This month I have encountered several close friends and family members going through the throes of the competitive college admissions process. Coincidentally, I also read the book Excellent Sheep: the miseducation of the American elite by William Deresiewicz (2015) that questions the impact of competitive college admissions on the young people involved in that process.  Meanwhile, I have also launched a Money class at North Star, in which my first class was about the power of compounded interest.  The combination of these three activities pushes me ever further into encouraging teens and families to consider alternatives to standard competitive college admissions.

          First, my recent encounters.  The most striking aspect of teens and families involved in competitive college admissions is that this topic dominates conversation, even if we don’t mean for it to happen that way.  I see friends and families when they are on trips visiting colleges to determine where to apply, so when I ask “How was your day?,”  the conversation immediately focuses on which campuses were visited and what’s next.  Asking young people which colleges they have liked best so far often provokes anxiety, as in “Well, if I could get accepted and get enough financial aid, I like…”  This is not a fun answer, and kids learn to avoid it. Some teens just don’t want to talk about their college aspirations and give one-word answers.  One young person has taken to offering their opinion of a campus after two minutes of arriving, walking to the admission office, and breathing in the air:  “Yes! No! Maybe!”

          Another is focused on his baseball career, and told me that he wants to go to a Division 1 powerhouse where he might have a chance to go to the college world series, even as a back up player.  When his parent asks, “Would you rather go to a smaller school where you could play as a starter?,” he shrugs and says “No! I want to go to a big school and be part of a big program!”   I found this to be an interesting discussion, at least, but still this conversation permeates the evening together.

          Another lifelong friend whose kids are younger than mine has a son entering ninth grade, and reports that even though the school he attends is doing all it can to not hype up the process, her son already feels stress and anxiety about how his high school career will impact his future.  My friend reports, “It’s madness!”

          Unfortunately, these stories are not news.  William Deresiewicz , a professor at Yale until 2008, wrote Excellent Sheep to offer his assessment of why his Yale students were so good at school but not necessarily so good at risk-taking, self-direction, and self-evaluation.  He acknowledges this problem is a cultural issue among only about 15% of the high school population that actually apply to the Ivy League and other famous colleges, while the rest of those applying to college are more worried about how to pay for it rather than where they might go.  I appreciate his framing the issue as limited to a relatively small segment of the population, many of whom are affluent or privileged in the first place, but it seems that I know a lot of people in this 15% that Deresiewicz is describing.

          His main point is that teens, parents, and families are very good at learning what college admissions officers may be looking for in an applicant, and then packaging themselves accordingly.   (He wrote his book before the recent college admissions scandal broke, for which one cheating parent just received 14 days in jail.)  He reports that well within the bounds of appropriateness, thousands of kids every year present themselves as appealing, capable, and deserving applicants such that every selective college could fill its entering class many times over.  His concern is that once the lucky ones who get into Yale sit down in the classroom, they are ready to repeat the process all over again as they aim for grad schools or high-paying jobs.  His students weren’t that interested in learning!  Even more, when he pushed them to step outside the traditional curriculum and use their creativity, he found them as a group to be sorely lacking.  Not just in their limited abilities to decide things for themselves, but in their emotional states of feeling terribly uncomfortable when forced to do so.  The title of his book comes from one of Deresiewicz’s students listening to his observations and replying, “So you are saying we are all excellent sheep?”

          Deresiewicz goes on to make a passionate defense of the traditional liberal arts college experience.  He also strongly urges students to take a gap year or time off during college to explore their interests, work a job, or travel.  My friend and colleague Blake Boles has written a very thorough book review of Excellent Sheep and conducted two thoughtful interviews with William, one from when the book came out four years ago and one that is brand new in the fall of 2019.

          While I’ve been reading this book and meeting young people who seem to have stepped right out of its pages, I have been teaching a new class at North Star about money.  The college admissions quagmire is not new, but it is compounded by the astronomical cost of private college, now approaching $70,000 per year.  That is $280,000 for four years!  Is there an upper limit to this cost that the market will bear? (The rapidly rising tuition rates and financial troubles of small colleges may be a topic for a different essay.)

          I work with many families that cannot afford North Star tuition of $6,000-$8,000 per year, and they are daunted by even thinking about college.  Since you are reading my blog, you know the financially manageable alternative we encourage for college-bound teens:

• Community College for Associate’s Degree, starting part-time during the high school years. Cost: Around $10,000.
• Public University for two years. Cost: Around $50,000 – $60,000 or less
• Or Private University for two years, saving half the cost of the traditional four –year experience.

          For the cost of one year of private college, students can earn a Bachelor’s Degree from their state universities.  How many of us currently believe that the difference between my Amherst College B.A. and the University of Massachusetts B.A. is worth more than $200,000?  With apologies to my alumni office, I do not.  Even as I continue to value my Amherst College experience, I cannot assert it’s value over what I most likely would have experienced at a public university is worth that sort of financial investment.

          Some people will receive scholarships that mitigate this difference substantially, including a few fortunate people that may receive full scholarships.  Even if we allow for 50% scholarships on average, the difference between these approaches would still be about $100,000.

          Imagine not having $100,000 in student loans at age 22! Or having one’s family holding $100,000 that might have been spent on an undergraduate college experience that is now available for starting young adulthood!  That could be enough for a down payment on a house, or to start a business.  And if you pay attention in my Money class to the exercise about compounding interest, you know that $100,000 invested at 5% for 40 years results in $704,000.  Or that it could produce $5,000 annually for future lifelong learning activities.

          When I see people close to me caught up in this madness of having their children suddenly become competitors with childhood friends in their schools as they choose where to apply to college, and when I hear them weighed down by the prospect of taking on long-term debt to fund that college education, I want to offer a road map to another path.

          I don’t mean that no one should aspire to go to Amherst College or its ilk.  Apply!  Know that gaining acceptance is a lottery, even for those with the strongest applications.  If the school offers you a substantial scholarship that fits into your family’s budget, then go!

          But rather than seeing the college admissions process as a game in which the winners get into a prestigious schools and are offered substantial scholarships, we can approach the process in an entirely different way.

          We could say to high school seniors, “Congratulations on finishing the high school portion of your life.  What do you most want to do now?”  College is one option, but don’t choose it until you have some inkling of what you really want to study and how the college experience might help you along your path.

          We can redefine “winning” from being about which colleges admissions to spending the years of ages 16-24 working on the following goals:

• Exploring some interests and skills prior to starting college
• Going to college or getting certified in one’s interests as is needed, instead of arbitrarily starting college at age 18
• Feeling a sense of purpose and confidence about what one wants to do after college and how college fits in to that path
• Being age 24 with limited or no debt in relation to achieving the goals listed above
• Having fun, developing friendships, traveling, and finding some community both inside and outside of college

          My friends and family know my views, but most of these parents and teens are swept up in the torrent of modern cultural expectations.  Stepping out of the mainstream feels like giving up or losing.  My voice tends to be a solitary eddy in a raging river that they have already committed to riding out to the end.

          We need a new norm.  Many young people are already choosing a different approach with good outcomes for their learning, emotional health, and finances.  The path is already here.   Let’s amplify it.