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BY JAMES ROBINSON Setting out to gain admission to a top university such as Stanford, one area high school student had seen an independent college adviser since the eighth grade, taken the SAT 14 times, held two internships, performed 300 hours of volunteer service and received writing coaching. "When students are spending all their time on this, they're clearly not doing what we hope in the college admission process they'll be doing -- in other words, reflecting on who they are and what they care about, and how they learn best and how that's going to fit in with any one given institution; in other words, whether there will be a good match," Robin Mamlet, dean of admission and financial aid, said at the June 12 Faculty Senate meeting. Mamlet and the chair of the senate's Committee on Undergraduate Admission and Financial Aid (C-UAFA), psychology Professor Hazel Markus, made a presentation on the causes and effects of the growing frenzy among high school students to get into the very top universities in the country -- and how Stanford and other universities might address the situation.
Admission and Financial Aid Dean Robin Mamlet, left, and psychology Professor Hazel Markus, chair of the Committee on Undergraduate Admission and Financial Aid, criticized public obsession with 'top schools.' Photo: L.A. Cicero "The issue of who gets into Stanford, who's making the decision and how they are making those decisions has become front-page news nationally. In fact, I can even go beyond that and say it has become a national hysteria, not just a conversation, not just an issue," Markus said. "And as a social psychologist, I can tell you that when something comes to the point of hysteria, you need to respond to it, but it's not easy to do so. It's not easy to get ahold of." Markus traced the origins of the hysteria to U.S. News & World Report's college ranking system, the methodology of which Stanford and other institutions have, in the past, publicly challenged. "Now it's not enough to just go to a top university -- it matters whether you're going to number one or number two or number six," Markus said. "Tell-all" books by former deans of admission have added to the problem, she said, and the rankings recently filtered down to the high school level with Newsweek's ratings of best public high schools. The growing public perception is that "college education only counts, can only be worthwhile, if it comes from one of the top 20 or maybe 25 schools. And, actually, applications to colleges among the top 25 has tripled in the last six years," she said. That has led to a sense that "there's some unfairness and the proliferation of the idea that you need to have a set of hooks to get into these top schools." A "kind of gamesmanship" has resulted in which applicants try to "play the system so that they can get into one of the top colleges, so they can get some kind of a hook," she added. Mamlet similarly criticized the "growth of an entire for-profit industry that has capitalized on the anxieties of families" and that focuses on giving students an "edge." She said the public's narrow definition of what it takes to get into a top school results in a disconnect between what Stanford does and what people think it's doing. "They think of grades; they think of test scores; they think of extracurricular activities, for example, student body president. The definition that we apply on the inside, however, is far more nuanced," she said. Mamlet cited Stanford's official selection criteria, which state in part: "The primary criterion for admission is academic excellence; a compound of exceptional capacity, scholastic performance in relation to available opportunities and promise of intellectual growth." Mamlet explained: "So, specifically, we look carefully at our assessment of a student's intellectual vitality; at the rigor of their high school curriculum; at what kinds of things their teachers and counselors say in their recommendations; what drives the student -- whether, for example, success is viewed by the student as an end product or simply what happens on the way to studying things that they love and can't put down; whether a student is a positive force in the classroom -- or just there in the classroom." Mamlet said the onus is on the admissions office and C-UAFA to "speak more forcefully and more clearly as part of the national conversation" about what institutions such as Stanford are doing to correct misperceptions. Added Markus: "We've increasingly felt on C-UAFA this year that we have a responsibility to enter into this national debate in some way, to try to have some sort of sane voice about all this." Following the presentation, however, President John Hennessy said he wondered if such an effort would do much good. "I, unfortunately, despair about our ability to do much about this, because I think while the focus often turns to the question of admissions criteria and getting the edge, the fundamental problem is the fact that there is so much focus on such a small number of schools," he said. "It's great that you have some good ideas to work on, but I think it's going to be very hard."
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Stanford Report, July 9, 2003
