The Secret World of College Admissions ... are you ready?

<p>I've realized from this thread that admissions advisers come in many different flavors, from extreme makeover artists to honest well-meaning types who might be useful to the right kid.</p>

<p>Saw Harry Connick Jr telling stories on UK TV. He grew up in New Orleans and studied piano with Ellis Marsalis and James Booker. </p>

<p>His father was District Attorney for New Orleans for decades. He took over sole parenting when Harry's mother, a Louisiana Supreme Court Justice, died from ovarian cancer. Harry was 13 when she died.</p>

<p>Shortly after his mother's death, Harry was invited to play piano in the French Quarter from 11 pm to 3 am. His father gave the go-ahead and Harry got the gig. </p>

<p>13! Hanging in the French Quarter in the dead of night! With musicians!</p>

<p>Raise your hand if you would be brave enough to let your 13 year old do something like that! Wow. What a gift from his dad. </p>

<p>At 18, he went on to Hunter and the Manhattan School of music, finding his way into the recording business.</p>

<p>I've never seen a story like that posted on CC but man, that's passion.</p>

<p>I love Harry Connick Jr, so talented and SSSOOO cute. Because we are close to NOLA, there are a lot of Harry Connick stories (I gather that his Dad was kinda legendary, too, a common thing in Louisiana politics). Anyway, several years ago, but after he became famous, he stopped by my hospital one day, just turned up in the OR waiting area - a nurse was an old friend from high school, something along those lines, and another friend had contacted him, found out he was passing through and urged him to surprise her for her birthday. Sure surprised everyone around her!
Like the time I saw Richard Thomas here in B.Dalton's in the mall, buying a book - thought I was having hallucinations.</p>

<p>I good friend of mine went to Mexico for <em>8 months</em> with a 23 year old friend when he was 12 years old!! His parents said yes because they thought it'd be a great experience!! (<em>keels over in dead faint</em>)</p>

<p>Someone I know works at the NYTimes. She told me that there are professional writers and speech writers writing college essays in a bright "teenager's voice" to help with the admissions process.</p>

<p>WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO THESE OVERPACKAGED KIDS WHEN THE WORK FORCE AND THE REAL WORLD GETS AHOLD OF THEM AFTER THEIR "SUCCESS" IN THE UNREAL WORLD OF COLLEGE ADMISSIONS ?</p>

<p>Maybe they will work for the successors of Enron, and the various mutual funds companies that are being busted everyday. They are well on their way to acquiring the values and the connections needed for that type of work. Nothing matters, but your own personal "success" and prestige.</p>

<p>What will become of the "elite" colleges as more and more of their classes are taken by the "game players" as someone called them? What will become of our country if the game players/ overpackaged types set the tone and run the country?</p>

<p>Well, starting soon, there will be a contrast between those college essays written by the "bright, young teenager" and those essays on the writing portion of the SAT1. Ought to be interesting.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Well, starting soon, there will be a contrast between those college essays written by the "bright, young teenager" and those essays on the writing portion of the SAT1. Ought to be interesting.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>That's true, but some kids just don't do well with the canned 45 minute testing essay, and do very well with a "take your time at home" essay. Honestly, with my daughter, I'm surprised they were even able to score her essay - and I think her low (for her) score on the SATII writing was due to that. Handwriting is not her strongpoint! My guess is the scorers looked at the length of the essay, deciphered a few scrawls and said "this writer has a good vocabulary", then gave her an upper-middle score because they couldn't really read any of the rest of it.</p>

<p>
[quote]
WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO THESE OVERPACKAGED KIDS WHEN THE WORK FORCE AND THE REAL WORLD GETS AHOLD OF THEM AFTER THEIR "SUCCESS" IN THE UNREAL WORLD OF COLLEGE ADMISSIONS ?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I think the problem happens even before that. What happens to the kids who get into these colleges but feel like "imposters" the whole time. Plagued by the feeling that they are frauds who don't really belong there....</p>

<p>"What will become of the "elite" colleges as more and more of their classes are taken by the "game players" as someone called them? What will become of our country if the game players/ overpackaged types set the tone and run the country?"</p>

<p>Duh.</p>

<p>Is it monty python that did the upper-class twit of the the year award ('is father uses 'im as a dustbin..). People have always been able to buy their way into at least some institutions.</p>

<p>I am all in favor of having the essays given over computer at a college test site where the students would have a word processor, a dictionary and a scratch pad to prepare the essay with. As for preparation, everybody should be allowed a prep class and so it should be included in the price for the test.</p>

<p>marite - I'd buy that optimal size arguement a little easier if I didn't know Cornell has nearly 20, 000 students and more than 13,000 undergrads. That makes it as big as many a state school. Penn has 19,000 students and nearly 10,000 undergrads. Not small either and while harvard undergrad is not that big the grad schools and professional schools push total enrollment to 20,000.</p>

<p>We were standing in the Soho Dean and Deluca's, circa 1982. Darling H ordered coffee beans while the rest of the store quietly went bananas. Standing right next to H was Katherine Hepburn, chatting away in that famous, famous voice. H never saw her. I didn't want to nudge him and break the NYC code of cool.</p>

