“Bloom Where You’re Planted”: Advice for High School Students Overlooking Growth in the Present

“You have to maintain a four-year commitment.” I can still hear my mother’s voice clear as day. This sentence is etched in my brain and immediately transports me back to a time when every decision I made was a piece of an intricate puzzle that would somehow shape my future. Despite falling out of love with playing the viola, leaving the orchestra was not an option. Why? Because colleges want to see a continued commitment to involvements when reviewing applications. Long story short, I graduated a musician.

“Your junior year grades matter the most.” Another phrase that constantly reappeared in conversation when it was near time to apply to college. Junior year grades are the last grades colleges see on your transcript and are, therefore, the most relevant indicator of future academic performance. The pressure to perform academically while courses simultaneously increased in rigor often left my stomach in knots. What if my course load is too light for college applications or too heavy for my mental health? Is balance possible? Will I manage to finish the year unscathed?

I never found the answers I was looking for because, strangely, COVID was my saving grace. I abruptly went from maintaining two leadership positions, playing an instrument and a sport, taking rigorous courses, being a volunteer at my church, and serving in my community to an uncomfortably slow pace of living. Or so I initially thought. After weeks passed in a new “normal” of social distancing and safe practices, I began to explore old hobbies and passions I no longer made room for on my quest to college admission. The pandemic required me to spend unrequested quiet time with myself that turned into self-reflection and exploration that I truly needed. The constant pressure to be an overachiever while fighting the fear of falling short would have rendered me defenseless by the time graduation rolled around. Without COVID, I never would have stopped to wonder why I engaged in a laundry list of activities that were not feeding me because that grind was and continues to be expected for 14 to 18-year-olds seeking higher education in selective spaces. Hopefully, it won’t take another global pandemic to save them, too.

Lloyd Thacker, founder and executive director of the Education Conservancy states that “far too many students are learning to do whatever it takes to get ahead — even if that means sacrificing individuality, health, happiness, ethical principles, and behavior” (Wong). The culture that elite college admissions have created is harmful to students and fosters irrational behavior to achieve a limited definition of success. Why have we allowed elite college admissions to create a society where students find high performance and achievement more important than pursuing fulfillment? High school junior Brandon Lok writes, “because they are performance oriented, what I find is many students around me attend classes and participate in activities that do not interest them to increase their acceptance rates” (Lok). The culture radiating from elite college admissions does not have personal growth and development at its core. If it did, students would not feel the need to display enough grit to handle too many extracurricular activities while excelling in rigorous courses they have no interest in taking year after year. This sentiment is so ingrained in higher education discourse that even parents felt the need to pay for their students to appear to be a complete academic and extracurricular package to receive one of few slots in the first-year class of an elite institution.

And how can you blame students and their families when this narrative is perpetuated by admission representatives as well? I attended many information sessions that emphasized the pride admissions teams take in curating an incoming class with bizarre statistics complete with perfect test scores, flawless GPAs, and innumerable activities as “elite colleges are now often distinguished by their rising SAT scores and falling admit rates” (Blair and Smetters). Nowhere in those presentations did I find an ounce of inspiration to dive deeper into curiosity, discomfort that sparks growth, or passion. Instead, I left with my head spinning about increasing my ACT score, demonstrating interest, and my personal essay.

High school should be a time of both academic and personal growth as it occurs during a critical transitional period for teenagers. Instead, a large subset of students and their families have adopted the mindset that high school is simply a building block to getting into selective colleges. This way of thinking deserves to be challenged because it indisputably disrupts learning, passions, and community. A lot of high school students end up spending so much time thinking about what comes next without ever stopping to invest in developing themselves and the relationships with the people in front of them.

Let’s take AP Calculus, for example. My high school counselor recommended I take AP Calculus during my junior year in hopes of showing increased academic rigor on my transcript. Well, increased academic rigor means nothing without securing a good grade in the course. I was committed to doing whatever it took to do well in AP Calc despite having no real desire to take the course in the first place. Without any internal desire, AP Calc became very time-consuming. Time spent doing countless hours of calculations stifled my growth and curiosity in other areas. Math homework often demanded my attention and would not let go, but worst of all, AP Calc was a prime example of relationship fragmentation because of competition. As everyone was fighting for limited slots at the same few top schools, any chance of collaboration went out of the door. When it comes down to you or the next person, why would anyone feel compelled to help someone with their math homework? After all, their misstep could make you look better in comparison. An acceptance for one usually meant a denial for many others. What kind of community does this encourage? Though I was hardly competing to be the top performer in any math class, AP Calc could have been a greater experience as a student first and an individual second if my peers and I were not so concerned with the implications of our actions on our college admission. There is nothing wrong with rigor, pursuing academic challenges, and even AP Calculus. But, we have to be more mindful about developing into better students and being positive community participants at the same time.

