don't send your kid to the ivy leagues

8/11/2019 Don't Send Your Kid to the Ivy Leagues

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NEOtI,{[i"1' {'Y

Don'tSendYourKidto

the

IqFLeague

The

nation's on

colleqes

re

urnins

our

kids ntei onlmr#*

By Wiiliam Deresiewicz

n the spring

of

2OO8,

did a daylong tint on the Yale

admissions ommittee.

We-that

is, three admissions tafl a memberof

hecollegedean's

office,and

ffi , the faculty representaEive-were

oing

hroughsubmissions

rom eastern

Pennsylvania. he applicantshad

beenassigned

score

rdm

one o

four,

calculated

rom

a string of figuresand codes-SATs,

GPA, lass ank, numerical

scores o

which

the etter

of recommendation ad

beenconverted, pecialnotations

or legacies nd diversity

case

The oneshad alreadybeenadmitted,

and he threesand ours

could

get

n only under

special onditions-if they were a nationally anked

athlete, or instance,

or a

"DevA,"(a

applicant n the highestcategory

f

"developnrent"

cases,which means

a child of very ric

donors).Our task or the daywas o

adjudicate mong he twos.Huge

bowlsofjunk food

were

stationedat the sideof the room to keep

our energ,y p.

The

unior

officer n charge,

a

young

man

who

looked

o

be

about3O,

presented

achcas

rat-a-tat-tat,n ablizzardof

adrnissions

argon

hat I had

o

pick

up on the fly.

"Good

rig":



the transcript exhibits

a

good

degree

of academic igor.

"Ed

level 1":

parents

have an

educational evel no higher

than high school, ndicating

a

genuine

hardship

case.

"MUSD

a musician

n the highest category

of

promise.

Kids

who had five

or six items

on their list

of extracurriculars-the

"brag"-were

already n trouble, because

hat wasn't nearly

enough. We

istened, asked

questions,

dove nto

a letter or two,

then voted up or

down.

With

so

many

accomplished

applicants o choose

rom, we were looking

for kids with

somethingspecial,*PQs"-personal qualities-that were often revealedby the letters or

essays.Kids who

only

had

the numbers

and the r6sum6 were

usually rejected:

"no

spark,

"not

a team-builder,"

"this

is

pretty

much in

the middle of

the fairway for

us." One

young

person,

who had

piled

up a truly insane

quantity

of extracurriculars

and who

submitted

nine letters

of

recommendation,

was

felt to

be

"too

intense."

On the other

hand,

the

numbers

and the r6sumd

were clearly indispensable.

'd

been told that

successful

applicants

could either be

"well-rounded"

or

"poinQ/"-outstanding

in one

particular

way-but

if they were

pointy,

they had to

be reallypointy: a musician

whose

audition

tap

had

impressed he music

department, a scientist

who had won

a national award.

"Super

People,"

he

writerJames

Atlas has called

them-the

stereotypical

ultra-high-

achieving

elite collegestudents

of today. A

double major, a

sport, a musical nstrument,

a

couple of foreign

languages, ervicework

in distant

corners of the

globe,

a few hobbies

thrown in for

good

measure:They have

mastered hem

all, and with

a serene

self-

assurance

hat leavesadults

and

peers

alike in

awe. A friend who

teaches

at a top

university once

askedher class

o memorize 3O ines

of the eighteenth-century

poet

Alexander

Pope. Nearly

every single

kid

got

every single ine

correct. It was

a thing

of

wonder,

she said, ike

watching thoroughbreds

circle

a track.

These

enviable

youngsters

appear to be

the winners in the race

we have made

of

childhood. But

the reality is very

different, as have witnessed

n

many of my

own

students and

heard from the hundreds

of

young

people

whom I have

spokenwith

on

campuses

or who have written

to me over

the last few

years.

Our system

of elite educatio

manufactures

young

people

who are

smart and talented

and driven,

yes,

but

also anxious

timid, and lost,

with little intellectual

curiosity

and a stunted

senseof

purpose:

trapped

in

a bubble of

privilege,

heading meekly

in the same

direction,

great

at what they're

doing

but with no idea why

they're

doing it.

