<p>PARENTS MUST HELP THEIR TEENS BECOME PEOPLE -- NOT PACKAGES</p>
<p>By Deborah Stipek and Robin Mamlet (DEBORAH STIPEK is dean of the School of Education at Stanford University. ROBIN MAMLET has just stepped down as dean of Admission and Financial Aid.)</p>
<p>It's February, which means applications to many of the nation's most competitive colleges were turned in at least several weeks ago. The pressure is finally off -- at least for a while -- for students whose lives have been dominated by preparing themselves for this task. For many of our young people, high school is no longer about preparing for college, or for working or citizenship or any aspect of life; it is about constructing the application that will get them into one of a handful of universities they have been told are gateways to success and happiness.</p>
<p>Many students, especially in more affluent communities, have taken every advanced-placement class available, engaged in every community service activity they can cram into their schedule, and worked hard to excel in sports or music or poetry. Often, the goal was not to learn the subject matter deeply but only to ace the test; not to develop a sense of civic responsibility but to certify character; not to develop a healthy body or enjoy and develop a musical or literary talent, but to stand out in the crowd of applicants. It's all about looking good on that application. The competition is fierce and the pressure relentless.</p>
<p>To assist students in this competition is a thriving industry of SAT preparation courses, tutoring and professional college counselors. But these services are generally available only to wealthier students, which would seem to place students who aren't in this group at an even greater disadvantage than they were before.</p>
<p>The pressure is taking a toll, and not just on parents' pocketbooks. Depression and debilitating anxiety among adolescents has increased dramatically. Suicides in affluent communities have risen. Excessive use of amphetamines that enable anxious students to study through the night, followed by the use of tranquilizers and sleeping pills to come down and calm down are common. Cheating is rampant. Concerns about good grades and achieving high scores on tests destroy whatever joy students might have obtained from learning. The sense of commitment or satisfaction in providing a service to the community is lost in concerns about the number, not the quality, of community service gigs. Perhaps of most concern, many of our brightest and most talented young people come to internalize the message that who they are must be ``packaged'' into a shape that only partially resembles who they are at their core; in other words, they learn that who they really are is not enough.
At Stanford University, we see the effects of the pressure. Too many freshmen arrive exhausted and burned out, and they carry unpleasant memories of high school. Teachers, college counselors and parents sometimes blame our admission policies for the pressure high school students endure. They have a point, and we have made efforts to minimize our contribution to the problem. We do not believe that the student with the greatest number of AP classes wins, nor the highest count for community service hours or the most leadership positions. We make an effort to see through ploys merely to ``look good'' on the application, and to recognize the inauthentic essays written only to impress or with substantial assistance from parents or counselors.
Regardless of our policies or our criteria for admission, however, the number of applicants accepted will not change. This is true for most selective universities. As long as counselors, teachers and parents send messages to our students that happiness depends on being accepted to one of a small set of highly competitive schools, the pressure will continue, along with the high number of disappointed young people.
We both talk with well-meaning and concerned parents about this all the time: How can they guide their children to strive and to incorporate challenge into their lives, while still leaving room for downtime, for play, for spontaneity, for daydreaming, for just plain becoming? How can they help their children gain a sense -- and an acceptance -- of their own strengths, weaknesses, proclivities and limitations -- and to make peace with themselves and their opportunities so that the first time a college ``no'' arrives in the mail is not in fact the first time they have been told that something they want is something they cannot have?</p>
<p>Rather than working to produce teens who we think will look good on college applications, we adults should be working harder to get to know our sons and daughters and students -- their interests, passions, and their natural talents -- and we should strive more to help our children get to know who they truly are. Instead of extolling the benefits of getting into one of a small set of select colleges, we should be helping youths identify the school (or alternative activity) that is right for them. So, parents, don't despair when your senior receives some thin envelopes in March. The fat one is probably the best school for your child. And that is worth celebrating.</p>
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