Let the College Admissions Game Begin

Perhaps because Grandma never went to college, she delighted in reporting on where the grandchildren of friends and family members were going to school. She knew she was supposed to be impressed that the daughters of her dentist, Irving Schreiber, were at Bryn Mawr, and said she hoped I might apply to a Seven Sister school. She also reported that her great nephew, Roger, alternately described by his own grandmother as “not college material” and “not a studier,” was at Simon Pierce College in New Hampshire, where he was “taking up space.”

Here in Boston the signs of fall abound. It’s dark when I arrive at my gym at 5:30 a.m. and it’s still dark when I leave at 7. After a soaker of a summer, the foliage is spectacular, especially along the Emerald Necklace. And friends whose kids are high school seniors are plagued with anxiety about college applications.

Yesterday I had lunch with a colleague who told me her daughter had decided to apply early decision to a small, selective college in Minnesota whose ranking has been rising steadily in U.S. News and World Report. A soccer player, her daughter finds it irritating to hear girls on her school’s lacrosse team, ranked #1 in Massachusetts, brag about being guaranteed berths at Northwestern.

Though it’s been 15 years since Daphne applied to college, I don’t think the conversations have changed here in Boston, or in any big cities, particularly in the Northeast. The pressure to get into the “right” school seems so unnecessary, we say, even as many of us continue to play the game.

I shared with my colleague something my daughter told me about living in Orlando. It was the type of observation that only someone who’s relatively new to Florida could make. Daphne reported that perfectly respectable people have kids going to a community college, which is intended to lead to eventual matriculation at one of the state’s colleges or universities. What’s more, few Floridians seem to think going to one of the state schools will limit one’s opportunities for succeeding in life.

My colleague and I contrasted the situation with Massachusetts. Here the assumption is that community college is a dead end – at best providing vocational training for kids with limited academic potential. Although I know talented people who have graduated from the University of Massachusetts, my own perception is that the school suffers from chronically inadequate funding, and would not be the college of choice if one has the resources to go elsewhere.

I also told my colleague about discussions my sister and I have had, ever since Phyllis moved from New York to Boulder more than 20 years ago. The University of Colorado seems to enjoy a good reputation and tuition a lot cheaper than Colorado College, where my nephew is now a junior. Still, my sister would feel that she had somehow failed as a parent were she to send her son to a big state school – even though her friends and neighbors consider that a perfectly acceptable choice. (I suspect my brother-in-law, a bright guy who grew up in the Bronx and went to the City University of New York, rolls his eyes any time the subject is raised.)

Today I can’t help thinking about the discussions in the home in which I grew up. Dad had a list of schools he’d cite as punishment for not studying hard enough. I can still remember Grandpa’s retort “you get out of a school what you put into it.”