Choosing The Right College, Part IV

by Joael Kelly

This is part four of my series about choosing a college, based on what I have learned working with transfer students for the last eighteen years.  This week: Value.

The last item to consider is the value of the universities on your list.  Did you notice I didn’t write “cost”?  The cost of attendance is only one factor in the equation.  Of course, the bottom line affordability is important too, but it is also important to consider the value of your investment.  Yes, college is an investment in your future, and just like a 401(k), you want a good return.

So, how do you know if college will be a good value for the money?  First of all, what DO you need?  Will the college prepare you for graduate school or medical school?  Will you be prepared for that audition or job interview?  Will you have the experience that you need? And by experience I mean, maturity, reasoning skills, leadership and technical training.  Colleges do not always teach you job skills—you will learn those during an internship or post-graduation employment.  The purpose of college is to teach you to learn, so that no matter what job you have, you will achieve success.

Learning is done with a liberal arts education and with classes in a broad spectrum of disciplines.  Learning is achieved outside of the classroom through leading and also following.  Leadership is learned by holding positions in organizations, working on group projects and, surprisingly, by following others.  Will your colleges offer you these opportunities?  Will you be able to study abroad, get a great internship, or earn a leading role in the play?  Will the reputation of the college get your foot in the door for your first job interview, your first internship, or graduate school?  If not, then you have to think about the value of your investment and whether that college is a good choice, not strictly how much you pay.

Hooray! Gainfully-employed Horned Frogs!

Last year, our Career Services department surveyed our graduating seniors before they walked across the stage.  They found that 58% of the undergraduates had jobs related to their major and 16% were going to graduate school.  This survey was taken in May, before they graduated in a recession.  These figures say a lot about the value of TCU.  If you can find numbers like this for the colleges on your list, they will help you make a better choice with respect to value.  Look at schools’ graduation rates, internship availability, study abroad percentages and jobs in your field.

It is likely that the award you get from TCU will not be the lowest bottom line.  We do not give as much money as some colleges because we put quite a lot of money back into our campus by building state-of-the-art residence halls and classrooms, updating older facilities and hiring top-notch faculty and staff.  We have a beautiful campus in a terrific city.  The opportunities are endless here.  TCU has value.

So, think hard about this point.  Figure out how much you can afford and the value of the education, and then choose a college that is high in value and within your budget.

If TCU is where you really want to be, but you just can’t swing TCU times four, think about the transfer option and do TCU times three (or even two).  We can work with you and help you choose the courses that will count toward your major and our Core Curriculum.

So, this ends my series on how to choose a college that is right for you.  I hope you found it helpful.  Now that you have this information, you can visit colleges with more critical eyes.  Start with your head and think of all the points I have asked you to consider and narrow down your search to about three colleges.  Then, go back.  Spend the night on campus, sit in on a class, eat at the cafeteria and just be a student for a day.  If you start with your head, you can end with your heart and ask yourself “Where do I want to call home for the next four years?” Hopefully, with all of your new knowledge, you will choose the right college for you and you will have a great experience.  We hope that choice is TCU, but we know that we are not perfect for everyone.  In the long run, your happiness is most important.  Good luck and have a great time wherever you choose!

Those who know how will always work for those who know why.

by John Andrew Willis

Dallas Mavericks owner and outspoken entrepreneur Mark Cuban posted about a potential meltdown in higher education in his Blog Maverick last May. It has recently resurfaced on various social media outlets. Since the major economic downturn in 2008, there’s been a lot of talk about both the current value and future landscape of American colleges. The gentlemen behind Epic 2020, for example, have gone as far as to suggest that higher education will be unrecognizably different by 2020.

The Higher Education Bubble

Cuban argues that the higher education industry’s bubble will burst similarly to the recent housing market disaster. He explains that consumers bought very nice houses on generous mortgages with the hope that their house would only grow in value, allowing them to sell later at a profit. Of course, values declined, and many homeowners had to sell at a loss.

In drawing a comparison to college education, Cuban predicts:

“At some point potential students will realize that they can’t flip their student loans for a job in 4 years. In fact they will realize that college may be the option for fun and entertainment, but not for education. Prices for traditional higher education will skyrocket so high over the next several years that potential students will start to make their way to non accredited institutions.”

Mark Cuban is right about one thing – going to college is a blast; many students meet lifelong friends, develop an intense affection towards their alma maters, and leave with stories they will tell their grandchildren.

