U.S.News & Word Report, December 20, 2004
Drowning in applications
by justin ewers
Jake
Levy-Pollans remembers exactly when he finally got his life back. It happened
on a Wednesday morning in early December— when he turned in the last bit of
college application paperwork to his counselor's office. Since summer, Jake, a
17-year-old senior at Community High School in Aim Arbor, Mich., has been living
one day at a time: Wake up, go to school, do homework, toil over college
essays, go to sleep, repeat. Sure, he asked for some of it: He applied to 11
schools, a mixed bag of big and small—from the Universities of Michigan and
Wisconsin to Brandeis, Georgetown, and Grinnell. Five required him to fill out
their own applications, but since the other six accepted the Common
Application, a standardized form recognized by more than 200 schools, he
figured he could keep the paperwork under control.
That's
when he hit his first snag. Even the schools with common applications, he
discovered, often required "supplements" brimming with additional
questions and essays. He started filling out forms in August, thinking he had
plenty of time. Three months later, he was still scrambling to explain just
how dynamic a guy he was and how much he deserved to be admitted— in a total
of 12 different essays. Each application, he estimates, came to some 30 pages –
from counselor recommendation forms to short-answer questions to graded high
school papers.
Every school seemed to have a different deadline. Some wanted
supplements to be turned in with the application; others wanted them
separately. (Nearly all wanted money, too: He coughed up more than $400 in
application fees.) Oh yeah, did Jake mention he was also trying to go to high
school? "There are days when you go online [with friends] just to
scream," he says. "Basically, you have to just become a machine—you
become numb to the process."
As application season hits its peak and students scramble to meet the
early January deadlines set by many elite schools, Jake is far from the only
stressed-out high school senior – or high school parent, for that matter. But
he's one of the lucky ones; he's done. For many of his classmates still wading
through essay drafts and supplements to the supplements, yet another
admissions question continues to loom: Why does applying to college have to be
so complicated?
Swamped.
Part of the answer, admissions gums say, lies in the sheer numbers of students
striving to get into college. There are over 600,000 more 17-year-olds than
there were 10 years ago, and more kids than ever have their eyes on college—3
of eveiy 4 schools reported a jump in apps last year. As elite colleges become
more selective, seniors are applying to more schools to cover their bases: In
1983, only 10 percent of undergrade at four-year schools had applied to six or
more colleges; by last year the figure had jumped to nearly 25 percent. With
applications flooding the system, the difficulty colleges have sorting through
them has been compounded by grade inflation. In 1973, just 20 percent of
students earned A averages in high school; 30 years later, fully 4? percent
did. For many colleges, the best way to differentiate
a mass of applicants whose stats look awfully similar is to require as much
extra information as possible.
Yet as recently as three decades ago, there were high hopes for a
simpler era. When the Common Application was introduced in 1975, many in
admissions thought it would streamline and standardize what was already a
chaotic process. Only 15 schools, most of them northeastern liberal arts
colleges, used it in its first year, recognizing that they shared the same pool
of would-be students. Applicants soon grew to love the simple four-page
document, with its standardized personal and education information,
short-answer question, and choice of one of six essays. So did a lot of
schools. After that first year, the Common App saw a steady rise in popularity.
Today, 255 schools use it, including, as of this year, five Ivies. "The
process has become too complex," says Karl Furstenberg, Dartmouth's dean
of admissions, explaining why his school, along with Harvard, was among the
first of the Ivies to switch over. "I don't think you need to ask kids to
write essay after essay after essay after essay."
Problem
is, in recent years more and more of the schools that signed on to the Common
App couldn't resist adding questions of their own. A decade ago just 33 percent
of schools using the Common App required supplements—now the figure is 63
percent. Some felt they had to do so because they were being barraged by Common
Apps apparently fired off (often online) without a second thought. And others
use supplements only to ask a handful of questions about whether the applicant
is the child of an alum or has ever gotten into trouble with the law. But many
contain extra queries that require a hefty commitment of time and effort. The
result? Apply to a school like Kenyon College with the Common App, and after
you've done your statement of purpose and short-answer question, you still have
five more short-answer questions and essays to get through before you're done.
To say
students and parents are frustrated is an understatement. "The supplements
sort of ruined the general purpose of the Common Application," says Nicole
Nash, a senior at St. Agnes Academy in Memphis. "The only time you're
saving is filling out your name more than once." Laments Katherine
Lonsdorf, a senior at Verona Area High School in Verona, Wis., who is applying
to seven colleges: "I thought I'd be able to write the same essay for
everything." Susan Marrs, a veteran college counselor at the Seven Hills
School in Cincinnati, used to reassure her students that they'd be able to
recycle at least some of their essays. Then one of her counselees had to write
15 separate essays for 10 schools last year – none of which could be submitted
twice. "As time has gone by," Marrs says, "I realized I'd better
stop saying that."
Of
course, the majority of schools don't take the Common Application in the first
place, preferring to ask their own questions in their own way. And most are
unapologetic about how difficult their applications make students' lives.
"I've never been convinced this is supposed to be an easy process,"
says Ted O'Neill, dean of admissions at the University of Chicago, which
pointedly calls its own form the Uncommon Application. "This is an
important thing in life. It's like looking for a job or doing anything that has
consequences. There's no reason to make it standard or uniform to make it
easy."
The
match game. Even some exasperated counselors admit that a complicated
application process can be good for kids – up to a point. It forces seniors to
think long and hard about where to apply, for one thing, and to be sure that
the school where they're applying is a good match. Take Chicago's Uncommon
Application: The school is famous for its off-the-wall essay questions, which
this year include asking students what they would do with a superhuge jar of
mustard. "When I tell students about this question and they wrinkle their
noses and go 'yuck' or look at me like I had just spoken an unknown language,
then I tell them that U. of Chicago would probably not be a good fit for
them," says Karin Botica, an independent college consultant.
Ultimately, even the most vocal critics of colleges' myriad applications
understand that the system is unlikely to change. "What do they want? They
want to know how you think," says Jon Reider, director of college
counseling at San Francisco University High School. "I'm not going to
criticize it. But when they do these things, they don't realize the effect they
have on kids." The bottom line may be simple: Ambitious students, already
buried by schoolwork, could use a simpler process. Selective schools, on the
other hand, continue to require ever more sophisticated ways to tell applicants
apart. What's good for universities may not always be good for their students,
and vice versa. But for the foreseeable future, at least, it looks like a seller's
market. Which means, no matter how many relatives are in town for the holidays
this year, it may be time for teens to get back to those unsent applications.
STRESSED.
Michigan high school senior Jake Levy-Pollans spent months slaving over 12
different essays for 11 college applications.