SPRING IS HERE, and along with the crocuses comes the annual admissions panic. High school kids get anxiety attacks as they approach their mailboxes. And in some parts of the U.S., parents stress as they await a phone call from their preschool of choice. The high school kids have tortured themselves to build up stunning credentials and then communicate those credentials strategically in a college application. And the parents of toddlers have struggled to find a way to distinguish their 18-month-old from all the rest.To today's high-achieving high school students, the future seems to ride on getting into selective institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford or my own institution, Swarthmore, where almost every one of the applicants is good enough to succeed but only one in 10 will be given the chance. And so the competition trickles down: The road to Harvard goes through the "right" high school, the "right" elementary school, the "right" preschool. Thus the anguished "admissions essays" from the parents of kids still in diapers.
We all know this process has gotten crazy. I believe that it has bad effects on winners as well as losers. I'm not just talking about the financial strain on parents, who can spend as much as it costs for a year at these elite universities on SAT prep courses and personal tutoring, on private college counselors and now on "getting-into-college" summer camps, costing as much as $3,000 for two weeks. And I'm not just talking about the stress on students. It's what the competition itself is stealing from our most talented youth.
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