Oh no. Here she comes. It’s not like I don’t like talking to my friends’ parents, but I’m not even friends with her son. He’s in the grade below mine, which makes him a junior, and I’ve never really talked to him. He’s really competitive about his school work, and it seems like his mom is always hanging around on campus. I’ll be polite, but I hope this conversation is quick.
            “Hey Jenna,” she says, smiling. I can already tell what she wants to talk about.

            Some parents have it in their heads that high school is all about getting good grades and doing things that look good on your transcript. It’s all a big game, the goal of which is to get their kid into the best colleges.
            My school, one of the best private day-schools in Texas, is proud of its college counseling process. It boasts a four-year program. The entire freshman class meets once per semester to discuss various details about selecting colleges. Generally, the purpose of these is to get kids to start thinking about college and to remind them that their freshman year grades matter, no matter what they’ve heard from others. Sophomore year, students meet once every quarter, again as a reminder that they need to take their classes seriously. These meetings also inform those who didn’t take freshman year seriously that it isn’t too late to change their ways; after all, improvement in grades over your four years of high school reflect well on you as a student, or so they said. Junior year, the meetings are split into different class periods during the day, so the groups are smaller, and take place once a month. During the first of these, students have to come up with a list of fifteen colleges that they might apply to. By the end of the year, they are supposed to narrow this list down to seven or eight, although a list of ten or eleven was not uncommon. SATs are also discussed, as are GPAs, extra-curricular activities, awards, and competitions. Juniors are assigned to read a book, The Gatekeepers, by Jacques Steinberg, which follows the complete admissions process from the view of an admissions officer at Wesleyan University, a “selective” college. The purpose of this assignment is to get inside the heads of admissions officers, to think of the college application from their perspective. After a discussion of the book, small groups of students are given four or five example applications, and each group is to determine whether the applicants should be admitted or not. Finally, in the last stage of the college-counseling program, seniors meet individually with their assigned college counselor (the school has two) to discuss their applications, teacher recommendations, and essays. Seniors occasionally meet in groups to read each other’s essays and to give opinions on them. The college counseling office also has some essays from previous years’ students who got into excellent colleges, and uses them as models for the current seniors.
            This is, undoubtedly, a complex process. I was lucky to have such an involved college-counseling program, and am grateful for everything that I gained from the experience, but some students take it too far. Some parents take it too far.

            “Hi, Mrs. Guan. How are you?” I am smiling, politely, anticipating her next words.
            “I’m fine, Jenna. Glen told me that you got in to MIT! Congratulations, your parents must be so proud!”
            I could have spoken the words for her. I had heard some version of what she said at least once a day since they made the announcement at school. Everyone’s college acceptances were announced as the letters rolled in, and there were a lot of positive letters. I was not prepared, however, for what Mrs. Guan said next.
            “How did you get in?”
            “What do you mean?” I replied, bewildered. I hadn’t heard that one before.
            “Well, Glen is thinking about applying to MIT next year. I was just wondering what you did to get in.”

            As if the college counseling process weren’t enough by itself, parents somehow get the idea that they have to play an active role in their child’s admissions process to ensure their success. These overactive, overbearing parents are, in many cases, a hindrance to the process, and sometimes reflect poorly on the student. There’s nothing more annoying to an admissions officer with a huge stack of applications to read than phone calls from parents either inquiring what the status of their student’s application is or complaining about why their child didn’t get in. I once read, at some point in my college-counseling process, about one particular student who got rejected from the school that his father wanted him to attend. The father sent a fax to the admissions office of the school angrily contesting the decision. The next day, the admissions office received a fax from the son, on the same letterhead, thanking them for their thoughtful consideration of his application, and thanking them, because the day he found out he had been rejected had been the best day of his life. This is proof that parents often get so caught up in the race to get their kid into good colleges that they forget what the admissions process is about: finding the school that best fits the student in both academic and social aspects.

            “Well, I’m not sure what to tell you. I think Glen won’t have any trouble getting into the best school for him.” I didn’t know what else to tell Mrs. Guan. Glen was just like the rest of the juniors. As a group, they were the most competitive, grade-hungry class at my school. They were all over-achievers, yet not all of them were passionate about what they did to supplement their applications. Too many of them were caught up in the competition to get into the most schools, or the best schools, or have the biggest scholarships.

            Every college acceptance is announced at my school. There is a daily period where the entire upper school goes to the theater to hear announcements made by the faculty, other students, and the principal. From mid-December through April, one of the college counselors gets up after all of the other announcements have been made, and lets the entire student body know which seniors have received good news. Every senior is required to bring in a copy of their acceptance letter to the college counseling office for their records, so no one can keep their acceptance a secret for very long. In addition to announcing acceptances, they also announce all scholarships received by individual members of the senior class. All of this attention only adds to the sense of competition. While you are happy to hear about everyone’s success, you are also reminded of the expectations of everyone around you: your peers, your teachers, and your parents.
            In case you can’t keep track of everyone’s acceptances and the amounts of their scholarships in your head, a running list is posted on the bulletin board outside the upper school office. Mostly, it is there for prospective families to “ooh” and “ah” over as they tour the school. Student ambassadors are trained to stop in front of this board, which, in May, is also home to a large map of all of the colleges in the United States with little pins next to each college that a senior has chosen to attend. It is always an impressive sight: two at Harvard, four at Stanford, one at MIT, two at Dartmouth, Rice, UCLA, Wesleyan, University of Chicago, NYU.
            This obsession with college acceptances is not uncommon. Though it may not be displayed to such an extent elsewhere, there is often a large amount of pressure on students to do well, to go beyond academics, to put in the extra effort to get into good colleges. Every year, the College Board claims that the current seniors are the most competitive applicant pool ever. By going the extra mile, students make it more difficult for college admissions officers to distinguish between genuine matches to their school and students who have been trained to sell themselves as matches.

            I knew that Mrs. Guan had not gotten the answer that she wanted. She wanted details, like my SAT score or how many clubs I was president of. But the thing is I couldn’t have told her what would get her son into MIT. I didn’t know. All I could do was try my best to assure her that he would get into the best college for him. Nevertheless, she walked away, disappointed that I didn’t have the secret formula that would insure his success.
                       Parents and students need to realize that getting into the best college will not guarantee success. For even the best education to be effective, you have to work to make the most of it. Too many seniors in high school think that once they have gotten in to the college of their dreams, the hard part is over. They’re wrong. The hard work is just beginning. They may have won the game of college admissions, but now a whole new game is starting. Now they have to get through at least four years of college. Hopefully, each student ended up at the school that is right for him or her, rather than the one that their parents thought would look best on that map outside the office. If not, the next four years will be even more difficult than the last.