Re: Getting on the treadmill early

Noel wrote:
I found this article to be sad. These kids are gathering "lines" for
their college applications, but how many of them really learn anything?
This parallels what goes on in much of corporate life, the valuing of
titles/labels/"documented accomplishment" over real substance. I was
heartened by the crowd of Asian kids described at the end, who got into
college the old-fashioned way, by just working hard (what a concept).

Noel

--------------------------
Ivy League or Bust: What does it take to make it through today's
college marketing mill? And can we stop it?
- Tia O'Brien Sunday, August 20, 2006 San Francisco Chronicle

In 1990, my husband and I made a terrible academic mistake. We gave
birth to our daughter. Had we been more strategically adept parents, we
would have researched the matter and delayed the start of our family.
But the deed is done and we're now coming face-to-face with the
consequences. Our daughter's graduating high school class of 2008 will
be the largest class ever in California, at the peak of what's referred
to as the Baby Boom Echo. Nationally, '08 is virtually tied with the
Class of '09 as the largest in the history of the United States,
according to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.

What this means is that these babies will have an unlucky X factor at
work -- the sheer size of their numbers. Even fewer spots are available
at the nation's 100-plus most selective colleges at a time when they're
turning away applicants in record numbers. And the admissions process
itself -- make that contest -- has devolved into a frenzied craze where
success is defined as getting into the Ivy Leagues, failure is a grade
point under 4.0, and less-than-near-perfect test scores shouldn't be
discussed in polite company.

Over the past two decades, the college-admissions process has undergone
a dramatic transformation. It's now a multibillion-dollar industry.
Anxious families with enough disposable income hire SWAT teams of test
prep experts, "summer experience" advisors and even "stagers," private
counselors who help spruce up a student's image. They're pursuing a
prestigious degree they believe will unlock the door to the good life
for the Baby Boomets. Even though the average acceptance rate at
colleges and universities nationwide is 70 percent, studies show that
one in 10 freshmen are attending schools that were their third choice
or lower. So, it's no surprise that applying to eight to 12 colleges is
common. Everyone involved -- high school counselors, university
presidents, parents, students and their paid consultants -- seem to
agree that the college admissions process is broken, but no one is sure
how to fix it, who's to blame and what the long-term ramifications will
be.

"The extreme version is that we end up with a population that knows how
to play games and market themselves, with or without substance behind
it, rather than approaching thoughtfully an educational experience,"
observes Bruce Poch, dean of admissions at elite Pomona College, near
Los Angeles. "We've already had our Enrons and Tycos. As a country, we
should be worried about the link to the next generation of leadership
that we're generating."

Those are not comforting words for those of us beginning the college
admissions journey. In a few days, our 16-year-old daughters and sons
will march into what some educators call "the academic crucible" -- the
junior year of high school when Advanced Placement classes are packed,
SAT prep courses are in full swing and an increasing number of parents
ratchet up the marketing machinery to boost the odds to get their kids
into prestigious colleges. Is it our fault? Are we forcing our kids to
mirror our own perfection-driven lives at a time when it's harder than
ever to achieve? Or is it selective colleges and universities that
market themselves with Madison Avenue savvy only to reject the majority
of kids they've encouraged to apply? Or, is it the annual $726 million
undergraduate test-prep industry that has commercialized the
college-admissions process, turning what used to be a pursuit of
academic excellence into a marketing exercise?

The ultimate example of Student Staging may be Harvard's dethroned
phenom Kaavya Viswanathan, the undergraduate author who now admits to
copying portions of her bestseller. It's unclear if the book grew out
of resume-building pressure. Her parents hired college consultant
IvyWise, a service that charges between $10,000 and $30,000, to help
pave the way to Harvard. It also introduced Viswanathan to a literary
agent, and the end result was "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and
Got a Life," a novel about a high school student's struggles to get
into Harvard. After the book was withdrawn from the market, Viswanathan
decided to take a break from Harvard.

