The post Stress of Admissions: More Time With Kids. Good? first appeared on Great College Advice.

As we hadn’t spoken in quite a while, Theresa asked me about my philosophy about college admissions.  She wanted to know what I thought were the quality colleges.

Theresa is an educator at a major state university.  I asked her what good education looks like, in her professional opinion.  She responded, predictably, that good education is all about what happens in the classroom between a well-prepared, knowledgeable, caring, and enthusiastic instructor and the willing, capable, and hard-working student.

Moral of the story:  education is not about an institution.  It is a process that occurs between teachers and students, primarily.  It is about learning, not about prestige.

The sad fact is that many of the most prestigious, Gotta-Get-In colleges do not deliver the best quality education—based on this bare-bones definition.  They deliver a lot of atmospherics and ivy and Nobel Prize winners and fantastic facilities (for graduate students, anyway).  But what happens in the classroom is not necessarily the priority of every Gotta-Got-In institution.

Theresa and I bandied these ideas around for quite some time, and we shared some interesting personal insights about our own educational experiences…both as students and as teachers.

A few hours after we hung up the phone, I came across an article written by Gregg Easterbrook, a writer for the Atlantic Monthly who has been a fellow at the Brookings Institution.  He wrote an article for Brookings in 2004, entitled “Who Needs Harvard?”

I recommend it to my readers who want a glimpse of how I think about prestige and the Gotta-Get-In colleges.  I don’t think Harvard and the rest of the top 25 most selective colleges are all bad:  I attended one and taught at another, and I’m proud of my associations with both.  Furthermore, several of the top 25 are truly outstanding—places I might be delighted to see my kids or my nieces and nephews attend.

What I decry is the notion that entry into the top 25 becomes a life-or-death pursuit for many kids—and their parents.  We all must keep things in their proper perspective:  an excellent education can be had a literally hundreds of institutions around the country.

And the quality of a student’s education has much more to do with the initiative, intelligence, and focus of the student than with the quality of the institution she attends.

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The post Keeping Perspective on Selective College Admissions first appeared on Great College Advice.

“The college admissions process is an initiation rite into adulthood,” says Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg, adolescent medicine specialist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and author of books on teenage stress and resiliency for the American Academy of Pediatrics. “But if success is defined very narrowly, such as a fat envelope from a specific college, then many kids end up going through it and feeling like a failure.”
Students complain about lack of sleep, stomach pain and headaches, but doctors and educators also worry that stress tied to academic achievement can lead to depression, eating disorders and other mental health problems.
“There are some kids who can handle it,” says Denise Pope, a Stanford University education lecturer and author of “Doing School,” a book about stress and academics. “But some of these kids have had college on the brain since sixth or seventh grade or even earlier. When you have that kind of stress over that kind of time, that’s where it starts to worry us.”

How can a concerned parent help ensure that the application process does not result in forcing a student over the edge? (And how can parents keep their own sanity at the same time?)
The first thing is to realize that there is no single college that is nirvana. Students may develop their preferences, but it’s important in today’s competitive environment to help them see that there are likely several colleges that will meet their needs, will nurture their interests, and will fuel their aspirations. Kids who pin their every dream on one college can be setting themselves up for a big fall.
The second thing is to not telegraph that a student’s worth as a human being is in any way tied to the college they attend. You may have seen the statistics that indicate that the richest, most successful people in the US did not, by and large, attend elite universities. Rather they attended state and local institutions–include community colleges! A person’s worth is decided more by their actions and contributions, not by the name of an institution printed on a piece of paper.
Finally, many families find it enormously helpful to rely on a respected, ethical, and knowledgeable third party to help them through the process. An independent counselor can keep everyone’s expectations on an even keel, and can manage the process and help everyone stay on track.
The admissions process is mighty cumbersome, and students and parents alike can feel like fish out of water. However, with a reliable, relaxed, and guide, the process for you can be more like a refreshing swim in a slow, cool river.

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