Parents

There are several reasons why this BBC article is very, very funny. Among them:

For those of us old enough to have used Walkmen (Walkmans?), it's hilarious to read about someone from the iPod generation experimenting with his dad's antediluvian portable music device. ("It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape." "I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.")

And while I can't speak for this particular writer -- I can't accuse the writer or the BBC of anything -- I suspect that the person who wrote these words is not, in fact, 13 years old. ("Genre-specific"? Please.) Examples that set off my Dad-Wrote-This detector:

• "So it's not exactly the most aesthetically pleasing choice of music player."
• "From a practical point of view, the Walkman is rather cumbersome, and it is certainly not pocket-sized, unless you have large pockets."
• "But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down 'rewind' and releasing it randomly - effective, if a little laboured."
• "Perhaps that kind of anticipation and excitement has been somewhat lost in the flood of new products which now hit our shelves on a regular basis."
• "Not long after the music warbled into life, it abruptly ended."
• "Did my dad, Alan, really ever think this was a credible piece of technology?"
• "But given the dreadful battery life, I guess this was an outright necessity rather than an extra function."

I don't have any trouble believing that these observations came from someone so young that he can't fathom a device that doesn't shuffle your music for you. But I do suspect strongly that dad had a hand here in a ghostwriting capacity. The examples I quoted above are not the vernacular that typically emerges from the mouths of 13-year-old boys, even in the U.K. (Americans seem to think that all kids over there sound like Harry Potter. They do not.)

Why do I dwell on this? It's a hilarious article, I'm glad they wrote it, and it made me laugh. Hats off to them. However... it reminds me to remind you (especially the parents out there) that when you meddle too much with your child's writing in the application process, admissions officers can smell that A MILE AWAY. They want to receive applications from your kids, not from you.

I have had a number of conversations with parents that go something like this:

Anna: Very nice essay.

Dad: Yes, we (!) really like it.

Anna: I'm hearing more [dad] in here than [daughter].

Dad: [Protracted silence.] Wow, you can tell?

Anna: Yep. Did you write the whole thing?

Dad: Well... uh. It's really her ideas.

Anna: She needs to write it, too.

Dad: So you're telling us to scrap this and start over?

Anna: Yes.

Many parents tell me that they are "best friends" with their kids, and they seem to think that means they have picked up the vernacular so well that they can mimic their children in their written work. But people who read essays from teenagers every day can tell the difference between the voice of a forty-something (or older) and the voice of a teenager.

So my advice, as always, is to keep a proper distance from your kids' writing. It's OK for you to help them generate and evaluate good essay ideas and topics, teach them how to improve their grammar and their spelling and their punctuation, encourage them to edit and edit and edit again, teach them how to proofread, and help them as they make editorial decisions about what to cut and what to keep.

Ghostwriting, though, is not OK, and parent-written essays uniformly end up being worse than the real thing. They are too safe, they are too boring, they sound phony, and they don't capture, in any way, the quirky and very fleeting way that teenagers observe their world or describe it. That quirkiness should be embraced, not stamped out.

And that's true for admissions consultants as well: your/our job is to draw out the best material and writing from applicants, in their own words and in their own voices. More than that crosses a line.

As I drove through Palo Alto recently, I saw the sobering reminders of the toll that depression can take on young people. Police officers sat guard at three spots where the local commuter trains pass over open road. During the last month, two teenagers from a local high school have ended their lives on those tracks, stepping in front of a speeding engine. A third tried to do the same, but was pulled back by his mother, police, and a passing motorist.

It has left a community shaken and on the local newspapers website, there are the inevitable murmurings about blame: the schools ask too much of kids. The trains should be put underground. Teenagers need to get more sleep. The local counseling service is failing. The high school is too large.

The pressure on these teenagers is intense to be sure. But surely preventing suicide isn't as simple as changing the configuration of the train tracks or making finals optional.

Cornell University - a place with an old reputation as a pressure cooker - has tried a unique approach.: make watching out for signs of depression everyone's job. The janitors - who see when someone is vomiting repeatedly - know that is a red flag. The doctors at student health screen for depression, even when the visit is for something else. Teams of staff from different areas of the university meet regularly to share impressions, allowing them to piece together the complex picture of how an at-risk student is doing.

