For some weird reason, yesterday's post was published before it was finished. Now it is ready. Please reread.
Some students and their parents are so desperate to get into college this year that they taken drastic measures: They have decided to sabotage their competition.
The Chicago Tribune has reported that admissions departments routinely receive anonymous letters about applicants, presumably from others who are competing for the same spots. Some of these notes are written in crayon and contain information about character flaws, racy Facebook pages and minor drug busts. The University of Illinois routinely throws these missives away, but an admissions officer from Notre Dame reports that they do contact the applicant's high school to give students a chance to defend themselves.
The Neurotic Parent wonders why would anyone would resort to sending an anonymous note to a college. Can't people just suck it up and accept that the world is unfair? Who would anyone want to live with this sort of karma? Your child might get into a great college, but then you would probably be hit by a bus.
Instead, the Neurotic Parent has a better strategy. Choose another college on your child's rival's list, and write a glowing recommendation for the dirty rotten scoundrel. For example, if your daughter has her heart set on Brown, and the mean girl who has made her life miserable since third grade is also applying there, send an effusive letter about the mean girl to Columbia. That way you can help give a slacker a second chance, and at the same time, pave the way for your brilliant unflawed kid to get the break she deserves.
Getting into college is now the least of CJ's problems. Instead, he has something much more pressing to worry about: if he does get in, how will he pay?
The Neurotic Parent Institute has commisioned a study, and here are the results:
1) Everybody is broke, so it might be slightly easier to get into an outrageously-priced private school.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122316530964805257.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
2) But it will be harder to gain acceptance at public schools. Maybe we should check out UC Merced.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2008/10/15/MNSG13DJRB.DTL
3) If students do manage to get accepted somewhere, the college might go bankrupt before they even start; they might not be guaranteed a place to live, and neuroscience research funding could be cut in half.
http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-collegeaid19-2008oct19,0,7182398.sto
What irony! What luck!
Here it is, the most difficult year in the history of the world to get into college, and the poor, stressed-out applicants might not even be able to afford college, if by some random stroke of luck, they are accepted.
And, to make the situation worse, they must quickly revise the essays they wrote last summer. They no longer can say they want to be investment bankers.
Hmm. What would be a good career choice now? The best fit the NP could come up with for the class of 2013 is….Bankruptcy Attorney.
CJ and I are at the Claremont Resort in Berkeley, California, where we have a breathtaking view and a fantastic internet rate, thanks to the recession. This place is too fancy for a college trip, but all the Berkeley parents we know said we must stay here. An incongruous grand old California castle on a hill, this fading old-world bastion of country club civility is just a few blocks away from the somewhat anachronistic African drums and tie-die of Telegraph Avenue.
CJ spent an entire day and evening with FE (Fencing Engineer) a childhood friend and teammate (and outstanding conversationalist) who is thriving here. They attended two classes together, and while CJ is not quite ready to switch from Undecided to Engineering, he said he "understood" the computer programming lecture.
The Good (besides the cost, location, prestige and weather):
1. Fires here are under control; SoCal fires rage
2. Despite the enormity of the campus, we ran into two people we knew, and were spotted by a third, who didn't say hello, but called his mom and reported that he saw us.
3. Yogurt Possibilities
4. Great China Restaurant – NY-quality Chinese
5. Amazing suites for freshmen
6. Parking spaces marked "NL" are reserved for Nobel Laureates.
7. Multiple styles of mugs in gift shop. Truly, I have never seen a better selection of college mugs.
The Bad:
1. Uncomfortable cement bleachers at football stadium
2. Our tour visited a class with 750 kids and a professor with sub-par English skills; tour guide was not certain whether class was Calculus or Economics.
3. Parking
4. Political Activism is presented on the tour as a piece of ancient history.
CJ has created his final college list. He has included three reaches, four 50-50s, and four likelies. His school has discouraged the terms "match" and "safety", but if we could use them, the list would look like this: 1 super-reach; 1 reach; 2 matches; 3 50-50s; 2 likelies; 1 safety; 1 super-safety; 1 unlikely; 1 super-unlikely.
I cannot reveal his list to you; I would have to kill you. But I can say that he ended up showing interest in only five of the twelve schools we visited way back in March when I began this blog. He also added two random college at the last minute, colleges that we did not tour, colleges that he had never mentioned before.
And he has violated the Southwest rule, one of the most important considerations in university selection: Southwest Airlines, the flexible, changeable, no-penalty transportation pal of the American college student, does not fly to all the schools on his list.
But we are getting on a Southwest flight this evening and heading to Oakland. Seasoned college visitors CJ and NP are embarking on yet another school visit.