Over at Crassparenting, I’ve shared my thoughts for parents about how to prepare their students for the college admissions process. Knowing my audience, I thought that Crasstalkers would rather hear the war stories from my odd job.
There are stupid questions: One father asked in front of 600 people if our food service had diet food because his fat daughter couldn’t afford to gain the Freshman 15. A mom asked me on a tour if undergrads could study in the law or med school libraries. The mom went on to explain that the boys on our campus weren’t that attractive, and that surely her daughter would date all the appropriately attractive boys well before she graduated. The mom also preferred that her daughter marry a doctor or lawyer.
Not the time or the place: While touring UC-Berkeley, we stopped in front of the Free Speech Movement Cafe where the tour guide (the sweet, physics major, 19 year old tour guide who did this for his work study job) told the story of the Free Speech Movement. A dad started to go on a fairly epic and racist rant about Ronald Reagan, godless Berkeley, his tax payer money supporting this communism. The tour guide was flummoxed, so I turned to the dad and quietly said that he could probably save these comments for later. The dad started shouting at me that I was a communist feminazi. His kid, with his white kid dreds and sweet Bob Marley shirt, melted into the ground and the dad was escorted off the tour.
Killing Dreams: I met with a family to assess the student’s record and college wish list. The student had a clear vision of herself as an applicant, the mother was more aspirational. I was shooting down ideas right and left. Not Stanford, not Harvard, not Brown or Williams. Maybe USC and Colgate. The mother started to sob and through her tears sneered at me, “They should change your job title from College Counselor to Dream Killer.” At the end of the school year, the mom brought me half-dead flowers, saying that the flowers represented her dreams for her daughter.
The Holiday Card Party: A student was applying to her dad’s alma mater, an extremely selective college that was beyond her reach. Since she applied Early Decision to this college, the student would have the decision in mid-December, just in time for the family to send holiday cards. The mom decided to announce the student’s college decision via holiday card. The family posed for two holiday portraits, one with the student in the college’s sweatshirt, the other without. The mom had 300 of each card produced and addressed, and every day she would ask the student, “Which card are we going to send?” To raise the stakes, the mom thought it would be fun to throw a party around opening the college decision. The mom billed the event as the Holiday Card Party: come see which holiday card we’re going to send this year! So the student learned that he did not get into his father’s alma mater nor a favored state university in front of 30 people.
My Shame Stings: I was on the phone with a mom whose daughter was admitted to Williams, Amherst, and Pomona, but shut out of the Ivies. It was May, and I thought that the mom had calmed down as the daughter was extremely happy to attend Amherst. I ended the phone conversation by telling the mom that I would see her at the honor society induction ceremony in which her daughter would be honored. The mom refused to attend. She said that her daughter had not earned the honor because she had not been admitted to an Ivy. The mom said, “My shame stings too much to be seen at school.”
