The Neurotic Parent

Many of you have asked which schools I will be visiting with our son GC on our ten-day, nine-state tour.  I cannot yet reveal that list because every day there is minor tweaking and/or major restructuring.  But I can tell you that we will be paying a visit to Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT. 

Wesleyan is quite different from most of the other colleges that GC is checking out.  In fact he added it to his list only because I insisted that he visit one small liberal arts school.  At first he resisted because he thinks he probably wants a larger university on a campus with big time sports.  But now that we have planned his Wes visit, he's actually looking forward to spending a night in the dorms with a freshman pal from camp and attending a Terrorism class with a junor family friend.

Maybe he'll like Wesleyan.  But that would be a problem, because I have just discovered that ALL the other juniors in his school are also headed there to check it out.  Last night, at the grade level pot luck, I had the occasion to speak to at least 30-40 parents about college tours.  And, no matter what sort of qualifications and passions their kids have, every single one is considering Wesleyan. 

Here are some of their tour itineraries:

1. Harvard – Brandeis – Yale – Tufts – Brown – Wesleyan

2. Oberlin – Kenyon – Sarah Lawrence – Vassar – Wesleyan

3. Banard – Bard – Skidmore – RISD – Wesleyan

Those all make a lot of sense.  But the lists of others got weirder and weirder.

4. Wisconsin – Indiana – Syracuse – Lehigh – Wesleyan

and even:

5. SMU - Texas A&M - Notre Dame – U.S. Naval Academy – Wesleyan

Can anyone enlighten me?  Why do 90% of the students in our school have Wes on their lists? 

Could it be the clothing-optional dorm?  That's so 2002. 

Everybody knows that the colleges care about more than GPAs and standardized testing.  They look at curriculum strength, essays, teacher recs and, in particular, extracurriculars.  It is no secret that the admissions committees are very concerned about what you do with your spare time – be it volunteering with lepers in India or interning as a trapeze artist with Cirque du Soleil.

And it is equally important that you do not begin a brand new extracurricular activity during your junior year. The committees will not be impressed with your story unless you have demonstrated a lifelong passion for your extracurricular of choice.

This makes it a challenge to choose a summer activity for the summer between junior and senior year of high school.  Our younger son GC has brought up several possibilities, but we just cannot find one that will help his college chances.  Theoretically, it is best to be chosen for a prestigious, competitive program related to your passion, a program that ideally you can catagorize as an award or scholarship on your application.  Unfortunately, there are only seven of these programs, and four are for New Jersey residents only. And, if you’re anything like our son, you missed the deadlines, and your hang-gliding skills are so rusty that you probably wouldn’t have qualified anyway.

That means you will have to choose between the following:

– A CHALLENGING SUMMER COURSE AT AN IVY.  Schools like Brown, Columbia and Cornell offer fascinating classes for pre-college students – courses in Great Books, Genomes or Globalization. Unfortunately, these programs cost $5000-$8000, and although the colleges like keeping their dorms filled, they are not particularly impressed when they see these classes on your resume.  They assume you’re a rich kid who settled for Genome Studies because you couldn’t get into a more prestigious program.

– A LIFE-CHANGING TRIP TO A WAR-RIDDEN, DEVELOPING COUNTRY.  These excursions, which often involve performing bunion surgery in Mongolia or training villagers in Guam to grow sustainable kale hydroponically, take high school students out of their comfort zones. The participants live with local families in mud huts and come back with a new appreciation for the after-parties they attend at home. But sadly, the colleges don’t like to hear about these adventures. They want you to wait until you’re IN college to go on expeditions to the rainforest, because then the profits will go to their own institutions.

– AN OUTWARD BOUND EXPERIENCE BACKPACKING BLINDFOLDED IN WEST VIRGINIA.  Again, the colleges once respected students who spent their summers eating bark.  But now they look at these programs as magnets for troubled teens.

– AN INTERNSHIP ON YOUR UNCLE BRAD’S NEW PILOT FOR FOX.  Don’t even think about it.  Stinks of privilege, especially if the show is picked up.

That leaves just one desirable summer activity:

– A JOB AT JAMBA JUICE.  This, my friends, is what the colleges want to see.  All the better if you don’t actually get to blend the juice and you spend eight full hours a day peeling carrots and mopping up.  But landing one of these coveted assignments is not as easy as it sounds.  I’m sorry to report that all of the the 2011 Jamba Juice positions have already gone to recent cum laude neuroscience grads from UCLA.

That’s where the Neurotic Parent Institute comes in: For a mere $6500, less than it will cost to go to Ghana or Cornell, we will personally arrange an UNPAID INTERNSHIP at a Jamba Juice for your high school student. Although there is no compensation, we will make sure that your son or daughter encounters severe traffic, rude customers and rancid protein powder – a plethora of excellent essay material….and all in all, the kind of experience that jumps off the page. Apply soon – opportunities are limited.  You don’t want your kid to end up spending his or her summer studying International Relations at Columbia!