I think this is pretty accurate.

As far as fit goes: Swarthmore strikes me as a clear example of a school where fit matters, but where the admissions office isn’t perfect at picking it out. There were a number of students I knew there who went because it was the ‘best’ school they got into, but they didn’t care for the [nerdy, obsessively intellectual] culture, and so they disliked the whole expensive, difficult experience. These people were mostly wealthy/upper-middle-class and from the East Coast, and it really did seem to be a matter of reproducing their class role: they couldn’t go to UConn or Rutgers or whatever because they wouldn’t ‘get the same opportunities.’ Whatever. I think that was a supremely dumb way to make a decision, but I’ve always privileged the quality of an experience over the status markers involved, so that’s my bias.

About what Western Dave and AndrewSshi have been discussing: I’m not in grad school (yet), but I have friends who went to a variety of institutions. My view is that small liberal arts colleges with good teaching (like Swarthmore) offer a far more reliably awesome education (in terms of pushing students to be able to participate intelligently in discussions, write interesting papers, think on their feet, etc) than either high-status Ivies or state schools. At larger schools, the critical variable for the education is the student in question: the guy I knew who went to Harvard and was a serious go-getter got some opportunities he never would have gotten at Swarthmore, and has really gotten what he wanted out of the experience; my friend at Harvard who is fairly shy and felt at odds with the culture there would probably have done better somewhere smaller and less status-conscious. I have friends who got amazing educations at state schools, but it’s because they were very proactive and really sought out learning opportunities.

I’m glad Dave posted this. I couldn’t agree more – I think it’s true of very many middle-class Americans that

a) the college admissions process is a black box. It’s part of the general non-transparency about how higher ed. works.

b) parents tend to draw on their own experience when they went to college – at a time when things worked very differently.

c) there are still significant numbers of Americans for whom “going to college” is the goal in itself, without thinking too much beyond that. I know at least one very talented and capable person whom I’d say was positively disadvantaged by that – this person’s parents weren’t equipped by their background to think beyond the nearest, most familiar, option. It may not have made too much difference in the long run, but I’m sure that it made some.

More generally, I’ve been bothered by “Judging the candidate as a person” element in admissions since I moved to the US – it was so radically different from the way things worked in Ireland and seemed too subjective and manipulable. But I’ve come round to the view that American society isn’t in a position to muster consensus on what constitutes “merit.”

You would be surprised how many parents, even at an independent school like mine, where parents tend to be rich in real and/or intellectual capital, haven’t even made it this far. I help kids all the time as part of my job, and that elusive quality of fit is hard to figure out. Parents, for the most part, rely on where their friends’ kids are going and often have no idea about schools beyond those they attended and their rivals. Trying to sell a family to at least look at Lewis and Clark/Reed/Pomona/Colorado College as a viable options to East Coast liberal arts colleges. The familiarity that folks like us take for granted (having applied for jobs at every institution imaginable), is simply not widespread.

Kids are also very confused about essays and interviews. When I mock interview my students, they all say as their defining characteristic, that they “are hardworking.” I’m talking about kids who have: made brilliant movies on their laptops integrating academic work and an usual outside interest, participated in and documented photographically in a stunning art piece a habitat for humanity women’s build over the course of a year, independently researched Catholic theology by taking seminary classes, and so on. Yet when asked “what sets you apart?” They all say, “Well, I’m very hardworking.”

That said, some college consultants, particularly in NY, play on fears to charge outrageous fees. But even those folks are often being paid simply to manage the expectations of parents who seem to think Bs and second team all-city wrestling are good enough to get Johnny Whitebread into Yale. For some reason, hearing the college guidance counselor say, “you know there are some wonderful options beyond the Ivies” doesn’t cut it but paying $5,000 or more (often beyond the private school tuition of 40k) to have the consultant say “I’m good but no miracle worker” the message gets heard.

Then again, are these college consultants all that different from a crooked mechanic who keeps not quite fixing your car as you spend good dollar after bad trying to locate the problem?

As long as the range of options is so huge, there will be a need for college consultants. And as long as there is a need, there will be people preying on the rich and gullible. Insert Madoff quip here.

But at the same time, the whole process powerfully incentivizes applicants to stress their distinctiveness from other applicants and to give an account of themselves as unusually accomplished in some important respect. Which in fact many applicants are, and continue to be as undergraduates. But I really do think we push applicants to imagine a story of their lives at 18 in which it’s not sufficient to say, “I’ve done very well in school up to this point, I’m a strong writer and thinker, I’m interested in literature and history, and on weekends I go orienteering with my parents”. Because that’s not enough to give an admissions officer a reason to admit you over the many others who could give a completely identical description of themselves. And yet, probably there are lots of 18-year olds with that description who would flourish perfectly well in a highly selective college or university. So parents who have either the most knowledge of the process or who have the money to hire a consultant who does end up helping an applicant shape themselves to look more distinctive, more accomplished, more “finished” than someone else. And I really do see that process carrying over with a small constituency of students who continue to narrate their projects and commitments that way, sometimes to the detriment of the project and the student.

And even if the curiosity would be an act, shouldn’t there be a flip side to your comments about the damage done by incentivizing applicants to present themselves as “finished, accomplished adults”? That looking for “curiosity, humility, openness to exploration” could actually shape people to those qualities? And I would guess that selecting for people who can act them well does a better-than-chance job of actually getting people who have them.

As an aside, the rhetoric about ‘matching’ institutions to students always seems kind of overblown. Sure there are (and should be) some differences between institutions, but (for example) it seems like “curiosity, humility, openness to exploration” should be pretty universally valued by undergraduate institutions, even if they aren’t presently.