READ: 'm

a

Laborer's

Son.

Went o

Yale. Am Not

"Trapped

in

a

Bubble

of Privilege."



When

I speak of elite education, I mean

prestigious

nstitutions

like Harvard

or Stanford

o

Williams

as well as he larger

universe of second-tierselective

schools,

but

I

also mean

everything

that leads up to and away rom

them-the

private

and

affluent

public

hgh

schools; he ever-growingndustry

of tutors and

consultantsand test-prep

courses; he

admissions

process

tself, squatting ike

a dragon at the entrance

to adulthood; the

brand-

name

graduate

schoolsand employmentopportunities

hat come after

the B.A.; and

the

parents

and

communities, largely upper-middle

class,who

push

their children into

the

maw

of this

machine.

n short, our entire

systemof elite education.

I

should say hat this

subject

s very

personal

or me. Like

so many kids

today, I went

offto

college ike a sleepwalker.You

chose he most

prestigiousplace

hat let

you

in; up

ahead

were vaguely understood

objectives:status,wealth-"success."

What

it meant

to actually

get

an education and why

you

mrght want

one-all this was

offthe table. It was

only

after

24years in

the Ivy League-college

and a Ph.D. at Columbia,

ten

years

on the faculty at

Yale-that I

started o think about

what this systemdoes o kids

and how they

can escap

from it, what it does o our society

and

how we

can dismantle

t.



young

woman from

another school wrote me

this

about

her

boyfriend at Yale:

Before he started

college,

he

spent most of his

time

reading

and writing

short

stories. Three

years

ater, he's

painfully

insecure, worrying

about things my

public-

educated friends don't

give

a second thought

to, Iike the stigma

of eating lunch alone

and

whether he's

"networking"

enough. No one but me laows he fakes being well-read by

thumbing through the first and last chapters

of any book he hears

about and obsessively

devouring reviews in lieu of the real thing.

He does this not

becausehe's incurious,

but

because here's a bigger social reward for

being able to talk

about books than

for actually

reading

them.

READ:

Can

World

of

Warcraft

Save Higher Education?

I taughtmanywonderful

young

people

during my

years

n

the Ivy League-bright,

thoughtful,

creative ids whom t wasa

pleasure

o talk with and earn

rom. But most

of

them seemed ontent o color within

the

lines

hat their education

had marked

out for

them.

Very ew were

passionate

bout deas.Very ew

sawcollege

as

part

of

a

arger

project

of intellectual

discovery nd development. veryone

ressed

s f they were read

to

be nterviewedat a moment'snotice.

Look

beneath

he fagade

f seamless ell-adjustment,

nd what

you

often ind

are oxic

levels

of fear,anxiety,and depression,

f emptiness nd aimlessness

nd solation.

A larg

scalesurveyof college reshmen ecently ound hat

self-reports

f emotionalwell-being

have allen

o their

lowest

evel n the study's2f-yearhistory.

So

extreme

are he admission

tandards ow that kids who

manageo

get

nto

elite

colleges ave,

by definition,neverexperienced

nythingbut success.

he

prospect

of

notbeingsuccessfulerrifies hem, disorientshem. The costof fallingshort,even

temporarily,becomes ot

merely

practical,

but existential.The result s

a violent

aversio

to risk. Youhave

no margin for

error, so

you

avoid he

possibility

hat

you

will

ever make

an error. Once,a student

at

Pomona

old me that

she'd

ove

o have

a chance o think

about he thingsshe's tudyrng,

nly shedoesn'thave he

time. I askedher if

shehad eve

considered ot tryrng o

get

an A in everyclass.She ooked

at me as f I had

madean

indecent

suggestion.



hereare exceptions,

ids

who insist,against

ll odds,on trying to

get

a real education.

But their experience

ends

o make hem

feel ike freaks.Onestudent

old me that a friend

of

hershad eft Yalebecause

he

ound he school

stifling

to

the

parts

of

yourself

hat

you'd

call a soul."

MAP:America's

10 Richest

Universities

Match These

Gountries'GDPs

eturn on

investment": hat's he

phrase

ou

often hear oday

when

people

alk

about

college.

