If there's a sign
of the times in college admissions, it may be this:
Steven Roy Goodman, an independent college counselor, tells
clients to make a small mistake somewhere in their
application--on purpose.
''Sometimes it's
a typo,'' he says. ''I don't want my students to sound
like robots. It's pretty easy to fall into that trap of
trying to do everything perfectly and there's no spark
left.''
What Goodman is
going for is ''authenticity''--an increasingly hot
selling point in college admissions as a new year
rolls around.
In an age when
applicants all seem to have volunteered, played sports,
and traveled abroad, colleges are wary of slick packaging.
They're drawn to high grades and test scores, of
course, but also to humility and to students who
really got something out of their experiences, not just
those trying to impress colleges with their
resume.
The trend
seemingly should make life easier for students--by
reducing the pressure to puff up their credentials.
But that's not always the case.
For some
students, the challenge of presenting themselves as full,
flawed people cuts against everything else they've
been told about applying to college--to show off
as much as possible.
At the other
extreme, when a college signals what it's looking for,
students inevitably try to provide it. So you get some
students trying to fake authenticity, to package
themselves as unpackaged.
''There's a
little bit of an arms race going on,'' says Goodman, who is
based in Washington. ''If I'm being more authentic than you
are, you have to be more authentic next month to keep
up with the Joneses.''
Colleges say what
they want is honest, reflective students. As Jess Lord,
dean of admission and financial aid at Haverford College in
Pennsylvania puts it, ''Everybody's imperfect.''
''Since that's
true for all [students], those that portray that aspect of
themselves are that much more authentic.''
How do colleges
find authenticity? They look for evidence of interests
and passions across the application--in essays,
interviews, recommendations and extracurricular
activities.
''What we see are
the connections,'' said Christopher Gruber, dean of
admission and financial aid at Davidson College in North
Carolina. If a student claims working in student
government has been a meaningful experience, it's a
more credible claim if recommenders have picked on
that as well.
''That, in my
mind, gives authenticity to an application, when you're
reading things more than once,'' Gruber said.
But in the age of
the hyper-achieving student, authenticity doesn't
always come easy. Some schools, such as the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, now specifically ask students
to write about disappointment or failure. Many can
come up with only a predictable and transparent
answer: perfectionism.
Will Dix, a
counselor at the University of Chicago Laboratory High
School, who also spent eight years in the Amherst College
admissions office, struggles to persuade students that
essays about doubt and uncertainty can be at least as
interesting to admissions officers as those with a
conclusion that's sweeping but implausibly confident for a
17-year-old.
''No one expects
you to solve the mystery of life,'' Dix says. ''I
sometimes get in trouble with parents for advising that.
They'll say, '[Colleges] will think he doesn't know
anything.'''
Dix counters by
paraphrasing Socrates via Donald Rumsfeld: ''The first
thing is to know what you don't know.''
Susan
Weingartner, another former admissions officer and now
college counseling director at Chicago's Francis W.
Parker School, surveys her juniors about shortcomings
and weaknesses. The next year, those now-seniors often
are unsure what to write about. She digs up their
junior-year responses, where they often find their
topic--like one student last year who ultimately
wrote a moving essay about his experience being
overweight.
Weingartner has
noticed more students writing about being gay. Some pull
it off, coming across as honest, humble and reflective about
the challenges they've faced. But others raise alarm
bells by appearing to be traumatized or just looking
for sympathy.
The challenge for
students is a tough one to get your mind around: If
you're authentic, you feel pressure to rise above the
fakers. But try too hard to do that, then you just
appear to be, well, inauthentic.
Dix summarizes
the logical muddle the student is in: ''As soon as you ask
someone to be authentic it's impossible to be authentic.''
Goodman, the
independent counselor who advises making a small mistake to
look authentic, unapologetically tries to hit the right note
of authenticity: be true enough to make the full
application consistent and credible, but also give
colleges what they want to hear. He compares it to a
politician who has learned to give a stump speech that makes
every audience feel like it's new.
And he defends
the tactic with a point that several admissions deans
frankly acknowledge: Colleges are guilty of playing games
with authenticity, too.
''They soften
their image with pictures of kids under trees, smiling in
front of the library, engaging with a professor in a small
group discussion,'' Goodman says. What's the
difference between a college trying to look good to
students and the reverse?
David Lesesne,
dean of admission at Sewanee, a small Tennessee liberal
arts college, admits Goodman has a point.
''Students
perhaps have become less authentic to themselves, trying to
be what colleges want,'' Lesesne said. But colleges
have done the same. Schools ''are looking to draw more
applicants and students are looking to gain
acceptance,'' he said. ''As those numbers grow I think that
has caused both sides of the equation to lose a little
focus on what should be most important: the match.''
(Justin Pope, AP)