By Joan H. Bress, LICSW, CEP

On May 1, high school seniors across the country confirmed their plans for the next four years of their lives. The deadline, imposed by nearly every U.S. college, for submitting a non-refundable deposit to hold a seat in the freshman class crept up on the nation's young as they enjoyed the spring rites of prom, Senior Skip Day and the countdown to graduation. College T-shirts and decals on car windows now proudly proclaim each student's September destination, and viewbooks and applications from those other colleges are ready for the recycle bin.

The newspaper-reading and television-watching public will be spared the screaming headlines that imply that unless a 16-year-old has the equivalent of a Nobel Prize nomination or Olympic gold medal in his pocket, his chances of getting into his dream college are slim. We will be spared, at least for another year. Just as the swallows will return to Capistrano, the media will besiege us again next year with stories of single-digit acceptance rates. Those stories sell newspapers, keep viewers glued to their television sets, and feed the frenzy that has evolved around what should be a natural progression from one level of education to the next. Worst of all, they subject our young people to a rite of passage that borders on cruel and unusual.

A key problem with the college admission process is that it leads students to believe that the process is fair, just and meaningful. The admission process, however, is none of these. While the mandate of a college admissions office is to serve the needs of both the applicant and the college, the needs of the college must come first. With many more applicants than available spots, most colleges are in a position to select from among a large number of similarly qualified students. Therefore, the colleges have the freedom to select those students who will contribute to the college in the specific ways that will strengthen the atmosphere and reputation of the institution.

The irony of college admissions is that the majority of colleges in this country admit at least 50% of their applicants. That information, however, does not sell newspapers. Ninety percent of the anxiety that surrounds college admission focuses on the 10% of colleges that admit fewer than 20% of their applicants.

Our imaginary student — let's call him Jake — works hard in high school, devotes time to the extracurricular activities that are purported to be valued by colleges, has grades and SAT or ACT scores that fall within the published range for Most Favored College and carefully prepares an application according to the rules he believes will win the heart and nod of the admissions office. Although Jake would clearly do well at Most Favored College and would be an active and valuable member of the college community, Jake's application is denied. Jake is surprised and disappointed, especially when he learns that his classmate, Jessica, who ranks below him in class, has been accepted. After a few days of appropriate dismay, Jake tries to make sense of the outcome. He cannot.

Jake is not alone. An increasing number of college admissions officers are beginning to acknowledge that the way they have been evaluating applicants to highly selective colleges does not make sense. Dr. Barry Schwartz, professor of psychology at Swarthmore College, proposed in the Chronicle of Higher Education the "crapshoot" method of admitting highly qualified students to highly selective colleges. He believes that because of the pressure that surrounds admission to highly selective colleges, students make poor academic choices throughout their high school years. They "sacrifice risk-taking and intellectual curiosity on the altar of demonstrable success. Moreover (as documented by a great deal of research), because students are doing the work they do in and out of school for the wrong reasons — not because they are interested in learning — the intense competition undermines their motivation to continue to learn for the sake of gaining understanding. As a result, even those who excel enough to get into Harvard, Stanford or UCLA are likely to be less-inspired students once that goal has been achieved. By making themselves so competitive, our selective institutions are subverting their aims."

Schwartz claims that it is impossible to know which excellent student will be more successful than which other excellent student. Therefore, he suggests that colleges enter all "good enough" students into an admission lottery. High school students will have to work hard to be "good enough" but they will not have to make decisions about their academic and extracurricular lives based on how they can be better than their classmates, as they all compete for a limited number of spots at selective and popular colleges.

Schwartz encourages colleges to test his proposal by admitting half the class based on traditional standards. The other half of the class should be admitted through a "good enough/luck of the draw" admission process. If after several years, the "luck of the draw" students prove to be as successful as the traditionally accepted students, colleges will have good reason to rework the admission process.

Schwartz hopes that his plan would give high school students the freedom to learn and develop without the pressure of having to be the "best" student they can be according to standards that have little to do with being successful learners and successful adults. He suspects that colleges would enjoy a student body that was "more interesting, more curious and better motivated" for having enjoyed the pleasure of being just "good enough."

Dr. Robert Sternberg, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Psychology at Tufts University, has an even more creative plan for reworking the admission process. Long a critic of the use of standardized test scores in college admissions, Sternberg proposes a different standard for admission. He proposes that colleges set minimum admission standards based on height. Height, he states, is a valued characteristic in our society. Tall people are typically considered to be more attractive, more intelligent and more successful than short people. Presidential elections have historically favored the taller candidate. Both tall men and tall women command attention in ways that shorter men and women do not. Is it not reasonable, therefore, to assume that tall people are more deserving of admission to an elite college than short people? Is it any more reasonable to suspect that people who have mastered the art of taking standardized tests will make better use of a degree from a top-ranked college than people whose expertise lies in other areas?

Sternberg's proposal is that the taller the student, the more selective the college that he will attend. The student who grows to seven feet in height will attend Harvard. At 6'5", one might attend Tufts. I, at 5'4" would have my choice of several good state colleges. Sternberg's facetious proposal highlights what he sees as the fallacy behind the criteria that colleges use to evaluate applicants.

A recent past president of the American Psychological Society, Sternberg earned a "C" in his Introduction to Psychology class. Clearly the ability to do his job as president of the APA and as a respected researcher and professor has little to do with answering multiple choice questions on a psychology exam. Yet in today's college admission environment, the ability to answer multiple-choice questions is an important skill in working one's way into a selective college. Successful adults, Sternberg says, are not just good test takers, but are able to think analytically and to apply what they know in creative and practical ways.

Both Schwartz and Sternberg address key weaknesses in a process that we as a society have foisted on our young people. They present alternate, though unlikely, ways that colleges might make the process both less destructive to the student and more focused on identifying students who are eager to engage in the type of learning that will make them successful adults and that will make the college environment more dynamic.

The real reform, however, needs to come years before the student is ready to apply to college. We need an educational system that is less focused on prepping students for MCAS, SAT, ACT and AP tests, and more focused on nurturing each student's creativity and desire to learn. We need to help students value learning for its own sake and not depend on external rewards such as grades and college decals on the car window. Education is not about filling in the right bubble on the multiple choice test. It is about making connections between what one knows and what one wants to achieve. It is about helping the student know that his worth as a learner and as a person is not dependent on where he goes to college, but rather on what he does once he gets there. It is about helping the student look realistically at how and why he learns and what he requires in order to be a successful learner. It is about maintaining perspective. o