Playing Catch Up

A half-century has passed since Glimcher first arrived at Harvard. On October 16 his grandson, 17-year-old Nicholas A. Nehamas, waited for his turn to stake his own claim in the dream

Nehamas stood in line at his post office in Lawrenceville, NJ, waiting to mail his Harvard Early Action application. Nervous, he couldn’t make himself stay in line.

“I’d been working on the application for such a long time, but there were little things that I kept checking over,” he says. “I’d say to the people, please, go ahead, go ahead. The people at the counter were giving me looks. I must have been there 15 or 20 minutes. There were two people left, so I finally put it in the mail.”

Nehamas is one of the typically 4,000 hopeful students who send in applications for Harvard’s Early Action program, which allows students to apply early without obliging them to attend. Disadvantaged students tend to be underrepresented in the Early Action pool in favor of students who are white, wealthy, and well connected. In other words, students like Nehamas.

The son of a tax advisor for Kaiser Pharmaceuticals and a Princeton philosophy professor, Nehamas attends The Lawrenceville School, a prep school in New Jersey. He places in the top decile of his class, scored straight 800s on his subject based SAT IIs, and got a cool 2270 on the new SAT I. He’s the op-ed editor for his school newspaper, the vice-president of the young Democrats, and has captained several of his house sports teams.

Sophisticated but over-represented, these are the students that Harvard says it sees too many of, particularly in the Early Action phase. “When we look at the Early Action program, it advantages the advantaged,” says William R. Fitzsimmons ’67, dean of admissions and financial aid.

Now that the Early Action era is coming to a close, Harvard might be mailing its own Dear John letter to its more privileged applicants. It’s not you, it’s us. Harvard needs a change.

THE MOVEMENT FOR DIVERSITY

During the American Civil Rights movement, Harvard took on progressive admissions reforms, culminating in its adoption of affirmative action.

While that perpetually-contentious policy has since lost its revolutionary edge, the golden standard of diversity still holds sway across higher education.

While the Harvard Gazette boasted a 39.4% minority population admitted for the Class of 2010, the admissions office has also tried to aggressively address socioeconomic differences. According to “America’s Untapped Resource: Low-Income Students in Higher Education,” only 10 percent of the nation’s college students come from the bottom half of the income scale.

Harvard cited this statistic last spring when it revamped the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative (HFAI), under which parents with incomes under $60,000 will no longer be expected to contribute to the cost of attending Harvard, and families with incomes between $60,000 and $80,000 will have their expected contributions significantly reduced.

“There’s been a lot of progress. We’ve gone from 14 percent of the class to 24 percent of the class from disadvantaged backgrounds, and that’s a big jump. It’s no longer the case as it was in my era,” Fitzsimmons says, referencing his own experience as a Harvard undergraduate. “I was one of those students,” he says, “I had no college in my background, we had no money. I will certainly confess that Harvard was bit of a cultural shock.”

As grand as these reforms might be, they resonate on a much smaller scale with the individual students who anxiously pore over and proofread their college applications during the fall rush. Harvard institutes its changes on behalf of these nameless faces, with the aim of equalizing and enriching their experience. But while the admissions office can aim for equality on its end of a highly controlled process, it is impossible to hope for equity of experience in the pre-college lives of actual students.

Nehamas, along with Rhoda L. Wang and Andres Zambrano, are three of the last Early Action applicants to Harvard. Each has had unique experiences in high school, and the three fall on different places on the socioeconomic spectrum.

By following these three students as they experienced the college application process, FM hoped to get a sense of how the theoretical debate about what admissions should be translates into the daily life of Early Action’s last generation.

IS ENDING EARLY ACTION ENOUGH?

Students confused by the announcement pointed out that Early Action (EA) is non-binding, which means students from low-income backgrounds can still compare financial aid packages at the end of the process. Some see EA as the lesser evil to Early Decision: a win-win situation that alleviates pressure early in the process for the well-prepared, without disadvantaging the less-privileged.

That is, if it’s assumed that the less-privileged participate at all. Perhaps the most important message that Harvard is sending is that there are many students who don’t even have the wherewithal to enter a game that starts earlier and earlier.

The growing information gap is the most compelling consequence of this admission process. Fitzsimmons cites disparities in college counseling to illustrate this point.

