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I applied to college way back in the dark ages of pens and pencils, paper forms, snail mail and phones with cords and dials. There wasn't much to it, really: My classmates and I took the SAT once, grimaced at our scores, kept our grades up and applied to college when it was time. The whole process was rather quiet, occurring on the edges of our awareness.
Of course we worried about the results, but in most cases we could be relatively sure about being accepted to at least one college on our list, "list" probably being the wrong word for the roster of maybe three or four colleges. In my high school graduating class of 1973, the three top students (tied for valedictorian) went to Amherst, Lafayette and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. I don't think anyone kept score.
That's all long gone; except for the extremely confident or extremely delusional, most students need some kind of help navigating the shoals underneath the rough seas of the college process. But how much help is enough and how much is too much? What kind of help is appropriate? When does "help" become a euphemism for "doing it for you?"
College admission professionals and counselors routinely decry over-packaged candidates who have clearly benefited from micro-managing advice about courses, activities and even service opportunities ("Choose volunteer activities colleges consider most attractive"). Those who've been molded and pruned throughout high school may also get extensive massaging of credentials and carefully-chosen adjectives for the application. ("Late bloomer" is one; the description from old high school yearbooks of someone no one really knows, "still waters run deep," is another.) Unfortunately, organic student growth often loses out to overdone, misguided espalier-like training, leading to sadly stunted results.
Going overboard hoping your child will be admitted to a particular college or university is particularly harmful and growth-stunting. It can lead to a child's taking courses or doing things he or she doesn't particularly want to do, leading to family conflict and even deliberate torpedoing of one's grades and efforts. On top of that, all the manipulation in the world doesn't guarantee admission to Elysian University. So it's best to use a light touch. As I've mentioned in other entries, anyone helping with a student's high school life should adopt the mantra "Guide, don't steer."
My lesson about this issue came early in my high school English teaching career when a senior asked me to read his college application essay. I dutifully "corrected" it with a sea of red ink. I was proud of my thorough job, but when I handed it back, he looked crestfallen. Thanking me, he said, "You know, I think I'll submit it the way I wrote it."
At first, I couldn't believe he wouldn't take my expert advice. On second thought (and ever since) I realized he was not only right but also being honorable: The essay he would have submitted would have been more mine than his. That moment has been my guide ever since.
Whether you're working with a high school's college counselor, an independent counselor or both or neither, your student should be in charge, with you close enough to provide advice and counsel but not so close you suppress the natural need to grow and explore freely. It's your child's journey; you're there to provide support as needed: Perspective when things get tough, a shoulder to cry on or just a supportive presence.
Any outside help with course planning or applications should similarly take a light touch, otherwise, as in my example, the application becomes more about the helper than the student. You may think you need someone to sand off all the rough edges and clean up Junior's prose, but too much of that creates an artificial picture of an applicant. It also disrespects him or her, since it implies that the real person, your child, isn't good enough as is.
If you're considering hiring someone to train your student through high school with the goal of gaining admission to a particular college or university, I urge you to think about it carefully. Advice about courses, extracurriculars, jobs, summer programs and so on can be helpful, but it should be organic, not mechanistic. It should take into account a student's own personality and interests without trying to fit him or her into a particular mold for a particular college.
Think about all this in the context of child rearing: Do you want to bring up a naturally developing person provided with the proper care or one who's been shaped and molded like a bonsai tree? As beautiful as bonsai are, they're not good models for child rearing.
