To the Editor:
‘Tis the season—the early-response round for college applications, that is. Here’s a quick course in the current state of play, dedicated to improving our holiday gatherings.
This week word starts filtering back, some still by snail mail and lots by e-mail, to more than three quarters of the University School of Nashville senior class. They are hearing from colleges and universities that are filling perhaps 30 percent of next year’s new enrollments by committing now to applicants from what may ultimately be less than 10 percent of their total applicant pool. And it all happens right on top of those students’ fall-semester exams. Nice timing. And we all get the chance to watch, wondering what to say.
Only a few years ago, some of the country’s most selective colleges, including Ivies and leading flagship state universities, announced a move away from early processes altogether. They worried about the gamesmanship, lamented the loss of sanctity in students’ senior years, and pledged to lead a charge in the other direction. Now that push can be deemed a failure, as those changes have rolled back down the steep hill they set out to conquer, and early numbers are higher than ever.
University School of Nashville students participate in the national trend, choosing among traditional early decision (binding on applicants), early action (nonbinding), and restricted action (binding in a different way, requiring a promise to be early-action monogamous). It all seems calibrated to confer maximum strategic benefit for each college, given their circumstances. It’s not clear that student well-being figures much in that calculus—there’s plenty of pressure all around, and applications continue to rise in carefully enumerated piles. One hopes they are as carefully read as they are counted.
Against this backdrop is the inexorable tendency of adults to assume these young people want, first and foremost, to be asked directly about their college-application story line. Put a grownup, whether neighbor or relative or remote acquaintance, in a room with a senior and listen for the well-intended inquiries: “What’s your first choice? Where are you going to be next year? Where are you applying?” Seniors know those questions are coming, and on balance they are not looking forward to their chance to reply, worried about sounding self-satisfied, or uncertain, or unsuccessful, depending on where they are in what will be for most of them a process extending into late spring.
What if we chose another path? What if we let them bring up the topic, and if they chose not to, we talked about something else? They’re not shy about speaking up when they want to, right? What if we all resisted the pull of this hyper-emotional moment of curiosity and let their questions of us guide our pronouncements regarding the whole imperfect process, the way we did with hard stuff when they were younger? Thirty years of those conversations with seniors tell me that we’d be doing them a big favor, bringing perspective where it’s sorely needed. So at the risk of being preachy, that’s my solstice wish for the season.
The holidays at hand remind us of the big picture and the people who bring meaning to all we do. Let’s choose to appreciate the rites of passage and the wisdom of experience. And let’s celebrate the talent, the perseverance, and the potential of our children—great things are in store, all in due time.
Vince Durnan
Director
University School of Nashville
Nashville, Tenn.