests as the be-all-and-end-all for college admission). But a test score in the U.S. is not determinative; it can be considered, downplayed, or lauded by any college to whom it is reported. And it doesn't limit where students can apply. Hundreds of institutions don't even use the scores or are score optional, with little effect on the quality of their student bodies. And even those who use scores often downplay them when necessary to enroll athletes, legacies, talented minority students, and so on. In other words, scores are fungible, not fixed; one set of scores or six doesn't really make that much of a difference.

Argument: Students should have the opportunity to get their best scores to indicate their true abilities.
Response: The College Board, which produces the SAT, long ago gave up the myth they themselves originated that the test can't be coached since it was an indicator of innate abilities. It even offers its own prep courses to subvert (sorry, prepare for) the test. And companies like Princeton Review and others, whatever one might think of them, have demonstrated that it is possible to raise scores not by knowing more about geometry or American history, but by knowing how the test is structured. How this adds to a student's academic qualities has yet to be determined. Ironically, students who take the test again and raise their scores significantly can be accused of cheating, and a very high test score coupled with low or mediocre grades can brand an applicant a slug in class. So it's damned if you do, damned if you don't, and whatever "true ability" is is certainly not being measured by the ACT or SAT.

Argument: Taking the test several times is just a good way to get a better score; it's not unfair or anything.
Response: Practice tests already exist for the SAT and the ACT, namely, the PSAT and the PLAN. Administered at students' schools, they come back with detailed explanations of what students got right and wrong and what concepts they need to work on for when they take the test for real. In fact, students can take the PLAN and the PSAT in their sophomore and junior years, without scores being reported anywhere, so they have plenty of time to see what they need to improve when the time comes.

Argument: If students want to take the test multiple times, what's wrong with that?
Response: Well, nothing, really, if you think that going through hours of test prep, anxiety, and craziness, not to mention hundreds if not thousands of dollars somehow are positive educational developments. Testing already crowds out actual academic subjects as early as third grade, and drilling for college entrance exams is the most tedious, boring, and retrograde activity a school can indulge in. No wonder students hate it. Students are already idiotically overtested and as to whether it's always the students' choice to take and retakes the tests, I'd look more closely at parental influence.

Argument: Test prep and multiple testing give students a taste of what's expected of them in college.
Response: I for one wouldn't attend an institution that focused on testing like that as an evaluative measure. Does it introduce concepts to think about, encourage intellectual development, accurately measure what a student knows? No. Testing is something to be gotten through, not embraced. It is intellectually deadening and as welcome as plague. Most students will find that, except for huge institutions with classes of hundreds, they will rarely see SAT-like tests.

Argument: A student can have an "off" day on the one day that the test is given, leading to a "false negative" score.
Response: A student's score is always considered in the context of high school strength and GPA; an "off" day could easily be seen as that in the admission process when so-so scores accompany an otherwise strong record. Scores (as well as every other application element) are subject to the sense and good judgment of the individuals reading applications, so there is every reason to believe that a sense of who's "off" can be developed with a one-test limit even as it is now with multi-test scores being reported.

Argument: Colleges need to be able to put the best scores of their applicants together so they can put together the best profiles possible, so allowing students to take the tests multiple times is to their advantage.
Response: This is a college issue, not a student or educational issue. In my experience we spent much more time talking about students' activities, courses, and achievements than their test scores in committee. One argument is that no college wants to have poorer scores to report than its competitors do. But if everyone has only the one score to report, a deflation will occur across the board and equilibrium should be maintained.

Argument: Multiple scores enable colleges to get the best bond ratings and rankings.
Response: Aside from the insidiousness of these methods of rating colleges, the same principle applies as in the answer above: If all institutions have the same one-test figures, it seems likely that everything will reach an equilibrium that would merely lead to a recalibration of the ratings and the rankings.

Argument: A single test date would put more pressure on students because there would be no "safety valve" if the results weren't good.
Response: Probably, but it would be up to colleges and universities to put the test in a more enlightened context by showing how they use it and where it actually stands in the admission hierarchy. In fact, adopting the one-time test might cause colleges to rethink how they use it because it would be a rawer picture of the test-taker, more "authentic," so to speak. A single date would be intense, but knowing it would all be over afterwards might be liberating. If the date were at the end of junior year, results received in the summer might provide motivation for doing better in courses senior year to make up for a poor score.

