Why Has Applying for College Become So Frenzied?

Parents Forum
1

<p>I see the posts here on CC and I talk to my friends and it seems everyone has gone off the deep end about getting their kids into a "good" college. And it's not just the Ivys and the other elite schools but it's about everywhere.</p>

<p>Things were definitely not this crazed back when I was a HS senior. By and large, parents stayed out of the process and it was up to kids to motivate themselves.</p>

<p>The only thing I can think of is that today's parents are a lot less confident about the future than ours were. That maybe we think there are fewer good jobs or that there are more people competing for them. We're less confident our kids can find their way on their own.</p>

<p>I'd be happy to hear other possible explanations for this. Thanks.</p>

2

<p>Spend more than 10 minutes on this website and you'll readily see why. I.e. PRESTIGE OBSESSED PARENTS AND STUDENTS.</p>

3

<p>I think we want for our kids what we didn't have (for most of us this is enrollment in prestige colleges) and we tend to personalize our kids' successes, allowing them to make us feel better about ourselves.
As to the effect on our kids, I guess the next couple of decades will provide that answer.</p>

4

<p>I can only speak for myself. I'm an information nut. Anything that comes up, I research it. Vacations, housing, careers, whatever, I would send away for the information and then once we got our first computer (15 years ago) I quickly used the internet for the same thing. So, when my first child was a junior in college I automatically looked to the 'net and books and what a plethora of information! My kids are just not as hooked on information hunting as I am so I did a lot of the research because I enjoyed it. I passed everything to them and together we did the rest. </p>

<p>Thirty years when I was graduating from HS I don't remember any of these books and the computers were these huge things that a couple of geeky guys guarded in a special room. The information just wasn't there. I'm not interested in the college search because I fear for my kids future, I'm totally excited about all the possibilities and want them to see all the doors that are open!</p>

<p>As far as going off the deep end about kids getting into a good college, I think we parents tend to go off the deep end trying to find the right fit college. A place our student can be accepted, affordable, have the academic, social, and whatever fit that they've determined to be perfect. Most of us know deep down that a good college experience can be had just about anywhere but we also believe that if we get the RIGHT college, we'll be better parents and our kids will be happier too.</p>

5

<p>I agree with the premise that parents want the best for their kids, and also with the concept that the internet has made so much more information available, that it is almost irresistable (at least for me) to dive into the fine details. Also, the advent of the information age has made college far more necessary than it was 30 years ago.</p>

<p>What I see, however, is an unwarranted obsession with the so-called prestige schools. I went to one of those schools (Stanford), but not because of the prestige. My father went there, we lived 10 miles away, and it had everything I wanted. I grew up going to Stanford football games, and as a water polo player/swimmer, it was a top choice. </p>

<p>Prestige is all in the eye of the beholder. Sure, if you are in a field that you take directly to the job market from college, the name may get you in a few doors that wouldn't otherwise be available. However, in my experience, many of the companies that put a high focus on the school name are not places you would necessarily want to work for! ;-)</p>

<p>There are precious few fields where an undergraduate education prepares you for a career. Those skills are aquired in graduate school or in the entry level positions that people obtain out of college. We are forcing kids to make decisions about their ultimate career path way too early. When they get to college and learn the ins and outs of their "chosen" field, many become disillusioned, and then perceive themselves as failures if they change their path. That's just wrong.</p>

<p>College is the last chance we have to experiment, try things on for size, and to fail, without serious consequences. These kids need the full gamut of things that undergrad offers, in and out of the classroom. Most importantly, they need to learn how to communicate well, both verbally and in writing. This is too often ignored, and I have been shocked at the people coming out of "name" universities who cannot put together a sound, logical, well presented written or verbal exposition. Knowing the intricacies of a field is worthless if you cannot communicate it well.</p>

<p>We are counseling our son to disregard "name" and price in finding his "perfect" college. (We are, of course, reserving veto rights ;-)) It is far more important that he find an environment in which he feels comfortable, affords the requisite academic options and challenges, as well as the extracurricular opportunities that are just as important to his growth as a person.</p>

