All too often students are lauded for being admitted to “good schools,” with the underlying rationale that they are awesome because they were admitted. Many students are awesome and deserve accolades, and that is frequently why they were admitted. Not the other way around.
A student does not become more awesome as a result of being admitted, but rather from what they achieve by taking advantage of the opportunity.
For some the wait is over, while for others it has just begun. Within the last few weeks, early action applicants received their admission decisions and the last of the regular action candidates clicked “submit.” For some, the wait is over, while for others it has just begun.
For high school seniors, many are seeing and early conclusion of a different type of marathon—one of emotional highs and lows that strike a deep nerve in each student’s sense of self-worth and the validation sought by their invested parents and educators.
The differentiation between the thin and fat envelopes of the past has given way to the opening sentence of an email that either ominously describes the highly competitive pool of outstanding students, or cheerily begins with an offer of congratulations. None of the rest of the email matters after that point.
For parents, college admittance can feel like affirmation of a parenting job well-done, and an opportunity for bragging rights on Facebook. After years of prodding, yelling, begging, carpooling, cheering, booing, questioning and—inevitably—comparing, parents can measure their parenting performance by the number of congratulatory opening lines they review. For the students, the responses mark the culmination of years of fears, stress, lack of sleep, too many practices and a forced abandonment of free time.
Too many high school students are exiting secondary school worn out from years of matching their activities to what they think a college admissions officer is seeking. Throughout that process, they have faced a dizzying array of mixed messages:
“Pursue your dreams.”
“Your SATs are critical if you want to get into a good school.”
“Enjoy your life.”
“Grades matter.”
“Go to the highest ranked school possible.”
“You have to win to succeed.”
And so it goes.
More students are applying to more schools, and the barriers to admittance grow increasingly daunting. More and more, parents are paying professionals to help identify where their children should apply and how to best position them for acceptance.
But there is a growing dark side to the health and well-being of a generation of students hyper-focused on success.
Everyone is quickly finding out that the culture of over-achievement is leaving kids sleep-deprived and hyper-focused on the path to college.
By the time today’s students reach high school graduation, they have become sophisticated navigators through a barrage of overt and subliminal messages that reveal how school administrators, teachers, and parents are, in actuality, measured and judged by the students’ success. The teenagers do not miss the point.
Too many high school students are exiting secondary school worn out from years of matching their activities to what they think a college admissions officer is seeking.
Students cannot alone extricate themselves from this marathon of over-achievement. Parents and schools must together recognize the long-term implications of the high-risk race they manage.
There is no shortage of examples demonstrating that success in life is not tied to acceptance at a college that meets some arbitrary standard of prestige.
This is not about taking a leap of faith; it is about the grownups in the room recognizing the escalating costs of a race without a finish line.
This column is by Ritchie Lucas, Founder of The Student Success Project and Think Factory Marketing. He can be reached at 305-788-4105 or via email ritchie@thinkfactory.com and on Facebook and You Tube as The Student Success Project.
