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  • College Prep

    By Dean Dad July 12, 2009 8:35 pm

    Sometimes words don't mean what they seem to mean.

    We had a lovely vacation in a part of the world we'd never visited before. Our neighbors stay there with some frequency, and we met up with them for dinner one night. They have two daughters, one of whom sometimes babysits TB and TG, and the other of whom is entering her junior year of high school this Fall. Her mother is trying to get her to add some clubs and activities to her schedule, to improve her college applications. A snippet of the conversation:

    Neighbor Mom: I'm encouraging her to join some clubs to round out her college application. If she waits until senior year, it'll be too late.

    TW: Honey, what do colleges look for?

    DD: I dunno. We take everybody.

    (awkward silence)

    At which point, I realized that the word 'college' has different meanings.

    In some circles, 'college' is an undifferentiated term for a place that other people go to get the kinds of jobs that other people get. It's probably some kind of racket, though the exact workings are hard to detail.

    In some circles, 'college' is a place to find a mate, go to football games, and/or party. It's a sort of way station between childhood and adulthood, with no particular connection to the outside world. It's an expected stage of life – it's just what you do after high school – regardless of whether you have any idea what you're doing there.

    For some, 'college' is a place to get trained for a job. One college is pretty much the same as any other.

    And for some, 'college' is a credential that carries a certain amount of prestige. The prestige, typically, is inversely related to the ease of getting in. (Groucho Marx' line “I would never join a club that would accept me as a member” is a nice summary of this view.) In these circles, phrases like “safety school” and “early decision” and “rounding out the application” carry real meaning.

    As a student, I was very much in the last camp, and spent plenty of time and angst trying to get into a sufficiently snooty liberal arts college. (It worked.) But as a professional, I work at an open-admissions college at which the concerns of that last camp are mostly irrelevant. (Mostly, but not entirely; we do a booming business in transfer, including to some pretty prestigious places.)

    Each of these points of view has something to be said for it, and each has its own flaws. What struck me, though, is that most people hold one view and consider it pretty much the last word. In some circles, it goes without saying that college is Other. In others, it goes without saying that college is about competitive prestige and getting into the most exclusive one you can. When confronted by an out-of-place viewpoint – like the community college guy shrugging his shoulders at the question of 'what colleges want' – there's just a silence. Although far too gracious to say “that's not what I meant,” the meaning was clear.

    The variety of definitions may help explain why the public discourse about higher ed is so deeply confused. People use the same words to mean very different things. If your definition of higher ed is all about exclusivity, then political battle cries of “college for everyone!” are unintelligible at best. If your definition is about job training, then the very idea of an expensive liberal arts college is absurd. If it's about living in dorms and getting away from home, then a community college (or any commuter school) doesn't really count. If it's about upholding tradition, then the prominence of cultural radicals at prestigious places must really grind your gears. If it's about critical thinking, then the culture of college-as-job-training must be like fingernails on a chalkboard.

    Wise and worldly readers, when you were 16, what was 'college' to you? And what is it now?

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Comments on College Prep

  • Posted by PRT on July 13, 2009 at 12:15am EDT

  • I wasn't a typical sixteen-year-old. I was already attending a community college instead of finishing out my last two years at the high school. However, I know that having been at the CC totally changed my idea of what college was. When I went to go visit the four year schools I was going to transfer into, I paid attention to how much time the students seemed to spend studying rather than where they partied. The school that offered me the best scholarship got turned down because I when went and visited the weekend before finals, and no one seemed to be studying, and the one class I visited seemed to be taught at a lower level than most of my CC classes. The school I ended up attending was the one where the student I stayed with had Plato and Augustine on her shelves, and she apologized for deserting me while she did her chemistry homework. She pretty clearly had lots of fun, but the schoolwork wasn't overwhelmed by it. That's what college meant to me, and I was so excited when I found it.

  • Posted by DoveArrow on July 13, 2009 at 12:30pm EDT

  • Hee hee. I was half expecting you to tell us that your wife was applying for a job at a college and asking you what they look for in an applicant. :-)

  • Posted by sibyl on July 13, 2009 at 4:00pm EDT

  • Both of my parents and all four of my grandparents went to college. When I was 16 "college" meant an AAU university with a good football team, although it also had ivy-covered halls and small seminars like a SLAC. Within two years I could differentiate among CCs, SLACs, and R-1s (though I wouldn't have used those terms).

