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SAmantha remembers her high school days more like a university trial version. She seems both amused and shameful in remembering the hours spent editing her resume, or the overtime spent furrying the SAT exercises in her coach's home collegiate applications head-to-head even though she already achieved almost perfect scores in practice tests. No matter what week of the week in high school, she says, she was probably up to 3 or 4 am, studying in her twin bed, and then getting up at 7 am to go to school. ;school. College preparation used her already limited free time, even going so far as to reduce her hours needed to complete her homework, ranging from a series of AP physics problems to her main dissertation.
Samantha, 20, who asked to be identified by her first name only to be able to speak freely about a sensitive topic, is now a second-year student at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, about 800 km from her home. home in the suburbs of Cincinnati. A Korean American graduate of a privately-owned high school private high school, she specializes in international relations and East Asian studies. The century-old Baltimore campus is gradually becoming home. But the way she arrived there still makes her uncomfortable. "I had a very good score at SAT," says Samantha, "literally because my parents hired someone."
The process of admission to college, especially for very selective, elite schools, encourages students to misrepresent their identities to match the profile they believe will appeal to those who review their applications. This dynamic becomes particularly problematic when it involves a student's racial identity, whether overestimating or underestimating this background in order to appear more appealing to diversity-sensitive admissions officers. . And this process is subject to subterfuges on the part of privileged people like Samantha and her parents, who can afford to hire consultants to help them use the system.
Some of the application extraction services are pretty irreproachable – basic study support and hands-on interviews, for example. And Samantha, who had already begun to feel disappointed with the admission system when she started the process, did not lie about herself in her applications. But sometimes, in their efforts to put their personalities in a user-friendly mold, students experience more sinister pressures. From the beginning, Samantha said that her tutor and her university counselors (all white) had encouraged her to not appear "too Asian" in her candidacy. She followed their advice, choosing not to write about her violin playing given the racial stereotypes about these instrumentsand giving up an essay that she had written about being Asian in the mostly white equestrian world.
"Many of the essays I've written have been dismantled," says Samantha. "Now that I've looked back, I'm like: It's the most unfair thing ever. … sometimes I even have to stop and think about why I am [at JHU]. Who is not here because I'm here?
On Monday, a federal judge in Boston will hear the opening arguments of a highly publicized federal lawsuit that has drawn the country's attention to the details of the process of admission to elite colleges in the United States. -United. Asserting that Harvard University illegally discriminates against US applicants of Asian descent, the lawsuit should ultimately bring back the debate on affirmative action to the US Supreme Court. In 2016, the High Court ruled on Fisher c. University of Texas, to determine the use of race as a factor in the constitutionality of admissions. But there is an essential difference between this case and the many high-profile cases brought before it. Or Sinner and others argued that the positive action is detrimental to white plaintiffs, the Harvard lawsuit is based on the idea that positive action harms claimants belonging to a minority. Both Sinner and the Harvard case were introduced by Students for Fair Admissions and led by the same conservative legal strategist, Ed Blum.
Students for Fair Admissions asserts in this lawsuit that the Harvard project subjective assessment of things such as student personality allows admissions officers to penalize US applicants of Asian descent. An analysis of the student data included in the plaintiffs' court documents at the Court revealed that Harvard's Asian candidates had better MBMs, higher test scores and more extracurricular involvement than their counterparts in other classes. races. But because of the personalized and inherently nebulous approach adopted by college admissions officers to evaluate each candidate, this does not mean that Asian students are victims of unconstitutional discrimination at Harvard. Prove that the case will be incredibly difficult.
Whether or not it discriminates at Harvard and whether or not it is possible to prove it in court, this action brightly illuminates, albeit indirectly. , a hindrance to the foundation of admissions to elite colleges across the country. The lawsuit, it seems, is a byproduct of the fact that too many students apply for too few places in too few colleges. The number of Asian Americans going to college especially jumped in recent years; it is possible, of course, that seemingly eligible American candidates of Asian origin be rejected from the limited Harvard slot machines.
"There is a disease in the fact that so many people are focusing on 10 to 20 highly selective colleges that are no better than 100 other colleges," said Richard Weissbourd, developmental psychologist and lecturer at Harvard. a national initiative try to encourage children to be altruistic contributors to society. "If we do not break the back of this [disease]Weissbourd says, "We can not get rid of the pressure on results." The Harvard lawsuit is just one symptom of this disease that will likely continue to metastasize.
