Just a few recommendations

No fire and/or brimstone about anything or anyone this time, just some credit where credit is due. (A slightly different version of this entry can also be found on NACAC's website at Admitted Blog)

Coming from the college side of college admission, I didn’t realize how much counseling was involved in college counseling until I started meeting with students and their parents, their divorced parents, and/or their divorced and remarried parents; with students who refused to meet with their parents in the room, with parents who refused to meet with each other, and with children who refused to speak in their parents’ presence. (I won’t mention the times I had to ask parents, as politely as possible, to let their children get a word in edgewise or to review their records a bit more objectively as they considered college possibilities.)

I quickly realized I had stepped into a cultural maelstrom, especially at my very highly competitive school. “College” affected everyone day to day, so knowing the mechanics of the process was only the beginning. Attending to psyches and personalities in the throes of college selection kept me plenty busy.

Now that I work with adults who counsel low-income and first-generation students, I’m in a whole different arena, but the goals are the same. As a result, I often rely on two organizations that have significantly shaped my college-counseling outlook: the National Runaway Switchboard (NRS) and the American School Counselors Association (ASCA). NRS taught me how to listen actively and enable students to express themselves; ASCA has provided an essential framework for joining counseling and college counseling.

I’ve volunteered at NRS, a teen crisis line, for over ten years. “Liners” complete an extensive training that teaches them to listen actively, help callers develop options, and, most important, put callers in the “driver’s seat” as they talk through the reasons they ran away or want to. As a result I’m committed to “guiding without steering.” (I didn’t know how much I’d incorporated this methodology until one of my students who had been through the NRS training came in and asked I thought about his college list. “Well,” I replied, “What do you think about it?” He laughed and said, “Aww, Mr. Dix, you don’t have to do that NRS stuff with me!”)

The ASCA addresses primary and secondary school counseling topics. Its “strengths-based” perspective means being alive to students’ potential and reaching out to students, especially valuable in first-generation contexts. It informs my sessions with counselors and teachers.

Two ASCA publications are important reading: ASCA School Counselor magazine and the Professional School Counseling Journal. The former is for a generalized readership; the latter is “research” oriented (not always rigorous) but full of excellent commentary from practitioners and academics. (Here is one particularly helpful article. For the full publications you need to be an ASCA member.)

The ASCA also has just published two new reports in conjunction with the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) and the College Board: "A Closer Look at the Principal-Counselor Relationship" and "Finding a Way: Practical Examples of How an Effective Principal-Counselor Relationship Can Lead to Success for All Students" that are worth taking a look at. They are publicly available for download here.

My college counseling, as well as my professional development opportunities for colleagues, has benefited immensely from these resources. I highly recommend them.

Eternal College Marketing and the Consumer/Student

Last week I attended the IACAC conference in Itasca IL. It was congenial as usual but one of the presentations touched on a topic I've been concerned about and writing about for a while. The session's title says it all: "From Here to Eternity: The Endless Application and Decision Process." But it doesn't really cover the issue to the depth I think it should or could have. The college process has become harmfully extended, and that's the real problem: As colleges and universities strive ever more mightily to keep their beds full, they are damaging the very resource most valuable to them and to society at large: prospective students.

Most people involved in the college process know that it seems to be getting longer and longer, starting earlier, becoming more complex, and inspiring more anxiety. On the other end, after colleges' decisions are made, students and families obsess over which college or university to choose (assuming they have a choice), trying to make a flawless decision the same way a coffee-crazed fashionista might obsess over the construction of a half-caf double shot soy milk latte with non-fat whip. The IACAC session was clear in describing the process but left me stranded when it came to reasons for it, what can be done about it, or even why it's an issue. The session looked at the college/student/high school/counselor relationship in a vacuum, concerend only with the admission and decision-making processes themselves, and didn't offer any possible cures besides adhering to NACAC guidelines and being nice to each other.

In an ever-widening search for more and more applicants, colleges have adopted marketing tools and strategies (often with the help of outside firms, one of which I am ashamed to say I once worked for) from the world of commerce. In small doses, things like glossy viewbooks, posters, helpful or imploring letters to juniors and seniors are harmless and can provide information to students just starting to learn about colleges. But as the session presenters noted, the process has stretched from perhaps a 17-month jog to a 34-month or more sprint through the psyches and aspirations of teens and their families.

In his book "Consumed" Benjamin Barber talks about how companies create "first order wants" that are not necessarily what we should want. They plant in us the feeling that we need to have a certain soda or appliance regardless of whether it harms the environment or if we really need it. ("Second order wants" are those that are really necessary or that serve a social/societal need.) Marketing is designed to rev up our first order wants because we have become a society dependent on consuming, not producing. (If you doubt that, recall that President Bush told everyone to go shopping when he finally addressed the nation after 9/11.) So we learn to "need" goods and services not because we actually need them but because we want them and we are told we want them.

