College admission sweepstakes
By Ari Kaufman (08/27/07)
Parents stress more than ever over where the kid gets accepted.
Recently, a longtime acquaintance told me that I should discontinue sending her e-mails because her daughter is "preparing to apply to colleges" and would be needing her mother's constant attention and assistance. I was miffed, recalling that the daughter had just turned 16 and will be entering the 11th grade. I'm well aware of crafty college basketball coaches these days recruiting players in ninth and 10th grades but I was unsure why my "domestic engineer" friend needed to devote so much time to this increasingly overplayed decision, which truly becomes less essential with each passing school year.
When I applied to college in the winter of my senior year, my mom was helpful, but there were no online applications and, therefore, no opportunities for incessant e-mails from parent to high school guidance counselor to university administrator. Unlike the homes I've visited the past few falls, my family's dining room table wasn't littered with brochures from a dozen schools. There was no calendar planning out which weekend was best to go on the "Mid Atlantic trip" (Maryland, Duke, Virginia, North Carolina), the "Nor'easter'" (Ivy League, small liberal arts schools, perhaps Syracuse, depending upon which older, erstwhile summer-camp friend's fraternity was having the best party), the West Coast sojourn (UCLA, Berkeley, Stanford), and of course, the Big Ten trip, centered around the October football schedules for Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana.
And after UCLA didn't immediately accept me, there was no esteemed alumnus my parents called to write a persuasive letter to the dean, requesting further consideration and review of my extracurriculars or high school ranking. Then again, back in 1996, 50 percent of UCLA's applicants did not claim to have a high school GPA above 4.0, as they did in fall 2006.
Alas, for middle- to upper-class folks, especially parents who live vicariously through their children, it's now a mad, two-year dash of planning frivolity, all for an indefinite, inconsequential result.
But how is it that, just as students' grades rise while their inherent knowledge frequently drops, college applications cause more stress, while undergraduate diplomas mean less?
Welcome to 2007, not 1957. Five decades ago, it actually did matter where you attended college. Employers cared, professors were objective and erudite, and students had to earn their A's. Half your classes the first two years were not "History of Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll in Ancient Egypt," the "Unbearable Whiteness of Barbie" and "Post-Colonialism," aka, Blame America for all the world's historic travesties.
Fifty years ago, 91 percent of Harvard grads did not have 4.0's as they somehow do now – and a majority of students could identify Iraq on a map or name the prime minister of Australia.
Cornel West, Ward Churchill and Jon Stewart were not required reading; Michael Moore and Al Gore were not required viewing; Cynthia McKinney, ACLU directors and pro-terrorism speakers were not invited to teach; and surely canceling a week of classes in April for partying, drinking and casual intercourse was not permitted.
But, heck, this is America, home of the best "higher education" in the world, right?
Wrong, most likely. The facts don't lie, and they are scary.
Recent grads I know were unaware of, among all too much else, who Robert F. Kennedy was, what socialism is, and what year 9/11 occurred. There was a 3.5 GPA Economics grad from a well-known school who had never been introduced to the genius that was Milton Friedman. (But could tell me all about Hugo Chavez and the evils of capitalism and free markets.)
So, since where one attends college – or chooses to consider before the junior year of high school – is more or less immaterial, why is it all the rage?
Unlike 1957, now that delaying one's entry into the workforce is augmented via grad school, the institute that produces your bachelors' diploma five to eight years from when you mail in the initial application is hardly imperative. Unlike when my grandparents attended college, precious few will meet a professor that changes their lives for the better, and clearly even fewer will meet their future spouses at the next beer bash.
Most of these kids will not flunk out, either, and will get a respectable 2.8-3.8 GPA, be it at Harvard or UC Irvine. Many more than ever before will also apply to grad schools, thus the source of the undergraduate diploma and inflated GPA becomes less and less important.
Yes, graduating from an elite school holds weight in certain fields and often in the biggest cities, but it depends upon where the boss puts value. In all the jobs and fields where I have worked, no one has cared where I went. Your grades matter much more, even if they're inflated, which they are.
Parents need to realize this and relay it to their offspring. But they do not. In fact, in my experience, the opposite continues to be true.
There are paid "educational consultants" in high-achiever enclaves for parents of 3-year-olds looking to pick the proper preschool. And the pressure to get into the "right" college is being felt by parents of kids not even in high school yet. When I taught a group of soon-to-be ninth-graders at the University of Vermont two summers ago, one precocious student's parents picked him up the final day in August and whisked him on a weeklong tour of New England campuses.
I'm afraid to guess what that kid's next two years will be like.
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