IAt the beginning of the 20th Century, the handful of the country's elite universities started to request tests, teacher recommendations and other information about the "profile" and "character" of applicants beyond the outcome of the entrance examination, in order to surreptitiously restrict the number of students Jews on campus. However, the scope and purpose of this "holistic" approach to student assessment has evolved since then. Today, each candidate, in its most authentic form, evaluates each candidate in the context of its context: her interests and her personality, yes, but also her race and her parents. schooling, for example, and how that identity may have hindered his chances. Nowadays, elite colleges tend to "rent it out as a legally viable method to reduce inequities and promote college access," according to a 2017 Michigan university political note co-written by higher education professor Michael Bastedo. Holistic admissions can be very effective in achieving these goals: a recent study by Bastedo and several co-researchers published in the Journal of Higher Education In the United States, the analysis of higher education institutions has shown that those who use global admissions are much more likely than those who do not enroll to enroll low-income students.
But this complex and imprecise approach to admissions is mainly used by the most selective schools (perhaps because these schools are sufficiently in demand to have the luxury of choosing between many qualified candidates). According to Journal of Higher Education study, nearly half ofLevel 1Institutions (the most competitive) examine the context of each student in addition to GPA and test scores, compared to about one-quarter of those in "Level 3." This approach to admissions is virtually unknown in the vast majority of the remaining colleges, many of which are probably disturbing more about the rescue decrease in registrations What about an articulate, impressive scientist and accolade to choose from among a multitude of applications.
In the last 15 years or so, the number of first-year applications has increased steadily in most colleges and universities across the country, but this trend has been particularly pronounced in elite institutions. In 2015, the most recent year for which national data are availableSchools accepting less than half of the applicants represented only 19% of American higher education institutions, but still represented 37% of the applications received that year. Lower level universities that serve mainly their local people Their number of students is expected to decrease by about 11% over the next decade or so, while American elite colleges could see increase in demand by 14%According to estimates by Nathan Grawe, economist at Carleton College, keeps an online index with forecasts of college attendance rates. A key historic turning point of the 20th century was the creation of universities for working-class Americans, as well as tuition subsidies for populations such as veterans and low-income Americans. This led to an explosion of college population in the 1980s. Other factors are also at play: the growing popularity of the common application, which allows students to use a single application for several schools, including all Ivies, and resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of schools to which each student applies. For many, there is also a growing feeling that success in the modern economy requires university education.
In addition, an idea that two scholars of higher education have double The gospel of education in the United States has permeated American society for decades: the intoxicating idea that schooling is the answer to everything and that its purpose is the preparation of the workforce. There is ample evidence to suggest that attending a large school can significantly increase the chances of getting a good paying job. A study 2017 found a difference in earnings of 21% between students who attended the most selective colleges in the country and those who attended non-selective colleges such as community colleges. And one 2014 study have found that it is extremely difficult to find a place in a senior undergraduate program for students who have followed less competitive programs as undergraduates – even if they post from Excellent grades and results in tests.
What students want from their studies can also change. Younger generations seem to value personal prestige more than older generations – and what better than giving it to an elite on your resume? The rate of students who regard reputation as "very important" in their choice of college, for example, has reached record levels in recent years, according to a national survey conducted regularly since 1967 by the Institute for Educational Research. superior of UCLA; the poll found Prestige must be a top priority for about two out of every three new students in 2016. A 2012 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and co-written by Jean Twenge, professor of psychology at San Diego State University, echoes this trend, concluding that, unlike previous generations, Generation Y and Generation X consider that "l & # 39; "money, fame and image" are more important than "self-acceptance". the affiliation and the community ". In 1967, for example, 86% of respondents in a large national survey said that "developing a meaningful life philosophy" was an essential goal of life; in 2004, the rate was 47%. The goal of "being financially well off" has seen a similar increase over this period. The fact that elite colleges are increasingly selective probably favors these mentalities, which creates a vicious cycle that is perpetuated.
Students and parents (and journalists) tend to give disproportionate attention to the few colleges at the top of the US hierarchy of higher education that shower thousands of young people with rejection letters each spring. Only 4% of American students assist colleges that accept less than one in four applicants, according to a data analysis from the US Department of Education in 2016. But many students apply to these schools: nearly 43,000 people applied for one 1,655 jobs available. Harvard Promotion in 2022– and future students and parents continue to place considerable weight on classifications such as those published annually by US News and World Report, which focuses on quantitative indicators that favor these institutions (such as standardized test scores of admitted students, contributions from elders and, until this year, selectivity). All this attention raises their profile, giving the elite, selective schools a disproportionate power to shape the cultural norms of the higher education ecosystem. And this includes how students approach the application process.
