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Description edit
The cutthroat competition to get into the perfect college can drive students to the brink of madness and push their parents over the edge—and bury them in an avalanche of books that claim to hold the secret of success. Don’t worry: Crazy U is not one of those books. It is instead a... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Quotes edit
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“"Of course, she tests well in general, always has. But scores like those…" Her pride bladder was terribly distended now, swelling in all directions, thumping up against the anterior walls of the pelvis, pressing down into the pubic bone, squeezing the hypogastric artery; this painful unsatisfied need driving her nearly to the slate flooring…"I mean when the e-mail with the scores arrived, I just had to peek!" She cast her pleading eyes around the kitchen for other parents who might be listening. "And then when I did, I'm thinking 'My God - this is *my* kid? Where'd those scores come from?'"At last she'd catch a sympathetic eye, and another parent would say, "They must have been really --""Twenty-four hundred! I'm like, Wow!"And then, having passed the stone, she'd stand up straight as a barge pole, the pain suddenly gone, and sip the Zin with a humble smile.”
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“But now a majority of kids coming into Harvard all share traits that are more important than blood, race, or class. On a deeper level, in the essentials, they're very much alike. They've all got that same need to achieve, focus, strive, succeed, compete, be the best - or at least be declared the best by someone in authority. And they've all figured out how to please important people."Harvard grads disagree with this, of course. They like to say that the new Harvard represents the triumph of meritocracy.No, my friend said. "It's the triumph of a certain kind of person."”
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“Someday, he said, and maybe soon, someone would come along to establish a widely recognized credential that sent the same signal as a bachelor's degree but without the expense, and the bubble would burst.”
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But that’s parenthood for you. You fulfill yourself by denying yourself, preparing the people you can’t live without to live without you.
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We confuse a coveted degree with an excellent education—eat the menu instead of the dinner.
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AND THAT’S WHEN I STUMBLED onto the law of constant contradiction. It was to complicate our self-education from first to last. The law was this: for every piece of advice or information a parent or child receives while applying to college, there is an equal and opposite piece of advice or information that will contradict it.
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“Those who look askance at testing should not rest their case on the simple notion that tests are ‘unfair to the poor,’” they wrote. “Life is unfair to the poor. Tests merely measure the results.”
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Anyone who doubts the futility of human progress should ponder this. After several generations of vicious racism, followed by protest marches, civil rights lawsuits, accusations of bigotry, appeals to color-blindness, feminism, and eloquent invocations of the meritocratic ideal, the latest admissions trend in American higher education is affirmative action for white men. Just like the old days.
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A more practical and accurate term for holistic admissions is “completely subjective.”
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The future of our children is too important to be left to our children.
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“Hooks are everything,” she said. A “hook” is an attribute that automatically gives one applicant an advantage over another. In the incoming class at a selective school, she told me, as many as 65 percent of the admits could be hooked.
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We want college (the means) to produce results (the ends) that it wasn’t built for. With its ample time for leisure, its relatively light workload, its often leafy setting, its discursive methods of instruction, its vast, comprehensive libraries, college was designed for contemplation, for the slow, steady nurturing of the spirit. It wasn’t designed to do what most Americans want it to do: set their kids up to get a good job. If the end we seek is the acquisition of marketable skills, there are much speedier means of doing this than a four-year education in the liberal arts.
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As higher education was democratized, a college degree became more desirable than the learning it was originally meant to signify. It was a guarantor of smarts, drive, social standing, and future prospects. As the historian David F. Labaree put it, “What matters most is not the knowledge [students] attain in school but the credentials they acquire there.”
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Setting & Locations edit
First Sentence edit
Forty thousand dollars: that's how much it would take to hire one of the country's most notable independent college admissions counselors, Katherine Cohen, for a full-service "platinum package" of advice and guidance that would last from the first starry dreams of ivy-covered brick to the day of matriculation.
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
- Dewey: 378.1610973
Subjects edit
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