Admissions Process Is Flawed

I am aware that you have been deluged with letters regarding the Gina Grant controversy, but I would like to add my particular viewpoint to the debate.

What disturbs me about this story has less to do with Ms. Grant's culpability than with the problematic state of te College admissions process that her case so vividly illustrates. The New York Times reported that Grant had been questioned about the death of her parents by a Harvard alumni interviewer who was "interested in the orphan angle." How typically shallow of the college admissions process to refer to personal tragedy as an "angle." When I applied to college in 1987, my counselor told me to do some hands-on community service to improve my application. I remember being disconcerted by his frankness; the primary purpose of the service was to make me look good. If I helped anybody in the process, It was just the fortuitous by product of a self-interested act.

I recall even then being disgusted by the lengths students went to to make themselves appear deep and moral to college admissions committees. One student formed a group called FAST (For a Safer Tomorrow) of students concerned about unclear war. I think the group met once, if at all. I believe the student was accepted early admission somewhere and his concerns about nuclear war dissipated accordingly. Although inactive, the group has served its purpose. In valuing these things, in looking at being an orphan as an "angle," colleges send a terrible message to young people: talking the talk is good enough. Success is less about making an impact than being a cunning personal publicist.

The other question that the "orphan angle" brings up is this: Is any student's personal life really an admissions committee's business? Obviously the Grant case is extreme, but I wonder if a healthy, middle-class kid with two living parents isn't fighting something of an uphill battle to convince an admissions committee that she is interesting. Likewise, is a student with a painful past obligated to bare her soul to a total stranger in order to obtain a high quality education?

Shouldn't Ivy League admissions officers be above the culture of ghoul that one normally associates with turbulent adolescence? It renders them as parasitic and contemptible as the people who packed Courtney Love's concerts after Kurt Cobain's suicide, scrutinizing her for a tear or reference or inappropriate smile, indifferent to the music, personal disclosure being infinitely more stimulating then art.

While this analogy may seem odd, I think it speaks to the sleazy character of the college admissions game rather well. Courtney Love is a musician. Period. It is inappropriate to judge her merits on anything but the product she puts forth. Similarly, I believe that academic performance, academic choices, recommendations and the quality of the personal statement are the only criteria on which a college applicant should be judged. Dead parents and artificial limbs are relevant only if they shed light on an irregularity on a transcript. If an A-student became a C-student in her junior year while mourning her brother's death, that may be alluded to in a recommendation or essay because, and only because, it illuminates her core application materials . After that, it should be left alone. Whether the applicant cries, laughs or performs a ritual dance in her interview is not relevant.

Nowhere on any college application I have ever seen is moral fiber defined as a criterion for admission. And how does one measure moral fiber anyway? Should academic institutions allow their interviewers to probe 17 year-old psyches and, in one hour or less, form opinions on their characters? Are any of these interviewers qualified to do this, or are they acting like armchair psychologists at the students' expense? And why are colleges doing this anyway? Presumably they are choosing candidates foe academia and not the priesthood.

What is the message of the college admissions process? Perhaps we should tech young people that it is better to be a chameleon than to be true to oneself. Learn to size up what a particular situation calls for and adjust your colors accordingly. My personal opinion is that it is ultimately fragmenting and self-defeating. How does a 17 year-old who succeeds by being a changeling ever learn who she is? As long as universities encourage this behavior they are not breeding great thinkers or healthy people.

Colleges need to make up their minds about what they want in a prospective student and be up front about it. Write it up and include it in the application materials. It might read rather like a personal ad: Top ten university seeks students with tragic, but not ugly backgrounds, Should wear scars valiantly. Persons not entirely recovered need not apply. Applicants should be deep but not desperate, experienced but not embarrassingly so. Should have stories to tell that will keep bored admissions officers awake without turning their stomachs.

In the end, Gina Grant is probably better off not attending Harvard. I read of her plight and I sympathized . I wondered how I might help her, but the little bit of academic pull I have is at Barnard, and--be she fair, four or indifferent--I wouldn't wish that on her. Barnard exemplifies the have your-cake-and-eat-it-too admissions paradox in the worst way. Whole forests of trees are slaughtered yearly to disseminate its admissions propaganda about attending to the particular needs of women, blah blah blah.

When I was at Barnard, we had a protest of our own when the Columbia Spectator reported that Barnard student, unable to contact her off campus psychiatrist, confided to a health services therapist that she was suicidal. She was promptly suspended and asked to leave her dorm. Now, I don't think her "special needs" were attended to well at all, do you? The debate became quite heated. The offcampus psychiatrist told Barnard that suspending his patient would make her situation much, much worse and asked them to take her back. The college maintained its position believing, I think that if the young woman and her needs were to jump out a window, it would be better done off-campus. Lawsuits, bad press and all that.

It's ultimately a matter of messy versus clean problems. At Barnard, sexual discrimination was a clean problem, suicidal depression was not. In Gina Grant's case cancer and car accidents were clean tragedy, child abuse and murder decidedly not. Colleges favor clean cut, easy-answer problems. Sexism bad, car accident sad. Sticky ambiguities, it would seem, are just a lot more of a hassle than they're worth. Gina Gionfriddo   New York, NY