A a few years after graduation Naomi Steinberg, originally from Harvard in the late 1980s, began volunteering as an interviewer of former students of future freshmen wishing to attend her alma mater. In the mid-2000s, Steinberg, who had quit his job in marketing, decided to take advantage of his interviewing experience to set up a college admissions consulting firm in Boca Raton, Florida. Today, she works one – to – one with no more than 15 students at a time, mostly private school children with great aspirations. A few years ago, she noticed that she was increasingly forced to actively discourage her clients from getting lost sight of when they were looking for a letter of acceptance.
"You can do everything right – have a 35 [out of 36 on the ACT]; have a lot of leadership no matter what it means; have all the things on a fictitious checklist of things you thought you should do – and you're just as likely or extremely unlikely to get into insert-whatever college-premium-hereSays Steinberg, stressing how arbitrary the process can be. "The admissions officers say," I need a tennis star tennis player, ambidextrous star, ambidextrous, "and they can no longer accept your request which was thoughtful and wonderful because of the directive that has just been published. … They just need a student to occupy this place on the beautiful mosaic they create. "
But as Samantha's story shows, and as Steinberg has witnessed on a number of occasions, it's hard for teenagers to keep things in perspective when they're in the thick of things. The application process is based on, as the Chronicle of Higher Education Eric Hoover reporter put, "A hodgepodge of conflicting goals." This may give the impression that it is a game to deceive – something that Lenora Chu, journalist in Shanghai and author of the book 2017 Little soldiers on the Chinese education system, found that it is prevalent among Chinese students seeking to enter an American college. "There is a growing perception that there are more losers than winners in this new world," according to which admissions are "a zero-sum game," Chu said in an email. "This perception of scarcity drives behavior."
In some cases, students resort to duplicity tactics. Some cases are extreme …hire ringtones to take the SAT instead of students, for examplebut mostly involve an exaggeration or omission, often influenced by advice gleaned. of forums, application consultants, and books promising to help people decipher the code of elite-college missions. Steinberg does all he can to discourage this impulse and emphasize the value of the process as a "journey". A student with whom she worked, for example, attempted to write a personal essay on Cinco De Mayo after discovering that a distant relative had been greeted. from Mexico, perhaps thinking that any connection with a marginalized identity would give it a head start in terms of admission. She immediately told him that it was not a good idea: holidays, to begin with, is largely an American holiday.
However, many Asian-American students and application consultants who supply them know that highlighting their racial and cultural identities can hurt their prospects. Some suspect that the stereotypes of Americans of Asian descent as an over-powered "model minority" lead admissions officers to brand them as boring or unoriginal, as students are concerned about quantifiable results and lacking the coveted Factor X the sought-after schools seek to fine-tune a perfect balance. first year class.
Liana Wang, a Yale student from Houston whose parents are immigrants from the Chinese working class, remembers how she and her friends had assimilated the message, so ubiquitous that its source is hard to pin down it was necessary to avoid "becoming a media caricature". "Nerd," to be "more gregarious, more outgoing," says Wang. She and her Asian-American counterparts have assumed that "if you are doing an internship at a medical center or doing a research … you should not do it because people will see you more than as a stereotypical Asian. " These days, Wang, a recent graduate in the fields of economics and globalization, wants to get a PhD in economics. In high school, she fled extracurricular activities focused on STEM and tried to convince herself that she was not particularly good at these subjects. After taking math classes for this degree, she was surprised to discover that they were not that difficult, that she might be good at maths. "I may have been able to pursue something more quantitative, but I just did not think because I thought," Oh, I just do not want to be an Asian stereotype " , she says.
Although Wang eventually realized that this refusal was counterproductive, she had to adopt interests and forces that confirmed the stereotypes about the people of her race. Yet many other American students of Asian origin are likely to face constant signage, especially after arrive on campus– That they will be better off if they minimize their racial identity. This underscores how the lawsuit against Harvard is a symptom of the infested world of diseases known as admissions in elite colleges. Process issues have become so difficult to contend with and argue that many Americans find it conceivable to allow widespread racial discrimination.
Most methods of subterfuge admission rely on money, an intelligence or a combination of both. In some respects, holistic admissions favor the privileged – those who, according to the data suggested, are already much more likely to use test preparation services and attend schools that: inflate the notes. And many of these already-privileged people get an extra boost from people who are reviewing their apps. Take, for example, the fact that most large colleges give preference to applicants whose parents are alumni: at Harvard, for example, at least 12% of first-year students – a majority of students who are not alumni. among them Caucasian – fall into this category. Then there are those who are recruited for their sports talents, most of them come from white families belonging to the middle class, according to research. In his new book Campus race: demystifying myths with data, Julie J. Park, professor of education at the University of Maryland, concludes 40% of Harvard's white population are heirs or recruited athletes.