It's a radical idea: maybe the solution isn't in the hands of the parents or teachers or administrators or counselors alone. Maybe it is our job - all of us who work with and live with children and teenagers - to know what depression looks like, to name it, and to talk about how to treat it.

Signs of depression in teenagers (Source: Suicide Prevention Resource Center): 

• A sudden worsening in school performance
• Withdrawal from friends and extracurricular activities
• Expressions of sadness and hopelessness, or anger and rage
• A sudden, unexplained decline in enthusiasm and energy
• Overreaction to criticism
• Lowered self-esteem, or feelings of guilt
• Indecision, lack of concentration, and forgetfulness
• Restlessness and agitation
• Changes in eating or sleeping patterns
• Unprovoked episodes of crying
• Sudden neglect of appearance and hygiene
• Seeming to feel tired all the time, for no apparent reason
• Use of alcohol or other drugs

Once we have recognized the challenges students face, the next step is to not hesitate to bring in a professional to help. A psychologist can identify and treat true depression. A trusted teacher will be a touchstone for students during the school day. And a college admissions counselor might provide unbiased advice during the stressful application process. We collectively need to make sure students are served well in every way.

Christine Foster graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor's degree in American History before embarking on a career as a journalist. As a former reporter for Forbes magazine in New York and Silicon Valley, Christine wrote articles on business and education-related issues, including privatization of school lunch programs and a cover story on school vouchers. One of her feature stories for Stanford's alumni magazine, on homeschoolers admitted to Stanford, continues to make the rounds on the internet many years after publication. Christine is based out of Silicon Valley and works with college applicants as part of the Anna Ivey team.

As the college admissions season starts to wrap up, I wanted to share some observations from another very interesting year:

Rock Climbing

I sat on a number of college admissions panels this past year (seminars and workshops for applicants and their parents), and one exchange in particular stood out for me.

As we were discussing school visits and the best ways to go about picking a college, one mom raised her hand and launched into a discussion about her son's grand passion for rock climbing. She recounted their various school visits in terms of this rock climbing wall and that rock climbing program, and she asked me to weigh in. How should they go about making their decision?

My response: "So you're going to select your son's college education based on a rock climbing wall?"

The room fell dead silent, and then people started laughing (including the mom who had asked the question). I hadn't meant to be sarcastic or snarky, and I don't think they took it that way. I had wanted to find a way to suggest that they might have lost some perspective and that they should take a step back and reassess what their priorities are in a college education.

Sometimes those priorities get lost in the big shuffle of the college application process, especially when schools in recent years have been seducing applicants (and their parents) with bling-bling amenities, gadgets, and facilities. That's less of a problem in this new era of shrinking endowments and budget cuts, but the overall message remains.

In any event, apparently that one-line response did the trick, and now "rock climbing" is my shorthand for asking people to reflect on their priorities in the college search process, whatever their priorities might be.

Heartbreak

I also heard an admissions officer from a very competitive liberal arts college give some great advice to a group of high school students. Paraphrasing roughly: Admissions officers are trying to assemble well-rounded classes; they're not necessarily looking for well-rounded people. If you let yourself fall in love with one dream school in the application process, you are setting yourself up for heartbreak, because you have no way of knowing if the admissions team that year is going to be intensely interested in adding a soprano or a fencer or a debater or a trombonist or a Latinist to the mix. And whatever well-roundedness gaps they're looking to fill this year might be different from last year's, so predicting what those gaps will be -- and whom your dream school is going to court -- is difficult.

On a related note, I'm reminded that college admissions heartbreak can come from different sources. Over the years, I've heard from a number of applicants whose hearts were broken by an athletic coach who was courting them hard and making big promises about their likelihood of admission. It's amazing to me how many coaches talk as if admission were a done deal. Sometimes they have that kind of admissions pull, but sometimes they don't. Don't let a coach break your heart; take their promises of admission with a grain of salt. 

