Students sell soul for higher education

by Nichole Betancourt, highlights, Opinion

The air is tinged with a sense of redundancy as admission officers read over thousands of applications characterized by a mess of numbers, personal essays, and course names.  Finally, the officer reaches to the decreasing piles of papers and picks up your application – number 2,487.  At this point, the last four years of your academic life are scrupulously looked over – from the lousy grade you received in ninth grade mathematics to the surprisingly high position you obtained in Italian Club. 

This quick evaluation of your hard and sacrificial work by no means guarantees justice, unless of course you can truly describe yourself within the boundaries of a few 8 ½ by 11 inch pages.  However, we come to accept this evaluation process, learning loop holes and methods of making applications “stand out.”  Consequently, for some, the four years of high school become a time for building a solid resume rather than four years aimed at truly gaining an acceptable education.  Some will take difficult courses because, “it looks good on the transcript,” despite the clearly evident hatred towards the subject.  Others will engage themselves in hours of community service that they despise in order to gain “leadership” roles.  It is time students pause to ask, “What is it that I really want?” Arriving at a prestigious, well-known school without a soul is not much of an achievement.  While it is true that students who stay clear of all the games and tricks may end up at a lesser-known college, who is to say that they will receive any less of an education?

“When it comes down to it, you’re the one that needs to be happy. If you cannot get into Harvard or Princeton, at the end of the day, it is still college and what really matters is that you are happy. I would not trade my school for a prestigious name,” Viviana Aranzazu, freshman at Randolph College and Gables alumnus, said. 

The fanatical craze in reaching the Ivy League is in part the fault of the numerous national college ratings lists.  Magazines and publications like US News and The Princeton Review seem to dominate the criteria for the college search process in addition to instilling into our minds the fact that prestige means the “best.”  Numerous statistics of a school are collectively calculated to create one devilish number on the left-hand side of the page.  But just because Princeton University is listed as the number one school in the nation in no way means that it is the best suited for every student.

They [college ratings] are a good way to get the college search started.  It narrows down a search to different types of schools.  You are going astray if you are using them to choose a school.  They can be very biased,” Irma Navarro, Admission Counselor at Davidson College, said.  

While college rating lists can help students narrow down types of schools, students must be prepared to independently research the schools.

“I don’t use them [the rating systems] because I do not think number one is any better than number five.  For them to say that number one is better for a student is not right.  I try to match the student to the right school,” Gail Payne, CAP counselor, said. 

CAP counselors Gail Payne and Barbara Inskeep work together in matching students with schools that fit their needs and preferences.  They believe that students are misinformed of the number of schools available to them, concentrating their attention on the notorious Ivy-covered establishments.

“What Inskeep and I try to do is open you [students] to be more aware,” Payne explained.

If students are primarily concerned with gaining a good education, they can do so at virtually any college, not necessarily just the “top” institutions.    

“What you do in college, the way you engage your educational opportunities, the efforts you make to learn...these will determine the value of your education, your success in life and the meaning you find along the way,” Lloyd Thacker, founder of The Education Conservancy, said in an interview with Sparknotes.

The Education Conservancy, a non-profitable organization founded in 2004, serves to make education the number one priority in the college search, in addition to increasing “the awareness and understanding of commercial influences in college admissions.” Thacker believes that the college admissions process robs “students of their senior year.” 

Besides cheating numerous students of their souls, the college admissions process serves to characterize October through January of senior year the most hectic and stressful months some students have experienced.  Though there exist few alternatives to prevent this fate, students can ease the pain by researching colleges early on during high school, and by talking to CAP counselors.