"Education is being sold as a product, and kids are being sold to as
consumers," warns Lloyd Thacker, founder and executive director of the
Education Conservancy. "Parents are looking at kids as trophy kids,
validating their parenthood." Thacker, a former college admissions
officer and high school college counselor, calls this Bumper Sticker
Prestige. He's one of the loudest voices calling for reform. In
mid-June, he accomplished what seemed impossible two years ago when
Thacker launched the Conservancy, a nonprofit committed to reforming
the college admissions process. At a recent meeting in New York, he
assembled 22 educators, including several presidents of exclusive
private liberal arts colleges, for a groundbreaking discussion about
how they could exert their leadership to reclaim the process. Will they
be able to push back against the commercialism they helped unleash? To
understand their odds of success -- and the obstacles they must
surmount -- it's important to first comprehend what it takes to get
into a highly competitive college, even the less selective ones on a
student's wish list.

Sleepless in Marin

Mount Tamalpais shimmers in the late afternoon haze as valedictorian
Nora Barr strides confidently to the podium in an amphitheater on
Redwood High School's grassy campus. Her shoulder- length blond hair is
ruffled by a breeze as she begins her final leadership duty at Redwood.
For Barr, this moment is the culmination of four years of grueling
work. Her determination to do her best and go to the best college
possible has paid off: seven semesters with a 4.5 grade point average
at the respected public school in Larkspur has landed her not only the
valedictorian honor, but a spot at Harvard, when only 9 percent of the
22,276 applicants were accepted.

The Redwood parking lot is filled with BMWs, Mercedeses and luxury SUVs
driven by the type of high-achieving Baby Boom parents who've helped
fuel the college admissions frenzy. Graduates standing in flowing red
gowns in back of Barr include an impressive crop heading off to some of
the nation's most competitive colleges and universities -- graduates
like Victoria Ruff, who set her sights on the top schools when she was
a freshman and developed an ambitious game plan with help from a
seasoned private college counselor. Ruff, petite with large dark eyes,
established grade-point targets, planned her summer activities --
language studies in Switzerland, Spain and Czechoslovakia, engaged in
community service work and took an array of rigorous Advanced Placement
classes. The end result: "I got into Tufts, early admissions," says
Ruff, who doubts she could have achieved her goal without her private
college adviser.

Her friend, Lauren Fried, rejected high-priced help -- and still
succeeded. The letters U-C-L-A are spray-painted on the back of Fried's
gown. Out of 47,300 applicants, she was among the lucky 25 percent that
won acceptance. In 11th grade, Fried consulted with the same private
counselor used by Ruff, but decided that the cost wasn't worth it. "Our
school counselor is very knowledgeable, but I'm also a very on-track
person," she says. To say the least. Throughout high school, Fried
juggled serving as coxswain for her crew team six days a week, while
carrying an AP-heavy course load, and volunteering at Planned
Parenthood. Crew recruiters from Dartmouth, her first choice, came
knocking, but a deal fell through. "Crew didn't help in the end. I was
disappointed," she admits. Luckily, Fried says she really loved crew.
Those hundreds of hours in the baking sun and winter rain, and nights
with minimal sleep, weren't just to beef up her resume.

Such a driven high school lifestyle might sound surreal -- even absurd
-- unless you've recently navigated a kid through the college prep
maze. Here's a primer on what's happened since you last stepped foot on
a college campus. Back in the 1980s, when enrollment dipped and federal
funding was cut, selective colleges resorted to commercial marketing
practices to attract and retain students. The marketing worked so well
that the number of applicants swelled, triggering competition that's
intensified with each new -- and larger -- class of Baby Boom Echoers.
The marketing hype begat the rankings hype: the higher the ranking in
US News &World Report's Best College issue, the more kids applied, and
the more kids were rejected. Enter the testing and consulting folks who
promised to improve a student's odds by boosting their standardized
test scores and polishing the college application. Fearful Baby Boom
parents who'd read the dismal admissions numbers were -- and still are
-- easy prey. Stressed teenagers scramble to achieve what too often is
virtually impossible. Education becomes an incidental byproduct of a
teenager's high school years.