<p>patuxent:</p>

<p>There ain't such thing as "optimal size" that fits all. What was optimal for S#1 is not optimal for S#2.<br>
But when thinking about undergraduates vs. graduates, the graduates who really matter are the ones in Ph.D. programs rather than the professional schools, as they share the same profs and may act as the graduates often act as TFs for the undergraduates. At Harvard in particular, with many of the professional schools located across the river, undergraduates are unlikely to be rubbing shoulders with students from the B-school, the dental school, the medical school, the school of public health. Furthermore, "mid-sized" covers a range of student body sizes. And within that range, some students will find that they prefer to be at the lower or higher end.
The state schools I cited, Michigan, Berkeley and UW-Madison, have far more undergraduates than Cornell which has perhaps the largest number of undergraduates among mid-sized universities. Michigan has 40k+ (ca. 22k undergraduates ); Berkeley has 32k+ (nearly 23k undergraduates) and Madison has a total of 41k (I did not find the number of undergrads). Not all state universities are huge, and quite a few qualify as mid-size. The University of Vermont, with a total of 11k (and only a little over 1k graduate students is smaller than Cornell of Penn.</p>

<p>Northstarmom wrote, in reply to interesting comments by Jamimom, "I get so much joy out of helping young people identify, run with and develop their natural talents. It is so beautiful seeing a young person blossom as they become their best self. It also is beautiful when one can help them find a career or college where they can flourish while honing their natural gifts. It is so sad that some people apparently think that young people should be carved in order to squeeze themselves into a mold." </p>

<p>Amen to that. I'm feeling very sad as I read this thread about parents who appear to feel "buyer's remorse" about their own children! Long before we had any children, my wife and I used to think ahead about all the difficulties and disabilities our children might have--and the conclusion was to fearlessly face the future, and love them for who they are. </p>

<p>I have been scared, as I observe my oldest son develop his interest in his favorite subject, that some of the best opportunities to study that subject in a university setting are at super-selective universities, some in the Ivy League and some not. I'm scared about that because I don't much about that echelon of schools. I lurk and occasionally post on the forums of the schools that are famous for having strong programs in my son's current favorite subject. </p>

<p>But he might change his mind about what he wants to study, and he may take up recreational interests of nil admissions appeal, and there will be a HUGE number of applicants around the world the year he applies. It's not at all a sure thing that he will get into any super-selective school, or even be interested in applying to any of them. (It IS a sure thing that he will get into State U., which is also a strong school for his current areas of interest.) So I have to resolve not to worry. It would be just too unfair to expect my son to reshape all his teenage years just to pursue a strategy for being admitted to a school he doesn't even really want to attend. [pausing a minute to clear wits as four children wrestle one another in next room :) ] Yeah, I really appreciate what you wrote about children being free to be themselves. [another pause for reading bedtime stories to the kids] Keep up the good work of encouraging parents to fit colleges to their kids (by finding a suitable college among the thousands available) rather than fitting their kids to particular colleges.</p>

<p>Just catching up on this depressing thread...</p>

<p>I can't help but feel so sorry for these kids who are being packaged by their "well-meaning" parents. What message are these kids really getting? I'm not a good enough person the way I am. My parents won't love or respect me if I don't get into college X. Assuming such transformations are successful (in the parents' eyes), what will these students ultimately expect of their own children? Generations of stressed out, robotic children - we're seeing signs of it now.</p>

<p>Have to add a note to the thread-in-a-thread I found here (sightings of famous people):</p>

<p>In Rome 1972 - I was a teen with my parents in a hotel cafe near the bar. In walked Jack Lemmon! He ordered at the bar, then turned toward us. We smiled (determined not to run up to him) and he smiled and nodded at us. What a cool guy. What a fun memory.</p>

<p>marite - when I said optimal size I was speaking from the schools perspective. If Harvard made left-handed widgits instead of BAs and BSs and it was turning away 85% of its potential customers it would expand its capacity. But of course it doesn't behave like another business would. Oddly though it continues to market itself aggressively thus increasing demand that it has no intention of satisfying.</p>

<p>So what is going on here? Are the parents who are packaging their kids and spendinf thousands on consultants nuts? Are they any crazier than the people running an institution that spends millions each year creating demand that they can't or won't satisfy? Harvard, Princeton, Yale and the other very elite schools spend a fortune each year convincing high school kids and their parents and the public that admitence to their schools is a sure fire ticket to success in the future and validation of your life to date. They are the ones busily creating the demand then we are supposed to be surprised that people buy into it and do crazy things?</p>

<p>These schools have done everything except put Joe Camel on the second mortgage you are going to have to take out to pay for it.</p>

<p>What's happening here is that the increasing HYPS demand is a rising tide that lifts all boats. The big winners are the next-level-down but wonderful schools that are being noticed and appreciated. They are using merit aid to draw world-class students to their campuses, and the HYPS wanna-bes are turning to them too. Grinnell, Davidson and similar schools are taking good care of the increased demand that HYPS won't or can't. IMHO-- in a generation the exclusive list will be a lot longer.</p>

<p>Patuxent:</p>

<p>HYP are behaving like luxury businesses. Just open a fashion magazine and read about the waiting lists for some goods such as shoes and bags. Demand for such goods is created artificially by a steady drumbeat of publicity both covert and overt and deliberately limiting supply. The moment something becomes affordable, it has to be replaced by some other luxury item even more expensive and even more exclusive.</p>

<p>Unlike luxury businesses, however, HYP are genuinely constrained by space considerations. You should hear the opposition to any new university building in the Cambridge/ Boston area by local residents, especially if this means increasing the umber of students (eg. displacing non-students and raising housing costs for those who stay, increasing noise and other forms of disturbance, etc...</p>

<p>If HYP increased significantly in size, they would stop being themselves. What makes LAC attractive to so many is their small size. LACs, too, indulge in publicity blitz and promise as much success and happiness as HYP, and are pretty hard to get into as well.</p>