College Admissions
America clings to the conceit that four years of college are necessary for everyone, and looks down its nose at people who don't have college degrees. This has to stop. It's time to give up the idea that every young person has to go to college, and start offering high-school seniors an alternative route into the middle class.
On the threshold between the life we've known and her departure, I slide my credit card, serve as Sherpa from store to home. We stuff the comforter into a huge bag, vacuum out the air, shrinking it into a manageable cube. The piles grow, spawn -- a Bed Bath & Beyond annex in our living room.
Here's to ivy-covered buildings, critical thinking, independence, making friends for life, asking hard questions, becoming global citizens, and discovering who you really are.
WHAT'S HAPPENING
Fisher v. University of Texas-Austin and Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, could have the most groundbreaking rulings regarding affirmative action in higher education to date. These cases have the potential to set a new precedent for how applicants are evaluated in the admissions process.
If you are a senior who receives a thin envelop from a dream school and are "bewildered at an admission decision," take heed. If you do what you do out of "love and enjoyment," you will have already succeeded in life beyond any institution's measure.
This exercise is the beginning of a process to come up with word messages students want colleges to "get" about them as they fill-out applications, write essays and have interviews.
While students who were accepted or denied at least know where they stand, those who were deferred to the regular decision pool are stranded in an application limbo.
Completing college applications can be hard work, work that often runs through the holiday season. Since everyone else is taking some time off, this would seem to be the perfect opportunity to hang out with your family. How could this possibly be a bad idea?