College marketing works along these lines now. Glossy images, lifestyle-oriented photos, cheerful students under trees, and so on, are less about offering an education to the student than presenting a magical realm of happiness and success to the consumer. (I wrote about this a long time ago.) Inculcating that desire earlier and earlier in teens and their families creates the "need" for college as a consumer good ("first order") rather than as an eventual public good ("second order). It gears the consumer of college (I almost said "education" but more in a moment) to think that college = my personal happiness (and ideally for the college, THIS college = my personal happiness). So the relationship comes to be defined as college/consumer not college/student.

One might say that colleges have plenty to say about education in their viewbooks and brochures, and one would be right. However, it takes a great deal of parsing to draw that information out from the cheerful descriptions of comfortable residence halls, helpful professors and the massive extracurricular opportunities available on campus. None of this is in itself problematic, but it overwhelms the process of education central to any college or university like kudzu on a Georgia highway. Sure there are courses at this college, but look at the beautiful campus! The rainbow of students! The "starchitect"-designed gym!

Growing up in a consumer society, teens and their parents can hardly be blamed for looking at a college education as a consumer good like toothpaste or patio furniture. But in the process, education has been ever more surely demoted to being an option on the SUV, the second DVD player in the back seat. As college marketing intensifies to reach teens and their parents earlier and earlier, it actually pushes the work of high school to the background, replacing it with the need to "get on the college track" early in order to get into college.

But this isn't about being more educated; it's about seeming more educated so a student can be a more attractive college prospect. Students and their parents fight for AP classes not for the challenge but for the transcript enhancement. As college heighten the sense of "need" they actually hollow out the educations they claim are the central part of any applicant's record. It's no secret that many who are counseling high school students these days talk about showing students how to "package" themselves for colleges. The marketing of the college to the student/consumer and the marketing of the student/consumer to the college becomes like the snake eating its tail without a clear endpoint or purpose except to get the student/consumer to the advertiser's college and to get the college to choose the "brand" of student that appeals to it.

"Packaging" emphasizes form over substance, appearance over reality. The glorious landscapes of the campus quad or the glittering accomplishments of a 16-year old who plays violin for an old folks home (at the suggestion of her independent counselor) are triumphs of packaging. The result is an expectation of glitz over tougher realities, fun over the harder work of learning. The few colleges that refuse to bow to marketing or the lure of the "zipless" class, like St. John's, where students read the original works of great thinkers and everything is required, can be counted on one hand. The rest hide the realities of real education--it's hard--behind smooth talk about professors willing to give out their home phone numbers and be on hand, it seems, 24/7.

Extended college marketing devalues substantial educational and extracurricular achievement because those things, to be genuine, need to be learned painstakingly and often through trial and error. By creating the "need" for an early start in the college process, this marketing is essentially making hothouse plants of our students, forcing them to bloom before they're ready and as a result making them more like hothouse tomatoes--better able to travel over long distances and last on the shelf, but not something you really want to eat. Marketing in this way forces students to arrive somewhere before they're ready to travel, and in the process teaches them that you only need to look like a student in order to be thought of as one. I have to think that this phenomenon is somehow connected to the complaints professors have about how often their students are unprepared for college.

One Good Book

I've just finished a very low-key, well-adjusted book concerning the college process that is a wonderful antidote to the frantic "win-at-any-cost" college books out there. It's called College Admission Together: It Takes a Family, by Steven Roy Goodman & Andrea Leiman. Unlike nearly every other book out there, it focuses on the family dynamic as students and parents approach the college years. I think if more parents read this book they'd get what we counselors are trying to tell them when we say "Take it easy."

The authors make a point of combining college process information with observations about what's happening in teens' lives as college looms. They ask parents to take stock of their children's changes and look into their own attitudes in order to make the fact of eventual separation as smooth and productive as possible. Within the many stressors of high school and pre-college life, the authors find ways to create positive moments when parents and their children can communicate better and learn more about each other.

If you're a college counselor, you know the frustration of working with parents who seem to have no idea about what their children really want or who they are. These parents insist on particular colleges for their children, or insist that you have to "chase after" Johnny to complete his applications or evern meet with you. You'll see these parents in this book but not as caricatures or objects of derision, simply as people for whom the process can be as stressful as it is for their children. It's an understanding and even compassionate book for that.

As I read the book I heard many things I've suggested to parents over the years--take a breath, listen more than talk to you child, step back and see him/her as a developing adult, and so on. Often these suggestions fell on deaf ears. Seeing it all in print can often be helpful and this book could be a great tool to get parents to look at themselves without a counselor's being the one to deliver the sometimes unwelcome news.