Community service

In talking to many college applicants as well as admissions officers, I've noticed that community service jobs have come to crowd out other kinds of extracurriculars. Service jobs are great, but admissions officers know that many high schools require them, or give out awards and perks for logging a minimum number of hours. As a result, community service has become highly inflated (in terms of résumé value), and it can be hard for an applicant to stand out through service activities alone.

One admissions officer also pointed out that it's immediately obvious when applicants haven't really internalized their service experience, because they parrot what some adult has told them to think about the experience. Guess what: teenagers don't observe the world or reflect on it the way grown-ups do. Admissions officers can spot the authentic reflections -- and the parroted ones -- a mile away, and that can sometimes mean the difference between acceptance and rejection at the most competitive schools.

Please share your own experiences and feedback. I'm curious to hear how the season went for you.

From our college admissions counselor Christine Foster:

At least one in every 150 children has some form of autism. These kids range from non-verbal toddlers lining up toy trains to talkative teenagers, whose special needs were noticed only when the organizational and social demands of adolescence began to overwhelm them. Each of them has parents who imagined a future life like their own, or even brighter, whose dreams were changed as they sat in a psychologist’s office. Last fall, my husband and I were the ones in that seat. Our bright, beautiful – and yes, quirky – 5 year-old son was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome.

In the aftermath of his diagnosis, I began to look, among other things, at what resources there were at the college level. The answer? Not many. A handful of schools are offering special programs for kids with autism spectrum disorders. Others can seek services through their school disabilities office, but many aren’t equipped to deal with issues beyond academic accommodations. Need a time-extension for your tests or a note taker? Most can handle that. But for a kid with autism, who might need help organizing their school work, making connections with peers, or advocating for themselves with a professor, there isn’t as much available.

I’m now inspired to take a closer look at what’s out there and cast a critical eye to figure out what is working and what isn’t. As part of the Anna Ivey team, I work with college applicants, and my goal is to blog more about college offerings and the admissions process for students with special needs in particular -- from autism spectrum disorders and ADD/ADHD to learning disabilities and physical disabilities. If you have a question you’d like to see answered or a suggestion for a topic, please email us.

-----------------------------------------------------

First, a peek at a place that is doing it right. Marshall University in West Virginia has what was likely the first specific program aimed at serving students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Begin in 2002 with a single student, the program supports 20 full-time students. And Ellison expects demand to continue to burgeon. By February 1, he expects they will have sent out more than 200 applications for next year. Admissions are tough – in 2008, they received 30 applications, interviewed 26, and accepted just 5. Families pay a premium of $3200 per semester, above and beyond Marshall’s tuition to enroll their students.

Marc Ellison, the director of the program, who has worked supporting people with autism for more than 20 years, says there is definitely a sea change. “Clearly, it is a wave of 18, 19, 20 year old students unlike anything we’ve seen before,” Ellison says.

His program is ideal because they don’t offer cookie cutter services. They look at each student as an individual, assessing their strengths and needs and figuring out exactly what kind of scaffolding makes sense. Last year, one student, a music major, needed to pass a hearing in front of teachers before continuing in his field of study. But his anxiety about performing solo before that group was debilitating. Ellison’s staff helped to arrange two mock performances for the student to practice, gathering as many as 30 spectators for those sessions. The desensitization did the trick, and the student was able to continue forward with his music degree.

Unlike most college disabilities offices, Marshall’s program also provides support in three areas: academics, social, and independent living. The staff might, for example, help break down a larger assignment into smaller, more manageable chunks. The staff also has weekly contact with professors to see how things are going for their students. Socially, they run a social skills group where students can practice practical relationship building techniques. Students get hand-holding on balancing a check book, mapping out when bills are due, and helps some with monitoring to see that students are taking their medications. (Sounds like stuff many typically-developing students could use, too!)

So far, four students have graduated from the program. Two are working and two are in graduate school. But Ellison is quick to point out that the measures of success for these students might be different than for your average college student. Instead of graduating and getting a job, the bigger accomplishment might be staying social engaged.

Why bother, one might ask? Ellison’s answer is swift: “Frankly the time is right – with 1 in 150 or 1 in 166 with some kind of ASD, there is a tremendous blow coming to society if those children are undereducated. It is in everyone’s interest to recognize their strengths.”