As students spend hours on end working towards a desired decision, elite colleges and their admissions processes operate as businesses. Have you ever wondered why elite schools do not increase the supply of slots for incoming classes despite skyrocketing demand year over year (Lowrey)? After all, this defies basic economic theory, which states that when demand increases, supply also increases to capture additional profit. Well, the social implications of attending an elite school have made a slot at these institutions a luxury good. Luxury goods hold social value that people are willing to pay a premium for. So much so that when people do not have the means for luxury goods, they will go to great lengths to access them in hopes of receiving the social recognition associated with possession (Collins). In this case, a degree from an elite institution is the luxury good. Likewise, selective institutions are hoping to maintain their elite status and further their exclusivity as this contributes to their perceived value. So, while these institutions as businesses are interested in their income, they are just as if not more interested in preserving their image.

While elite schools concern themselves with image protection, their admissions processes have created a market known as the “entrepreneurial admission sector.” This sector contains everything from standardized test preparation and the mass media market for college application information to college tours and private college counseling. Might I add that this is a multi-billion-dollar industry? Hence, a transactional nature is promoted amongst these companies, applicants, and universities as students are now engaging in a process of marketing “themselves as competitive products to higher education institutions, thereby transforming themselves into college applicant commodities” (Liu). Essentially, applicants to elite schools are participating in this costly buy-and-sell process where they buy the guidance to improve their test-taking abilities and writing skills and sell themselves through their enhanced application. Because the desire to attend an elite school and, therefore, be a competitive applicant will likely never completely disappear, neither will this market that profits from the hopes and dreams of college applicants and their families.

Students and their families attempt to plan their whole lives around admission into an elite school. Meanwhile, elite schools want to continue to admit a minuscule percentage of students, creating exclusivity and maintaining prestige at a high cost. And their admissions are incredibly unpredictable as these schools often reject “students that are essentially indistinguishable from admits” (Blair and Smetters). Elite schools have their priorities, whether that be prestige or otherwise, and there is no formula to being accepted. The misalignment between the desires of college applicants and the schools they wish to attend indicates why people should not let their value rest on acceptance letters. Yes, denial can feel like an insurmountable failure, but perhaps what I am suggesting is that an even greater failure is curating a version of yourself to appeal to colleges without prioritizing what is really important to you. A lot of time, money, and emotion can go to waste in the process of trying to be as desirable and palatable as possible for these elite institutions. The purpose of high school needs to be redefined to nurture the whole student as a human instead of as a prospective student of selective schools.

The application process itself is described as daunting and soul-sucking because students are forced to look themselves in the mirror and explain who they are on a sheet of paper. Many students currently view the process “as being less about growth and exploration and more about checking boxes and fitting into a narrow definition of success,” as stated by US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy (Brumer). No wonder people always say college is a time to “find yourself.” Until that point, many students do little introspection about what matters to them because they are too busy trying to fit into a predetermined mold of who and what they should be in order to succeed. By changing the narrative around high school’s intended purpose, the application process can be a productive and rewarding exercise that allows students to reflect on four years of self-discovery.

“Instead of preparing themselves for college — or more importantly, for life — students spend all of their pre-college years preparing themselves for the moment of admission” (Wong). The frenzy surrounding admissions into selective colleges and universities proves that a large subset of our society incorrectly assumes that high school is just a stepping stone. Parents, teachers, counselors, and admissions representatives alike must caution themselves when encouraging impressionable students to suppress their personal growth and development in the process of pursuing elite college admissions. Success should not be characterized by the 99th percentile, perfect GPAs accompanied by minimal absorbed information, and unwavering commitment to dreaded extra-curricular activities. Instead, success looks like students collaborating with their classmates and developing as individuals by deepening their passions and expanding their desire to learn. In doing so, they will discover their unique excellence and positively impact the environments they are in instead of forgoing their individuality for a seat at a table where they wish to go.

Works Cited

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https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8960931. Accessed 28 April 2024.

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Brumer, Delilah. “Amid youth mental health crisis, teens ask for a kinder college admissions process.” Los Angeles Times, 7 March 2023, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-07/youth-mental-health-crisis-college- admissions-process-stresses-out-young-people. Accessed 28 April 2024.

Collins, Dr. Marcus. “How College Has Become A Luxury Good.” Youtube, Forbe, 20 October 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnoudvKjJxg. Accessed 28 April 2024.

Crow, Michael. “Opinion | It’s time to end the obsession with college exclusivity.” Washington Post, 17 October 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/17/forget- varsity-blues-madness-lets-talk-about-students-who-cant-afford-college/. Accessed 28 April 2024.

Horowitz, Juliana Menasce, and Nikki Graf. “Most U.S. Teens See Anxiety and Depression as a Major Problem Among Their Peers.” Pew Research Center, 20 February 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/02/20/most-u-s-teens-see-anxiety-and- depression-as-a-major-problem-among-their-peers/. Accessed 28 April 2024.

Liu, Amy. “The Admission Industrial Complex: Examining the Entrepreneurial Impact on College Access, Journal of College Admission, 2011.” ERIC, 2011, https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ918456. Accessed 28 April 2024.

Lok, Brandon. “The Problems with the Culture Surrounding College Admissions and Schools.” Medium, 20 July 2020, https://medium.com/the-faculty/the-problems-with-the-culture- surrounding-college-admissions-and-schools-cd373f328266. Accessed 28 April 2024.

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Wong, Alia, and Ed Yong. “Why Is It So Hard to Get Into a Selective School.” The Atlantic, 28 March 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/03/where-admissions- went-wrong/475575/. Accessed 28 April 2024.