Will Colleges Begin to Close their Doors?

What remains to be seen is whether or not we will see a decline in traditional brick-and-mortar residential colleges due to increasing cost of attendance. Eventually, I think we will. I believe some regional, public universities with small endowments will see their enrollment drop to the point that some will shut down. You’d hope they will be parts of a larger regional public system such that another college in the system can absorb many of the institution’s students and programs, similarly to what often happens in the private sector. Maybe this will happen at private colleges too, but my suspicion is that it will be schools with less individual identity – the places students go to “get in,” “get through,” and “get out” as quickly as possible.

Increasing Financial Assistance

I believe colleges will have to adapt to the changing needs of the 21^st century student and job market, but I also believe they already are. Tuition is increasing at most colleges in the United States, but so are the prices of goods and services of everything we consume. Just as few students look at a college’s sticker price and think, “Wow, what a good deal,” few drivers leave a gas station thinking, “$3.50 per gallon – I think that’s a fair price for a refined black liquid from the ground.”

Fortunately, TCU and many other schools have consistently increased institutional funding for merit scholarships and need-based financial aid at the same time as tuition prices increase. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, private U.S. colleges as a whole offered an all-time high 45% discount rate last year. This means that – when taking into consideration students paying the full sticker price, students receiving full scholarships, and everyone in between – only 55% of the full tuition price was actually collected by the universities. So, while the price tag is increasing nationally, so are the discounts to high-achieving students and those with demonstrated financial need.

Universities vs. the Dallas Mavericks

I find Cuban’s comments to be very fitting of his industry. He is a fast-paced mover-and-shaker in many aspects: a technology business guru, an entrepreneur, and the owner of the Dallas Mavericks. It’s hard to say which of these changes most rapidly, but it is impossible to argue that any change slowly. If his businesses don’t adapt immediately, their competitive advantage is threatened.

If the Mavs lose a game, it can change the outlook of the whole season. If Google released a smart phone with a software superior to iOS, it could change the iPhone’s dominance in the marketplace overnight. However, if TCU replaced a retiring professor of Latin with a new faculty position in Engineering, not so earth-shattering…

Much like the government, education changes slowly. There are pros and cons to this. A university is never going to be able to offer the precise menu of course curriculum to satisfy the market’s picky appetite for worker qualifications. Even if they could, would that be in the best interest of students?  I don’t think so. For starters, a bachelor’s degree takes three years for the most ambitious students, four for most, and five for some. Many industries change so quickly that, by the time you’d learned something in a classroom, the real world procedures are already refined. Great colleges teach you the fundamentals of your area(s) of study, help you intern at reputable companies who will show you exactly what they expect, and facilitate an environment of maturation that will make you an exceptional individual in any field, anywhere in the world.

On a Mission

At TCU, our mission is much broader than job training; we aim “to educate individuals to think and act as ethical leaders and responsible citizens in the global community.” We want a student to accomplish something greater than land a job after they receive their degree. We expect them to improve the human experience.

In the words of TCU Professor of Political Science, Ralph Carter:

“There used to be a quote on www.addran.tcu.edu that I loved, which said, ‘Those who know how will always work for those who know why.’ And that’s what we do – we deal with the why.  And as a result of that, students who really master social sciences and humanities types of training, whether it’s in the core curriculum, and then they go off to the business school or nursing or whatever college they want to at TCU, one of the things that we give them is this ability to question and to analyze and to critique and to communicate…One of the other things, though, that is structural about TCU that works is, because we have a limited enrollment, we can have smaller classes. Because we can have smaller classes, we can make our students write more papers and write more essay exams and we have the time to grade those things. And so the result of that is they get drilled on these skills that are crucial to future success in life…”

Class in Your Living Room?

 I question the notion that a student can acquire the skills and experiences necessary to be a successful professional and fruitful citizen from classes on a laptop in their pajamas in their parents’ living room. If you thought Matthew McConaughey was pathetic in Failure to Launch, imagine millions of Millennials who never physically go to college.

Cuban and others who claim that traditional colleges will go bankrupt as students instead choose the value of non-accredited schools I think fail to understand the totality of the college experience – the whole student education. As Amanda Nickerson noted in a previous post, it was Socrates who claimed, “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” Colleges don’t simply feed students information for them to later regurgitate. There’s a lot more to it than that.

