Dialing Down Pressure in College Admissions

How we can reshape a college admissions process that dangerously elevates achievement pressure

How can we reshape a college admissions process that dangerously elevates achievement pressure in many school communities, inflating students’ anxieties while stifling their intellectual interests and exploration?

Rates of depression, delinquency, substance abuse and anxiety appear to be as high in affluent communities as they are in low-income communities, according to psychologist Suniya Luthar, who has conducted studies of adolescents in affluent communities. While these problems have many sources, achievement pressure appears to be a prime culprit.

Quality Engagement

About five months ago, Making Caring Common, a project that I co-direct at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, released a report, “Turning the Tide” (http://mcc.gse.harvard.edu/files/gse-mcc/files/20160120_mcc_ttt_report_interactive.pdf), in collaboration with the Education Conservancy, that seeks to reshape the college admission process. The report has now been endorsed by almost 150 key stakeholders in college admissions, including the admissions deans of all the Ivy League colleges.

In addition to promoting meaningful ethical engagement and increasing equity and access for economically diverse students, the report seeks to reduce excessive achievement pressure. For the first time in history, a broad range of colleges has banded together to send a powerful, collective message that what’s important in college admissions is not high numbers of impressive accomplishments or long “brag sheets,” but meaningful ethical and academic engagement.

What, specifically, does the report recommend in terms of dialing down achievement pressure? And how might high schools play their part in de-escalating the infamous “arms race” while promoting meaningful, spirited learning?

Perhaps most important, the report emphasizes that the quality of a student’s engagement is far more important than the quantity of her or his achievements. Far too many students think that piling on extracurricular activities and Advanced Placement courses is a big plus in their applications. The report indicates that 2-3 activities are plenty and urges students to avoid overloading on APs.

The report encourages school staff, parents and students to focus on a wide range of colleges that might be a good fit for a student, rather than trying to shoehorn students into a handful of highly selective schools. Parents are urged to use the college admissions process as a wonderful opportunity to get to know their kids, to help them uncover what interests and inspires them and to express their interests authentically.

Healthy Norms

Some high schools in affluent communities are taking important steps aligned with these goals by limiting students to four or five AP courses during high school or even eliminating APs altogether. Several high schools hope to develop a “healthy school” compact — a set of specific norms and commitments signed by parents and/or principals that are designed to reduce excessive achievement pressure.

In these compacts, schools could commit, for example, to eliminating practices that not so subtly inflate the importance of elite colleges, such as publicizing average SAT scores or the percent of students accepted to highly ranked colleges. Schools could do away with school test prep except when it increases equity for non­affluent students and recognize students for meaningful academic and/or community engagement instead of high numbers of achievements.

Through a compact, schools and parents could agree to expose students to nonelite colleges and to intervene immediately if kids show signs of achievement-related stress and depression. Parents could commit to not hiring SAT tutors before 10th grade and to encouraging their kids to engage in just a few extracurricular activities that are meaningful to them. Instead of treating their children’s peers as competitors in the college race, parents could commit to helping their children’s peers find the right college, including sharing college information with these peers and taking them along with their own kids on college visits.

The very public nature of the compact would assure at least some accountability. When applying to highly selective colleges, students and their counselors could indicate that their schools and/or parents had signed the compact, so no student could reasonably be penalized relative to children in other communities for taking only a few AP courses or extracurricular activities. Because these colleges know, for example, that some high schools ban AP courses, the admissions deans we’ve spoken with say that students from these schools aren’t disadvantaged in the application process.

These actions, of course, are neither simple nor a panacea. But the fact is that the admissions process is distorting many students’ values, badly compromising their capacity to learn and imperiling their health. We all need to think bravely, creatively and collectively about how we can enable students to lead saner, more balanced, more purposeful lives.