"Gold-Plating Our Students"
G. Gary Ripple
Newsweek, April 4, 1988. page 9

The application was professionally typed; the candidate made a strong case for her admission to our university. But something hastily scribbled at the bottom delivered a different message: “Please do not admit me to William and Mary. I am only applying because my father made me.” The selection committee granted this young woman’s wish ... and those of us on it wondered how many more kids, hidden in the stacks of the folders remaining to be read, had been dragged kicking and screaming through the American ritual known as the selective college-admission process.

This year 10,000 students have applied for the 1,200 freshman-class spots at my school. And admissions officers at other highly rated colleges — as the Ivy League, the “public Ivies” like The University of Michigan, the Little Three, The Seven Sisters — are also reporting a record number of applications. All this despite a declining population of high school graduates and therefore potential college students. How can fewer kids produce more applications? The answer I find, after visiting hundreds of high schools around the country and reading thousands of student essays, lies not with the students but with their parents.

I believe the increased number of applications reflects the greater numbers of parents who went to college and who now want their children to have more than they had. As with other luxuries today, “more” often means a big name, a brand name. The Depression-era parents of these parents were proud if they could send their offspring to any college at all, but many parents today will spare no expense to ensure that their dream of a brand-name school becomes a reality. Their intense interest in the college-admissions process has spawned a profitable service industry. Witness the proliferation of SAT-prep courses, independent college counselors, the steady sales of costly guides to selective colleges — and the increased vitality of private elementary and secondary schools that can cost as much as $10,000 a year.

Around the country, high-school guidance counselors are under more pressure than every before. One adviser at an affluent private school tells me that parents are “acting crazier then ever” and are putting more pressure on their kids to get into the most selective colleges. Some parents are even encouraging their children to submit applications to as many as 15 to 20 highly selective colleges, no matter what their prospects are. Forget about putting the poor kid in the position of receiving 20 rejection letters.

Early admissions has also taken on a new meaning in my office. I recently received a letter from parents that began this way: “We have just begun the college search process for our 10-year old daughter and your college is at the top of our list.” I wondered to whose list they were referring? And that is not an unusual letter.

More often that not, I get the feeling that the social acceptability of an institution, its cocktail party or business-lunch value, is of a higher priority that the quality of the match between the student and institution. In my view, that is the true focus of the college-search and selection process. Yet not long ago, I was counseling an applicant we had rejected about her alternative choices, when her mother, striking a dramatic pose, interrupted to say, “Dean, I do not want my daughter to go to a second-rate school!” After some discussion, I discovered the term “second-rate” had been used to refer to a college that wasn’t instantly recognizable at her country club.
In my book, a second-rate college is one that fails to meet the specific needs of the individual student. All this is to say that today’s parents are having a very noticeable effect on the tension levels of their offspring. No matter how aloof adolescents try to appear, how turned off they seem to be, these are worried youngsters.

Confidence and self-esteem: I recently read an essay that said: My father had always wanted gold plated kids — children he could read about in the newspapers and brag about to his business partners. As long as we looked good and made him look good, he would be content.” In this case, the writer was focusing on a relationship that had gone sour and on her struggle to make sense of her father’s approach to parenting. Her story had a happy ending — she said she was grateful for the pressure. But far too many kids end up like the young man who shared a lunch and his failures with me. He felt doubly distressed because he was doing poorly in college and because he had failed to stand up to his parents. His confidence and self-esteem were at a low ebb, just months before he was to graduate. Worse yet, he probably never found the time to have fun.

In the wrong college, a student can become shy, embarrassed and fail to fulfill his potential. He may not become what he might have been. When I tried to warn a family that their son really didn’t want to attend their alma mater, their reaction was typical: “Once he gets there, he’ll love it.” Well, he came, he saw and he left a year later with grades so bad that almost no other college would entertain his application for transfer.

I have seen other sad cases when students try to transfer into my school. One applicant wrote us saying that “My first college decision was made by my parents. I have just told them that this is my college choice, my future, and my life and I just have to make it myself.”

I worry about the student who hangs on for four years of near-failing grades, who suffers humiliation and feelings of not belonging. And I worry about the kid who quietly drops out. But once in a great while, an indignant parent has written or called me with this happy message: “Remember that student you rejected a few years ago? Well, he just made Phi Beta Kappa.” My invariable response is to congratulate the parent and say something self-effacing about my inability to choose the right candidates. But inwardly, I smile. The system works. The kid wound up at the right place for all the right reasons — and I had a hand in his success.
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At the time of this writing, Ripple was dean of admission at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.