How Far Do You Go?

As high school seniors finalize their college lists and calculate their chances of getting into Stanford, UC Berkeley or Pomona College, I’m thinking of several stories I’ve heard in recent months about the extreme measures some families are taking to see their children get into an elite school.

The Washington Post had an article about an educational consultant on the East Coast who advised the family of a bright Chinese-American student, desperate to get into an Ivy League school, that they should move to another community where there were almost no Asians. The average SAT scores were 300 points lower in the new school, and this student would easily rank at the top of her class.

The consultant also encouraged her to enter the Miss Teen New Jersey contest, which not many scholarly, piano-playing students would have on their college applications. Her piano-playing helped her win the talent portion of the Miss Teen contest, and she ended up as class valedictorian at her new high school. She got into Yale and MIT.

The strategy may have worked for this student, though there is no way to know if she would have been admitted to those schools anyway. But is it worth uprooting a family, leaving friends and starting over in a new community, not to mention entering the Miss Teen competition, just to increase the chances of getting into a prestigious college?

Another student, an Eagle Scout, was advised that because of the Boy Scout organization’s discrimination against gays, he should volunteer with an AIDS group so college admissions officers would see that he is sensitive to the gay community.

Now if the young man was genuinely moved to volunteer, that’s great. But we only increase cynicism and disconnection when we teach kids that the way to be successful in life is by playing games. If the goal is to help youth realize their potential, which is my definition of success, we need to encourage them to be authentic.

There was the story about another college consultant offering a $10,000 three-day college admissions boot camp in New York. I don’t know how many students signed up, but I hope there weren’t many who bought into the idea that if you pay a lot of money, someone will reveal the secrets that will get you into the “best” college.

I understand wanting your children to have every opportunity for a good life. But getting into the “best” school doesn’t guarantee a good life, just as not getting into the “best” school doesn’t preclude it.

If you’re a regular reader of this column, you know that I don’t believe there is a best college. There are some colleges that are good matches for each student. As we start another anxiety-producing college application season, I hope families will focus on finding a school that will be a good fit for their child’s learning style, personality, interests and goals.

To younger students who are deciding what extracurricular activity or community service will be the most valuable, I hope you will choose activities that develop your skills and interests and help you feel good about yourself. That is what’s most valuable, and that is the real path to a successful college experience.

So here you have it. And you didn’t have to pay $10,000.

Audrey Kahane, MS, is an independent college admissions counselor in West Hills. She can be reached at (818) 704-7545 or at audreykahane@earthlink.net.