High Anxiety of Getting Into College
A high school senior was fighting back tears in her guidance counselor’s office. Despite her 92 average, the girl had been rejected by her top three college choices. Another senior, already clad in a new Northwestern T-shirt, interrupted to give his counselor a thumbs-up. He was in.
And so it has gone over the last few weeks, as colleges send their decisions and counselors console, cheer up and otherwise try to help this year’s seniors navigate the end of the admissions process.
“It’s a bittersweet time,” said Susan Buchman, a counselor at Byram Hills High School in Armonk. “You get some kids who are ecstatic because they got into their first choice school, and then there are disappointments. And you get parents who are very upset. They were hoping their kid was going to get into a certain school so that they could put the sticker on the car.”
Ms. Buchman tries to explain to families that the second- or third-choice college is also a wonderful place, that the child will make friends, get a good education and life will go on. In six months, that first choice will be a vague memory.
But given all the angst surrounding college admissions, it can be a difficult message to sell. Emotions run high this season, and the anxiety level is testament to a process that many educators believe has spiraled out of control.
The frenzy over college admissions is well known. Stories abound about overstressed students who race from Japanese calligraphy classes to hockey practice to SAT tutors. Anecdotes about out-of-control parents who write college essays, monopolize questions at college information sessions and hound their children to make every moment a resume-building one - are plentiful.
Those aren’t even the really crazy ones. One Westchester guidance counselor described a student who was applying to a college that required a graded high school paper. The child brought in an ‘A’ essay with many enthusiastic teacher comments. The counselor took a closer look and asked why the teacher had written comments in two different inks. It turned out that the student’s mother had added a few thoughts of her own.
It’s easy to criticize parents for the current state of affairs, but you can also point to other culprits the infamous college rankings, ambitious high schools, colleges that brag about all the students with perfect SAT scores whom they reject, colleges that market themselves aggressively and then proudly declare low admission rates, and a culture that values performance over character.
However you allocate the culpability, though, there is a growing sense that it’s time to return some sanity to the process. Merilee Jones, dean of admissions at M.I.T., has made this her mission. Recently, she addressed 160 school counselors at a meeting of the Westchester Putnam Rockland Counseling Association in White Plains. When Bob Sweeney, a counselor at Mamaroneck High School, introduced her, he said, “You just flew into the Bermuda Triangle of stressed-out guidance counselors, overstressed kids and unrealistic parents with high expectations.”
Ms. Jones laughed, but she was serious about her message to the counselors (and, at a later meeting, to parents at Byram Hills High School): she is worried about the toll the application madness takes on today’s children, whom she describes as “the most anxious, sleep-deprived, steeped-in-stress, judged, tested, poorly nourished generation.”
These teenagers, she said, are being raised to please adults and held to impossible standards. They are loaded down with A.P. classes and expected to participate in multiple extracurricular activities, demonstrate leadership, garner high SAT scores and, on top of that, have a “passion,” a buzzword in college admissions. “It’s ridiculous to expect that of them,” Ms. Jones said. “Most teenagers have no passions at all, except sex.”
The pressure is literally making children sick, Ms. Jones said, citing increases in everything from eating disorders to depression. Her call to arms: reel in the pressure and start changing the culture. Parents need to back off. Children need downtime. High schools need to lower the pressure. Colleges need to be straight with teenagers.
Most counselors embraced the message. Mr. Sweeney described Ms. Jones as “the voice of reason and sanity in the middle of all this craziness.”
But the culture isn’t going to be easy to crack. Barbara Leifer-Sarullo, director of counseling at Scarsdale High School, said that in the college competition, parents were victims as much as children.
“A few years ago, I had a parent who was outraged because I didn’t tell him his kid needed a math tutor,” she said. “He told me, ‘Here my kid is climbing Mount Everest himself, and everyone else has a Sherpa.’ He felt like he was a bad parent.”
Article by Kate Stone Lombardi
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April 10th, 2007 at 11:14 am
I am a parent of a son who graduated with Ms. Coll’s daughter from the fictional high school described in her book. It is truly crazy out there and our children are the ones who suffer. Although my husband and I tried not to pressure our son, it was pervasive in our community. My son was competing against children whose parents condoned cheating and did whatever it took to give their offspring the extra edge, often at the expense of others. Parents forced their children to engage in activities in which they had no interest just to bolster their college “resume,” and the students felt burned out in their senior year and into college.
The students reflected their parents elitism and often expressed distain at the college choices of students who did not have stellar GPAs. April was very stressful for students who did not get into their Early Decision colleges or who applied regular decision. In May, the school published in the student newspaper, the college choices of all of the students. I can only imagine the humiliation of those students who were not followingmthe typical path of students at the school.
Guidance counselors, who were well meaning and wanted to enhance the college choices of their students, pushed children into AP courses which were totally inappropriate. For example, my son was clearly interested in majoring in the Social Sciences and wanted to take AP Statistics. He was steered into AP Calculus without the appropriate foundation because it looked better on his application. It was such a struggle for him that it lowered his GPA anyway.
I also lay the blame on the colleges themselves. I naively assumed that the care anad shaping of young minds was the primary mission of colleges. Boy, was I mistaken? Colleges are big business. My son was barraged with marketing materials from several top schools.The goalwastoget him to apply so the school could reject him, thereby increasing its selectivity rating in US News and World Report. Schools were buying top students rather then giving out aid to needy students. This also boosted their standards in the ratings. A lot seemed to be driven by ratings and contributions from alums not on the undergraduate experience.
In the final analysis, my son ended up attending his number 5 school, which surprisingly happened to be a “reach” as dubbed by the counselors. It turned out to be a good fit in reality if not “on paper.” The school took a chance on my son’s outstanding passions and contributions to his high school rather than his respectable but not outstanding grades and SAT scores.
He gets the chance to be around good minds and has small classes in which he can exchange ideas,which he loves to do. He has not pursued the extracurricular activities that he did in high school but is devoting time to sports, which provide needed exercise and stress reduction and a fraternity, which enhances his social skills and sense of community. He also did community service not because it was required but because it was meaningful and fun for him.
All I can say is relax and let your child be who (s)he is.If parents and those who support children don’t get caught up in the game, there will be no one to play it and the rules, as we know them now, will have to change.