College Admissions Scandal
With the recent news about the college admissions bribery scandal, I have a couple of thoughts:
Some of those schools are truly WTF. You're going to break the law and risk prison and your reputation for...Wake Forest? USC? Seriously? Go big or go home, people.
The main reaction I'm having to this is how innocent my Mom and I were back in the '80s when I was applying to schools. I mean this in the best way but Mom didn't really help me a whole lot, except to remind me when things were due (and of course to drive me to interviews). She didn't read over any of my essays, I didn't have a tutor helping me write them or a tutor to prep me for the SATs. In fact I liked taking the SATs and the PSATs precisely because you weren't expected to study for them. (And in fact I did very well on both--I had the highest PSATs in my class.) These stories of elaborate strategies--tutors and fake accommodations for fake disabilities and re-writing essays, photoshopping--they're mind-boggling. I didn't do any of that and I don't think my friends did either.
Here's how I did the essay thing: I procrastinated until literally the day it had to be mailed. I woke up early that morning and improvised an essay--I wrote an imaginary conversation between two women in 1947, one of whom has just seen A Streetcar Named Desire (a few months prior there'd been a TV-movie of Streetcar starring Anne-Margret and Treat Williams which served as my introduction to the play--Mom watched it with me and said some of the lines along with the characters and I was mesmerized). I wrote this essay by hand onto the admissions form--no typing, no computer, just wrote it all down. Didn't edit or anything. I mailed it off that day. And that, my friends, is how I got into Mount Holyoke :) My essays for Bryn Mawr and Sweet Briar were necessarily different since I didn't make copies.
Full disclosure: I got in everywhere I applied, but that had a lot to do with the fact that my generation was a lot smaller than the Baby Boomers. I wrote very well, and had the scores (and did a great interview since I was interested in everything) but my grades were not that great. The sponsor of the National Honor Society used me as a tutor (I was paid!) even though I wasn't actually in the NHS. I remember her lecturing me that I SHOULD be in the NHS, and I really need to take care of that. (I was a much better student in college, I will say.)
Some of those schools are truly WTF. You're going to break the law and risk prison and your reputation for...Wake Forest? USC? Seriously? Go big or go home, people.
The main reaction I'm having to this is how innocent my Mom and I were back in the '80s when I was applying to schools. I mean this in the best way but Mom didn't really help me a whole lot, except to remind me when things were due (and of course to drive me to interviews). She didn't read over any of my essays, I didn't have a tutor helping me write them or a tutor to prep me for the SATs. In fact I liked taking the SATs and the PSATs precisely because you weren't expected to study for them. (And in fact I did very well on both--I had the highest PSATs in my class.) These stories of elaborate strategies--tutors and fake accommodations for fake disabilities and re-writing essays, photoshopping--they're mind-boggling. I didn't do any of that and I don't think my friends did either.
Here's how I did the essay thing: I procrastinated until literally the day it had to be mailed. I woke up early that morning and improvised an essay--I wrote an imaginary conversation between two women in 1947, one of whom has just seen A Streetcar Named Desire (a few months prior there'd been a TV-movie of Streetcar starring Anne-Margret and Treat Williams which served as my introduction to the play--Mom watched it with me and said some of the lines along with the characters and I was mesmerized). I wrote this essay by hand onto the admissions form--no typing, no computer, just wrote it all down. Didn't edit or anything. I mailed it off that day. And that, my friends, is how I got into Mount Holyoke :) My essays for Bryn Mawr and Sweet Briar were necessarily different since I didn't make copies.
Full disclosure: I got in everywhere I applied, but that had a lot to do with the fact that my generation was a lot smaller than the Baby Boomers. I wrote very well, and had the scores (and did a great interview since I was interested in everything) but my grades were not that great. The sponsor of the National Honor Society used me as a tutor (I was paid!) even though I wasn't actually in the NHS. I remember her lecturing me that I SHOULD be in the NHS, and I really need to take care of that. (I was a much better student in college, I will say.)