Strategy

Which small colleges in the Pacific Northwest have a competitive women’s varsity volleyball team and a strong musical theater department? Which Midwestern universities have support for students with learning differences and good Greek life? Which colleges have the best four-year and six-year graduation rates? Which colleges have the highest percentage of alumni contributions? Which liberal arts colleges will take a chance on a hard-working B-/C+ student who is passionate about creative writing?

My wonderful professional organization—the Independent Educational Consultants Association—supports a list serve where these and other obscure questions are answered promptly and graciously. Members support one another and are eager to lend a helping email. Indeed, IECA members claim that there are no “data driven” questions that we can’t answer quickly and accurately.

But there is a subset of admissions questions with a different flavor that concerns me. Matching students and institution is a good thing. Conferring unfair advantage is not. Whenever I hear the word “strategy” or the phrase “what do admissions officers prefer?” I cringe because I know what’s coming. The giveaway is “I don’t want to game the system, but…” Invariably the next sentence includes the word “disclosure” as in: “My son has severe learning differences, gets accommodations in high school, and takes tests untimed, but we don’t want to tell the college because his chances of being admitted will be less.” “My son got arrested for committing a burglary after smoking pot but his attorney says that the record can be expunged. Does the student have to disclose?” And the most common: “My daughter doesn’t have the profile to be admitted to First Choice U; how do we get her in anyway?”

Is the child who committed the burglary sorry he did something wrong? Or is he just sorry that he got caught? Does the boy with learning differences want to be admitted to college? Or are we interested in his success once he matriculates? Does the girl with the credentials a bit below the mean for F.C.U. understand that it’s not the dog in the fight, but the fight in the dog?

Loving parents know, “Help your daughter acquire the SKILLS so that she will be successful wherever she ends up matriculating.” If she is admitted to Amherst, she needs to be able to function at Amherst; if she ends up at Colby (Go, Mules!) she needs to have the background to succeed at Colby.

There is something worse than Tommy being rejected from the University of Chicago. Coming home from U. C. after half a semester because Tommy doesn’t have the skills to be successful in the classroom is worse.

Remember that kid in high school who spent hours inventing and implementing ways to cheat on every exam? He would design and disguise elaborate formula sheets. He would hide papers up his sleeves and in his shoes. In the days before instantaneous electronic communication, he even used the time difference between New York and San Francisco to get a jump on questions on a standardized test.

“If he spent as much time studying as he does cheating,” his teachers and parents lamented, “he would get perfect scores on every test.” If he would just put that creative intellect to work studying instead of scamming.

The analogy to admissions is clear: Smart kids who know how to turn off the electronics so they can study are the ones who do well. No matter where they go to college. Kids who game the system so that they can be admitted to a college where they don’t have the skills? Not so much.

It’s the reality rather than the indicia of ability that matters.

Rather than finding a teacher who will “sign off” on service hours that don’t actually exist, why not do the work? Rather than asking “How many hours of community service should I do to look good for this college?” consider instead “What are the values for my family?” Rather than signing up to be a “paper member” of clubs in which you have no actual interest, why not commit your time to the activities that are truly important to you?

Remember that lovely girl in high school who had that wicked crush on that hunky guy? Remember how she pretended to like drinking beer and watching football so that he would be attracted to her?

Remember how unhappy she was after they were married when it turned out that, in reality, she enjoys neither beer nor football? Remember their difficult divorce? Remember how confused and unhappy their children were?

I’ll ask Polonius to bring us home this week from Act I, scene iii or “Hamlet.” His son, Laertes, is about to head out, not to college necessarily, but he’s going down to the dock to jump on a ship. In the four hundred something years since Polonius gave this advice to his son there are still no truer words.

… to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

How many of us as parents are giving our children the advice to be both truthful and able? Helping our kids to have both skill and truthfulness beats the heck out of helping them lie and cheat so they end up in the wrong place.