What will it take to unhook this runaway train of rankings,
commercialization and fear? "First, you must get lots of colleges and
universities to reign in their unreasonable marketing efforts," says
Bob Laird, the retired director of undergraduate admissions at UC
Berkeley. "They are so worried about maintaining their enrollment or
moving up in the prestige category that they do a lot of questionable
things, from purchasing (student) names from the College Board and
deluging them with marketing literature, to sending partially filled
out electronic application forms with names, addresses and other
demographic information." Laird notes that at 28 cents a name, selling
lists to colleges is a profit-maker for the College Board, the
nonprofit that oversees SAT testing.

Getting into the Ivies -- without consultants

Nora Barr has been on the receiving end of those mailings, a deluge
that could have filled a storage locker. A few days after graduation
Barr reflected on what it took to get into Harvard -- and Princeton,
and a host of other highly competitive schools that accepted her. She's
a solid, matter- of-fact kid, tall with blue eyes, who exudes an air of
confidence. What's most impressive is that she accomplished her goal
and gained an edge through grit, determination and common sense.

When Barr arrived at Redwood, the athletic freshman was urged to go out
for crew. "People said it will help you get into the best schools,"
recalls Barr. "But the commitment is insane. There were kids who missed
graduation and the prom." She decided to stick with her sport --
basketball. "It was a hard one, but I wanted to enjoy my life." Barr
acknowledges that for many, the unrelenting pace that she set would be
untenable, but for her it was right -- and the key was selecting
courses and activities culled from her genuine interests, not to
impress an admissions officer.

To prepare for the SATs, she took practice tests. At Redwood, she
served on the school board, won a spot on varsity basketball, served as
captain of the Ultimate Frisbee team, joined drama productions and
helped raise money to finance summer trips with her church, where she
and other teens worked with American Indians and built a house in
Nicaragua. By her senior year, the workload was so heavy that she
dropped basketball. Throughout it all, Barr says it was choir and her
family's ad-hoc band that kept her sane. As for outside help, she and
her parents nixed the idea of hiring a private counselor. And, unlike
many public schools with a dearth of guidance counselors, Barr could
turn to her Redwood adviser for expert -- and free -- advice.

Summers were orchestrated with precision planning by her mother. "I'd
map out every single week of the summer so that this poor child didn't
do all her AP homework before school started," says Lynn Barr, a
Wellesley alum. "And, we tried to make sure there was sanity, some
family time." That AP summer homework meant reading a slew of books and
writing as many as 12 essays.

Their mother acknowledges that while both daughters -- Sarah Barr is an
'08er -- seem to thrive on pressure, it's not for everyone. "That's who
they are. But to push a child if they're not that way isn't fair." Even
for an engine of a student like Nora, there were times when the stress
was too much -- like the day she realized that the process pitted
friend against friend as they competed for those elusive Ivy slots. "It
can get a bit catty, especially among the girls." Barr reflected a
moment before adding, "It's probably a lot like the real world."

StudentHood instead of student staging

It's too much like the real adult world for teens -- that's the
consensus of many guidance counselors, admission officers and even
psychologists who study the health effects of college prep-induced
anxiety. In 2004, Lloyd Thacker was so frustrated by the admissions
process and the lack of leaders pressing for reform that he quit his
job as a college counselor at Jesuit High School in Portland, Ore., and
founded the Education Conservancy. His disillusionment had been
building since the 1980s when he resigned as a college admissions
officer at Pacific University near Portland, after disagreeing with its
marketing plan. Some 25 years later, Thacker cautions that he doesn't
have the answers, but his goal is to prod leaders of higher education
into action. "We're trying to help them realize that the message
students are hearing is hurting education," he's says.

The Conservancy's s first success was the publication of Thacker's
book, "College Unranked," a collection of essays by college presidents,
admission deans and foundation leaders who voiced their concerns about
the admissions system. Although admissions officers snapped up copies
and displayed them in their waiting rooms, critics remained skeptical
that Thacker's lonely crusade would have an impact. But gradually, the
born, bred and educated Californian is winning a following as he
crisscrosses the nation, preaching a message that's attracting media
attention.

"Lloyd's voice is the single most important voice trying to reign in
this kind of national hysteria that's overtaken the college admissions
process," says Laird, author of a chapter in "College Unranked."