What no one seemso ask

s what the

"return"

is

supposedo

be

Is t

just

aboutearning

more money? s

the only

purpose

of an education o

enable

you

to

get

a

ob?

What, n short, is college

or?

The irst thing

that college

s

for

is

to

teach

you

to think.

That doesn'tsimply

mean

developing

he

mental

skills

particular

o individual

disciplines.Colleges an opportunity

to stand

outside he

world for a few

years,

between

he orthodoxyof

your

family

and

he

exigencies

f career,and contemplate

hings rom a

distance.

Learninghow

to think is only the beginnhg,

hough.

There's

omething

n

particularyou

need

o

think about:

building

a self.Thenotion

maysoundstrange.

We've

taught hem,"

DavidFosterWallace ncesaid,

*that

a self s something ou ust have."But t is only

through the act of

establishing ommunication

between he

mind and the heart, the mind

and experience,

hat

you

becomean

ndividual,a unique

being-a soul.The

ob

of colleg

is to assist

ou

to begin o do

that. Books, deas,

works of art and hought, he

pressure

f

the minds around

you

that

are ooking

or

their

own answersn their

own ways.

College

s

not

the only chance

o learn o think, but

it is the best.One hing is certain: f

you

haven'tstarted

by the time

you

finish

your

8.A., there's ittle

likelihood

you'll

do it

later. That swhy anundergladuateexperiencedevotedexclusively o careerpreparation

is

four

years

argelywasted.

READ:Send

your

kid to the lvy League A

rebuttal.

Elite

schools

ike to boast

that they teach

their students how to think, but

all they mean is



that they train them

in

the analytic and rhetorical skills hat are necessaryor

successn

business

nd he

professions.

verything s technocratic-the

development f

expertise-and everything

s

ultimately

ustified

n technocratic erms.

Religious olleges-evenobscure, egionalschools

hat

no

one haseverheardof on the

coasts-often do a muchbetter

ob

in

that respect.

What

an ndictmentof the Ivy League

and

ts

peers:

hat collegesour levelsdown on the academicotem

pole,

enrolling

studentswhoseSAT cores rehundredsof points ower han theirs, delivera better

education,

n the highest

sense f the

word.

At least he classes t elite schools re

academically

igorous,

demanding n their

own

terms,no?Not necessarily.n the sciences, sually; n other

disciplines, ot so

much.

Thereare exceptions, f course,but

professors

nd students

ave argelyentered nto

what

one observer alleda

"nonaggression

pact."

Students re regarded y

the

institution

as

"customers,"

people

o be

pandered

o insteadof

challenged. rofessors re rewarded

for research, o hey want to spendas ittle time on their classes s hey can.The

profession's

hole ncentivestructure s

biasedagainst eaching, fid

the more

prestigiou

the school,

he

stronger

he bias s ikely

to be.

The

result s higher

marks

or

shoddier

work.

It is true that today's

youngpeople

appear o

be

more

socially

engagedhan kids have

been or severaldecades

nd

that they are more apt to harbor

creativeor entrepreneuria

impulses.But t is also rue, at leastat the most

selective chools,hat

even

f

those

aspirationsmake t out of college-a big "if" -they tend to beplayedout within the same

narro\M onceptionof what constitutes valid ife: affluence,

redentials,

restige.

Experience

tself has

been

educed o instrumental

unction,via the

collegeessay. rom

learning

o commodify

your

experiences

or

the application,

he

next

stephasbeen

o

seekout experiencesn order o have hem

to commodiff. TheNew York

Timesreports

that there s now

a

thriving sectordevoted

o

producing

essay-readyummers,

ut what

strikes one s the superficiality

of

the activities nvolved:

a month traveling

around Italy

studyrngheRenaissance,awholeday".witha bandof renegade rtists.A wholeday

I've noticed

something

imilar

when

t comes o service.Why s

t that

people

eel

he nee

to

go

to

places

ike Guatemalao

do their

projects

of rescueor documentation,nstead

of

Milwaukeeor Arkansas?When

studentsdo stay n the States,why is it

that so many head

for NewOrleans? erhapst's no surprise,when kids

are rained o think of service

as

something hey are ultimatelydoing or themselves-that s, for

their rdsumds.

