Error reveals college process obsession

On my 15th birthday, my mom bought me the definitive Fiske Guide to Colleges. Undaunted by its four-inch spine, I took to it with my chunky highlighter and a pad of sticky-notes, and I was off. Somewhere in that four-inch monster was my dream school—a New Jerusalem that would transform me into a better scholar, citizen, friend and daughter. This was the beginning of my "college application process." So when I heard about the 76 students who were notified by an automated email that their acceptance to Vassar had been a "glitch," I felt sympathetic.

I remembered the hours of mind-numbing homework; the tears over my inadequate SAT scores; waking up at 6 a.m. on a Saturday for Model UN tournaments; agonizing over those excruciatingly cheesy essays; feeling the need to be perfect, to do more, study harder and make myself (seem) special. For four listless years, this ordeal consumed me.

The New York Times headline that broke the news about Vassar's mistake read: "For Some Vassar Applicants, Joy Then Misery as College Corrects Mistake."

"Misery." It didn't seem so far off from memories of my own "college application process." Suddenly, college admissions seemed like some sort of national psychoneurosis.

The all-ruling "process" is full of contradictions. Applicants are told "you are more than just a test score" but feel compelled to submit data on websites that rank college chances on a scale from "reach" to "good bet." We have come to believe that those kids who subject themselves to the most AP fill-in-the-bubble tests are intellectually ambitious and that sticking with French Club for more than two years indicates bona fide passion. Many enroll in test-prep classes and some hire coaches or ghostwriters. And though admissions counselors reassure applicants that they "just want to get to know you," most essays reek of a foul kind of self-marketing.

Colleges disseminate brochures with pictures of faculty members making some expressive hand gesture, a gothic building covered in vegetation, a guy kicking a soccer ball, a complex model of a macromolecule and maybe some students laughing in a circle in front of something really quaint. They host tours wherein parents marvel at all of the quaint adornments, lamenting their lost youth while students avoid eye contact with their parents—and each other, the competition—for the entire 45-minute duration.

In an effort to keep the process personal, admissions offices convolute the already stressful application. As if Early Decision were inadequate, they invented Early Decision II. They ask for photographs, short works of fiction, an accurate description of "who you are" (in 250 words, or less) or Vassar's famed Yourspace.

We convince ourselves that this process is fair and necessary to prepare students for the academic rigor of college. It seems to me more like a weird cult of the 18-year-old. Paradoxically, my friends at Vassar who didn't play the admissions game seem to be the most intellectually engaged and meaningfully invested in school.

Vassar's screw-up, in the end, was a poorly handled clerical mistake. Yet the controversy it sparked speaks volumes to our obsession with getting into college versus learning something and the hopelessly false idea that a school magically instills students with boundless wisdom and knowledge.

Still, I completely understand why one College Confidential poster wrote, "I mean, it's like giving a baby a chocolate and right before he bites it, you take it away."

One poster, open with his disdain, wrote, "Trust the hippie-dippie culture at Vassar to be supremely unbusinesslike." Another used self-deprecating humor, "I even made a Facebook status and everything."

But others were more earnest, "It's funny because I knew something of the sort would happen (I have horrible luck) but to have this happen to anyone at such a crucial time is nothing in short of cruel and slightly despicable, really," adding, "Sorry I'm going to go hibernate now."

One simply wrote: "this is my worst nightmare."

—Hannah Blume '13 is a sociology major. She is Opinions Editor for The Miscellany News.