The College-Admissions Fetish

For many people, the story about college admissions that came to light this week centered on a legal scandal.  The Empathic Rationalist, however, is a law-free zone, so I will have nothing to say about the scandal du jour.  What I would like to talk about instead is the rat race that gave rise to this particular scandal.  Specifically, I’d like to draw an analogy between the way our society approaches getting children into college and the world of sports. 

Imagine for a moment that a sports league declared performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) legal.  Not just some PEDs, but all PEDs.  Hell, imagine that the league encouraged PED use -- for professional athletes, for college athletes, for high school athletes, you name it.  You’d expect many people to refuse to partake in them, thinking that these drugs are dangerous to body and mind.  But those athletes presumably would have trouble competing, because if there is one thing we sports fans have learned over the years, it’s that PEDs work.  

In our hypothetical, that fact is hardly lost on the athletic community.  So one by one, in town after town, athletes would go to their local pharmacies and get themselves on the juice.  Quickly, they’d find themselves running faster, hitting harder, and remaining injury free (at least in the short run).  It wouldn’t take long before these PED users came to dominate their sport.  They’d fill the rolls of the All-Mets in high school, the All-Americans in college, and the All-Stars in the pros.   By contrast, those who were drug free would end up sitting on the bench, or if they were really talented, perhaps they’d attain the status of “role player” – you know, the utility infielder, long snapper, or winger on the fourth line of a hockey team.  But the Hall of Famers, they’d all be shooting up or drinking up ... at least until the point where their bodies fell apart or they started contemplating suicide.  You see, in this hypo, just like in the real world, PEDs will eventually destroy the ones who use them. 

Now let’s get back to the context of getting little boys and girls into college in the real world.  When I look at our society, I see that process as very similar to the hypothetical I just described.  In well-to-do towns like mine (Bethesda, MD), it may be the rule, rather than the exception, for parents to obsess about getting their children into the very “best” of colleges.  And so they essentially give their kids a childhood on steroids, one that is encouraged by the admissions departments of the colleges themselves.  Some of these kids start studying for their so-called “Aptitude” tests when they are 11 or 12, perhaps with the help of SAT tutors or prep classes.  Other kids are pushed, relentlessly, into the most advanced math classes possible by parents who are practically doing their homework with them, much like Willie Shoemaker used to whip his race horse down the home stretch.  These parents also become obsessed with finding “extra-curricular activities” at which their progeny can excel and which are valued by colleges.  So, for example, instead of encouraging little Junior to play the guitar, an instrument he might possibly enjoy playing in rock bands, on campouts, or pretty much anywhere, they buy him a bassoon in the hope that he can become one of the best damned bassoon players of his cohort and thereby fill an elite college’s need for that rarest of musical breeds, the virtuoso orchestral bassoonist.

For the PED families, this approach to starting out in life essentially means that their kids will not have a childhood.  Instead, they will become soulless rat-racers.  On paper, they’ll look pristine with their 4.0s, 1600s, and demonstrated excellence at some sport, musical instrument, or other avocational vehicle.  But when you talk to them, you’ll quickly realize that they’re neither interested nor interesting.  They’re just unappealing machines. 

And then there are the families who aren’t buying into the whole rat race and who, for one reason or another, are allowing their children to grow up ... as children.   You know, normal kids.  The ones who often have time on their hands to day dream, play computer games, run around the backyard with other “underachieving” friends, etc.   These days, such kids might find themselves at college too.   But it won’t be the “top” colleges.  And they won’t come to see themselves as “top” students.  They’ll be the butt of the joke when they go on the road trip to watch their college team play at one of the PED colleges, whose crowd chants “That’s alright, that’s OK, you’re gonna pump our gas someday.” 

This approach to childhood is insane.  It isn’t fair to the kids who tried to enjoy their childhood, only to find themselves being pushed aside as mediocrities.  And it isn’t fair to the PED abusers who gain admittance to Harvard, Yale or Princeton, only to later realize that they’ve lost their humanity in the process.  Is there any question that this epitomizes a negative sum game?  But what in God’s name do we do about it?  How do we stop the rats from running around in their mazes for one generation after another with no end in sight?

To me, the most obvious suggestion is to get rid of the standardized tests – those phony symbols of meritocracy that eat up so much of our children’s psyches.  Instead, I would suggest that the college emphasize the interview process and hire interviewers who can spot genuine warmth, curiosity and courage.  Secondly, colleges admissions departments need to stop rewarding over-programmed kids, who clearly are so busy building their resumes that they haven’t had the time to build their souls.  Thirdly, colleges need to stop providing information about their schools to those organizations who attempt to rank colleges, like that God-forsaken U.S. News and World Report.   If not for those rankings, the elitism that has fueled all this insanity wouldn’t be nearly as intense.  But perhaps the most important thing is for all of us – from college admissions departments, to high school administrators, to parents, to students – to encourage kids to be just that: kids.   

The truth is that you can lead a remarkably productive life with an education from a non-elite state college and a tragically unproductive life with an education from an Ivy League school.  Given that fact, it makes no sense for us to destroy what ought to be some of the best years of our lives worrying about whether we’re heading to one college as opposed to another.  And it’s clearly not fair to those who lack either the opportunity or the inclination to jump into this rat race to make them feel like mediocrities or losers in the so-called “meritocratic” society we claim to be creating.  Anyone who thinks that merit can truly be measured by an SAT score or a child’s willingness to devote at least hours a day to practicing a musical instrument is definitely on drugs.  And they’re not wisdom-enhancing drugs, I can tell you that.

Folks, this shouldn’t be difficult.  The fixes to this mess are right in front of our eyes.  All we have to do is wake up, smell the roses, and let our kids do the same.