Students can’t participate in athletics, explore the plazas of a European city with a well-traveled professor, or break down the meaning of life with a diverse array of residence hall neighbors on the internet. They can’t manage the budget and culture of a student organization or meet a new friend, significant others, or fiancé through “distance learning.” Above all else, I’m convinced the power of the human connection is too great to allow a mass exodus of young people from brick-and-mortar colleges to their electronic counterparts.

Dollars and Sense

All this crunchy, gooey, touchy-feely stuff sounds good, but what about affording it? Colleges are getting more expensive and their parents aren’t getting any more wealthy as of late. This is true, but, as previously mentioned, colleges are discounting their tuition more than ever before. Mark Cuban mentions traditional universities’ burden of legacy costs, “from tenured professors to construction projects to research they will be saddled with legacy costs and debt in much the same way the newspaper industry was. Which will all lead to a de-levering and a de-stabilization of the University system as we know it.”

For some colleges, I think he’s right. Some institutions’ administrators will be completely at odds with professors not willing to adapt, subsequently making them unable to meet the enrollment goals which allow the college to operate. However, for most colleges, I think gradual adaptation will be the reaction to the public’s newfound obsession with online education. While colleges do have substantial ongoing financial obligations like compensating a large number of highly-skilled employees and building and maintaining dozens and dozens of complex facilities, many colleges also have enormous endowments unlike corporations. TCU is blessed to have an endowment of roughly $1.12 billion, greatly aiding in long-term financial stability.

I think some academic departments will downsize, maybe even merge with another discipline and offer something a bit broader. Online courses could be very helpful for students trying to find placement in a subject, or for those desiring or needing some remedial work in a subject before studying it at the college level. It would be a great benefit to the community for colleges to offer these free of charge. Let’s also not forget that the research on college campuses drives much of the innovation advancing our global society. Even when it’s not outwardly apparent, colleges are always adapting.

Colleges can’t buy into the hype of sound bites and abandon their beliefs. Today’s skills alone aren’t what will lead to prosperity and success tomorrow. It requires time-tested values – excellent communication skills, the desire to challenge the status-quo, and a thirst for lifelong learning – to realize the potential for the human experience in the future. I just happen to think these attributes are more likely accomplished on a residential college campus than on YouTube.

Is a substantial investment in a young person for four years not worth it for the rest of their life and their influence on the next generation?

Choosing The Right College, Part III

by Joael Kelly

This is part three of my series about choosing a college, based on my experience working with transfer students. This week:  Location.

You have thought about admission requirements, the major and size of the college.  It is time to talk about the location of the campus.  You have probably considered the distance from home and how far away you want to be from your hometown (yes, I know, you want to get as far away from Mom and Dad as possible!), but one thing students often don’t think about is this: When you want to go home, how hard is it to get there?  Some transfer students tell me that it is a two-hour bus ride to the airport, and then there is a stop somewhere, just to get back to Ft. Worth.  If you have a three-day weekend and spend two days traveling, you may not go home very often.  It is important to consider distance from home when making a college decision because, as hard as it is to imagine, you will want to go home sometime.

Location of the college also means thinking about what surrounds the campus and what that means for your experience while you are in college.  Is the campus in the heart of the city or in a more residential neighborhood?

Main Street Arts Festivals is just one of the many free events hosted by downtown Fort Worth

On the other side of the coin, many colleges are in “college towns,” where there is not much else besides the college.  While there is a warmth to this environment, these colleges can present some serious challenges, too.  It is best to find out answers to some questions before you commit to a campus in a college town, like “Where is the nearest movie theater or Applebees?” and “What is there to do on weekends?”  I can’t tell you how many students have complained that the most fun thing to do in their college town was going to the local Wal-Mart.  Nothing against going to Wal-Mart, but you probably do not want shopping at Wal-Mart to be the highlight of your weekend.  Another pitfall to college towns is that students party a lot. Of course you will find partying on every campus and, just like high school, it is always a choice.  But when your alternatives are limited, the party scene is difficult to ignore.

