HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Absurd Lies Of College Admissions.

These days, a nearly-perfect GPA is the barest requisite for an elite institution. You’re also supposed to be a top notch athlete and/or musician, the master of multiple extracurriculars. Summers should preferably be spent doing charitable work, hopefully in a foreign country, or failing that, at least attending some sort of advanced academic or athletic program.

Naturally, this selects for kids who are extremely affluent, with extremely motivated parents who will steer them through the process of “founding a charity” and other artificial activities. Kids who have to spend their summer doing some boring menial labor in order to buy clothes have a hard time amassing that kind of enrichment experience.

The irony is that even admissions officers seem to be put off by this dynamic; presumably that’s why I’m told that kids now have to have fake epiphanies about the suffering of other, less privileged people instead of just having fake epiphanies about themselves. This proves that they are really caring human beings who want to do more for the world than just make money so that they, too will, in their time, be able to get their children into Harvard.

This entire thing is absurd. I understand why kids engage in this ridiculous arms race. What I don’t understand is why admissions officers, who have presumably met some teenagers, and used to be one, actually reward it.

Perhaps they hope that students who have lied shamelessly to get in will be less angry when they find out that schools have lied shamelessly about their job prospects when they get out . . . .

Meanwhile, I recommend Andrew Ferguson’s excellent book on the college application process, Crazy U.