“Nationally, the average ratio of counselees to counselors is about 500 to one,” he says. “In poor communities, because of budget cutbacks there are no longer any counselors at all. In affluent communities, the ratio is as low as 40 or 50 to one. Many students have private counselors ”

A recent poll by The Chronicle of Higher Education showed that 94 percent of pollees believed that “every high-school student who wants a four-year college degree should have the opportunity to earn one.” Another 52 percent agreed that a college degree was “essential for success in our society.”

The need for higher education no longer has the fuzzy haloed status of an American dream: it’s a necessary reality. And Fitzsimmons and other opponents of Early Action claim that equalizing the process will benefit an increasing number of disadvantaged students.

“This isn’t just a nice thing to do,” says Fitzsimmons. “If America doesn’t take advantage of all the talents of all the members now, it will be a less significant factor in the world in one, two or three generations.”

A DIFFICULT DREAM

Like Nehamas, 17-year-old Andres “Andy” Zombrano had a strong-willed grandfather, who immigrated to Venezuela from Italy during the Depression, became mayor where he settled, and then immigrated to the United States.

In a draft of his admission essay, Zambrano connects the struggles of his grandfather with his own life: “This strong-willed Zambrano gene was instilled in me as well.” The essay describes living in the “myopic, conservative town” of Stockton, Calif., where Zambrano attends the only public school in the district. The school boasts diversity and a growing Latino population, but Zambrano voices a different opinion. “I was a smart kid, I had good grades, but the attention was on the white kids in my class and I was left behind.”

After an incident in which Zambrano was blamed for stealing lunch, his guidance counselor reached out to him. Later on, the same high school counselor recommended Zambrano for a scholarship program called Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America (LEDA). The program allowed Zambrano to visit college campuses, gave him SAT preparation, and encouraged him to apply early.

He had always hoped to go to college in the University of California system. With a 3.94 unweighted GPA, AP classes, and 730s on two SAT IIs, Zambrano would have likely qualified. But LEDA got him thinking about Harvard.

“Seeing the Ivies opened up a whole new world for him,” says Zambrano’s mother, Rosalind Chamarro-Padillo. “He would call everyday and say, ‘Mom, I saw Harvard! We’re going to Princeton tomorrow!’ Oh my God, it was wonderful.”

“My mom, she’s so excited for me. She’s a dreamer,” says Zambrano. Chamorro-Padilla is a second-generation immigrant who attended University of California-Santa Barbara, and believes that higher education is essential. “Today, college is the way to success. I think generally people know that; the difference is between those that know and those that commit to getting there: to make that dream into a reality. That’s what Andy’s striving for.”

With Zambrano came back from LEDA to California in the fall, mother and son sat down to edit essays. “We spent a week and a half trying to cut it from 1,200 words to 500,” Zambrano says.

Zambrano had to work at balancing his homework with the application. His grandparents had recently moved into the master bedroom, where the computer is kept. “My grandparents go to sleep really early, so I only had a couple hours to do both,” Zambrano says.

But the potential payoff for Zambrano is great. Chamorro-Padilla says her yearly income totals about $60,000, which means the family might qualify for HFAI. The financial picture, however, will ultimately depend on whether Zambrano’s father, who is divorced from his mother, decides to pitch in. “We’re trying to contact him about that,” Zambrano says.

“At this point in time,” Chamorro-Padilla says, “there hasn’t been communication about whether he’s committed to helping financially. He’s known that Andy wanted to go to the university. Perhaps he was not as…” she pauses for a few seconds. “He didn’t understand how much work it entailed.”

‘STUDENT-HOOD HAS BEEN VIOLATED’

While the current college application certainly requires a lot of work on the parent’s part, it’s usually the pressure involved at the student’s end that has become a lightning rod for criticism.

“There aren’t enough hours in the day for me to tell you what is wrong with the current admissions process,” says Sally F. Rubenstine, Senior Counselor and Editor at CollegeConfidential.com. “All the anxiety that it brings our children that doesn’t need to be there!”

This anxiety manifests itself daily on the CollegeConfidential.com discussion forums, which claims to be the “most popular on the web.”

