Blogs and Stories
How Colleges Dupe Students
No, Really, Ditch Your Folks
“The hardest part is getting the parents to stop freaking out. Usually, they spend the tour asking every single question they’ve ever thought of. Or they’re obsessed with crime stats or the one murder on campus in 1982. Or just repeat the tuition price over and over again. I always wanted to shake them.” — Doug Baker, independent college consultant and former admissions officer in Los Angeles
Be Prepared to Make Tough Choices
“I turned down a full ride to Duke for [University of] North Carolina after one weekend visiting a family friend there. He took me to a party at his frat that was, more or less, a drunken orgy—it was unbelievable. I woke up in a fountain half-naked, and I wanted every night of college to be just like that.” — a UNC junior
Have a Meal, and Consider the Season
“Be sure to eat there at least three times and at least once in the cafeteria. And visit in the winter. I visited Cornell on a gorgeous day last summer and fell in love. Now I’ve had to suffer through some of the worst food ever and the freezing cold for a year, and I seriously considered transferring.” — a Cornell rising sophomore
Inquire About Your Chances of Finding Your Soulmate
“One Southern not-quite-Ivy’s info session quoted a statistic about the percentage of students who meet their future spouses at the university—it was a ridiculous percentage and was meant to be a draw.” — a Georgetown alumna
Don’t Plan Too Far Ahead
“I always suggest families limit [the number of] college tours during the summer before senior year, because kids change. One of my students started senior year straight-laced and dreaming of studying engineering at Georgia Tech. By the spring, he’d found punk rock and was desperate to go to the Berklee College of Music.” — Meg Thomas, a high-school guidance counselor in Miami
Parents: Don’t Oversell
“I’ve been trying to sell my kid on Dartmouth, but he complains it’s too conservative and lacks diversity. Of course, we get there and the tour guide is the whitest guy you’ve ever seen who starts bragging about interning for John McCain’s campaign and loving hockey. I was dying.” — George Kyles, a Washington, D.C., stepfather
If You Suspect Your Tour Guide Is Sabotaging the Tour, She Probably Is
“My roommate was a campus tour guide at Notre Dame. She always dressed the part, wearing her J. Crew sweaters and knee socks. But, inevitably, she found me on campus and introduced me as her ‘lesbian lover’ to the families. She loved to freak out the Catholic parents.” — a Notre Dame alumna
Get a Feel for the Level of Pretentiousness and Backstabbing
“Our eldest daughter’s tour at Northwestern was crazy. It was her dream school for years. With every person we met, you could see the dream being chipped away by the bitter reality that the ivory towers were more like The Lord of the Flies. To a student, each one of them said the most important relationship was with your academic adviser. Oh, and don’t lend out your lab notes if you don’t want them to be sabotaged.
She wanted to jump off the rocks into Lake Michigan by the end of the day. If we heard one more kid drone on about their IB curriculum and the play they were writing for Tony Kushner, we would have joined her in that plunge. At some point, you wonder if they are accompanied by their parents or their agents.
I have purged that awful chapter from my mind. Our second daughter is more than a little miffed that we are not indulging in her fantasy college tour. We told her to see where she gets in and then we will think about visiting. I could not care less if the campus espresso bar and vegan food depot are to her liking.” — a St. Paul, Minn., mother of four
Kathleen Kingsbury is a writer based in New York. She's a contributor to Time magazine, where she has covered business, health and education since 2005.
John Talks Joe
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
Top 10 College Admissions Tips
Kathleen Kingsbury covers education for The Daily Beast. She also contributes to Time magazine, where she has covered business, health and education since 2005.
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Kathleen Kingsbury covers education for The Daily Beast. She also contributes to Time magazine, where she has covered business, health and education since 2005.
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Kathleen Kingsbury covers education for The Daily Beast. She also contributes to Time magazine, where she has covered business, health and education since 2005.
If you're female, do not leave until you've check their security, their stats on campus rapes & their response times!! Make a note of every building you go into and see where the exits are and where the stairs are.
