Private College Counselors
Are colleges today more selective than ever? According to the National Association for College Admission Counseling , over the last 20 years the college admissions selectivity rate hasn’t changed; 4-year colleges on average still accept 75% of their applicants. But Harvard and Princeton are just as selective as they’ve always been with acceptance rates under 13%. Forget SAT prep, it’s private college coaches and counselors who are giving kids the edge they need to get into the universities of their dreams (only 2.6% of the nation’s colleges accept less than 25% of applicants).
I listened to an archived NPR program about college admissions in which two private college counselors tell their side of the story. College counselors want to act as guides for their clients, helping them to find the college that’s “the right fit” for the student in question. Both of the counselors interviewed tended to try to steer the students (read: their hyper parents) away from “brand-name schools.” Some parents are hyper and have hired a counselor to better their kids’ chances of getting into the best schools. Some parents are overwhelmed and confused by the application process itself as well as by the sheer number of colleges to choose from. The two private counselors repeatedly stated that “name brand” schools are often the focus of the parents, which is a big part of why the parents felt their kiddo needed the extra advantage a private college counselor could give them.
My initial gut reaction to the whole idea of private college counselors was utter disgust that parents can do this for their kids. It seemed like one more item in the already long and messed-up list of bizarre, high-pressure hoops that parents demand their kids to jump through because a child who is anything but stellar makes his / her parents look like failures.
But college counselors aren’t entirely evil. They do this for a living, so they’re better at it than a parent or a high school student doing it for the first time. They have probably toured hundreds of colleges, and have a good idea about the personalities and the philosophies of different schools. They have seen more schools than any student will ever have the time or the money to check out, so the counselors will be far better able to match the best fitting school with the student. They have excellent book recommendations such as: Colleges That Change Lives by Loren Pope, and Rugg’s Recommendation on the Colleges by Frederick E. Rugg.
The upstanding versions of these private counselors say that they act as “guides” to the high school students, leading them through the college application process. The all-inclusive package can start freshman year and includes guidance with everything leading up to waiting for the letters to arrive: which courses to take in high school, which activities look good on the app, taking the SATs and the ACT, touring college campuses, summer internships, help with the admission essay, etc. As with everything in life, there’s a good version and a bad. I would be willing to bet that some private college counselors do more writing than editing, more doing than guiding. Especially the ones that guarantee admission to an Ivy League school.
What most upsets me is the intense focus that parents have on getting their kids into a “name brand” school. A lot of folks may not be ready to hear / read this, (if so, cover your eyes) but getting into the Ivy League school of your (parents’) dreams does not guarantee happiness. It also doesn’t make or break your (parents’) future success. There are something like 3,000 colleges in the United States. You can get an excellent education and also have an amazing time at a college the entire world hasn’t heard of. There will probably be fewer students taking up space in the classes you need, and you’ll actually be taught by the professor.
Maybe my tune will change someday when my kids are running the applying-for-college gauntlet. My youthful image of myself as the perfect adult started crumbling the day I yelled to my two-year-old who was crying in the backseat of the car, “Crying isn’t going to get us there any faster!!”, which was followed by silence while my husband and I blinked hard several times, making sure I really had uttered that supremely parental statement. I slapped my own forehead and knew it was the beginning of the end… But right now, with at least 13 years until I have to shove my oldest kiddo out into the swarm of biting, snarling, highly competitive teenagers all trying to get into the college, I’m mostly disgusted by the entire high-pressure bizarreness that we (parents, society, teachers, all adults most likely) put our graduating seniors through.
I still cling to the belief that the Tour de France is ridden by pure, unadulterated, non-doping cyclists who are just really really fast. Should I just give up and accept that the kids with the hired adults will have a better shot at getting into the college of their choice, and the athletes with the best sponsors (read: excellent cash flow for buying performance enhancing drugs) will win the Tour? Why is it ok for kids to get so much adult help with something that is supposed to show a college admissions person who this kid is, what this kid is made of, and whether this kid should attend this school. It smacks of athletes on steroids, doesn’t it?
Posted by Alexa Harrington
