Passion?

A friend forwarded me this article from the New York Times Parenting Blogs, "Our Push For 'Passion,' and Why It Harms Kids."

In my job as a college counselor, I talk about passion all the time.  I'm certain that I say the word "passion" to my students and fellow educators at least ten times a day. 

I jumped on the passion bandwagon when I was an undergraduate admissions officer at Trinity College during my very first reading season.  As a first reader, I spent six days a week, eight hours a day for two long months doing nothing but reading college applications.  Throughout the "reading season" I would review applications from students who were highly qualified to students who were under-qualified, and everywhere in between.  Regardless of how qualified each student was, I still read every application from beginning to end.  You never knew where a gem would be hiding! 

I would often find myself rooting for some applicants, regardless of GPA and standardized testing scores, because they had the ability to take an activity they participate in and make their commitment come alive for the reader.  I'm not saying that these students needed to be outstanding writers or truly deep thinkers.  They just needed to be able to understand why an activity was important (either to them, their family, their friends, their community, and/or the world) and articulate that commitment.  Sometimes these students had more than one passion that they divided their time between, and that was totally fine! 

For me, passion doesn't mean finding one thing and doing nothing but that one thing over and over again in order to show that you are committed/passionate/highly proficient.  In the college application process, passion is about understanding how or why what you do is important and how that activity can or has made a difference in this world.  It's about thinking below the surface level and acknowledging that what you do matters - in your life or in another person's life.  It's not about do, do, do.  It's about think, think, think.        

The Moral Bucket List

I was very inspired by this article by David Brooks called, "The Moral Bucket List."  Read.  Enjoy.  Be inspired to be the best you you can be.   

Who Gets to Graduate?

I came across an interesting article in the New York Times Magazine a few weeks ago about graduation statistics in the United States, "Who Gets To Graduate?"  I know that as a college counselor who works at a private school in Asia I probably won't come across many students who this information applies to.  Almost all of the students I work with will be able to afford college without private loans.

Still, the students I work with will probably enter a university education system in which they will be surrounded by students who fall into this category - possibly first generation college students or those who come from diverse economic situations. 

I was really stuck by the fact that, "more than 40 percent of American students who start at four-year colleges haven’t earned a degree after six years."  I know that the graduation rate in the US is low, but this was a startling statistic.  I'm curious to know if the current economy in the United States is aiding these statistics. 

Another interesting trend that this article points out is, "whether a student graduates or not seems to depend today almost entirely on just one factor — how much money his or her parents make.  To put it in blunt terms: Rich kids graduate; poor and working-class kids don’t."  The University of Texas is working hard to tackle this issue.  

"If you want to help low-income students succeed, it’s not enough to deal with their academic and financial obstacles. You also need to address their doubts and misconceptions and fears. To solve the problem of college completion, you first need to get inside the mind of a college student."

To do this one of their professors, Professor Laude, has not only created a small classroom environment for these students but also, "supplemented his lectures with a variety of strategies: He offered students two hours each week of extra instruction; he assigned them advisers who kept in close contact with them and intervened if the students ran into trouble or fell behind; he found upperclassmen to work with students one on one, as peer mentors."

Overall, I think this article struck me because I believe so strongly in liberal arts education.  In general, these colleges tend to be small, with small class sizes and individual attention for each student.  While not every liberal arts college can provide this close personal contact, I think that most strive to create a more community based approach to education - integrating residential life and classroom learning where ever possible, and encouraging personal contact by professors, teaching assistants, mentors, and residence life staff.  

From my own personal experience as a student at Trinity College (CT), I had many dinners at my professors homes and was surrounded by faculty and students who kept an eye on me.  When my father had a stroke when I was a sophomore in college, a team of college staff came to my aid to make sure I had a plan for completing school work and that I had access to a mental health professional if I needed one.   

In working with Asian students for the past four years, many of them tend to shy away from "Liberal Arts Colleges" because they think of them as a bastion for far left thinkers and artists.  Many of them enter the college search with this mis-conception, hearing only "arts" and move toward larger universities in search of a more balanced education.  I have been working hard over the years to encourage my students to take a look at liberal arts colleges for the small classroom environment which fosters personal connections and interdisciplinary thinking.  

When speaking with students in the future, I think I will add to this information that the learning environment offered by a liberal arts college might actually increase graduation rates too. 

College Ratings Systems

I don't make it a secret that I'm opposed to college and university rankings lists.  One article that I hold to be sacred in the argument against ranking colleges and universities is a 2011 article from the New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell called, "The Order of Things: What College Rankings Really Tell Us." I think this article does an excellent job explaining why a "One Size Fits All" list doesn't actually lead a student to choose the best fit college for them.

I talk about ranking a lot in my job.  I live in Asia and counsel Asian students.  I have found that the high achieving, test driven culture in Korea jumps at the opportunity to rank things.  I have found two reasons for this:

1)  This is a culture of numbers, of ranking its students numerically to see who is the best.  In the public schools, earned grades are not necessarily given out.  Instead, the student's transcript actually reflects the grade earned in relation to the other students in the same class.  For example, the A+ (or numeric equivalent of that) can only be achieved by one person - the person who got the best score - and the grades are given from there.  You could have gotten almost every question on the test correct and received a low grade because lots of other students also did well.  This system also translates to the national university entrance exam.  Students with the top scores go to the top colleges.  There is no holistic review.  It's simply about the score on this one exam.  Many of my current students have told me that they left the Korean public school system because students didn't care about their everyday activities in school.  They only cared about the test.   

2) Most people in Korea attend college in Korea but there are many Korean students who are now receiving their college and graduate school educations in North America and Europe.  If these students return to Korea after graduation, prospective employers don't really know about the reputation of colleges in these far away countries.  Because of this, they turn to a simple rankings list in order to decide if a prospective employee received a good education or not.

Regardless of how I feel about rankings lists, I need to acknowledge their place in my role as a college counselor in Asia.  Still, in reading a recent New York Times article titled "Colleges Rattled As Obama Seeks Ratings System," I can't help but think of my students.  Obama is seeking to creating a rating system of colleges and universities in the United States in order to better inform students about what they will get for their tuition dollar.  This is in response to higher tuition rates and the government's need to know that the billions spent each year on financial aid are going toward helping and not hurting students.

I have mixed feelings about Obama's plan.  One one side, I do think that college has become far too expensive.  My son is five years old and I simply can't imagine how much college will cost when he is ready to go in thirteen years (or how I will pay for it!).  I think that colleges and universities should be examining ways to stop tuition inflation in order to make college a more affordable entity.  On the other side, Obama is simply looking for an easy answer to a difficult problem.  How will yet another one size fits all list really tell the whole story of what a college can give to its students?

I'm interested in hearing what you think!  Please leave a comment!