"Lloyd has no special ties to special interests," says Jon Reider, the
director of college counseling at private San Francisco University High
School, who serves on the Conservancy's advisory board. "He says,
'Let's talk about the whole person.' He calls this StudentHood." Given
the power of the industries and institutions he's taking on, Thacker
could easily be dismissed as a Don Quixote. Instead, high school
counselors like Reider, a former Stanford University admissions
officer, describe him as a Jeremiah, the biblical prophet who believed
in a future full of hope. Reider needs both hope and diplomatic skills
when he meets with parents like the businessman father who handed him a
13-column spread*** correlating his daughter's interests and scores
with 40 college choices. Reider filed the spread*** and thanked the
father, telling him, "This is a great start, but what matters is how
your daughter perceives herself."

Over-the-top anecdotes like that one fuel Thacker's crusade. In late
May, Thacker made a quick pit stop in San Jose to serve as a guest
panelist at the annual meeting of the Western Association of College
Admissions Counselors (WACAC) on the San Jose State University campus.
As we sit outside the Student Union, the trim, upbeat 52-year-old
activist with bushy brows and graying hair doesn't mince words as he
spells out his challenge: "This is a billion-dollar industry that needs
to be dismantled because it hasn't contributed 1 ounce to the
betterment of education." Thacker's wrath is aimed at institutions like
the powerful, nonprofit College Board, which insists its tests can't be
gamed, but has a flourishing test-prep service online.

During his WACAC appearance, Thacker urged the audience -- a mix of
high school counselors and college admissions officers, to start
accepting kids for the right reason: not because they've gamed the
system, but because they've exhibited the traits of what he describes
as a true student -- curiosity, creativity, effort, the ability to deal
with ambiguity and disappointment. "These are the qualities that the
admissions process does the most to repress," warns Thacker. "And all
educators must reclaim them from the clutches of commercialization."

Inside the Student Union, where attendees are mingling over drinks, we
pass by vendors who are hawking the 21st century tools of the college
admissions trade. One company's literature bills its "propriety
college-bound high school student database" as helping to ensure the
success of "your enrollment campaign" by tracking down targeted
students based on geography, grade point, age, religion and ethnicity.
Multiple businesses are selling test prep services. Others are pushing
magazines for the college-focused teen with cover stories that blare
such dire warnings as "Financial Aid Horror Stories;" "Juniors, Only
365 days Left!" and "The New Crackdown on Cheating Is Fierce."

At dinner, we're seated with Tamar Adegbile, a counselor at
Harvard-Westlake, the exclusive Studio City school where the kids of
L.A. moguls and Hollywood stars are prepped for college. She'd attended
Thacker's panel discussion, leaving impressed, but Adegbile is
skeptical about whether Thacker will convince college presidents to
take a stand. "Even though they bash the rankings, they benefit from
them," observes Adegbile. The Vassar grad has the kind of impeccable
credentials -- a former admissions officer at both Columbia University
and Vassar -- that should encourage parents to value her advice. But
when Adegbile suggests they look for the best fit for their child, not
the toughest school to get into, she's often ignored. "In spite of what
I say, lots of families are influenced by those rankings."

In the summers, Adegbile tutors disadvantaged 11th-graders, many of
whom have never taken an SAT prep test. Is this obsession with prestige
strictly an upper class illness? I ask. Adegbile shoots me an amused
look and explains, "These are kids who are just trying to get out of
high school. They're hoping that their one AP class won't be canceled."

Even if they finish high school, low-income students might be
victimized by another byproduct of college mania -- the merit
scholarship. In an attempt to boost their rankings, colleges use
financial aid packages to lure top students, leaving less money
available for kids with real financial hardships. Vocal critics of this
practice like Amherst President Anthony Marx warn of the consequences.
"They won't be able to go to college," says Marx. "You're cutting off
social mobility... That's not what America is supposed to be about."

A moral conflict en route to Cornell

Robbin Mashbein could be Exhibit A in Lloyd Thacker's mission to halt
what he views as the corruption of higher education's values. When her
son, Zach Lipton, a student at University High, began thinking about
college, she attempted to stay calm. She read studies about CEOs who
achieved success without an Ivy League degree. Mashbein reassured
herself -- and her family -- that "it's perfectly possible to go
someplace that's not an Ivy League college and lead a perfectly happy
life." Then, she started hearing the stories from friends -- about kids
with incredible resumes who didn't get into the best schools. "I really
was freaked out," she admits. "It feels like certain doors are open to
(kids) if they go to schools that are top-ranked. You certainly don't
want to see those doors closed."