The biggest concern that students and parents have in the current economic climate is how college will prepare students for entry into the workforce.  So, another thing to consider with colleges that are geographically isolated is where do you find an internship or a job?  This is another big reason why TCU is such a popular college.  Ft. Worth is a great city with a low cost of living and plenty of activities from which to choose, from the world-class museums, to the fun Stockyards, to Sundance Square, which is considered one of the safest downtowns in the United States. There is always something to do here.  Not only does TCU have terrific sports teams, but the DFW area also has the Stars, the Mavericks, the Rangers and the Cowboys (a team you either love or hate).  In addition, Ft. Worth was named one of the top cities in which to start a career, to own a home and to start a business.  Plus, we have Dallas right next door, so the opportunities double.

Location is very, very important when it comes to choosing a college.  It seems to be one of the things that most transfer students do not think enough about the first time around.  Take time to consider the location and what it means to you, so that you have a good fit, wherever you end up.

Next…cost and value.

What’s the Final Verdict?

by Heath Einstein

A continuing resolution is a legislative maneuver that allows Congress to appropriate funds even when an appropriations bill has not passed before the end of the fiscal year.  Essentially, this allows our legislators to do nothing without our federal system disintegrating.  Assigning applicants to a waitlist, rather than rendering an up or down vote is an admission office’s continuing resolution.
Every year students are surprised to learn that after months of waiting they will need to wait a little bit longer.  Some colleges use their waitlists sparingly; of the 988 students who accepted a spot on Princeton University’s waitlist last year, none were admitted.  Other colleges are more liberal in their use of the waitlist; Cornell University admitted 139 students off of its waitlist for the fall 2012 entering class.

In each of the past three years, TCU has admitted between 177 and 269 students off of our waitlist.  While we are likely to move to our waitlist again this year, it is unlikely that we will be able to offer as many spots in our class as we have in previous years because of the behavior of those who have already been offered admission.  In fact, we have about 100 more students who have accepted our offers than we did on this date last year.  Our Dean of Admission said just this morning, “It’s entirely probable that we will go to the waitlist, but it’s even more probable that we won’t go very deep.”  And if we do move to our waitlist, much of the activity is likely to happen after May 1, the date by which students much notify colleges if they plan to enroll in the fall.

This is mixed news for us.  On the one hand, we are moved by the number of students who want to join the TCU family.  Identifying with our core values and strong sense of community, these students are some of the most accomplished people we have ever welcomed to our campus.  We are equally stirred by the many superb students to whom we were unable to offer admission, and whose desire to attend TCU are no less enthusiastic than those who have already sent in their tuition and housing deposits (via the TCU portal).

The first question waitlisted students ask is: “Where do I rank on the waitlist?”  The answer at TCU, as it is at other colleges, is that there is no rank order to the waitlist.  Colleges use the waitlist to fill in areas of need according to their institutional priorities.  If, for example, a college seeks geographic diversity and they do not have enough students from the northeast, then it’s better to be a Rhode Islander sitting on the waitlist than a Coloradan.  Students who are not taken off of the waitlist still have the opportunity to earn a degree from TCU.  We welcome hundreds of transfer students each year.

Appropriations bills are ultimately passed. Likewise, we intend to have a well-rounded freshman class arrive on campus in just a few months.  To those of you have already committed to TCU, we thank you, and hope you’re looking forward to orientation and Frog Camp, and an exciting four-year journey.

Engaging the 21st Century Student at TCU

By Amanda Nickerson

TCU is again literally and figuratively revitalizing itself for the future. “Never content to rest on our laurels, we are now beginning to realize the next phase of our long-term plan, Vision In Action: The Academy of Tomorrow,” says Chancellor Victor J. Boschini, Jr.

Our Provost, Nowell Donovan, recently unveiled The Academy of Tomorrow, the newest major renovation and expansion now breaking ground on TCU’s campus. This includes the: Mary Couts Burnett Library, the Energy Institute, the Institute of Child Development, and a renovation of the Annie Richardson Bass Building for the Harris College of Nursing & Health Sciences.  The architects have designed a common space with the technology of the future for multidisciplinary use—Discovery Hall.

The term university, derived from the Latin universitas magistrorum et scholarium, meaning “community of teachers and scholars,” originated in 1088 and has been the world’s preeminent institution for higher education for over a millennium.  TCU, a university steeped with 140 years of tradition, must seek to be relevant in the world today.  The Provost says we have a job to do—to lead and be valued by today’s students. Charles Darwin, stated, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives.  It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

Although the buildings underway now at TCU are spectacular, what happens inside the buildings is far more important.  In fact, a new paradigm in higher education is emerging at TCU.  The Koehler Center for Teaching Excellence hosts Faculty Interest Groups (FIGS) focusing on “Engaging the 21^st Century Student.” This group is zeroing in on active learning, basically anything other than lecture, including group work, group presentation, gaming, technology-based learning, experiential learning, service learning, telecommunication (Skype) bringing the world into our classrooms, video educational software, flipping the classroom, etc.  Active learning places emphasis on higher order thinking skills such as analysis and synthesis, and students retain upward of 40% more material when engaged in active learning vs. passive learning.  After all, what is the value of knowledge if we don’t use it?

