A very thoughtful article on how “leadership skills” are evaluated today by college admissions offices.
“The glorification of leadership skills, especially in college
admissions, has emptied leadership of its meaning.”
NYTimes
https://nyti.ms/2n03guB
I think there is a legitimate type of quality that the colleges are looking for, and “leadership” is a proxy description for a paragraph-long explanation.
In my opinion, the difficulty arises when students (and sometimes guidance counselors) interpret the proxy term in ways that are somewhat off. Harry Kagan! The Students’ Choice! from Up the Down Staircase comes to mind.
The local school district found itself short of funds and cancelled all extracurricular activities other than sports at the beginning of QMP’s freshman year. Parent volunteers were not permitted to run activities for which a teacher had previously been paid as the club sponsor. About 90-95% of the class was college-bound and people in the community were not clueless about the desirability of ECs.
The GCs made an announcement at an evening meeting for parents: Parents could provide financial support for an activity to continue. The example given was: “Say that your student is supposed to be President of the Latin Club this coming year. Well, you could pay for Latin club to continue, so that your student has some leadership.”
I am pretty sure that is not how leadership works.
The rather dark and cynical element in the NYT article was the statement that if the colleges are looking for the people who are most likely to become wealthy and powerful, they should just say so.
I loved Helen Vendler’s comment about Baudelaire, cited in the article!
Elite colleges value leadership because leaders earn more and give some of it to their college. It’s part of their educational mission to have highly motivated students. Plenty of schools- probably 95% of them- don’t even ask about your EC’s - they just want your GPA and ACT/SAT scores, and some don’t even ask for that.
The concept of leadership mentioned in the article is pretty outdated in a team oriented world.
I don’t think it is as stark as leaders and followers. Many people who have good people skills and know how to collaborate are needed to bring the leader’s vision to fruition.
Too many people confuse leadership with accomplishment. I think of my small church group which runs communications (website, advertising,etc.) Each person on the team is a leader in what they contribute (time and talents and all that). The nominal chair (who changes every year) just runs the meetings and compiles minutes to report. Same is true in most things. Being president of the club may have very little to do with “leadership.” And I think colleges know that as well.
Leadership can really only be demonstrated…not written down in an app. It is also very hard for a GC or teacher to effectively describe. I think the college may want to see them say things like:
s/he is a natural born leader.
People a drawn to her/him.
S/He takes charge when working in teams to ensure the group works as a whole.
Shows great empathy while giving constructive feedback to teammates.
Resolves internal team struggles.
You can’t do anything proactively to “show it”. I think people are born with it.
Followers is not the right term. They are team members. Someone has to do the “do”. Too many captains and the boat goes nowhere!
I think the article completely misunderstands what colleges are looking for, albeit buying into a common misunderstanding.
Leadership has to do with qualities such confidence, competence, responsibility, independence, motivation. initiative, strength of character – and nothing at all with a title. Leadership does not mean “boss”, or “president”, or “team captain”.
And one reason that colleges look for leadership qualities is that people don’t attend college with the idea that they will graduate and get jobs working in factories. People attend college with the hope of getting higher status & higher paying jobs. Jobs that have words like “manager” in the title.
And of course colleges still accept plenty of students who don’t have much in the way of leadership qualities – just as they end up accepting students whose test scores or GPA’s fall on the lower end of the spectrum of admitted students. It’s just that “leadership” is a general term that covers an array of personal qualities that represent value added to the college. They need a critical mass of students who will be active participants in campus life and in the classroom to make the system work.
@calmom that’s true, but they also need a critical mass of people who think and listen, and aren’t always trying to be the leader. I agree with @TooOld4School that yes, they do want people who can ultimately become big donors, but not everyone who is successful is a Type A personality.
I suspect that not even Harvard wants its student body to be exclusively A Type personalities.