Mashbein is surprisingly candid about the internal struggle that ensued
between common sense and the lure of prestige. Ultimately, pursuit of
the Ivies won out. "It didn't seem like the best part of me," she
confesses. She was dismayed when her son was offered enticements such
as a free laptop and cash to visit campuses. Like his mom, Lipton came
to believe that "reputation matters" in terms of opportunities after
college, so he used a private tutor to help him improve his SATs, a
test that's now 3 hours and 45 minutes long. But Lipton, a serious
young man, interested in computer science and technical theater, also
found himself turned off by a transcript-driven approach to education.
"Getting a good grade on your transcript was all important," he
reflects, "not as much as what you learned." Those grades paid off:
Lipton won early acceptance to Cornell. How would Mashbein change the
process? "I don't know how we can get at this without addressing
society's values," she says. "What's important in life? What is the
value of an education?"

Those are the very sorts of questions that Thacker placed before about
22 college presidents and foundation officials when they gathered
behind closed doors on the New York University campus in mid-June. The
participant list included the presidents of Amherst, Reed, Bates,
Colby, Swarthmore, Grinnell, Pitzer, Williams and Barnard as well as
the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Christian A. Johnson Foundation
and the Spencer Foundation. While these liberal arts leaders didn't
create a manifesto, they did commit to trying to build a consensus on
several hot-button issues. Ask participants about the meeting and they
are tight-lipped. But Thacker confirms that the college presidents
focused on topics that included: creating a list of a college admission
principles that presidents would commit to; revamping the college
application, which Thacker describes as encouraging narcissism with
"first person essays and resume-padding"; reducing the importance of
SATs by agreeing to use tests taken only twice, and only in the senior
year; and undercutting commercial rankings by creating their own
criteria for evaluating schools. "There hasn't been a mechanism to
deliver educational conscience to this market frenzy. We're providing
that mechanism," Thacker says of the historic meeting.

The presidents' unwillingness to publicly discuss the meeting
underscores how much is at stake. They point to anti-trust laws that
have restricted collaboration in the past, but violating the law isn't
their only worry. "Whenever alumni, trustees, legislators of a public
institution ... hear that their college may drop standardized tests or
early admissions, they can exert enormous pressure on the presidents,"
explains David Hawkins, public policy director of the National
Association of College Admissions Counseling.

Just the fact that the college presidents met is hailed as a
breakthrough. "I'm much less skeptical about change than I was in the
beginning," acknowledges Jane McClure, a respected San Francisco
private college counselor. In recent months, Thacker has won increased
funding and grants, including a tentative pledge to help fund a $1.5
million study on how the college admissions process impacts student
attitudes and behaviors.

Down in the trenches, admission process veterans like Dan Murphy,
director of college counseling at the private Urban School of San
Francisco, say the need for reform is urgent. One day soon, our
daughter, an Urban student, will visit Murphy's office. While he places
students in top schools each year, Murphy cautions that his ability to
properly advise students is hampered by a lack of truthful information
from colleges, like knowing how many slots are given away to
early-admission applicants. "It would be great," says Murphy, "if
they'd put something on their Web site that said, 'Half of the places
are gone.' "

Even Wall Street is monitoring reform efforts. When Pomona's Triple A
bond rating came up for review, Poch found himself defending the highly
selective college's 40 percent early admissions rate. "I was dumbstruck
the first time I was asked about our yield rate (the number of kids who
apply)," says Poch, who notes that those dubious college rankings now
are factored into bond rating calculations.

The no frills solution

If there's hope in this story, it's in the saga of the students at San
Francisco's Lowell High School where the majority of students still get
into good colleges the old-fashioned way -- all by themselves. The
public high school is packed with ambitious students who won acceptance
to Lowell, which offers a rigorous college prep curriculum. But unlike
their wealthier public and private school counterparts, Lowell kids,
many of them sons and daughters of Asian immigrants, often don't have
the money to indulge in private consultants, expensive SAT tutors, or
community service trips to exotic destinations. Yet, they are heading
off to selective colleges and UCs in impressive numbers.