There are many reasons to support a one-time only test:

1. The hours and dollars spent on test prep seriously distract from more useful activities like homework and true academic development, whether they're sponsored through schools as classtime sessions or after school. Especially in areas with a high percent of first-generation or poor students, it is critical that time and dollars not be sacrificed for something as ephemeral and uncertain as test prep. I know of one school that has spent nearly $60,000.00 on test prep for students who could have better been served by spending that money on academic enhancement, tutoring, equipment, and so on. A recent article in Harper's magazine (September 2008) documenting a year of test prep in a New York City school is illuminating. Click on this entry's title to go to the article.

2. Test prep as a part of schooling is a kind of regression to the days of rote learning, which has long since been abandoned in this country. It kills motivation, deadens intellectual curiosity, and makes education look like a hoop to jump through rather that an ongoing source of personal development. It makes students and teachers cynical; no good teacher I know will sacrifice a classroom discussion about "Death of a Salesman" for an SAT vocabulary drill. And no student would willingly attend. He may not care for Arthur Miller, either, but at least there's the possibility that something interesting might come up. (Furthermore, it most disadvantages those who can least afford it: First-generation and other underserved students who most need to learn the basics of English, math, and so on to do well in college.)

3. Multiple testing opportunities favor those already privileged; a one-time test date can even the playing field to a certain extent. While privileged students can still afford the books and testing that non-privileged students can't, the one-time test means that what you see is what you get on the other end. Will non-privileged students suffer because they can't afford test prep or the ability to try again? Those students already have extra consideration for their backgrounds and lack of educational support, so test scores will continue to be seen that way. (Remember, test scores have been shown definitiely to have cultural biases.) It will affect privileged students more, because they'll have to live with their scores without being able to tinker with them over and over. (Idea: After adopting the one-test only policy, schools can ask "Estimate how much preparation you received or paid for before the test." The more that's reported, the less credible the test. Fantasy I know, but still...)

4. Multiple testing is a financial bonanza that offers little real improvement in educational environment, siphoning off money from individuals and school systems that could be put to better use. While test prep companies and the College Board get rich coming and going, that money doesn't go to enhancing educational opportunity (although the companies do provide their services pro bono in many circumstances). And schools that can't really afford it are led to chase the ephemara of scores as a way to getting their students into college rather than focusing on building their academic programs.

5. The ability to take the test multiple times fosters the idea that testing is more crucial than it really is. Like Sysiphus, rolling the stone up the hill only to have it roll down again so he has to start all over again, multiple testing really accomplishes very little while creating great strain and anxiety. Nothing gets learned, nothing is accomplished, other more fruitful opportunities are passed up, and in the end, an admission decision can be made in spite of scores as much as because of them. Consistently, according to NACAC, a student's GPA and course strength are the most compelling parts of the application; the scores are really more window dressing. They're easy to look at and mess with; they have acquired a magical quality; and they play into our love of lists and bests/worsts. So while admission officers tend to drool over big scores, they also can see the proverbial "diamonds in the rough" that shine in class without the burnishing of high test scores.

Adopting a one-time only testing policy may be seen as radical, but it would help to simplify and equalize the whole testing universe. Colleges and universities should consider cutting back the testing underbrush while at the same time promoting the importance of academic achievement more forcefully.

College Counselor: Servant or Teacher?

More than once when I was counseling private school students, a parent would warn me that "you'll have to chase after Johnny during the application process, keep on him" to get him through it. Well, I don't do chasing and for the most part I never did, which may be one reason I don't work with them any more. Nevertheless, it raises a question about what the college counselor's role is. After a certain point, how much is the student's responsibility, and isn't the willingness to take it on one sign that a student is ready for college? When I did reach out to recalcitrant students (usually boys, by the way), I would often say, "Look, I've already gone to college so I don't need to do any of this, but you do." Sometimes that would be enough to get them moving, and sometimes not. Although I don't remember anyone ever falling through the cracks or not getting into college because of not filing an application, it still gave me pause. Is this like pushing kids to get their homework done, or am I on the verge of ruining their lives because I won't haul them in, sit them in front of my computer and make them fill out their applications while I watch?

