College Application-Still a Myth

With my first cup of coffee this morning, I read a New York Times post.  The title is "The Ivy League Was Another Planet", and the tagline is "Elite Colleges Are As Foreign As Mars".  When I read the titles, my instant thought went to the foreign students in the Ivy League schools, how many cultural shocks they might experience and how they learn to maneuver the American not-quite-user-friendly higher education system.

However, the article was about the domestic phenomena in U.S., about talented students in rural America and inequality of higher education.  In addition to lack of financial resources, these young people know little about universities that will suit them.  They don't have too much knowledge of college application process and don't have too many role models or consultants they could go to for valuable suggestions.  The article demanded that the college admission should shoulder more responsibility to reach out to the communities that have little access to the institution.  It compared the college recruitment process to the army recruitment.  The army recruiting personnel make sure they penetrate these communities and helped the applicants go through every step of the application, while college admission rarely does that, even to rich kids in America.

Rich or poor, most kids have to fill in various application requirements ultimately on their own.  The major difference between the rich and the poor is that the rich has a large group of experts, family members, teachers, college councilors, and alumni they can rely on for hands-on support.  The whole process seems less lonely and some advice could play a significant role in getting into the school you want.  Most importantly, the rich kids have experienced adults or peers, who graduated from the same high school, to help them find out what they want.

The foreign students share the same challenge the poor American high students face. Some of the foreign students might lack financial support.  But many more foreign kids and families have limited knowledge of the higher education system and the application process.  When college representatives from well-known institutes in U.S, Canada, Australia, and etc. attend a variety of education fairs overseas and present how wonderful their schools are, they conveniently skip the answers to some important questions.  How can the applicant fulfill every requirement on the long list and which requirement is weighed more than others in the admission process?  And often people don't ask themselves, is this school really for me?  Foreign students tend to select a handful of the most prestigious schools because everyone knows the big wig.  Hence they have to compete with an army of highly qualified applicants and sometimes bare the disappointing result.  Meanwhile, a number of well-established, smaller institutes are easily overlooked in this process.  When  more and more kids are planning to go to universities overseas, a comprehensive review of who you are  and all the options you have is a must.