An Absurd Record

I am a year older than the Guinness Book of Records, founded back in 1955. I became aware of the book about a decade later, and I was fascinated by the idea of world records—although not enough to want to hold a world record myself.

Eventually I lost interest as more and more bizarre activities got on the list of world records. Do we really need to know the record for farthest tightrope walk while wearing high heels or who alphabetized the letters in a can of alphabet soup the fastest? Should we care that someone in Malaysia set a record for assembling a Mr. Potato Head in 5.43 seconds or that someone in Nebraska has paddled a boat made from a hollowed-out pumpkin more than 37 miles?

I have asked before whether we measure the things we value or value the things we can measure, and the inflation in Guinness world record categories suggests the latter. At some point the Guinness Book of Records moved from journalism to entertainment, from a digest of notable human accomplishments to a raison d’être for all sorts of frivolous pursuits for the sole purpose of setting a world record. We might even say that the Guinness Book of Records, now known simply as Guinness World Records, at some point became a parody of itself, or at the very least a marketing ploy to sell beer.

Not all world records are equally important. The world record for the mile run? Important. The world record for pushing an orange with one’s nose for a mile? Maybe not.

So where does the record for most scholarship dollars won fit on that spectrum? A couple of weeks ago there were several news stories about a high school senior in New Orleans who has been accepted by more than 170 colleges and earned more than $9 million in scholarships. At the time of the stories, the week before May 1, he was awaiting decisions from at least 30 other colleges and was hoping to get his scholarship haul above the $10 million mark.

So how should we respond to this news?

First of all, we should offer congratulations to the young man in question. He is obviously a motivated student with an outstanding high school record, and I’m happy for him that he has lots of college options as well as the funding to make college affordable for him.

He may be the only one deserving congratulations. On a more global level, I think this news is not something to be published or celebrated.

There is no world in which applying to 200, or even “only” 170, colleges comes close to making sense. It totally misses the point of what applying to college is about. The college process isn’t about collecting acceptances or scholarship dollars but rather about finding a college fit.

A few years back, I had a senior come into my office and tell me that he had applied to 17 colleges on Sunday afternoon. When I asked him why, he told me his dad “went crazy” and made him. Months later, after the student had been admitted to most of the 17, I ran into the dad. He shook his head in embarrassment, and said, “Please don’t tell anyone we did that.”

Applying to 17 colleges is too many, reflecting an inability to apply thoughtfully. Applying to 10 times that number is absurd, and maybe obscene. I don’t blame the student, but rather the adults. It is a truism in schools that in any interaction between students and adults, someone has to be the adult. It is unclear who fills that role in this situation.

Did anyone at the school try to put the brakes on this? A CNN article reported that school officials declared the world record and had reached out to Guinness to receive official confirmation. It can be argued that encouraging a student to apply to 200 colleges is a form of child abuse. Were the adults at the school innocent bystanders or willing co-conspirators? In either case, there is negligence in allowing this.

But does this case do any real damage? I think it does. How much time did it take to complete 200 college applications, and how could that time have been spent more productively? And what about staff time processing transcripts and letters of recommendation? How many students could have benefited from the $9 to 10 million in scholarships racked up by this one student?

I also blame the journalists who thought this was newsworthy. I’m sure they will argue that they were just reporting a human interest story, but making a big deal about this encourages other students to try to beat the record. That’s not reporting, but rather making, news. This story is an example of the media focusing on the sensational at the expense of the significant. It sends the wrong message about what the college search should be about. There are far more important stories about college admission that need to be told.

Just once I’d like to go through an admissions season without the annual “this student got admitted to every Ivy” story, the “millions of dollars in scholarships” story or the “this has been the toughest admissions year in history” story. I’d love for once to see a story about a student whose life trajectory has been changed through receiving the opportunity to attend college at a good place that isn’t a “name” school.

Now that would be one for the record books.