Why a blog and not a book
Two summers ago, with my oldest going into 10th grade, I woke up to a barrage of media messages about college. They all said the same thing: Getting a kid into any college that's not an embarrassment requires a frenzied campaign to strategically package and market the applicant, driving the student to insane heights of superachievement.
This started with Alexandra Robbins' riveting "The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids," which my son spotted in a Borders and to which he solicitously insisted I should treat myself. (It was only coincidental that he wanted to read it.)
Robbins follows the lives of ambitious high-school superstars as they scramble desperately to the college-acceptance pinnacle. They rack up the toughest courses (one boy's nickname is AP), run for school president as they edit the newspaper, captain the lacrosse team and prepare for the debating club championship, then save the world as their community-service project, all before breakfast. SAT prep courses and four hours of nightly homework help fill their spare time. In return, their parents get really impressive college logos to stick on their car windows.
As I was digesting that, both Time and Newsweek arrived the same week with cover features on the same topic. And then the Chronicle Sunday magazine weighed in with a great story by eloquent Bay Area journalist Tia O'Brien on the local situation.
This left me assuming that the norm is what Tia describes, focusing on Marin County and high-end San Francisco private schools like University: "Stressed teenagers scramble to achieve what too often is virtually impossible. Education becomes an incidental byproduct of a teenager's high school years."
I wondered if there was a book about what happens when a student refuses to plunge into the madness and insists on being himself. Does he have a future? Maybe a how-to with details: Here are the options you cut off when you shun Advanced Placement courses. Here's what happens if you play the sport you love rather than the one that catches the admissions officer's eye.
I couldn't find such a book, so I pondered creating one and did some interviews for a possible book proposal. I viewed the prospective book as a community service, part of the effort to restore sanity ( knowing full well it was not my ticket to riches and fame as an author).
Right now I need to thank some professionals who generously shared their time with me after I contacted them out of the blue: Bay Area college admissions advisor and columnist Joanne Levy-Prewitt; University High School (San Francisco) college counselor Jonathan Reider, a prominent voice in the field; and New Yorker Elizabeth Wissner-Gross, author of the intense and strangely fascinating "What Colleges Don't Tell You (and Other Parents Don't Want You to Know"): 272 Secrets for Getting Your Kid into the Top Schools." (An aside: Much of this book clashes with my personal philosophy, but I snagged some great advice from it.)
And thanks to my friend and sometime editing client, San Francisco author Maria Goodavage of the classic "Dog Lover's Companion" guidebooks for her advice and support.
I conceived a collection of chapters by different talented journalists with their own expertise, starting with Margo Freistadt on daringly playing the sport you want rather than the one that "sells," Tanya Schevitz on the perils of ignoring rankings and SAT prep courses, and Janice Wright Sugerman on giving the cold shoulder to status colleges. (My gratitude to all of them.)
But then I started noticing something. The people in my own world — smart, creative and very busy urban public school families — were not playing those games and almost didn't seem to know they existed. Going about their lives, some of my friends wondered what year their kid was supposed to take the SAT — the same SAT that the "Overachievers" students had been preparing and strategizing for since sixth grade.
Pondering the discrepancy between what I saw around me and what I was reading, I realized that the "Overachievers" families really don't need any help. But a resource that provided basic information, augmented with links to some carefully selected samplings of useful media coverage of college admissions issues, would benefit kids in the rest of the world — my world — especially, I hope, "First in the Family" college applicants, who really embody the American Dream.
There are many books on the basics of getting into college. But a book is a creature of its moment, and the world of college admissions is ever-changing. Clearly, a blog is a more effective if less glamorous delivery system for updated information. It doesn't do everything a book does (there's no advance — or compensation at all — but then, no need to sell publishers either). So the book proposal never got done, and here we are in the blogosphere instead.
The blog couldn't happen without the expertise of parent and tech god KC Jones, who is also responsible for the San Francisco Schools blog and the 1,000-plus member San Francisco Schools listserve, which has become an influential force in the San Francisco Unified School District. KC himself, without ever raising his voice, has become a power in our school district and in the world of public education.
We hope the blog reaches the people who need these resources and makes a difference to kids' futures.
This started with Alexandra Robbins' riveting "The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids," which my son spotted in a Borders and to which he solicitously insisted I should treat myself. (It was only coincidental that he wanted to read it.)
Robbins follows the lives of ambitious high-school superstars as they scramble desperately to the college-acceptance pinnacle. They rack up the toughest courses (one boy's nickname is AP), run for school president as they edit the newspaper, captain the lacrosse team and prepare for the debating club championship, then save the world as their community-service project, all before breakfast. SAT prep courses and four hours of nightly homework help fill their spare time. In return, their parents get really impressive college logos to stick on their car windows.
As I was digesting that, both Time and Newsweek arrived the same week with cover features on the same topic. And then the Chronicle Sunday magazine weighed in with a great story by eloquent Bay Area journalist Tia O'Brien on the local situation.