Personally, I think that students who don't do their research, information requests, recommendation requests, and applications (despite hours of workshops, class meetings, and individual appointments) aren't really ready to face the end of high school. They're saying that they have other priorities and are willing to let college wait until the last minute. Fine, I say. Why should I spend energy on you if you're not going to spend it on yourself? I can help any number of students who are really grappling with the process while also doing their homework and keeping up with their extracurriculars. When you're ready to fill out applications, let me know. In this respect, I believe that a college counselor is also a teacher, and one of the lessons is learning to plan ahead, make choices, and accept the consequences of those choices. In other words, to help them mature.

Now don't get me wrong--I don't wish for someone not to get into college or suffer for mistakes. I simply believe that "babysitting" is not part of the college counselor's job description, especially if all the necessary information is presented many times over the course of several years and students come from college-educated families. The "chase after my kid" request is the same as the "why didn't he get an A?" challenge to a teacher when the student has been AWOL in class--it's not my responsibility to do his work for him. Besides, isn't chasing after your kid part of the parent's job description? (Although I would argue that by the time they're high school seniors that should be only in extreme situations.)

When the current head of my former school first came on board a few years ago, we had a conversation in which he emphasized that college counseling was a "service" the school provided. While I agreed in principle with the statement, I also said, "But I am not a servant," meaning that I was not at anyone's beck and call and would not, in fact, could not, always accommodate every wish and whim of parents or students. Providing all the facts, deadlines, encouragement, and so on to those who will take advantage of them was often enjoyable and energizing. But making the rest of the horses drink was low on my priority list. As a teacher, I believed it was like doing students' homework for them, and that doesn't help them at all.

This distinction is important, I think, because while college counseling isn't rocket science, it does have a complexity that makes it at times extremely difficult. Not only are there all the mechanistic elements to worry about, we also have to deal with the emotional, intellectual, developmental, and even financial issues that surround each student. As a servant, I would be obliged simply to do what was necessary if a parent insisted that her child should apply to an Ivy League school, even if that child didn't have the record for it (or even the inclination, as happened more than once). To a certain extent, that's fine--students in this country can apply anywhere they want. However, as a responsible teacher as well as counselor, I think it my responsibility, my duty, even, to indicate what the odds are, to be realistic about the applicant's chances and suggest alternatives, and then to step back as the student carries out those resonsibilities. I was never reluctant to give a hand when I saw a student working hard to get everything done, but I was always reluctant to do things for him.

More than once, however, a parent would become enraged when I suggested that her child wasn't "Ivy League material" or wasn't getting applications done. Who was I, I suspect the reasoning went, to imply that Precious wasn't up to snuff, despite clear indications in the transcript, test scores, and lack of activities? (Never mind the "What am I paying my money to this school for?" comments...) The expectation seemed to be that I should simply file the papers and write the support letter while holding Precious's hand over the keyboard. But I would opt for educating every time, which means respecting a student enough to expect him to do his own work.

This kind of reaction reduces the college counselor to servant status (and belittles the child, incidentally) and reduces the college admission process to a sort of quid pro quo, although what the quo was I've never fully understood. I could bring up the changing face of college admission (it's startling to learn how many parents still think "merit" is the only qualification for admission and that their child clearly has it), the imponderables, the history of admission at a particular college, the student's own preparation (or lack thereof), but it didn't matter. Just do it! they implied, don't bother us with realities.

To state things positively: I believe that a college counselor is, and in fact has to be, a teacher as well as a service provider, and should be supported as such. College counseling should be recognized as a way to help develop adolescents' maturity as well as simply a means to an end. Students aren't just pegs to be fitted into the right holes, they are developing human beings on the verge of adulthood who have a wonderful opportunity to put their own ideas, hopes, and desires to the test in the college process. Done right, it can be an exciting time of reflection and self-definition; approached merely as a utilitarian process, it deprives everyone involved of their dignity.