    Now, though, I know that "college" has as many varying meanings as, say, "car" or "job" or "book." And if someone had said to me, "Honey, what do colleges look for?," I would immediately answer, "Different colleges look for different things. What kinds of colleges are we talking about?" (In some contexts I admit I would immediately assume the "prestige definition".)

  • What does college mean to me?
  • Posted by Michelle Solomon , English teacher at NYC Dept. of Education on July 14, 2009 at 5:15am EDT

  • I can't remember what college meant to me when I was 16. I knew I was expected to go (as the child and grandchild of teachers), but I barely made it out of high school alive, academically speaking. I was burned out and like, totally didn't want to go to college.

    I went to the local CC after HS, then to two other 4-year colleges (one of which I flunked out in truly grandiose style such that I'm weirdly proud of just how badly I did - but I can afford to have that attitude now that I'm finishing my M.A.). College to me now, as an adult who went back at 27 to get her B.A., then M.A. (I went straight through), is a means of job training. One school was not the same as another, though - at least in my case I considered that I was living in New York a few years (originally being from Pennsylvania), not entirely familiar with the local colleges, but innately feeling that perhaps a state school might be better than a private school in terms of teacher training. (I don't know how true this is, but SUNY schools are damned good, and SUNY Stony Brook, one of the four research SUNY schools, is damned good. In my opinion, they hand down beat every other school that provides teacher training on Long Island.)

    I don't recall thinking, even in high school, that clubs and honor socieities had that much meanining "in the real world," although I'm not sure I could have articulated such a thought at the time. Now, I'm convinced of it. Very few people have careers in which their GPA matters (teachers being an exception I'm aware of - possibly doctors, lawyers, and other high-stakes careers). I know of no career it matters which clubs you belonged to in high school. I think they're extremely useful in having fun, in networking, in teaching transferrable skills, in introducing students to skills and careers that they may with to persue. (I was a very quiet, shy student until my mother suggested I join the drama club in high school. Boom!) And possibly, when I went back to school 6 years ago, I wasn't thinking of the clubs I was a member of before graduating in 1994.

    I suspect that the further away one is from high school, the less these things matter. I remember reading an article or two some back in which high school students who had outstanding GPAs, did SGA, took leadership positons, were members of clubs and all these other things, remarked how shocked they were that they "had done everything right," but it still didn't guarantee an easier time of getting in or through college, or of finding a job. When I teach, I encourage my kids to get involved, but I also stress they should be getting involved in activities they're really interested in - and to learn how how to differentiate between that which matters in school, and that which will help you outside school. But not to overdo it.

  • Why not?
  • Posted by AK on July 14, 2009 at 9:30am EDT

  • I graduated from HS at 16, and I went to college because I had no other options. (I was too young to work.) I went to a flagship because my parents had gone to a flagship, but in retrospect I realize I would have been happier and more productive at a smaller school. I went to a small private for grad school and loved it.

    One thing I think extracurriculars can do for you, though, is make you more desirable to a school that already wants you. I had none and, although I had no trouble getting admitted, I knew many other students with lesser academic qualifications that were offered scholarships. Also, I only applied to one school, so they knew they didn't have to recruit me.

  • Animal House
  • Posted by Lil Johnny on July 14, 2009 at 11:15pm EDT

  • Nobody in my family had ever been to college for more than a semester, so my images were largely based on movies I had viewed. Animal House comes to mind... followed closely by Revenge of the Nerds. In short, I thought college meant toga parties and panty raids.

  • Overheard
  • Posted by CC Prof on July 17, 2009 at 1:45pm EDT

  • When I was of age, there was no question about whether I would go to college or not - I was going. I am not sure why other than I was a good student. For me college was getting ready to get a job.

    Your opening anecdote reminded me of a conversation I overheard once. I was having a drink with my wife at a bar attached to a playhouse where we waiting to go see a play. A young man (early 20s) was sitting with what I assume were his parents at a neighboring table. I assume they were discussing his college options because they were talking about local choices of higher education. At one point my CC was mentioned that young man dismissed it out of hand stating rather derisively that, "but they take anyone." I came very close to going over there and saying that, "We do not take 'anyone,' we take everyone. And that is our mission and we are proud of it." It was easy to see what "college" meant to this guy.

  • Posted by Kevin on July 21, 2009 at 10:15am EDT

  • The last one for me, as I prepare to head off to Princeton University next fall. But doing some institutional work at a local community college this summer has really opened my eyes to at least some of the other meanings of college, as I've run into a lot of things that I didn't know about before.

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