So much noise these days. A Times book review on a Twain-like father taking his son on the tortuous road through college admissions. Bob Herbert on a provocative scholarly study which basically states that students are learning much less today than in yesteryear (for a whole lot more money). Harvard and Princeton have reinstated their early admissions practices, tilting the playing field again. A remarkable "Frontline" story from last May on the stunning (and largely unregulated) rise of private, for-profit colleges (well, which school really isn't for profit?) in which students at McUniversities come out with three times the debt as students at traditional institutions. A lot to digest and a lot to process if you're a high-school senior or the parent of one.
I'm going to sound extremely naive, but can I offer three simple, calming, and effective tips for the loony season of admissions?
1) Let your son or daughter write his/her essays. Proofread them. And, if they're open to it, ask them questions about why and how they came up with the ideas for their essays. Perhaps that will compel them to revise and rethink their essays on their own. And, of course, you can encourage them to show the essays to their English teachers or college counselors with the understanding that these are opportunities for your child "to give and take" with other critical minds, just as they hopefully will during office hours in college (that buzzword discourse everyone seems to be talking about).
Don't write the essays for them. Don't come up with the topics for them. And absolutely do not revise them so that both your child feels undermined and the admissions officer reading it can easily toss the application on the "Deny" pile. Don't coach them in any way imaginable. Presumably you've been doing that for the past sixteen years already. Allow their "freak flag to fly," or in parlance you and I can understand, permit them to show off the critical thinking skills they've developed during high school and at the dinner table. Otherwise, admissions officers have no way of knowing what higher order of thinking your child has cultivated or what kind of foundation they will build on. They won't know if your child has room to grow, with great upside, or that he/she will be a pre-packaged kid for whom all of college will be a set of pre-purchased essays and copied problem sets. I'm obviously being overly simplistic here in the last sentence, but you get what I mean. As much as you might not want them to, let them think and do for themselves!!
2) So, if you're not writing their college essays for them, you'll have so much more time to talk to them about "fit." Perhaps you and your partner, or ex-partner, or second ex-partner, had particularly positive or negative experiences at certain colleges or universities. Share those stories with your kids, even if they seem completely uninterested. While a huge state school with a top 20 football team was the best place for you to grow, your child may really shy away from those large classes and the inability to really get to know his/her professors. Obviously (and you've heard this ad nauseam) do not re-live your college life through your kid, or do not burden your child with the notion that he or she has to fulfill the dreams in college you were never able to achieve. You know it and I know it: your kids will pick up on all that subconscious (or explicit) anxiety, and they'll try to please you, never fulfilling their own aims.
And, fit really does matter. Those lovely small, liberal arts colleges throughout the country (Amherst, Carleton, Oberlin, Occidental, Lewis & Clark, Sewanee, Smith, Williams) all have amazing faculty members, and most classes are smaller, so interactions with classmates and instructors are intimate and may best suit your child. Additionally, your child's interests (like playing a Division III sport, more deeply investing in the visual arts, or fully committing to a theater ensemble) may be more achievable within the cozier, more community-based atmosphere of these little gems. Conversely, the Research I institutions may provide research opportunities (e.g., in a cystic fibrosis lab) or exposure to extremely specialized fields of study (e.g., historical anthropology) that one might be unable to find in a smaller institution. Neither experience is more "valuable" or more impressive on the c.v. for post-college employment. They're different, but good-different, and like your child, these places force you to stop and enjoy the moment, big or small. (BTW, I've always thought that if you were well-rounded in high school, you had a better chance of following your manifold interests in a smaller, liberal arts college. In a big Research I university, you often have to choose one interest and do that one activity well outside the classroom, becoming a specialist. That always struck me as somewhat of a loss.)
3) Chill out on the standardized tests. Buy a few prep books and spend some time with them, but only familiarize yourself with the test formats. (OK. Maybe I have the luxury to say so because I went here and there, and I had a certain set of scores. But really. Especially now that more and more schools are de-emphasizing the weight of SAT I or II scores in the overall admissions package, breathe a bit more.) I'm not saying that they're not important, or that it's a waste that your kid is doing well and enjoying a host of AP classes. Not at all. But the more and more we learn about the inefficacy of these tests, and the poor predictive value of such tests (i.e., they largely tell you how your kid might do in his/her freshman year, and that's it - which should be a mulligan for all of us), the less we should hyperventilate over their importance. Additionally, until the SAT I stops being a proxy for socioeconomic class (i.e., the better off your family is, the better you'll probably do on the test because of access to tutoring, prep books, etc.), I don't think we should think the sky is falling if Jeremy scores around 1000. To me, and I've probably taken scores of standardized tests over 25 years of schooling, these kinds of tests have only proven to me that I know how to take particular kinds of tests. That's it. They don't make me think I'm smarter. I've always read to do that, or did puzzles, or math problems. Or I'd go outside and try to figure out how I was going to get my whiffle balls out of the tree at a certain distance with a certain breeze blowing. Think critically. Don't think "normatively." That's what standardized tests force you to do - to think like everyone else a little above or below the "norm." Think critically. Tell your child to go for a walk in the park and look for as many different "creatures" out there to draw at home, and that can be urban or rural. Or ask them to read or write freely for an hour.
"All of the above" is so much better than sitting at your kitchen table and choosing "c)."