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” – Socrates

Take, for example, Professor Randy Lewis, MBA, from the top-ranked Neeley School of Business.  In his senior level international management class, students form teams and interact with executives to explore several modules of learning.  Like Donald Trump’s Apprentice, you will get fired if you don’t pull your weight on your team. Professor Lewis has found that this raises the overall performance of all the teams.  The class tackles big questions facing the world’s 7 billion people, including environmental and economic sustainability.  Students interactively participate in real business deals with worldwide corporations like Kimberly Clark, Pepsi, and Roda.

I concur with Nowell Donovan, when he suggests we need to create a sense of urgency, as academia has been known to move glacially.  Alas, who will instigate this vast change of paradigm in pedagogy?  I say it will be the students.

Educational thought leaders such as Janusz Korczak , John Dewey, Jean Piaget, and Lev Vygotsky seek for teachers to learn from students and engage in meaningful relationships  with students built on respect and equality.   The premise is that students actively construct their own learning.  Student-centered learning means inverting the traditional teacher-centered understanding of the learning process and putting students at the center of the learning process. Watch out faculty—this could be fun!

Although challenging, perforating the silos of the University’s academic structure and forming a new paradigm for higher education for the 21^st century student could actually be exciting!  Last quote by Darwin, I promise: “In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.”

TCU – Learning to Change the World

Choosing the Right College, Part II

by Joael Kelly

(see Part I)

Okay, so you have found a college that will admit you and you have considered your major.  Now it’s time to think about some items that perhaps you have not really considered.  The size of the college is one of the most common reasons students transfer.  Sure, you may think about the college’s size a little, but do you really know what attending a large/small college means to you? Does it fit with your expectations and values?

If you are looking at a large college—and most of you will—then there are factors you might consider before you choose to attend these schools.  You might find Division I sports, tons of clubs and organizations and choices galore in majors and minors.  That’s the good stuff.  Now, the not-so-great stuff.

Where’s Waldo?

Class sizes may be huge.  You might feel like a number.  Transitioning to a large university can be overwhelming to some people.  Therefore, it is very important to connect quickly at a school that is large.  Find a group where you can walk into a room and recognize people and people know you, too.  If not, you will feel lost, alone and overwhelmed. Get involved right away.  Join a club, organization, intramural sport, sorority, or even connect in your residence hall.  Just find a way to feel like you are part of this huge “family.”

At a large college, you also have to be responsible for your own learning.  No one is going to know, or care, that you are in class.  When considering a large college, you have to ask yourself this question: Can I get myself out of bed in the morning and go to class, even if no one knows I’m there?  I find that students who attend large colleges miss class for two reasons. Either they get so overwhelmed that they cannot leave their room (if this happens to you, please, please get help) or they are having so much fun that they forget they are students, too.  Go to class or you will fail.

Large colleges can be very competitive, too.  Just think how much harder it will be to get that part in the play, or get on the team or receive an internship when hundreds of students are also vying for the same position.  Huge colleges can be fun, but they can also be very challenging.

So, what about small colleges?  Small colleges have an amazing sense of community, your professors will know you by name and notice when you are not in class.  You will have the chance to bond with people and have many more opportunities to grow outside of class, because you are competing with fewer people. However, small colleges also have their own challenges.  As you can guess, they are much smaller and so there will be fewer choices, from majors to friends.

Most people looking at small colleges know that they are going to know—or certainly recognize—almost everyone at the school.  On the other hand, students who transfer from those schools tell me some things that might surprise you.

They have a hard time getting the classes they need, because they are not offered very often.  If they change their major, there are fewer choices and thus the college may not have the major they want.

But, the most common thing that I hear from transfer students about the small college is that they thought Division I athletics and the sororities and fraternities and all of the things a big college has didn’t matter to them.  But, after being there for a while, they realized that something was missing from their college experience.  When you consider a small school, ask yourself: Will I miss those traditional college experiences?