I had an interesting discussion with a friend of mine who works (as I do) with lots of twenty-somethings. When we got around to the gratuitous praise to which Gen Y/the "Praise Generation" has become accustomed (phony praise that inflates their sense of achievement and rewards them for process rather than outcomes), he had this observation to share:

On all of this, I'll point out that, having worked with a literally never-ending stream of recent college graduates--half of everyone is 22 in my world--I notice that the people who consistently are the best to work with are ex-elite athletes. If you spent a substantial chunk of your life in sports, how could you:

• Think fairness is relevant? Losers talk about fairness.
• Fail to put stock in hard work, hoping to hide in the pack instead?
• Think hard work guarantees success?
• Fail to appreciate the importance of natural talent?
• Fail to focus on outcomes?
• Over-focus on process to the detriment of outcomes?
• Get confused by multiple goals and so fail to achieve any of them?

I say this as someone who frankly is more committed to the arts than to sports, but it has become clear to me that those who live a life in the arts and/or academics are prone to *ALL* of the fatal mistakes outlined above, and these are failures of outlook that wouldn't last past your first varsity season in high school, let alone college.

The difference is simple--top athletes are trained to focus on outcomes, period. Everything else is whining. Business is about outcomes, period. Non-athletes are shocked by that.

As an addendum, I was amazed when I got to [college] how many kids arrived there believing they had genuine artistic talent. They were going to be performers, or artists, for a living. They thought themselves that good.

No similar problem with sports. But in the arts, it's subjective. If you are the best in your high school, well, as far as you can tell, you're Kristin Chenoweth. There's no mechanism -- or incentive -- to level-set. In individual sports, there's no chance of this at all. In team sports, there's a little self-delusion, but not too much. [Anna asks: But what about teams where everyone gets a trophy? Helicopter parents invented that rank stupidity. Makes sense though that *elite* athletes don't suffer from this syndrome.]

Can I speculate that this problem is more an issue in law school, where kids majored in subjective disciplines like Poli Sci, Religon, and other stuff, and that math and physics grad programs don't have these problems? Even med schools probably don't have the problem as much?

Fascinating. Thoughts? Please comment.

A lot of Gen Y experts out there are telling companies to suck up to Gen Y's parents. Here's an excerpt from a blog posting, for example, by Tammy Erickson in connection with her book ("Plugged In: The Generation Y Guide to Thriving At Work") put out by Harvard Business Publishing (meaning, she's obviously no slouch):

• Distribute packs of information for parents to students at universities and job fairs
• Hold a career fair in your community designed specifically for parents
• Create special FAQ material directed at parents' likely questions and concerns (retirement, health benefits, 401(k) plans, educational opportunities and so on
• Hold parent orientation sessions or conference calls
• Invite parents of interns and new hires to visit the Y's place of work and meet the boss and colleagues
• Provide the staffing necessary to follow through with parent requests
• Run ads communicating your positive attributes as an employer aimed at parents
• Provide incentives for parents to refer their children (beginning with your current employees - if your current employees won't refer their own children, consider whether you really are a good employer)
• Include parents in employee benefits

Do you have a parent-approved brand?

I can see the short-term benefit of this kind of recruiting strategy. Very short-term. However, I wonder what kind of people you end up with when you use that kind of selection mechanism. Maybe the same subset of Gen Yers employers complain about all the time: the ones who don't show up on time, can't follow directions, can't make even simple decisions on their own, can't behave like grown-ups. I would posit that there's a connection between that kind of recruiting and that kind of employee.

So maybe you get entry-level bodies in the door that way. But what's that going to look like longer term? When you're trying to groom young employees to rise up through the management funnel? How do you make grown-ups, let alone leaders, out of people whom you selected for their dependent, child-like qualities?

I give Gen Y's parents a really hard time about infantilizing their grown children, and now companies are being encouraged to do the same thing. I have to think that's not a good outcome for those companies as a business matter, and it's downright toxic for Gen Y.

And for those whose immediate response is, "That's what Gen Y is like, there's no way around it," I say: You're not looking hard enough. You have to recruit more wisely than this, because with some of these recruiting strategies, you are inviting longer-term headaches.

