The Push to Look Good on Paper

To apply to college, we, as 15 year olds, are told to: earn top grades; take the ACT and/or SAT two to three times, five to ten AP tests, and three SAT Subject Tests; write witty and profound essays that display our personality; participate in a variety of extracurriculars that demonstrate leadership, versatility, and a clearly shown passion, and have dazzling recommendations from teachers and guidance counselors. All of these components are great things for us to aspire to, and together, create an application that will allow admissions officers to select well-rounded individuals that can handle the intensity and rigor of higher education and add to the spirit and reputation of the school as a whole.

Despite the well-meaning behind the approach to college admissions, high school faculty, parents, CollegeBoard, and students themselves are harboring and perpetuating an unhealthy culture in high school. Students are pushed to achieve excellence that can be translated on to paper instead of encouraged to foster critical thinking and creativity. While I can only speak to my own experience and, in part, the experience of students thrown in the intense competition of Silicon Valley, I don’t doubt that many high schoolers and recent high school grads have encountered the modern attitude towards college.

To gain an edge in the application process, many students, including many of my friends, employ private college counselors and SAT/ ACT tutors, both of which are becoming more popular, and fill their time participating in recognized organizations. None of these are wrong or particularly unfair for students to do, but the extent to which practices like these are being carried out is alarming.

Recent high school graduate Antonia Salisbury explains, “While we aim to pad our college resumes in a manner that is both academically impressive and appealing to the modern holistic application process, private college consultants are hired to work alongside students to help them keep track of application deadlines and edit writing supplements.” But private college counseling is not monitored, and there is speculation that the practice takes away legitimacy from a student’s application. Counselors have been accused of catering to the parents, their ultimate employers, rather than the students and writing a majority of each essay in lieu of editing the students’ voice.

The cost of hiring a consultant can range from $3,000 to $40,000 (according to StudentAdvisor), but it’s not unheard of for families to spend upwards of $100,000 per college applicant. The expense of college applications rises with private tutoring for various standardized tests, which can cost more than $100 per session. Families are dropping another $3,000 for potentially higher scores.

It’s safe to say that my friends and I will never feel satisfied with our test scores and college apps, and hiring a consultant and tutor seems to only provide a sense of security to students’ parents. Alongside that, students pour hours into sports, clubs, and organizations for the sake of college applications, opting for activities that are appealing to admissions officers instead of exploring their own interests. The truth is that students can be heard bashing the organizations they devote their weekends to up and down the halls of my school. Negativity has begun to rule the way in which students go about pursuing their own interests.

The system under which we apply to college is what’s pushing students to treat admissions like a game that should be played aggressively and strategically. Students will always been left wondering what they did wrong and what more they should have done, and despite my own stubborn resistance to completing more than what is required and what I want to spend my time doing, guilt seems to preside over nearly every aspect of applying to college. Is it better to sacrifice time and money or the chance of getting a prestigious education? There’s no right answer, but students have to try to choose what’s best for themselves at some point in high school.

A friend of mine could easily be my class’s valedictorian, but she’s taken Advanced Science Research, which has no GPA boost, for three years. She sacrificed a title, and likely a few college acceptances, for the opportunity to conduct legitimate biological research. Her situation is not unique, but her response is. The manner of applying to college that is currently in place creates dozens of trade-offs in high school. The tension seems to lie between admissions and learning, and the pressure that surrounds students forces them to choose admissions more often than not.

While students undergo the pressure of being admitted into universities, the inescapable perspective for many is: the more selective a school is, the better. But skepticism of schools’ philosophies is growing. Applying to college is so cutthroat that the best students are no longer favored; those who know how to work the system and, more often than not, have ample money to spend are the real rivals.

The valedictorian of my high school’s 2016 graduating class was admitted to top schools but was still waitlisted at a public university. Under the current application system, colleges can’t truly boast of unbiased admissions and a student body composed of “the best of the best” because students aren’t the only ones admitted; a student’s counselor, parent, tutor, and affiliations are let in too.