Engineer the Perfect College Candidate?

Americans have gone college crazy. What was once the brass ring is now the bare minimum, including for jobs that require skills that have nothing to do with a college education. It has never been easier, or more common, for prospective students to attend university, and many schools accept 100% of their applicants. But these opportunities come at a very high cost: around $125,000 for the average four year degree, going up to about $250,000 for a degree from a private college. At this price, college is a privilege, not an entitlement. And whether or not they can afford it, kids need to be absolutely sure that they’re getting value out of their education. 

There are a lot of theories on how to create the perfect college admissions profile. Walk into most high schools in America and you’ll witness a veritable beehive of college-credentialing activity: Advanced Placement courses, mock college boards, more extracurriculars that you could dream up, varsity sports, charity drives, and on and on and on. The standard for admission to competitive colleges today is extremely high, and many students will stop at nothing to craft the perfect resume. I challenge any adult to summon the stamina to get through a day in the life of a 16-year old American high schooler. It’s exhausting to even consider. 

There’s an industry of tutors and private coaches and college counselors to help well-heeled families navigate the process. It’s a form of performance enhancement, but it’s become extremely common. And as the numbers of applicants with super human admissions profiles climb, the bar is raised for everyone, including those who don’t intend to matriculate at the most elite and exclusive colleges. In the process, much of the fun and joy of high school (and learning) is ruined for kids, and their parents.

But creating a strong college applicant is not exactly the same as creating the perfect candidate for college. And that’s the crux of the problem in our country today. It’s not hard to find someone who can tell you how to curate the four years of high school to maximize your changes to be entered in the lottery of competitive colleges admissions. I call that socially engineering the perfect college admissions candidate. It’s a lot harder to find someone to help you create a kid who, amidst the stress and frenzy of the four year college admissions race, is actually a good candidate for college. In other words, a student with opinions, that is a strong creative problem solver and critical thinker, who communicates well, and knows how to collaborate, and is deeply engaged and invested in his community. I think it’s extremely difficult to do both.

Let’s start with standardized tests. College admissions officers at most competitive universities rely heavily on standardized test scores, including Advanced Placement and college boards, in making admissions decisions. With a few exceptions, AP courses are broad surveys covering extensive material that moves at a very fast pace. In the most uncharitable assessments, AP’s are based on rote memorization and regurgitation. APs assess a student’s understanding of broad course material in a single three-hour exam at the end of the year. There is virtually no room within the model for creative teaching, interdisciplinary discussion or study or meaningful teacher input. And the evidence on information retention by students is appalling - as low as 25% merely three months later. APs were once viewed as college-level equivalents. But very few colleges award credit for Advanced Placement. It’s really just a signaler for admissions purposes. For this reason, many top private schools have eliminated Advanced Placement altogether because they want their kids to actually learn. It’s a luxury that most public schools don’t have, but it reveals a lot about the shortcomings of the current model.

The college boards are even worse. Have you looked at an SAT lately? It’s really not a test of intelligence, or of knowledge. It’s a test of how well you can take a very specific type of test. And the test prep process has gotten completely out of control. Thirty years ago there were a small number of SAT prep companies offering once weekly courses for a period of months. That’s now the bare minimum, and in some affluent communities there are kids that start being tutored for the SATs in middle school! I don’t know that it’s even possible to add up the total collective cost of such performancing enhancing behaviors. But I’d speculate that, for some families, the money spent (to say nothing of the hours!!) would get you close to the $65,000 in private college tuition. And unlike, say, professional accreditation exams (like, for example, the medical boards) the SATs have absolutely nothing to do with college, career or life. It’s not a test of college readiness, it’s a big fat joke on American society.

For years, American educators and politicians have worried about where American kids rank vis a vis their international counterparts, particularly on standardized math and science tests. Paradoxically, while Americans double down on their standardized testing, many of the perennial test leaders, including China and Korea, are now recognizing the futility of institutionalized testing, and its cost to the development of other skills like innovation and creativity. America was once the undisputed worldwide leader in innovation, as measured by new patents. Today, more than half of the top 500 most innovative companies are located in China. Chinese politicians are going all-in: new curricula across the country de-emphasize rote memorization and test-taking and promote courses in entrepreneurship and creative problem solving from the early primary years onward. I’m starting to worry that China really is the future. And, if things don’t change quickly, America may be history.

So what’s the answer for parents? If we want our kids to go to a great college, we have to buy in, right? To a point I think that’s true. There are still a lot of great things about the American system, and we can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. But we do need to start thinking more about the skills that our kids need to be adaptable and successful in the 21st century. What good is a top tier education if your child is completely lost once he reaches the workplace? Some high schools are trying to incorporate more meaningful interdisciplinary coursework, including more emphasis on creative problem solving and critical things. But most still have a long way to go, so it’s up to parents to fill in the gaps. We think a great way to start is to enlist young people in engaging with real problems in their communities. Context-based learning is a powerful tool for skills-building, with the added benefit that it makes youth more engaged and invested. A kid who has strong communication and collaboration skills, and who knows how to approach a novel problem is going to get a whole lot more out of his education and his life than one whose high school education has been wholly or even mostly focused on standardized test achievements. Let’s all try to stop worrying about where our kids will go to college and start focusing on the more important issue of whether we are truly cultivating the skills that our kids will need to be successful in college, the workplace and beyond.