The question “What are my chances?” litters the discussions groups. They feature students who post their statistics online for others to evaluate. In one Harvard thread, a student who boasted a 2350 on the SAT I, triple 800s on the SAT IIs, and runs a “self-started computer business,” wonded whether he might get into Harvard Early Action.

Forget about professional counseling. Many high school students today are attempting to learn on their own what it takes to get in. The same movement that drives the multi-million dollar test-prep takes a more personal form in websites like CollegeConfidential.com. For these students, CollegeConfidential.com is not only a source for information, but a forum for therapy.

DIAGNOSING COLLEGE ADMISSIONS

Rhoda L. Wang thinks she can diagnose the disease of that online Harvard applicant. “He wanted other people to say that he was good. You hear it from you parents and friends that you’ll get in, but if you hear it from others it could make you feel better. It’s kind of stupid. But college, well, it’s stressful to each person, let them do what they need to do.”

Wang, 17, applied to Harvard Early Action, and is now waiting for her outside evaluation. “It’s like, well, it’s not really paranoia,” says Wang. “Just worry. A lot of it. Because of the wait. ”

The long wait before the December decision day is nothing compared to the whirlwind of pressure that Wang went through before the application deadline. “A couple of days I stayed up until three just doing the essays and no homework,” says Wang. “I was almost crying because of the essays! I asked my mom to look over them, and my first essay was pretty bad, and I guess she was honest. I don’t usually don’t take criticism extremely well, and it was unusual because I usually don’t ask my parents to read my English essays.”

Wang’s parents are Chinese immigrants who came to America to complete their masters degrees. While Wang characterizes them as pretty hands-off, they encouraged her in to get a 4.0 in school and sent her to SAT prep, which she took as a part of her supplementary Chinese-language school in the eighth grade and then culminated in a Princeton Review course the summer before her junior year.

The fruits of their labor (and expectations) are visible in Wang’s academic record: she has a 4.0 unweighted GPA, a 2390 on her SATs, and a cumulative 2270 on her SAT IIs. She’s also co-captain of her school’s varsity ice-skating team, vice-president of her school’s chapter of Business Professionals of America, and treasurer of a service organization.

But although her résumé seems primed for college admissions, Wang is ambivalent about whether the choices she made in high school were strategic.

“I’m not sure when I became aware of it,” she says. “‘Oh, I have to take this class, so that I can get into a certain AP class, because we need AP classes to get into Harvard.’ It’s not at the forefront, we’re not doing everything we do to get into Harvard, but we’re all just sort of conscious. Should we join this club versus this club to get into Harvard?” Wang pauses. “I don’t know how to describe it.”

For her, the culture of competitive college admissions is so indoctrinated it that defies delineation, a formless but pervasive factor that’s shaped the lives of Wang, her friends, and, as the argument goes, too many of the students applying to college.

STUDENTS OR VICTIMS?

“Students have been victims. They’ve been reduced to consumers!” says Lloyd Thacker, the founder the Education Conservancy, a nonprofit that wants to right what’s wrong with the college application process. Thacker believes that today’s process is run on a consumer model in which colleges attract students with gimmicks like high SAT averages, competitive rankings, and preferential and early programs.

“Student-hood has been violated,” says Thacker.

Student-what? “Student-hood is a concept that students make learning happen,” says Thacker, “It’s curiosity, hard work, risk-taking. Those things are not celebrated by current admission offices.”

Harvard and other colleges are paying attention. Thacker recalls dashing off a “one-sentence abstract” for a book on college admissions.

“‘The commercialization of college admissions has created a crisis by undermining educational values.’ I wrote it and sent it off to 12 deans of admissions and college presidents—I put it through spell-check first, of course—e-mailed it, and within three days, 10 out of the 12 responded.”

The book, “College Unranked: Ending the College Admissions Frenzy,” was at first self-published because “the publishers wanted to make it into a how-to-beat the system book, and it was a how not-to book,” says Thacker. His book is now published by Harvard University Press.

ON THE HORIZON

The Early Action deadline was Nov. 1, and though the admissions office doesn’t promise a decision until Dec. 15, the applicants have trouble focusing on anything else.