Raw Material or Finished Product?

Eugene S. Wilson, legendary admission dean at Amherst College, believed that no matter how long he was in the business he'd never perfect the art of human evaluation, and that was OK. For him, every applicant was an opportunity to see the potential in a young person, to assess him fairly, and to render a decision that might indeed prove incorrect down the line. For him (and his immediate successor at Amherst, Ed Wall), admission was most definitely an art, not a science, and putting a class together was the delicate balancing of the college's needs with the needs and desires of young men (and later, women) as they began to enter adulthood.

When I joined the Amherst admission office in 1990 I was delighted to be part of that tradition. To this day, I believe that Dean Wall used his gut more than my numbers to admit me to Amherst in 1973, and I wanted to have a chance to combine hard numbers and humane considerations to create Amherst's next generations in a way inspired by Wilson and Wall. At the core, I think they recognized that applicants to college were still unformed persons trying on new identities and exploring different aspects of their lives and the world's offerings. A liberal arts college like Amherst was designed to help students choose well and build on their previous accomplishments as they moved into their future lives.

To me, this meant that students would apply to college as works in progress, ready for the college to exert its influence on them, and vice versa. We were looking for potential, a most elusive quality: We all know of the class presidents who burned out or the most likely to succeed students who never made it out of their hometowns. Our test as admission officers was to spot the energy, the uniqueness, the elusive qualities that infused the GPA and test scores and made the whole a great deal more than the sum of its parts.

But after a few years of helping make admission decisions, I began to feel that looking for the :diamond in the rough" or the "potentiality" of an applicant was less important that getting the numbers as high as possible. Not that it was ever fully mechanistic, but our admission process seemed to me more dependent not only on the black and white figures but also on what students had already accomplished. We celebrated (and rightly so) the applicants who had achieved some remarkable goal, like writing a novel or developing a new invention, but they began to overshadow other applicants who had "only" led a community food bank or restructured their high school's student government or did exceptional work in math or biology classes. I began to call these applicants "merely wonderful" because while they were truly exceptional in their own right, they faded in comparison to the superstars.

I'm not saying we shouldn't have taken the precocious, but it became clear to me that we were beginning to look for the already formed instead of the in progress student. Faculty members wanted to see more students who had been published or made major contributions to their fields. We wanted to see academic "heavy hitters" almost to the exclusion of anyone else. We were lucky to have plenty of them apply and we were always in a little awe of what some of our eventual freshmen had done, but some of the pleasure in putting a class together was lost as we had to turn down more and more exceptional students to make way for the super-accomplished. That pleasure had come from being able to say "yes" to someone we could see as coming into him or herself at Amherst. It was potential we wanted to see on campus as much as past accomplishment, but increasingly the process became more mechanistic and less idiosyncratic, leading to more predictable, but in many respects less satisfying results.

This situation was reflected in the change made a few years into my tenure at Amherst. Our last round of deliberations was devoted to each dean's bringing to the table one favorite candidate who hadn't made it in the regular rounds. Although the applicant had to meet basic requirements for admission, the deans could present their candidates and have them admitted. Even though this round occurred after weeks of debate over hundreds of candidates, it was often the liveliest and most interesting. We were able to exercise our judgment and reward some wonderful quirk in a wonderful student who we felt would add to the incoming Amherst class. Our choices often reflected our own personalities and interests. I remember speaking up for a kid from Arkansas who, among other things, liked to create "found poetry" by cutting up prose and putting it back together randomly, then reading it at poetry slams. Others spoke for student-athletes, mad scientists, and others who would otherwise have been overlooked, and we always ended the season on that high note.

Admission continues to be more an art than a science, especially at small liberal arts colleges, but I still wonder whether the impulse to enroll only the most over-accomplished students has crowded out a more humane imperative to identify human potential that will benefit from our institutions' educational offerings. It affects students, too: The more they see the overachievers being rewarded with college admission, they more they feel they have to stay up until two in the morning and spend every waking moment getting ahead. Perhaps we should re-examine how we look at human potential in the college admission process in order to recalibrate our expectations of students' past and future, as well as our institutions' missions.