How fast can you run to the exit? If you are going to that school, how fast can you get to the exit from your room? If there's a fire, how long is the drop from your window? Can tie sheets together & still get out? You have to have the brain of MacGyver in order to survive these days in schools where the buildings are old. When were these buildings built? Have they been upgraded? If so, when?
Keep your eyes and ears open . . . especially if you're female! No one will protect you except yourself. The important thing is to know how to protect yourself in all situations on & off campus.
Stay low! Eat bugs and grass!
Well - in the real world, most women are raped by a man they know.
So all the emergency exits in the world aren't going to save you from the boy you VOLUNTARILY brought back to your room who thinks that NO means MABYE.
You know, it's far safer to never leave home. Entrances can be barricaded and canned food stored in the safe.
-yawn-
-yawn-
Yawns are contagious, you know.
-yawn-
Uh oh.
-waste of electronic ink-
Says someone who'se never tried to get into a high-pressure college.
This comment has been removed by The Daily Beast's editors.
It's just a business and they are telling you what you want to hear. Its all about the numbers.
WOW! What a puff piece.
"How colleges dupe students."
1. Overpriced 'education'.
2. Convincing students its a privilege to be in college even though the student is paying for it.
3. Convincing students that colleges and universities are not business's.
4. Convincing students that they have been educated not indoctrinated.
Wow! Sneer a little more at the higher-educators of the world Johnny, I think some of them didn't quite grasp your vitrol.
Have fun imagining a microbiology course or an organic chemistry lab or as "indoctrination."
The few faculty members that are moderate or conservative keep their mouths shut. It is really quite sad. The place for ideas has become the place for idea. You can dispute that, but you are only kidding yourself.
lreyn84702, I encountered fewer professors in my college years who were vocal about their political view than I did during high school - and in high school it was an extremely conservative agenda to boot! - and I am skeptical of lumping all professors into the categories of either outspoken liberals or sheepish conservatives. Making a career of promoting open mindedness and continuing learning throughout your life is not something that should be dismissed as a political bully pulpit.
Given a college degree is the equivalent in economic value to graduating high school back in the 1950s most students are better off minimizing education costs by doing the first 2 years at community college and then finishing at their state university. Private colleges are a total financial ripoff for most students given today's very depressed wage structure.
Best bet - the City University of New York!
Very low tuition and high quality education!
Why pay $ 40,000 when you can get the same quality for $ 4,000?
Amen.
Or UNC Chapel Hill. Or Wisconsin. Or UVA. Or College of NJ,
Reject the tired elitist approach to higher education.
Ms. Kingsbury, I admire your ability to get paid for writing this.
I read this article hoping for something like this:
http://enrollment.rochester.edu/blog/admissions/how-colleges-distort-th e-truth/
Or, even more juicy, this:
http://enrollment.rochester.edu/blog/admissions/colleges-dont-like-you/
Oh, well...
I gave tours at the university I went to. I don't think I ever had to lie while I was there...the great thing about being the tour guide is that you can dump the tough questions on the admissions counselors :)
With more and more institutions of higher ed straped for funding and fewer and fewer students attending without scholarships, grants or loans, of course universities want to sell prospective students on their campus.
Do the simpler thing: do one or two years at a community college then see which of your state universities suits your goals.
It's cheaper, and in the long run, likely just as good as a private university for the bachelor's.
The author of this drivel writes for Time mag? No wonder news magazines are in trouble.
Yeah not the most exciting post. One thing I wish I had thought of when I was looking at schools is to figure out what direction the campus (i.e. student body, adminisitration, athletic programs) was heading in. I loved my first two years of college and hated my last two.
Funny you should mention Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, CA. Our son is a senior math major there this year and he reports an experience beyond exemplary. The whole school is barely 700 students but they have a reputation and performance record all out of proportion. Their president, Maria Klawe, for instance, was just elected to the board of Microsoft. Check it out only if you're an uber-nerd.
Better yet,get a real job(you know,something that requires WORK)and quit trying to be a Yuppie S.O.B.
Thank you.
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