“I’m trying not to think about the application: something I should have done or should have left out. We try not to talk about it too much,” says Nehamas. He was contacted for an interview, but he didn’t practice for it. Part of it might be because he’s too busy: his work on the school newspaper means that he often comes home after eleven at night. Another part is his personal philosophy.

“Preparing for an interview is always a bad idea. I’m just trying to come off as an interesting person. One of my friends got one of those books ‘College Trade Secrets’ or something, but I really just want to be myself, I’m just going to act normally,” Nehamas says.

On the other side of the country, Zambrano is worried. He’s received his SAT scores from October; he scored a 1990. He had hoped to break 2000.

The emphasis on SAT scores also draws ample criticism from those who think such numbers handicap disadvantaged students.

“I’m not even talking about knowing about the EA or ED: it’s something as simple as meeting basic requirements,” says Jolene A. Lane, executive director of LEDA. “Philosophically, anyone can participate in the college process. But in reality people don’t have the information to apply. There are counselors who’ve never heard of SAT IIs. Students are eliminated from the candidate pool because of a lack of information about and emphasis on tests.”

Fitzsimmons points out, though, that the relationship between socioeconomic levels and test scores is part of why the admissions office looks at students holistically, taking students’ backgrounds into account .

That’s good news for Zambrano, who is hoping for “a little bit of slack on the SAT scores.” Perhaps they’ll put more weight on other parts of his applications, like his essays, which he sees as the strongest part of his application: “It’s not numbers and letters,” he says. “It’s the closest they can get to actually knowing me as a person rather than from a computer screen or numbers.”

WAITING...

While Zambrano hopes his essays will make up for what his scores lack, Wang is concerned about her personal statements, done at odd hours in the week before the deadline. “I’m nervous right now. I actually don’t really think I’ll get in,” Wang says. “I don’t know, I guess have a chance, but I was reading over my essays and modifying them for other schools. And they weren’t the best that it could have been.”

Like Nehamas and Zambrano, Wang moderates such self-doubt with the knowledge that she can’t do anything about it now. “I’ve done the best I can,” she says. “Hopefully, it’s good enough.”

Good enough. It’s the idea that connects all three applicants despite their backgrounds, their locations, and their socioeconomic levels.

There will always be a more privileged, better-connected applicant. Nehamas says that his family’s connections to the school won’t be enough. His cousin, whose mother teaches at the medical school, applied early years ago. She was ultimately rejected. “Very smart, great grades, and she actually didn’t get in,” says Nehamas.

Although Zambrano’s family tree doesn’t include Harvard, he has also had advantages that some other applicants don’t.

“I think my counselor is very supportive, and some of my teachers are very supportive, and my family has been really supportive,” he says. And the LEDA program helped edit his essays and of course, told him about Early Action.

In a most-of-the-time meritocracy it’s natural that students learn to measure themselves up against other applicants in these ways: to collect stories and examples and advice from the media, their counselors, and their families about what they should do and should be.

Appropriately, Harvard is going through the same process; like applicants, they are attempting to define their own purpose and value.

“It seems to be very important to a lot of people, and it’s good that higher education is important,” Susan D. Glimcher, Nehamas’ mother, says, “I sometimes wonder about the reasons, like you need to have a good education to make a lot of money. For me it goes without saying that education goes well beyond that. It’s very good that education’s become very important, you sometimes wonder why people are valuing it.”

It’s a given today that higher education is important, but the reasons as to why are still being debated. The outcomes of the debate are what has and what will guide the changes college application process.

For some, college is about the experience. Nehamas gets excited just talking about the possibilities at Harvard. Though he’s looking toward a Classics concentration, he’s keeping his options open. “I’m open to anything in the humanities: Classics, history, literature, archeology. It’ll be fun to explore.”

Zambrano, too is looking forward. He writes in his essay that he hopes to become a politician later in life. But Wang is just trying to keep her mind off the process. She’s looking forward to the ice-skating season, and she’s hoping to go to regional competition for Business Professionals of America. Pondering about what going to Harvard would mean is a premature question.

If she’s deferred, Wang doesn’t know what she’ll do. “I might consider taking an SAT subject test again…maybe—I don’t know,” she says. She probably doesn’t want to keep thinking about a process she’s just finished. She does know one thing though.

“I’ll just be trying to get in.”