I think that one of the biggest reasons TCU is such a popular college is because we are a “tweener.”  We are not too big and not too small, but just right.  We are large enough to have Division I athletics, Greek life and over 240 clubs and organizations, but small enough to offer classes that are personal and professors who care about you.  We are the best of both worlds here and it makes life as a TCU student really fun and rewarding.  Our students get to experience our football team winning the Rose bowl and studying abroad with TCU professors. They can join a sorority or fraternity and play club sports, but they can also be the Student Body President, play a Division I sport and major in Engineering—all at the same time.

So, big or small makes a difference.  There is no right or wrong answer; it just has to be the right fit for you.  Please think about the size of the colleges you are considering and ask yourself what you want from your college experience.  In the world of colleges, size does matter.

Next blog:  Location, Location, Location!

Serious or Sardonic?

by Heath Einstein

For the past week and a half, the blogosphere has been abuzz about an opinion piece written by a high school senior named Suzy Lee Weiss, published by The Wall Street Journal.  “To (All) the Colleges That Rejected Me” is mystifying in its ostensibly satirical tone.  Ms. Weiss writes as if she’s dead serious, but uses such outlandish examples that we are to believe she is writing completely tongue-in-cheek.  This is most blatant in the article’s culminating sentence: “To those of you disgusted by this, shocked that I take for granted the wonderful gifts I have been afforded, I say shhhh—‘The Real Housewives’ is on.”  We can debate whether or not Ms. Weiss is being serious or humorous, but in all likelihood she is attempting to be both.

My view on this article is influenced by the fact that I hang out with and speak to college admission officers every day.  In our circle, the article was summarily and almost universally condemned.  Scores of unflattering commentary have been written about Ms. Weiss, suggesting that the Ivy League schools that rejected her application feel better about their decision having read her biting words.  Subsequent appearances on The Wall Street Journal’s webcast and NBC’s “The Today Show” further enraged the admission masses.  My position is a little less harsh, though certainly not in line with the throngs who support her railing against the über-competitive admission process at highly selective colleges.

Suzy Lee Weiss is not Nelson Mandela or Betty Friedan or anyone else who draws a line in the sand and says, “I will not go any farther.”  She’s a seventeen-year-old student who got a taste of fame and ran with it before her fifteen minutes expired.  When I examine the language she uses, two thoughts immediately jump into my head: (1) Her word choice is poor, confusing clever expression with offensive rhetoric; (2) Where in the world were her parents, counselor, friends, and—most importantly—editors at the WSJ?  I suppose the WSJ achieved its goal of churning out a provocative piece, so I shouldn’t be surprised at their negligent editing.

“Show me to any closet, and I would’ve happily come out of it.” On its face this sounds funny, but it doesn’t take too long to realize this trivializes the painful journey that millions of young Americans take in facing the social pressures of living in a hetero-normative society.  Ms. Weiss further fans the flame by writing, “I also probably should have started a fake charity.”  Does she actually believe there are bogus organizations sprouting up by hordes of high schoolers in this country?  Not only does it devalue the untold hours of service work completed by her peers, it implies that admission professionals are too foolish or indifferent to figure out what is real and what is not.

Perhaps Ms. Weiss should look inward.  After all, she admits, “I’ve never sat down at a piano, never plucked a violin.  Karate lasted about a week and the swim team didn’t last past the first lap.” She goes on to say, “I could have been a gopher in the office of someone I was related to.”  (The irony of this sentence is that her sister is a former assistant editor of the op-ed section at which newspaper?  None other than The Wall Street Journal.)  So, what has she done to merit admission to colleges that accept fewer than 10% of those who apply?

Ms. Weiss expresses the frustration that many students feel at being shut out of the most elite colleges in America.  We, the adults, bear some responsibility for not effectively educating our young people on the value of education.  We have created a world in which success is measured by thick and thin envelopes (long or short emails these days) rather than the pursuit to make the world a better place.  We have created a world in which life is perceived to be an abject failure if one does not attend one of two dozen top colleges rather than acknowledging the incredible opportunities Americans are given by living in a country with thousands of institutions of higher education.  We have created a world in which a cunning young person can turn a badly written opinion article into an internship with a major corporation rather than aspiring to learn from the mistakes of her confessed apathy.

Shame on Ms. Weiss.

And shame on us.