Packaged for College

By Carleton Kendrick

These days it's not enough to have your parents and guidance counselor help you with the college selection and application process. College consultants give you the edge now. High-priced image makers. Craftily packaging students for college acceptance like Hollywood-style media wizards package political candidates for the presidency.

Buying the edge
These consultants have got the angles to play, the scoop on what individual colleges want--from application essay topics (they'll even help you "research" your essays) to "hot" community service projects and articulate college interview answers.

Everyone needs "handlers" today. We're convinced the college entrance game is too tough not to buy our kids the best leg up on the competition.

If the SAT portion of your college portfolio is lacking, just buy some courses from Kaplan or the Princeton Review. Their ads and brochures let you know they can help you beat the system. They promise to get you the SAT scores that colleges want. Your children might have to take more than one of their expensive courses, but they have the big scores if you have the big money.

It all counts now
We begin telling kids by eighth or ninth grade, "It all counts now! Every grade, every sports event, every activity in or out of school. You're building your permanent record for the colleges to look at. It's time to get serious." As one student told me, "The big transcript worries start freshman year and your whole future is pretty much determined by the end of junior year." Case closed.

We've convinced them that school is for getting the grades that will get them into a good college. Going to college is about getting a degree that will get them a great job and a secure financial future. We show them comparison graphs of high school and college graduates' lifetime incomes to prove our point.

Smart, scared, and sad
As an alumnae interviewer for Harvard for the past sixteen years, I've seen college applicants become progressively more frightened, apathetic, and cynical. It's usually difficult in these interviews, even for an experienced psychotherapist, to break through their boilerplate, rehearsed responses and get a glimpse at who they really are. The following anecdotes are from interviews where kids revealed, to my sorrow, how shallow we've encouraged them to become regarding their education and their efforts. (Names of students have been changed):

Sarah, class valedictorian and winner of numerous prestigious math and science awards, spoke with a dull affect about her academic skills and her future, "Math and science has always been easy for me. I guess I'll major in them in college, get a graduate degree, and get a job. My parents want me to get a job as soon as my education is finished. I hope I can save up enough money so I can retire in my early 50's and travel." No excitement in her voice, no inspiration.

Why hurry their childhood? Why scare them into getting good grades and teach them that learning doesn't really matter? Is it any wonder that a recently released American Council on Education survey of more than 348,000 college freshmen reports that, "Academic credentials, rather than a love of learning, seem to be their motivation."

Shame on us all.

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