Do

well



by doing

good," goes

he slogan.

How

about

ust

doing

good?

If there is one idea, above all, through which

the concept of social responsibility

is

communicated at the most

prestigious

schools, t is

"leadership.'

"Harvard

is for leaders,

goes

he Cambridgeclich6. To be a high-achievingstudent is

to constantly be

urged to

think of

yourself

as a

future leader

of society.But what these

nstitutions mean by

leadership s nothing more than

getting

to the top. Making

partner

at a major

law firm

or

becoming a chief executive,climbing the greasypole of whateverhierarchy you decide to

attach

yourself

to. I don't think it occurs

o

the

people

n

chargeof elite

colleges hat the

concept

of leadership

ought to have a higher meaning,

or,

really,

any meaning.

The irony is that elite students

are told that they can be whatever

they

want,

but most

of

them end up

choosing

o be one of a

few very

similar things. As

of 2O1O, bout a third

of

graduates

went into financing

or consulting at a number of top

schools, ncluding Harvar

Princeton,

and

Cornell. Whole fields

have disappeared rom view: the clergy,

he military,

electoralpolitics, even academia tself, for the most port, including basic science. t's

considered

glamorous

o

drop out of

a selectivecollege f

you

want

to become he next

Mark Zuckerberg,

but

ludicrous

to stay

n

to become a social worker.

*What

Wall Street

figured out," as Ezra Klein has

put

it,

"is

that

collegesare

producing

a large

number of ver

smart, completely confused

graduates.

Kids who

have ample mental horsepower,

an

incredible work

ethic and

no idea what

to do next.n'

For the most selectivecolleges, his system s working very well indeed.

Application

numbers continue to swell, endowments are robust, tuition hikes bring ritual complaints

but

no

decline in business.Whether it is working for anyone

else

s

a different

question.

t almost feels

ridiculous

to have o insist that

colleges

ike

Harvard

are bastions o

privilege,

where

the rich send heir children

to

learn

to

walk,

talk, and

think

like

the rich. Don't we

already know this? They aren't

called

elite

colleges or

nothing. But

apparently

we

like

pretending

otherwise. We ive

in a meritocracy, after all.

The

sign of the system'salleged airness s the set of

policies

that travel under the banner

of

"diversity."

And that diversity does ndeed represent nothing

less han a social

revolution.

Princeton, which didn't even admit its first woman

graduatatudent

until

1961-a

year

in which a

grand

total of one

(no

doubt very lonely) African

American

matriculated

at

its

college-is now half female and only about half white. But

diversity of

sex and

race has

become a cover

for increasing

economic resegregation.Elite

collegesare



still living offthe

moral capital they earned n the 196Os,when

they took

the

genuinely

@

courageousstep of dismantling

the mechanismsof

the

WASP

aristocracy.

The truth is that the meritocracy

was never more

than

partial.

Visit

any elite campus

across

our

great

nation,

and

you

can thrill to the heart-warming

spectacle

of the

children

of

white

businesspeople

and

professionals

studyrngand

playing

alongside he

children of

black, Asian, and Latino

businesspeople

and

professionals.

Kids

at schools ike

Stanford

think that their environment is diverse f one comes rom Missouri and another from

Pakistan,

or

if

one

plays

he cello and

the other lacrosse.Never

mind

that all of

their

parents

are doctors or bankers.

That

doesn't mean there aren't a few exceptions,

but that is

all they are. In fact,

the

group

that is most disadvantaged y

our current admissions

policies

are working-class

and rural

whites,

who are hardly

present

on selectivecampuses

at all. The only way

to think

these

places

are diverse

s

if that's all

you've

ever

seen.

Let's not kid ourselves:The

collegeadmissions

game

s

not

primarily

about

the

Iower

and

middle

classes eeking

o

rise,

or even about the

upper-middle class

attempting

to

maintain its

position.

