Resume-Padding, Risk-Taking, and Intellectual Curiosity

In the last post, I laid out the salient points of Barry Schwartz's opinion piece on highly selective college admissions that ran in the LA Times. Today I am going to examine some of those points. Schwartz's first point:

1. The nature of admissions to highly selective institutions has encouraged students to expend more energy on high school resume-padding than engaging their minds and spirits on risk-taking and intellectual curiosity.

-Anyone who has worked with high schools students, including the students themselves, can see the validity of this point. Students are frequently looking for an angle on how the activities they are involved in can be put into play on their college applications. They may be genuinely interested in joining the chess club, for example, but if they want their involvement to have cache, then they better be one of the club officers. Similarly, they may want to help the less fortunate at a soup kitchen or by building a house (e.g. Habitat for Humanity), but at some level, they know doing so won't look bad on their college applications. The same is true for course selection. Students constantly weigh whether it is better to take a course that you know you can do well in or one in which you know your abilities will be stretched, but that nonetheless, you are interested in taking.

I don't mean to lump all students and their activities into an ulterior motive category, but it is hard to deny that at current levels of competition, the temptation exists. Because I know this, students know it, and college admissions officials know it, what can we do? All of us want to see students do things because they are genuinely interested in doing so. If someone likes chess, they should be able to be a member of the club without the nagging feeling that they should take on leadership.

By the way, if you listen to admissions officials, leadership is a buzz word. The student who is a member of a number of clubs because of interest but did not take on any leadership positions will not have the same leadership cred as the student who was intensely involved in only a couple of clubs and consistently held leadership positions in those clubs.

Colleges also love to talk about admitting applicants with "passion" and "spark" [see this LA Times article (subscription may be required) on UCLA's version of "holistic admissions"]. Colleges want students who will bring something unique to their campus. Passion and spark, apparently, are unique qualities. It seems reasonable that uniqueness will include passion and spark, but also may go in many different directions.

What about the unique kid who defies the tide of "me too" approaches to college admission by doing exactly what Schwartz argues - taking risks and being intellectually curious? Say this hypothetical student takes a couple of college courses, studies abroad, works at Starbucks, volunteers on a Habitat for Humanity project, but only gets middling grades (a 'B' average in today's heady times). Does she pass the passion and spark tests? I bet she doesn't and because of that, probably won't have a place at the "best" colleges. It is students such as this hypothetical one that are being left out of admissions equations. To display the kind of pizazz that UCLA and other "top" schools are looking for, you need to have it all - grades, leadership, sustained involvement. In truth, it sounds rather formulaic and thus, not so unique.

To think, this is only Schwartz's first point! I promise that there will be more of a positive bent in future posts surrounding Schwartz's article.