Playing Hard to Get in College Admissions
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[Music]
so there are two things that i consider
myself
an expert on college admissions which is
my career
and pop culture which is my guilty
pleasure
so in march of 2019 when a news alert
popped up on my phone with felicity
huffman and lori laughlin
among dozens charged in college
admissions scandal
i thought for a second that somehow the
things i’m
most familiar with or at least care the
most about
had gotten mixed up in this bizarre
algorithm to become my own personal
clickbait
unfortunately the story was true as of
now
50 people have been charged mostly with
bribing
exam administrators of tests like the
sat to facilitate cheating
or with bribing athletic coaches or
university administrators to
nominate unqualified applicants
as recruited athletes now there have
only been eight
colleges named in the scandal eight out
of more than five thousand in the
country
whose selective admission practices have
inspired families to commit illegal
activity
of those eight colleges
and we talk about the selectivity of
those colleges what we’re really talking
about
is admission rates so an admit rate is
of the percentage of students
out of thousands and thousands who
actually apply to that college what
percent is actually admitted
the lower admit rate the more selective
a college so anyways back to the scandal
of those eight colleges more than half
had an admit rate
below 12 but
80 percent of american colleges emit
more than half of their applicants
i often find that students and families
can be fixated on colleges that
aren’t a realistic option for most
students
and as a society we’re not really
helping with that
let me give you another example based on
this overlap of my personal and
professional interest
tony stark also known as iron man the
lead character in some of the top
grossing films of the past decade
well everyone knows that he went to mit
admit rate
seven percent in the television show the
office
which it seems like this entire
generation of teenagers has binge
watched on netflix
the office is constantly highlighting
the alma mater of andy bernard
cornell admit rate 10 percent
in gilmore girls which i watched when i
was in high school rory gilmore applies
to
and is admitted to only two colleges
harvard and yale
admit rate five percent in fact
the admissions scandal was nicknamed
operation varsity blues
based on the movie where the lead
character is obsessed with attending
brown university
admit rate six percent
if you remember one thing i say it
should be the selectivity of a college
does not equal the quality of an
education
but the colleges that we tend to
celebrate
highlight in pop culture who are in a
worst-case scenario commit fraud to try
to get our child admitted to
are often colleges that are unrealistic
options
for most students in my job
some of the toughest conversations i’ve
had are with students
who were not admitted to their dream
college but wasn’t really their
dream college if it didn’t recognize how
great they were
why have we trained our brains to think
of colleges like someone playing hard to
get
would you want to date someone who
wasn’t into all the great stuff you have
going on
if someone told you they would only love
you if you played soccer
but you had never even kicked a ball
would you photoshop pictures of yourself
scoring the winning goal
that actually happened in the scandal a
lot of athletic photoshop
should you change yourself just to be
accepted by someone
why value a college that doesn’t admit
you
these should be rhetorical questions but
here’s the thing
we know that in college admissions and
also in love
playing hard to get actually works in
2011 there was a study conducted by
aaron whitchurch
timothy wilson and daniel gilbert
basically
they showed college age women facebook
profiles of
men and they told them that these men
either liked them a lot
like them an average amount or felt
uncertain about their feelings
guess which men the women were most
interested in
yes the ones who felt uncertain
do you know what else feels uncertain
the current state of college admissions
and pretty much everything else right
now so i wrote this speech in the winner
of 2020 with plans to deliver it in
march
and at the time we were in a national
conversation about the cost of college
and student loans and whether the
admissions process is favored towards
wealthy families
who can afford to provide their son with
opportunities that might make them
more attractive to a college or can
afford to pay 15
000 to rig their daughter’s s.a.t scores
a lot’s happened since then those
conversations are still relevant but
colleges are also talking about
how to keep students on campus and
healthy college admissions offices
recognize that due to the pandemic
most students haven’t had the
opportunity to take many s.a.t or act
tests if any at all and they’re waiving
that requirement to apply
laurie laughlin was recently sentenced
to two months in prison
and high school students are still
trying to decide and
figure out which colleges to apply to
but without the opportunity often to
visit these campuses
maybe they’re not at school in person
with resources to help them figure this
out
they might be relying on what they
already know about these colleges
and how do we learn a little bit about
colleges well we hear their name in the
news
or we hear their name on a movie screen
or on the television
or we hear about them through rankings
now some of the best known college
rankings are through u.s news
they rank colleges across the country on
about 15 different areas of academic
quality
however two of those areas of quality
are the college’s perceived reputation
by others
and how many students they deny each
year
now we know that this selectivity and
uncertainty
can certainly fuel attraction but there
has to be some