It is

about determining the

exact hierarchy

of statuswithin

the

upper-middle

class tself. In the affluent suburbs

and well-heeled

urban

enclaveswhere

this

game

s

principally played,

t is not

about whether

you

go

to an

elite school. It's

abou

which

one

you

go

to. It is Penn versus

Tufts, not Penn versus

Penn

State. t

doesn't matter

that a bright

young person

can

go

to Ohio State,become

a doctor, settle

n Dayton,

and

makea very good living. Suchan outcome s simply too horrible to contemplate.

This

system s exacerbating nequality,

retarding

social mobility,

perpetuating

privilege,

and creating an

elite that is isolated from

the society hat

it's supposed

o lead. The

numbers are

undeniable. In 1985,

46

percent

of incoming

freshmen

at the 25Omost

selectivecolleges

came rom the top

quarter

of the income

distribution.

By 2OOO,

t

was

5

percent.

As

of 2OO6,only

about

15

percent

of

students

at the most

competitive

schools

came

from the bottom half. The more

prestigious

he school, the

more unequal

its studen

body is apt to be. And public institutions are not much better than private ones. As of

2OO4,4O

percent

of first-year

studentsat

the most selective

state campuses

came rom

families

with incomes

of more than

$1OO,OOO,

p from 32

percent

ust

five

years

earlier.

The major reason

or the trend is

clear.Not increasing

uition, though

that

is

a factor,

but

the ever-growing

cost of manufacturing

children who are fit

to compete n the

college

admissions

game.

The

more hurdles there

are, the more expensive

t is to catapult

your



kid across hem. Wealthy amilies start buyrng their children's way into

elite colleges

almost

from

the

moment

they are born:

music

essons,sports equipment, foreign

travel

("enrichment"

progfams,

to use he

all-too-perfect erm)-most important,

of course,

private-school

uition or the costsof living in

a

place

with

top-tier

public

schools.

The

SAT

is supposed

o

measure

aptitudeobut what it actually measures s

parental

income, which

it

tracks

quite

closely.Today, ewer than half of high-scoring

students rom low-income

families even enroll at four-year schools.

The

problem

isn't that there aren't more

qualified

lower-income

kids from which

to

choose.

Elite

private

collegeswill never allow their students'

economic

profile

to mirror

that of society as a

whole. They

can't afford to-they need

a critical massof full

payers

an

they need to tend to their donor base-and it's not

even clear that theyd want

to.

And so

it

is hardly a coincidence hat income inequality is

higher than it has been

since

before the Great Depression,

or that social mobility is lower in

the United States han

in

almost every other developed country. Elite collegesare not just powerless o reverse he

movement

toward a more

unequal society; heir

policies

actively

promote

it.

s there

anything that

I

can do, a lot of

young people

have

written

to ask me, to

avoid becoming an out-of-touch,

entitled

little

shit? don't have a satis$ring

answer,short of telling them to transfer

to a

public

university. You

cannot

cogitate

your

way to sympathy with

people

of different backgrounds, still less o

knowledge

of them. You need to interact with

them directly, and it has to be

on an equal

footing: not in the context

of

"service,"

and not in the spirit

of

"making

an effort,"

either-swooping

down on a

member

of the college

support staffand

offering to

"buy

them a coffee," as a former Yalie

once suggested,n order to

"ask

them about themselves

Instead of service, how

about service worl? That'll really

give

you

insight into

other

people.

How about waiting tables so

that

you

can seehow

hard it is,

physically

and

mentally? You really

aren't as smart as everyonehas beentelling

you; you're

only smarte

in

a

certain way. There are smart

people

who

do not

go

to a

prestigious

college, or to

any

college-often

precisely

or reasonsof class.There

are smart

people

who are not

"smart.

I am under no illusion that it doesn't matter where

you

go

to college.But

there are

options. There are still very

good

public

universities n every region of

the country. The

education

is

often impersonal, but the

student body

is

usually

genuinely

diverse

n terms

of socioeconomicbackground,

with all of the invaluable experiential

earning that implies



S. News and

World

Reportsupplies the

percentage

of freshmen at each

college

who

finished n the highest1O

ercent

of their high schoolclass.Among

he top 2Ouniversitie

the

number s

usually

above9O

percent.