On the day before graduation, Lowell's seniors, about 600 of them,
packed into the New Asia restaurant in Chinatown for lunch. The banquet
hall echoed with high spirits and laughter, as the students blew off
steam. At one table, five kids say they're going to UC Davis in the
fall, including Derrick Chao. "I only applied to schools I wanted to go
to," he says as the pot-stickers arrive. I asked if any of them had
outside help. "Maybe at other schools," answers Chao, "but we're all
real responsible."

At another table sits John Kim, the son of Korean immigrants, who's won
a slot at highly selective University of Southern California. NYU was
his first choice. "I wanted a level of prestigiousness because it will
help you later in life, but I wasn't about to make myself crazy," says
Kim. Any outside help? He shakes his head. "I figured out the process
myself." Kim's primary source of information? Web sites.

Are they handicapped because they're not spending summers building
classrooms for Guatemalan villagers? Apparently, those expensive
community service trips may not pay off. Adegbile recalls that she and
other admission officers at Vassar and Columbia were unimpressed by
students who "had to go to some exotic place where there were
Aborigines, when they lived near urban areas where volunteers were
needed."

Over the next few months the Education Conservancy hopes to hold
another meeting of college presidents. For Amherst's Marx, reforming
the process requires confronting some disturbing questions. "Are we
sending signals that are misinterpreted as encouraging students to lie
and oversell themselves?" he asks. "If so, what are they suggesting
about what our values are?"

Those college presidents might be interested in the reflections on what
needs to be changed by survivors of the admissions war. Harvard-bound
Barr, a champion test-taker, suggests ending reliance on
standardized-tests: "I don't think they show your strengths, more your
weaknesses." Cornell-bound Lipton thinks that binding early admissions
-- a pledge made in the fall to apply to just one college and attend if
accepted -- can result in a poor choice. "For me it worked out, but I
don't think it's a good thing to ask college seniors to commit right
there." Laird, the retired UC Berkeley admissions director, calls for
an end to rankings. "If a significant number of institutions withhold
information, then they become irrelevant." And private college adviser
McClure says parents can stop the frenzy by worrying about what's best
for their kids, not reputations. "I wish this whole prestige thing
would go away," she says with a sigh. What's at the top of Lloyd
Thacker's own wish list? The answer is one word: Leadership. "There's
hope," says the Jeremiah of admissions reform, "that college presidents
are more than CEOs -- that they are public servants."

As for my daughter's monster Class of '08, I asked Marx what advice he
could offer students who are just a year away from applying to college.
"The more you can focus on where to go and less on gamesmanship and
rankings, the better." He paused, then added, "But I understand the
pressure on seniors."
The best college essays

The college essay is a student's one chance to talk directly to an
admissions officer, and convey something about personalities and
beliefs. If you're planning to spend thousands of dollars on fancy
summer programs to provide a theme for that all-important college
essay, think twice. Admission officers and college advisers say the
best essays aren't about a 17-year-old who's trying to save the world.
Instead, they would focus on an experience that resulted in personal
growth and reflection. And, while the writing should reflect an
accomplished teenage writer, if it's too polished, admission officers
may question whether the student had professional help. Below are some
essay topics that helped students get into the school of their choice:

Helping to care for a grandmother with Alzheimer's
A summer job at Jamba Juice working alongside a recovering drug addict
The moral dilemma of working for a photographer who was overcharging
tourists
The difficult decision to give up dance in high school after working at
it since childhood.

Know Your College Prep Vocabulary

High Yield: Getting as many students as possible to apply
Angular: Passionate student with focused interests
Enrollment Manager: New name for director of admissions
Development Case: Applicants with potentially large donor parents
Helicopter Parents: Baby Boomers who hover over their Boomets
Resume Building: Beefing up activities and courses to impress colleges

Ivy League college: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown,
Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, Cornell

Low Admit: Accepting as few kids as possible
Passionate: Student with a few, deep interests -- in vogue (same as
angular)
Well Rounded: Colleges wanted them until they discovered angular,
passionate students

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