Has it really gotten all that much worse getting into a selective college?

Granted, the 70s had the big baby boom and we are now in the baby boom echo. Perhaps selective schools were easier to get into during the late 80s and early 90s?

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Personally, I think that well roundedness tends to work against the really bright, especially really bright girls. There is nothing like being ordered to get well rounded to keep one from focusing on getting really good at something. Girls who really want to excel in some scientific or technical area are under much more pressure than boys to get out and get some air, spend more time with friends, pay more attention to how they dress, diversify their interests and so on.

Exploring the sciences and technologies offers its own rewards to both men and women. There is no sex hormone involved in experiencing the joy of plucking a radio signal out of the air, breeding a neat hybrid mouse, getting a good look at the Crab Nebula, or booting Linux on your old point and shoot camera. It’s just that girls don’t get any encouragement or resources.

“with the stakes so high so early, are we starting to discourage well-roundedness? Do you really have to focus that much that soon in order to get into one of the “name” colleges these days?”

in college, i worked in the admissions office giving campus tours, and inevitably ended up answering questions about “what did i need to do to get in?”, rather than “what can i bring to the school?” or “how might this school engage me and support my interests?” ok, so not many people know to ask questions like that, at that age. but with these kids working toward developing such an incredibly broad, dynamic package, i fear not only 1. overextension, and 2. narrowed focus (as you alluded to), but 3. a lack of realization that their application – and all of the APs, extracurriculars, and projects summarized within – doesn’t necessitate their heart being in the decision. because of this competitiveness, so many kids seem increasingly concerned w/ how to get in, and not about their experience once they’re there.

on an aside, funny you mentioned the Expanding Your Horizons program – i was just chatting w/ someone the other day about how attending for three consecutive years influenced my understanding of what science/math opportunities were available to me. great program.

Many people have this concern, and I recently read an interesting proposal in response to it (I wish I could remember where I read it!): The idea is that all the high-end schools should decide who, in their applicant pool, is a suitable candidate, and then use a random lottery to select admits from that pool. This means that you don’t have to have perfect SATs AND all As AND 12 extracurricular activities AND etc in order to compete with the student who had 13 extracurriculars. The goal: students who love learning will be able to focus on learning knowing that padding their resume won’t give them a leg up, so they might as well relax.

One of my big worries is that students abilities aren’t better than they were twenty years ago but that people have gotten so focused on doing well on tests that the spirit of education has been eroding further. That people are going to college because it is what is done, not for the education. That getting A’s is more important than understanding.

But I’m also wondering that, with the stakes so high so early, are we starting to discourage well-roundedness?

I wonder this too, which relates to what I wrote above. Students strive for entry into these universities, but does all that effort really pay off for them in the end, in their lives after university? I wonder.

Does it really matter if you go to Harvard? I think people focus on the wrong things when selecting colleges. Being a top research university in the nation does not mean a school is a top teaching institition. The value of these schools is often in their reputation and the natural sorting of already talented students that they accept, rather than the value they actuallly give students, or so it has seemed to me for many years.

If students were to demand real value for their education dollar, they wouldn’t look to research universities, they would demand schools where teaching was the top priority and where they would be given support to learn.