<p>Jeff</p>

6

<p>Kathiep --</p>

<p>"Most of us know deep down that a good college experience can be had just about anywhere but we also believe that if we get the RIGHT college, we'll be better parents and our kids will be happier too."</p>

<p>You are clearly very self-aware, and I think a lot like you! You expressed the "issue" of information availabilty very well. I also research (usually, over-research!) vacations, housing , career etc. Read way too many books, magazines and articles about too many aspects of child rearing, too. Fortunately, my kids, so far, are no worse for it...and I get to be OCD in a somewhat constructive manner! (So...we're not necessarily obsessed with prestige...just obsessed!)</p>

7

<p>
[quote]
I can only speak for myself. I'm an information nut. Anything that comes up, I research it. Vacations, housing, careers, whatever, I would send away for the information and then once we got our first computer (15 years ago) I quickly used the internet for the same thing. So, when my first child was a junior in college I automatically looked to the 'net and books and what a plethora of information!

[/quote]
Wow. No, you are speaking for me too. I am exactly like this. I want to know everything. If I can know it, whatever it is, I will. I tend to keep most of my findings to myself. But when it seems important and relevant to those I love, well, I don’t see the harm in dumping one, two, maybe three or four dozen pounds of research on them.</p>

<p>Not about prestige. I just want to do the best I can to help those who matter most.</p>

8

<p>The college frenzy is much more than just prestige. Money is involved. BIG money. Financial aid is a problem for almost everyone. Kids can't work their way through college. Many State schools have gotten very expensive and in addition many States have not invested enough for the schools to keep up with the population growth. They haven't invested enough to keep up with the highly technical nature of our jobs and society. The bottomline is you can spend a small fortune sending a kid to college and that college may not be very good, may not provide the level of education needed in the future and may have well less than half of the students graduate. Dadguy, if you haven't done it, you need to try one of the calculators to see what you will be expected to contribute. Then realize that schools may not meet financial need and when they help it is likely to be in the form of loans. Go ahead run that calculator, then decide if you are worried about your kids abilities to deal with life or your abilities to deal with the costs of college.</p>

9

<p>I don't think the process has become particularly frenzied. CC represents an extremely small portion of the applicant pool, and elite schools only make up about 1% of colleges in the US. The vast majority of the students at my high school were perfectly happy to apply to the flagship State U as a reach and some of the other state schools as matches. The process is really only getting out of hand at the highest level of applicants. I suppose it might be different in states like Mass., though.</p>

10

<p>I agree totally with Kemet. The media and sites like this one have whipped up a crisis where there doesn't have to be one. </p>

<p>There are plenty of great schools out there that are not impossible to get into --there are over 2600 colleges in the US, and of those only 25 accept less than 25% of students, and only another 130 or so accept less than 50%. So that means there are actually about 2400 or so schools where your chances of getting in are better than getting rejected (and you can get a great education at many of them). Yet, the media continues sending out the message that it's "impossible" to get into a good college (look closely at those articles, folks, they seldom mention schools outside the most impossible to get into). The message being sent is that selectivity in and of itself is the only measure of quality that matters. The only "good" colleges, the thinking goes, are the ones that everyone wants to get into. Everything else is not worth even considering. Once you start thinking that way, you also stop thinking about what the process of applying to college is REALLY about -- and that's finding a range of colleges where you or your child's educational and social needs can be matched and met successfully. </p>

<p>So, yes, the process is crazy -- IF you CHOOSE to make it so by continuing to equate scarcity as an absolute indication of quality and make this more about bragging rights than finding good options across a range of selectivities. The vast majority of students and parents in this country, like Kemet says, however, aren't on CC and they aren't marching lockstep towards schools that reject 90 percent or more of applicants. Their admissions experiences are quite different than those who are. </p>

<p>I find it interesting that I have been contacted several times by the media in the past few weeks for my thoughts on the "admissions frenzy" of this year --- only one reporter has taken me up on the offer to put her in touch with the many students I know who have had very happy and satisfying results this year. So, don't worry about the "admissions frenzy" that the media is selling. Worry about making YOUR (or your child's) admissions experience a successful one because it's based on more than just applying to "elite" schools because you don't know anything about the other options out there.</p>

