The thing is, regarding my last post, nobody got in. Not a single one! No one even wait listed! I was so surprised! Every year I’ve had one interviewee get in. But last year the school just let in 13.5%, and this year I’ve read online it’s looking to be even fewer, maybe 10%. What on earth?
How has college gotten so competitive? It seems to stress everyone out so; every applicant I’ve talked to is almost manic to take all the APs in the world and do inhuman numbers of extracurricular activities of all variety. (I wasn’t nearly so overwrought about it all, though I did take care not to slack off and I was awfully snobby on the topic my senior year of high school.) I certainly don’t think that it’s because the education is getting more rigorous that it’s so much more competitive. I guess it’s some combination of marketing, or of how everybody likes to be notable and wealthy or at least thought that way, or anxiety about the future…? Well, what do you think? Did you have fancy-college aspirations? What is it all about?
It’s just not worth the stress and expense, if you ask me. I try to tell the students so in the interviews, to help make it better when they don’t get in, since mostly they don’t, that my having gone where I did doesn’t seem to have made any real difference in anything other than my family’s finances, but they’re so invested: they believe that getting into the Right College is the prescription for a happy, successful life. When really it just changes the details, like who you have lunch with for a few years and what kind of winter clothes you need to have. If you don’t meet the love-of-your-life at one college, you’ll be sure to meet him/her at another, or later on; if you don’t find one kind of internship you’ll find another. College just doesn’t make or break you. So why do they think it does? Do they feel at the precipice of a loss of control due to adolescence and its attendant craziness? I wish I could remember.