Please weigh in. Am I wrong? And Gen Yers: do you want to be treated this way? Do you think that's a good thing?

(Here's my memo to employers; my memo to helicopter parents; and my memo to Gen Y. And here's a sample HR Director's lament.)

So I was catching up on my Tivo'ed Project Runway episodes the other night when I couldn't sleep. (I won't call it a guilty pleasure -- I will defend Project Runway 'til the end!)  Thought I could escape Gen Y issues for a brief spell? No sir. In this particular episode, the lovely Frau Klum challenged the designers to "design a look for recent college graduates who are starting their lives as independent professional women."

Independent? Really? Then why did all these young women BRING THEIR MOTHERS ALONG? Naturally, the moms started dominating the working relationship with the designers, and the designers started pitching to the moms rather than to the daughters/clients. In defending their designs to the judges, the designers would say things like, "Holly and her mother seemed really happy with it" -- a reminder that with Gen Y, parents are (almost) always part of the package. How old does Gen Y have to get before their parents back off? I'm intensely curious.

In any event, with the exception of the winning design by Jerell, these were some of the worst clothes you could ever see in the workplace. Or anywhere. Yikes. (Read the blow-by-blow here.)

Usually the parents of applicants drive me a little nuts, but yesterday I received a lovely email from an applicant's father who reminded me that a little perspective goes a long way when people go into panic mode. And this time of year, applicants are going into serious panic mode.

The family crisis? The applicant -- call her X -- had just found out that the superstar professor who had promised to write her a recommendation a few months back has decided not to write any this coming semester. X started stressing, called a family conference with her parents, and agonized over this lost opportunity.

Once X and I hopped on the phone, I told her the following:

• Recommendations don't really matter all that much in the law school admissions process (unlike business school). Very few end up changing the admissions officer's analysis in a material way. You want to be smart in deciding whom you ask and how you ask, but after that, it's largely out of your hands, and not a big factor anyway.
• Yes, sometimes faculty are jerks. Yes, talk is cheap. Nothing you can do about that.
• If someone you ask for a recommendation declines to write one, don't push. I'd much rather he be honest wtih you and let you move on to another recommender, than have him say yes and write you a "meh" recommendation (and you'd never even know that the letter he sent was "meh").
• There are some things you should worry about in the application process. This turn of events isn't one of them, so don't lose even one more minute of sleep over it.

The conversation took all of ten minutes, but apparently it made an impression, because X's dad then sent me the following email:

Anna -

Although we have never met or even spoken, I have with great interest and admiration observed your comments and advice to X (a wonderful young lady), and do most appreciate your helping her, as your guidance is simply terrific.

A wise man once told me "never sweat the small stuff, and it's almost all small stuff."

Should you tire of advising law school applicants (of course only after X gets accepted to several great law schools), I suggest you consider expanding your consulting practice to include advising:

a) Husbands on how to treat their wives.
b) Wives on how to treat husbands.
c) Partners on how to treat partners, or
d) large corporate clients on anything.

Thanks for all you do for my favorite daughter.

Aside from being the sweetest thing ever, this email from X's father reminded me to remind you not to confuse the big stuff and the little stuff.

Our college counselor Christine reports from Silicon Valley:

_____________________________________________________

“I would give my left testicle for my son to get into Harvard.”

Appalling? Absolutely. Actually said? You bet.

Madeline Levine, a psychologist in Marin County, California and author of The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage are Creating a Generation of Disconnected, Unhappy Kids, shared this quote from a patient’s father during a recent talk I attended in Palo Alto, California. Her point was clear – the stress wealthy communities put on kids is inappropriate and unhealthy. In some cases it is even killing them.

As the parent of three little ones, I left the talk feeling almost ill. Levine pointed out the skyrocketing suicide rates among young teen girls, how school, homework, and structured activities fill up 16 hours and more a day for your average high schooler, and how the craziness of traveling sports teams for kids starts as young as 7 and 8 years old.

Kids like those Levine treats used to have it made. They had involved parents, comfortable homes, and lived free from financial concerns. In the last decade, though, these upper-middle class teens have shown shockingly high rates of mental illness. It used to be that depressed kids looked depressed – poor hygiene, sucky grades, behavioral problems in school. Now the kids in Levine’s office have acceptances to Stanford and Princeton in hand. They look like they have it all together – until they lift their shirt sleeves and you see the cutting marks.