The book is mercifully free of simplistic remedies for things like procrastination although abundant with simple methods for dealing with them. If putting things off is a problem with your teen, review the coming week's calendar every Sunday evening; not only can college tasks be outlined, but you and your child can think ahead about other things as well at a time that's not full of anxiety and that, perhaps, comes on the heels of a day relaxing.

It's nice to read a book that doesn't have an undercurrent of frantic striving to it. College Admissions Together takes a broad view of a turbulent time in a family's life and lets you see it's possible to ride the wave and come out nicely on the far side. I recommend it highly.

The Parental Overinvolvement Quiz

It’s only natural for parents to be part of their child’s college selection and application process: You’re paying for it, after all, and this is a climactic moment in your offspring’s life. It’s also one of the visible results of primary and secondary education. With few rituals left to mark the passage from childhood to adulthood, the process enables your child to relish this significant moment in the safety of home and school, with guidance from you, teachers, and counselors. In important ways, it’s also a test run for college and life itself.

But this American walkabout often suffers from too much parental involvement. At a time when a child should be taking the reins and learning to direct his or her own life, parents can unwittingly short circuit the process. They see this moment as theirs instead of their children’s, or in the name of “helping” or “preventing mistakes” they take over, situations that can cause a great deal of conflict and ill will as a child heads into the future. Anyone who has been through it knows the signs: increased mumbling and eye rolling, dark looks, eruptions at the dinner table, and a refusal even to say the word “college” or fill out applications.

But there are ways to tell if you’re doing too much and need to back off. Below is a short quiz to see if you’re letting go or holding on.

1. Do you say, “We’re applying to college” instead of “Johnny’s applying to college”?
2. Do you insist that your child apply to your alma mater or other college of your choice regardless of his/her interest in it?
3. Do you look forward to telling friends at cocktail parties where your child is applying?
4. Do you let people know your child’s GPA, standardized test scores, and other personal information?
5. Are you planning college visits with little or no input from your child?
6. Do you ridicule your child’s college choices because he/she clearly doesn’t know what’s good for him/her?
7. Do you know more than your child’s college counselor does, even if you haven’t applied or been to a college in 20 years?
8. When you have college conversations with your child do you talk more than listen?
9. Do you insist on scouring rankings lists for “best” colleges rather than listening to what your child wants?
10. Do you lose sleep worrying that your child will go to a “no name” college?
11. Do you talk about your child’s talents/gifts/abilities or lack thereof to others with him or her present?
12. Do you (or a surrogate) do all the college research, all the calling, and all the typing of request letters and applications?
13. Do you make admission interview appointments for your child?
14. During college visits, do you ask questions for your child or otherwise take center stage?
15. Do you worry that you haven’t done enough as a parent to ensure that your child gets into a “good” college?
16. Do you prod your child, even as application deadlines approach, to join more clubs or take up exotic activities like bungee jumping or spelunking?
17. Do you insist that your child begin taking honors or AP courses even if he or she has never taken them in the past, and do you berate school officials if they think that’s not a good idea?
18. Do you see college as a reward for your efforts at raising a child?
19. Do you see college as a judgment of those efforts?
20. Do you interpret your child’s college choices as a comment on you as a parent?
21. Have you read all the college guides, getting-into-college guides, secrets-of-getting-into -college guides, and "how to" books about essays, tests, and everything else?

If you've answered "Yes" to any of these questions, it's time to pull back and take stock because you're taking control of something that should belong to your child. Allowing him or her to take the driver's seat in the college process is like, well, letting him or her take the driver's seat. You can't do it for your child; at some point your offspring has to drive alone. You may panic that he's not taking that corner properly or she's changing lanes too quickly, but true knowledge and independence, not to mention maturity, only come with experience. If your child is resisting college planning, perhaps you're pushing too much' he may want to take his own time and make his own plans.

Naturally, you need to keep an eye on things, but stay in the passenger's seat; don't try to grab the wheel. Make suggestions, keep the nagging to once or twice a week, and remember that, overall, the college process is actually a lot more forgiving than driver's ed: despite the panic over early admission and "regular" deadlines in November and December, many colleges have deadlines that run into February and even March. Now, it may be difficult, but you may want to acquaint your child with the idea of being responsible for her/his actions, if you haven't already done so: Late applications can mean being shut out of a college or being last to be considered for financial aid. But put the responsibility on your child, don't do applications for him or fill out forms for her. Be resolute and insist that your child do the work. In the long run, this will be much better for your child's development and your long-term relationship.

Remember, it’s your child’s future at stake here, not yours. Give him or her the power to make decisions, even to make mistakes, with your support and guidance, not your direction or judgment. Take a virtual vacation and “return” only when an application check needs to be signed or you’re asked for advice. Let your child feel the thrill of controlling his or her own destiny. Above all, parents, enjoy this moment of watching your child begin the process of becoming an independent, well-adjusted adult. You’ll be glad you did.

The Frankenstein Parents' Handbook

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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