This left me assuming that the norm is what Tia describes, focusing on Marin County and high-end San Francisco private schools like University: "Stressed teenagers scramble to achieve what too often is virtually impossible. Education becomes an incidental byproduct of a teenager's high school years."
I wondered if there was a book about what happens when a student refuses to plunge into the madness and insists on being himself. Does he have a future? Maybe a how-to with details: Here are the options you cut off when you shun Advanced Placement courses. Here's what happens if you play the sport you love rather than the one that catches the admissions officer's eye.
I couldn't find such a book, so I pondered creating one and did some interviews for a possible book proposal. I viewed the prospective book as a community service, part of the effort to restore sanity ( knowing full well it was not my ticket to riches and fame as an author).
Right now I need to thank some professionals who generously shared their time with me after I contacted them out of the blue: Bay Area college admissions advisor and columnist Joanne Levy-Prewitt; University High School (San Francisco) college counselor Jonathan Reider, a prominent voice in the field; and New Yorker Elizabeth Wissner-Gross, author of the intense and strangely fascinating "What Colleges Don't Tell You (and Other Parents Don't Want You to Know"): 272 Secrets for Getting Your Kid into the Top Schools." (An aside: Much of this book clashes with my personal philosophy, but I snagged some great advice from it.)
And thanks to my friend and sometime editing client, San Francisco author Maria Goodavage of the classic "Dog Lover's Companion" guidebooks for her advice and support.
I conceived a collection of chapters by different talented journalists with their own expertise, starting with Margo Freistadt on daringly playing the sport you want rather than the one that "sells," Tanya Schevitz on the perils of ignoring rankings and SAT prep courses, and Janice Wright Sugerman on giving the cold shoulder to status colleges. (My gratitude to all of them.)
But then I started noticing something. The people in my own world — smart, creative and very busy urban public school families — were not playing those games and almost didn't seem to know they existed. Going about their lives, some of my friends wondered what year their kid was supposed to take the SAT — the same SAT that the "Overachievers" students had been preparing and strategizing for since sixth grade.
Pondering the discrepancy between what I saw around me and what I was reading, I realized that the "Overachievers" families really don't need any help. But a resource that provided basic information, augmented with links to some carefully selected samplings of useful media coverage of college admissions issues, would benefit kids in the rest of the world — my world — especially, I hope, "First in the Family" college applicants, who really embody the American Dream.
There are many books on the basics of getting into college. But a book is a creature of its moment, and the world of college admissions is ever-changing. Clearly, a blog is a more effective if less glamorous delivery system for updated information. It doesn't do everything a book does (there's no advance — or compensation at all — but then, no need to sell publishers either). So the book proposal never got done, and here we are in the blogosphere instead.
The blog couldn't happen without the expertise of parent and tech god KC Jones, who is also responsible for the San Francisco Schools blog and the 1,000-plus member San Francisco Schools listserve, which has become an influential force in the San Francisco Unified School District. KC himself, without ever raising his voice, has become a power in our school district and in the world of public education.
We hope the blog reaches the people who need these resources and makes a difference to kids' futures.
posted by caroline at
7:08 PM
4 Comments:
This looks like a great blog. I've already learned a lot I didn't know. My child is a bit young for this, but I've read a couple of articles on the insanity that is supposedly ahead. I'm glad to know it doesn't have to be this way. Hooray to you for helping restore some sanity to this process. I look forward to reading more in the future.
I grant you there is useful and interesting stuff in this blog. But as someone who is going through the process, I think this kind of blog, exploring every nuance of opinion on college admissions, just adds fuel to the fire. The same with starting the process five years early (touring schools, etc.). It just doesn't have to be that big a deal. And its kind of as big a deal as you make it. My solution for avoiding a lot of the hysteria is just not to go for the most selective colleges. There are plenty of others.
The other thing is ideally this should be the student's project. At a certain point, parents need to leave their lives to them, and the college search seems like a good time for parents to take a back seat.
Thanks for both comments! To the second poster -- we are trying to aim for a middle ground and just provide enough information that applicants see the big picture. I tend to agree about easing the stress by just aiming for one/some of the many excellent colleges that aren't highly selective.
I recently overheard a high school sophomore -- someone I know to be a fantastic kid but not one of those hyper-perfect driven superachievers -- say casually that she'd probably try for Harvard or Stanford. If she got her heart set in that direction, it would either be a waste of time or a huge, stressful endeavor requiring one of those marketing/packaging/strategizing makeovers some advisors urge. So I was hoping to provide a dose of friendly reality as well (hopefully to students as well as parents).
Caroline said:
"If she got her heart set in that direction, it would either be a waste of time or a huge, stressful endeavor requiring one of those marketing/packaging/strategizing makeovers some advisors urge."
I think that this comment is true to students who are set on one or two ultra-prestigious schools. however, students who apply to harvard and stanford don't necessarily only aim to get into schools on that level. an application to first tier schools is not mutually exclusive to that of other tiers. therefore, i would encourage students to try for these schools. i agree, however, that there is too much stress in the process but that should not dissuade people from trying. (not that you are)
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