My read on this – based on reading Levine’s book and on spending the last 8 years parenting in Silicon Valley – is that more and more parents in elite communities view their children as products to be perfected. Sending a kid to the Ivy League is like having your initial public offering outperform all market expectations.

None of this is to say that aspiring to raise kids who are academically successful is bad in and of itself. My own progeny are the IPOs of two Ivy League-educated parents. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were academically able enough to attend elite schools someday. I certainly won’t discourage them. Levine’s point is that the problem comes when the child’s identity – and that of their parents – revolves completely around achieving that dream. If they want to be a lifeguard, a pirate, and a lawnmower man (my kids' current aspirations at 7, 5, and 2), I feel like my job is to help them be the best they can be. Well….maybe not the pirate.

Many of the things Levine recommended to save our kids I am already doing – trying to ensure that my kids get good sleep, trying to lay off the pressure. I just wonder how to maintain this when it seems like I am a fish swimming upstream. It’s hard to not worry that your kid is missing out when everyone else is spending the summer at tutoring centers and language immersion camps and you know yours will be eating popsicles and playing in the backyard sprinklers.

The only positive? More than 1,000 Palo Alto area parents turned out for Levine’s speech. Perhaps we can start a trend.

Today's NYT writes about how insanely competitive the college admissions process has been this year ("Elite Colleges Reporting Record Low Admissions"). It's never easy getting into an Ivy or Ivy equivalent, but this year has hit a new level off difficulty. The admissions rate at some of those schools for the 2007-08 year (so far):

Harvard: 7.1%
Yale: 8.3%
Columbia: 8.7%
Brown: 13%
Dartmouth: 13%

Those statistics are in large part a function of demographics. As another recent NYT article explained, this year and next have the highest numbers of graduating high school seniors... ever. That's a lot of people competing for a more or less fixed number of seats at a more or less fixed number of top schools.

Compounding this demographic reality is the end of binding early decision at some of these top schools, which has freed applicants up to apply to more schools than they would have in years past.

More compounding: waitlists. As applications to these schools have soared, more students get waitlisted, thereby inspiring them to apply to more schools as a hedge. (See my waitlist advice here.)

And finally: as more of the elite schools ramp up their recruiting of lower-income applicants and make attendance more affordable, those schools are receiving more applications from people who might not have applied to these schools otherwise.

The end result? “There is a pure level of panic and frenzy like they’ve never seen before,” according to Scott White, director of guidance at Montclair High School in New Jersey.

That's a perfect storm right there, as those two NYT articles lay out so nicely.

One of the things I struggle with as an admissions consultant is the duty I feel not to feed that frenzy and make it worse. The last thing I want to do is to use scare tactics as a sales tool. And yet... those statistics really are scary for a lot of families, and I don't blame them for wigging out a little, or a lot.

And I've never bought into the assumption -- fed more by the most prestigious mainstream media than the elite schools themselves -- that your life will somehow be worse because you didn't attend an Ivy League school. On the other hand, I will also never deny that these elite schools really are excellent, and that brand names help in the real world. Nobody ever has to defend being a "school snob" to me when they are selecting schools for themselves or their kids. I just hate seeing people go insane about it and forget that there are a lot of ways to become successful -- at least in this country -- and they don't all involve the Ivy League.

I don't like the ubiquitous message to millions of teenagers that their whole identities should be wrapped up in going to school X. That's unreasonably fatalistic -- they have so many choices ahead of them that will determine their success or failure, and 99% of those choices have nothing to do with the name of their college.

I believe in excellence, and I don't pretend that all schools are equally good. There are excellent colleges out there -- some of them are Ivies, some of them aren't. Some of them have famous brand names behind them, others don't. Some kids flourish at Ivies, others don't. Life is complicated, and so is picking a college.

Note that this whole conversation is completely separate from the question of paying for college, and whether a certain degree from a certain school at a certain price is worth the investment given whatever the alternatives are. That's an entirely different analysis, one I've written about, for example, here and here.