11

<ol>
<li><p>There are more college-entry age kids in absolute #s than a generation ago and the # of places available at the top colleges hasn't really increased. </p></li>
<li><p>A higher percentage of college-entry age kids at least start college. </p></li>
<li><p>A higher % of students at US colleges are internationals, which has the effect of increasing the # of students in the total applicant pool. </p></li>
<li><p>The "elites" make more of an effort now to reach out to all sorts of people. A generation ago, students who took the PSAT didn't get mail from dozens, if not hundreds, of colleges, as they do now. There are more kids who WANT to go to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, MIT, CalTech than there were a generation ago, when most didn't even think about it. </p></li>
<li><p>The dawning of the realization that test prep DOES work. In the old days, you read through the SAT instruction booklet and took the test. Now, test prep is an industry and lots of folks think that if they just plug away they'll get the scores they need. </p></li>
<li><p>The common application has made it easier to apply to colleges. </p></li>
<li><p>Because of USNews and other rankings, students find out about good colleges further from home. (I still meet Northeastern parents who have never heard of Pomona. Show them the US News ranking and they are a lot more interested.) </p></li>
<li><p>The (relative) decrease in the cost of long-distance travel, telephone service, email, fax, and express mail make it less "scary" to move half way across the country than it was when a call from Boston to California was REALLY expensive and it took a week for a letter to get there. </p></li>
<li><p>In general, economic prosperity.</p></li>
<li><p>To some extent, the media has created the frenzy.</p></li>
</ol>

12

<p>I'd like to think that the frenzy is created by a small minority of my generation. This small minority is extremely driven to achieve and experience everything before they grow up; whether this drive comes from the students, parents, or both is quite another question that I won't try to answer. IMHO, this minority are the people who want to get 1600s on SATs, be valedictorian, play two sports and be captain in one, start their own student club, live in Europe for a summer, volunteer with three different organizations, etc. Don't get me wrong; all of these things are good. But when you start trying to do ALL of them, that's when you start getting carried away.</p>

<p>And of course, the ultimate achievement and experience is getting into the perfect college. And then "perfect" gets muddled up with "most prestigious according to conventional wisdom", which becomes the revered "HMPSY". When "HMPSY" can't meet the huge demand that even this small minority puts on them, spots start to get very competitive. Since this minority is by nature competitive, they start going to great lengths to get in, which results in the frenzy we see. Furthermore, when opportunities abound for kids like this to congregate, such as at prep schools or CC, the frenzy only intensifies.</p>

<p>Me, I tend(ed) towards the "relax and enjoy being a kid" side. Yes, I had some pretty big achievements in high school, but I never let achieving get in the way of doing what I enjoyed (fortunately, there was a lot of overlap). And I can count the number of things I regret from high school on one hand (I think). I'm willing to bet that I was a lot happier and less stressed out than a lot of the people who participate in the frenzy. And it even worked out for me, college-wise.</p>

13

<p>"I'm in a hurry to get things done
I rush and rush until life's no fun
All I really gotta do is live and die
But I'm in a hurry and I don't know why."</p>

14

<p>There was a good story in the NY Times about this a few days ago. Parents have always had high aspirations for their kids; our parents may not have had an opportunity to go to college at all so they were very focused on their children going; to them the flagship state school represented success. The generation educated at good public universities naturally wants their kids to have more and better opportunities than they had so they are looking at selective private schools. Add that to a decade of pretty sophisticated marketing and brand image building by about 50 schools and you have the makings of the frenzy you see.</p>

<p>Si is right--it's a fairly small but loud minority. About 15% of the adult population has a college degree right? And it's the subset with teen kids--it's the group of older adults that were yuppies then thought they were the first generation ever to reproduce. I dread the decade when they start to retire and demand that we all just fork over our paychecks to support them in their old age!</p>

15

<p>jonri, very clear reasoning. thanks.</p>