level of perceived interest to fall in
love with a person
or with a college if you’ve ever lived
with a high school student
you know that seemingly out of nowhere
your mailbox starts filling up
with college brochures that’s because
when students take the psat in about
10th or 11th grade
the college board the company that owns
the psat
buys test takers names and information
or sells test takers names and
information to colleges
and then colleges after buying that
information use that information to
start recruiting students
now i worked at a college for eight
years i certainly understand
that colleges are working to build these
freshman classes and they’re trying to
increase the academic quality and
increase the diversity of these
of the students applying and they can’t
know based on some initial testing
information
whether or not they would actually admit
the student so what happens
students get information about a college
telling them to apply or to visit
they know that college is hard to get
into which makes them even more
interested
so they apply they’re not admitted
and then the college has the distinction
of denying more students than ever
before
now i want to be clear that no college
admissions office
or no college counselor was ever part of
the scandal
in fact i’m not really blaming colleges
i’m blaming you
we need to start thinking differently
about what makes a good
college good is it because it denied
90 percent of its applicants or is it
because it’s offering
opportunities for students to grow into
the best version of themselves
when you hear about the student who
applied to all eight ivy league colleges
and was admitted
which is a college list that actually
makes very little sense if a student is
really being thoughtful about what type
of college
might be a specific good fit for them
well anyways are you more impressed with
that student
than your nephew who applied to a local
regional
university admit rate 74
because it was a good fit for him
academically
socially and financially as adults
we’re just as bad about this playing
hard to get
as teenagers maybe worse how many times
have you become more interested in a job
or a person or an opportunity
when you found out it was going to be a
little bit harder to get than you
originally thought
i have a confession when i found out
that i was selected to
talk at tedx greenville i was elated
and then i thought i wonder how many
people actually applied
the point is not whether or not this was
a selective process which it was
but that i should be honored that i had
this opportunity that someone recognized
something that i wanted to offer and i
can stand here today
the gallup purdue index which is the
largest
representative study of american college
students in
united states history released something
called
the big six six college experiences in
these are the experiences most closely
aligned with
students feeling prepared for life after
college
spoiler alert these experiences prove
that it’s not so much where you go to
college but what happens once you get
there
these were experiences like i had i had
a professor who cared about me as a
person
or i had the opportunity to become very
involved in a student organization
or i had a job or an internship that
allowed me to apply what i learned in
the classroom
these experiences were not i went to a
college that denied most of my friends
or my parents felt very smug when they
tell their neighbors that i’m attending
this elite institution
so parents let’s talk about you for a
second
if you tell your child that the only way
they’ll get into a
good college is by taking a class that
they hate
or if you encourage them to apply to a
bunch of highly selective
institutions just to see if you get in
then what you’re saying is
who you truly are isn’t good enough and
something’s only worth having
if it’s practically unattainable also
here’s a suggestion don’t commit fraud
to try to get your child admitted to
college
support them through the process but let
them take it on
on their own and be proud of them no
matter what
because the name brand of the college
that your child attends
is not a reflection of you or your
parenting
now in my job i strongly believe that
students should be challenging
themselves
that means taking higher level courses
that means
trying out new activities or hobbies and
yes that means applying to a college
that might be a reach for them
but as a high school student the choices
you make about how you spend your time
inside and outside of the classroom
should be about what makes you feel like
the best version of you
not what makes you feel like this ideal
college applicant
i sometimes find that students who’ve
been admitted to wonderful colleges
are fixated on the one college where
they weren’t admitted
as if that college is more worthy or
carries more weight
than the colleges that have accepted
them
have a place for them on campus have
offered them scholarships
have you ever known someone who was
stuck on a relationship
that clearly wasn’t right for them
there’s no such thing as
the one that got away when it comes to a
college
there are plenty of colleges out there
who will accept students as they are
without falsifying sat scores without
photoshopping themselves
onto a crete onto a crew team and
there’s a lot of people out there who
will love you
just the way you are i guess what i’m
trying to say is
your dream college isn’t the one who
won’t admit you
and the perfect person for you isn’t
asking you to change
college and to a greater extent life
is about finding the people and the
places
that accept the real you students need
to know that their destiny
is not tied to a dream that’s only
achievable if they try to change
themselves
we should love and accept college
applicants
just as they are and know that their
dream college
is one who will do the same thank you
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you