'd

be

wary

of attending choolsike that.

Students etermine he levelof classroom

iscussion;hey shape

our

values

and

expectations,or

good

and ll. It's

partly

because f the students hat I'd warn kids

away

from

the

Iviesand heir ilk. Kidsat ess

prestigious

chools re apt to be more nteresting

more curious,more open,and ar lessentitledand competitive.

If there

s

anywhere hat college

s

still college-anywhere hat teaching

and he

humanities

are still accorded

ride

of

place-it

is

the

liberal

arts college.Such

places

are

small,which s not for everyone, nd hey're often airly solated,which s

also

not

for

everyone.The bestoption of all maybe the second-tier-not second-rate-colleges,

ike

Reed,Kenyon,Wesleyan, ewanee,MountHolyoke,and others.

nsteadof trying to

competewith Harvard and Yale, heseschoolshave etained

heir allegiance o real

educational alues.

Not

beingan entitled

ittle

shit

s

an admirable

goal.

But

n the end, he deeper ssue

s the

situation hat makes

t

so hard to be anythingelse.The ime hascome,not

simply

o

reform that system op to bottom, but to

plot

our exit to another kind

of society

altogether.

The educationsystemhas o

act to mitigate

he classsystem,not reproduce t. Affirmative

action shouldbe basedon classnsteadof race,a change hat manyhavebeenadvocatin

for

years.

Preferencesor legacies nd athletes ught o be discarded.

SAT cores hould

be weighted o account

or

socioeconomicactors.Colleges hould

put

an

end o r6sum6

stuffing by

imposinga limit on the number of extracurriculars

hat

kids

can ist on their

applications. heyought o

place

more

value

on the kind of service

obs

that

lower-incom

studentsoften take

n high

schooland that high achieversalmostnever do. They

should

refuse

o be

mpressed

y any opportunity hat

was

enabledby

parental

wealth.

Of cours

they

have

o

stop cooperatingwith

US. News.

Morebroadly, hey need o rethink their

conceptionof merit.

If

schools re

going

o train

beffer classof

leaders han

the ones

we have

oday, hey're

going

o have o ask hemselv

what kinds of

qualities

hey need o

promote.

Selecting tudents

y

GPA r the

numbero

extracurricularsmore often benefits he faithful

drudge han

the original mind.

The changesmust

go

deeper,

hough,

han

reforming

he admissions

rocess.

hat

mrgh



address he

problem

of mediocrity,

but

it won't

address he

greater

one of inequality.

The

problem

s the Ivy Leaguetself.Wehave

contracted he

trainingof our leadership

lass o

a set of

private

nstitutions.

Howevermuch they claim

to act for the

common

good,

hey

will always

place

heir interests irst. The

arrangements

great

or

the schools,

ut is

Harvard's

desire

or

alumni donationsa sufficientreason

o

perpetuate

he class

system?

I used o think

that

we needed

o createa world where

everychild

had an equalchance

o

getto the Ivy League.'ve come o see hat what we really need s to createone whereyou

don't

have

o

go

o the Ivy League, r any

private

college,

o

get

a first-rate

education.

Hrgh-quality

public

education,

inancedwith

public

money, or

the benefit

of all: the exac

commitment hat drove he

growth

of

public

higher

education n the

postwaryears.

Everybody

gets

an equal chance o

go

as

ar

as heir hard work

and talent will take

them-you know;

he

American

dream.Everyonewho wants

t

gets

o

have

he kind

of

mind-expanding,soul-enriching

experience hat a iberal

arts education

provides.

We

recognizehat free,qualityK-12 ducation s a rightof citizenship.Wealsoneed o

recognize-aswe oncedid and

as

many

countriesstill do-that

the same s

true of highe

education.We

have ried aristocracy.We

have

ried

meritocracy.Now t's

time to

try

democracy.

William Deresiewiczs the author of Excellent

Sheep:

The

Miseducation

f the American

Elite and The Way o

a

MeaningfulLife, http://www.excellentsheep.com/

coming

out

August19 rom FreePress.

He taughtat

Yale

rom 1998 o 2OO8.

don't send your kid to the ivy leagues

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