The Wow! Factor

The pragmatist in me is beginning to rear its serpent like head, bolting out from behind my shoulders, and viewing with reptilian eyes the dollar signs attached to education.

Here we are, a single-wage-earner-middle-class-family of five, about ready to launch our second child. A child that to us holds so much promise and potential that we are willing to consider schools to which we’d be shelling out upwards of forty thousand dollars every year. One hundred and sixty thousand dollars over the four years.

The schools with the stingiest endowments make pointed statements of the value of such an investment suggesting to me that if you’re not willing to make the sacrifice, you may not value education enough. Schools known to be generous with their endowments recommend applying for aid, and virtually guarantee that we’ll be surprised at how affordable a private college can be.

Both Sig and I attended the big, public, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities campus where lecture classes crammed together well over a hundred students, and many times were taught by a foreign Teacher’s Assistant whose accent made comprehension difficult. As we progressed within our majors, we were in smaller classes, sometimes even getting to know a few professors. With no prior comparisons being made, we both experienced a solid college education, enough to get us in the workforce, and enough to make us conversant in a diverse realm of subjects.

Neither of us lived on campus, nor did we participate in the Greek systems, or engage in study abroad or research programs. We co-existed with like-minded students, paid in-state tuition, and went home to off-campus apartments at the end of the day.

I want something else for my children. I want their college experience to make them engage, to open up, to risk, to enjoy, to imagine big things, and be allowed mistakes.

It seems a perfect time in life to dive right in.

So when we took Hans on a visit to a small, selective, private college that would cost a great deal of money, we gulped, we swooned, we got sucked in. “Wow, how cool is this?” we’d say. Or “Counselors really meet with the students before they register?” “Classes of 18?” “Ninety percent study abroad?” “Wow!”

Who wouldn’t want that for their kid?

And the kid, he too was smiling, saying, “Yeah, I could see myself here!” A Division Three golf program, (a key component of the search), an incredible academic program with an emphasis on study abroad, as well as a great community. Sure, he could see himself there.

So the list of schools receiving applications from this address are small, private, and cost a fortune. Except for one.

There is a college nearby that is part of a neighboring state’s public university system. It is three time the size of the privates, but still relatively small at 10,000 students. It isn’t particularly selective, although it does have an Honors program, a Division Three golf program, and a strong study abroad program. The total cost is exactly a quarter of what the others charge.

We visited, meeting with an admissions counselor, touring the campus, popping in on a lecture hall (very small), and experiencing a campus day-in-the-life-of on a cold and gray fall day.

I didn’t have any big ol’ Wows in me, nor did Sig. Hans was fine with it. His words. “It’s fine.” He can imagine himself there too.

How important is the Wow! factor?

There are high school seniors who know exactly what they want to do when they grow-up. A mother I’ve known since our boys were in kindergarten tells me of her son’s applications to Yale, Princeton, Harvard, to name-drop just a few. He plans to become a neurosurgeon, and I’m sure he’ll succeed. And a neurosurgeon’s paycheck will enable a relatively stress free loan repayment.

But if your child is planning a liberal arts education with no known career plan, let alone major, how do you justify banking your retirement on obscene student/parent loans?

Alternatively and more realistically, what a way to enter adulthood, stuck in extreme debt.

It results in the classic business model cost/value relationship; you get what you pay for.
It also contributes to the hysteria about making the “right” choice!

Is the education at selective privates so superior? Do those schools really attract better professors? They must attract strong students, and won’t a kid be better off surrounding himself with such students? And those students, along with those professors, will likely have an impact on the choices made during the college years, which will in turn affect life choices.

On the other hand, I read a commentary a while back by a dad who had gone to an affordable urban college of little prestige/selectivity. He claimed he never would have met such a diverse group of students if he had attended one of what he referred to as the “name” colleges. He learned so much from the friends he made, he said. They were hard workers, most had to hold jobs to pay tuition, they represented various ethnicities and backgrounds, and they opened his eyes to a world much bigger than his somewhat privileged suburban upbringing allowed.

And the classroom education he got netted him a big-time professional career to boot.

Now who wouldn’t want that for their kid? Wow!

Recommendations

One of the college admissions deans we met with over the summer suggested to Hans that he “pop in and say hello” to his high school guidance counselor as a way of building that relationship. That’s when it hit me that colleges really don’t have a clue about the mega high schools.

Did that admissions dean really believe that an overworked guidance counselor really has time to get to know a kid by his popping his head in? I guess he doesn’t know about the secretary who takes appointments, or the quick fix walk-ins available on Wednesdays only. Really, if you don’t have a problem, don’t bother them. They are busy.

I guess they don’t know that guidance counselors are in abysmally short supply; doing the best they can with an average 500 students each, of which some 235 are seniors.

So, to provide recommendations to colleges, a student must arrange a 45-minute “get-to-know-you” meeting with his assigned counselor. Hans had his the other day. He said it went “all right,” with his counselor ostensibly interviewing him about his interests and activities outside the classroom.

We won’t see what she writes as she fills out evaluation forms on Hans, but somehow she will have to rate him on “personal qualities and character” in comparison to other students, along with comparisons on academic achievement, and extracurriculars. She will be required to come up with “the first words that come to mind to describe this student,” and will have to note, “how long she’s known this student.” After she’s written the narrative, which is a “broad-based assessment” about him that includes a “description of academic, extracurricular, and personal characteristics,” I hope she fills in the “Enthusiastically” circle next to the recommendation choices.

She might as well, because she doesn’t know him.

Teachers, on the other hand may know their students pretty well. Unless you’re one of the independent spirits. Like Hans.

With both of my boys, conferences were always a meeting in which the teacher would comment that my boy was so quiet, they had a hard time getting to know him. Sometimes an English teacher would comment on writings, expressing surprise that he had so much to say, and were capable of saying it so well. “He really should speak up more in class,” I’d be told.

So how well can a high school teacher really get to know a reserved student in order to provide a valid recommendation? Hans deliberated long and hard over which two teachers he should approach for recommendations. He settled on his A.P. World History teacher from three quarters in junior year, and a wonderful Advanced Writers Workshop teacher he had only one quarter, again from junior year.

What will they write about? Hans supplied them with a couple of guidelines about his interests, and they do have the option with three of the colleges to fill out an evaluation form from the Common Application. But I wouldn’t be surprised if both teachers were a little taken aback to see the request from Hans. As his Art teacher who had him in her class parts of all three years said to me, “Hans seems to be coming out of his shell this year. He’s so hard to get to know.”

Lucky for Hans that he’s a good student, producing creative, intelligent work, and getting A’s for it. But what, oh what, will be those first words that come to mind to describe him, from those who barely know him?