What Should Parents Do About Highly Selective Schools?
A follow up to last week's post
After my post last week about the continued lack of economic diversity and the clear preference for wealthy applicants demonstrated by highly selective schools, I got a question via email that, with their permission, I’d like to share a portion of here.
“Hi Wendy,
I’m the mom of a current high school sophomore who plans to apply to some of the highly selective schools you referenced in your post about the admissions rates of poor students in ivy league schools. I really appreciate your blog but I’m finding myself wondering what a parent should do about the kind of inequities you wrote about. My son is really bright and I don’t want to tell him he shouldn’t apply to name brand school, though I have a better understanding now of how hard they are to get into. Is there something parents can or should do to try to somehow try to make admissions more fair for all kids? Is it okay to still want for my kid to get the shot to attend his dream school?
I really appreciate this question and the thinking this mom is doing about what it means and how to engage in a system that isn’t designed to be fair.
But before I share my thoughts on that, I want to state again that college choice is an incredibly individual thing and every family has to do their own work to figure out what they value, what they can afford, what kind of learner their kid is, where their kid is most likely to thrive, and how they want the experience of higher education to change their child. The critiques I make about the highly selective sector are because I want my field to both be more honest about how admissions works and to challenge (in my own small way) the most powerful schools to DO BETTER.
My critiques aren’t meant to shame anyone who still wants to go to those schools, especially kids who have grown up hearing that these schools are “the best” for their whole lives.
I do, however, want to encourage parents to ask themselves some questions about the pursuit of highly selective colleges along the way:
Have we had really clear conversations with our kid about how hard it can be to get admitted to highly selective schools and that they can do everything right and still not get admitted? Is there a way to help them understand that getting rejected by a school that rejects 95% of their applicants doesn’t tell them anything about how smart, deserving, hard working, or talented they are?
Is the pursuit of getting admitted to a highly selective college in the future making their current life miserable? Are they living in fear of a “B”? Are they able to do extracurriculars for fun? Is their sense of self-worth getting tied to the idea of someday getting to wear a Harvard sweatshirt? What are they giving up now that they might regret someday if they don’t get admitted? Will all the things they are doing now seem reasonable and worthwhile if they don’t end up going to the most selective schools?
Are we communicating that there are a lot of good college and university options beyond the highly selective sphere? Are we encouraging them to identify interesting schools are a variety of selectivity levels? Are we not dismissing some great options as merely being “safety schools”?
Do we see where our child goes to college as a reflection on us and our parenting? Would we be less proud of them or less confident in their future if they didn’t attend a selective school?
Some of these questions obviously involve some heavy duty parental self-reflection, which ideally should happen before any applications go out or admissions decisions come back and hearts get broken.
I also want to speak to the other question that this reader asked about what parents can do to make admissions more fair for all students because the answer is … not much, actually.
The inequities in the admissions processes at highly selective colleges and universities are fundamentally structural problems and structural problems generally can’t be solved by individual action.
That doesn’t mean these problems can’t be solved though.
The truth is that none of the critiques I’ve made are new information. The schools know who they are admitting and they know that they have processes that that advantage certain students. Admissions is a system and systems are designed to keep getting you the same results unless the powers in control of a system change it.
There are a few very obvious ways that highly selective schools could start leveling the playing field for non-wealthy students right away:
End legacy admissions: Legacy admissions results in less qualified students, who are more likely to have economic privilege getting a disproportionate number of spots, further reducing the opportunities for lower income and first generation students.
Practice need blind admissions if they don’t already do so.
End early decision admissions programs which advantage students who are willing to make a commitment to a college without having financial aid offers in hand. (Always remember that early decision benefits colleges FAR MORE than it benefits students)
Practice targeted recruitment to better identify high achieving students in lower income areas. Colleges can find the students they are looking for… if they really want to.
The enrollment demographics of highly selective schools aren’t accidental. They represent the outcome of institutional choices about who they want to serve, how they are defining “excellence”, and their own tolerance for continuing systems that intentionally exclude some kinds of students. They can change that… the open question is still “do they want to?”
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This will likely be my last post of 2024, so I want to end with a thank you for reading and subscribing. When we come back in 2025, I’ll be covering some new topics including:
how to compare financial aid offers
how to navigate the admissions process for students with disabilities
addressing the whole “is college still worth it?” conversation
how plan a successful transfer from a community college to a four year college or university
Choosing a major and why being undecided isn’t a terrible first option
I’d love to know if there are topics you’d like to see covered here or questions you’d like me to answer, so please feel free to leave those in the comments or shoot me an email!