As a high schoolJalen is at the eleventh hour of his candidacy to be admitted to Yale, the University of Chicago or UPenn, but he does not seem too stressed. At age 17, he has already spent years preparing for this moment, both in the classrooms of an elite residential school in Ontario and elsewhere. His curriculum vitae, for example, includes but is not limited to piano, basketball, badminton; its CAED school section, an international entrepreneurship contest for teens; and volunteer as a photographer and marketing consultant at the Toronto Military Family Resource Center.
But Jalen, whom I identify by name only to protect her privacy as a minor, often wonders if that is enough. "When you're competing with all the candidates … it's hard not to just want more and more," he says, pointing out that it can be difficult for high school students as prolific as himself to understand this. which motivates them to certain activity. "Sometimes I notice that I think a lot about what I can do to [whatever I’m doing] bigger. It's like I can never be satisfied. "
Barry Schwartz, psychologist at Swarthmore College, has long been argued that the abundance of choice in the United States, be it institutions of higher education or salad dressings, makes Americans unhappy. The abundant choice, he argues, forces those who make the choice to set unreasonably high expectations. This, he suggests, plays particularly acute in admissions to the university.
For example, a 2013 article published in the journal Development and psychopathology suggested that the unprecedented numbers students seeking help at university campus counseling centers for substance abuse, depression, anxiety, eating disorders and non-suicidal self-injury may be in part suffering from the "accumulated stress of 18 years of attempted college admissions." "
Are colleges of eliteas the the ChronicleHoover suggested "victims of their own popularity"? These sought-after institutions have certainly played a role in creating the twisted incentives of the current system, but they are somewhat embarrassed in their ability to change things. How do you prevent Americans from associating, to use the words of Harvard law professor and affirmative action scholar, Lani Guinier, "Selectivity with excellence"? Universities – both elite and open access, private or public – rely heavily on student tuition and research grants, and are therefore forced to compete to stay on top. And even if they wanted to unite to try to repair the admission system, these solutions would probably be prohibited by the federal antitrust law, L & # 39; AtlanticJeff Selingo reported; many of the proposed solutions would require colleges to share information about applicants and to cooperate, which would violate corporate competition laws. As an admissions expert in colleges concluded in a 2012 interview with Inside Higher Edstudents and colleges continue to "chase each other around a round table".
If you're looking for culprits, it's tempting to blame many other targets: college coaches who help students train perfect candidates, sometimes at the expense of their personalities, or high school counselors who keep targeting their students in the same famous elite colleges without considering other options. But do they perpetuate the problem or simply provide what the system requires? Steinberg says that she regularly feels a psychological tension between the fact that she takes advantage of the cultural fixation on elite colleges but that she also recognizes the consequences.
"What we have universally created is a dysfunctional system that requires something that most 17-year-olds are not quite ready, from a development perspective, to [give], "She says – a definitive and nuanced answer to the question of who they are and how they are in the world.
Some elite colleges have taken small steps to fight their own elitism. Harvard, for example, launched an online training portal a few years ago that allows any member of the public to access and follow their courses. And Jill Dolan, Dean of Colleges at Princeton University, said that school admissions officers constantly insist, during campus visits and events for prospective students, that the Ivy League It was not for everyone and that a lesser known school was often a lot better. worthy of many candidates. Many large colleges are also members of the Coalition for Access, Abordability, and Success, which has developed an alternative universal application that designed encourage children to think more deeply about the process. Some, in particular Yalehave recently increased the size of their first year classes; Princeton has major projects to expand his undergraduate body, too.
But the broken ideology that feeds admissions to elite colleges will not be corrected solely by these small changes. And perhaps the lawsuit against Harvard, whatever its merits, could help dispel the illusion that whether or not to join an elite university is the reflection of the value or future prospects of a student. In one recent survey of admissions directors by Inside Higher Ed and GallupHalf of those surveyed said the Harvard lawsuit "created a lot of distrust among American-born Asian applicants and their families" in the process of admission. Perhaps he can heighten the weaknesses of the system by forcing conversations that could be an important first step in making change happen.
Meanwhile, students who win the elite-university-admission lottery often find themselves stuck in the wheel of successful hamsters. While they may be better positioned to succeed than their peers at other colleges, they also find that the stress and competition they have been subjected to for acceptance does not end once on campus. "In Yale, everyone is competing with the standards they set for themselves, and … it's something I would simply not like to exist," says the aspiring economist Wang. "But I do not know how I was able to approach [the admissions process] better in high school. It is a bit like a tragedy of the Commons: if everyone is competitive, you must be too. "
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