the rix mix

Colleges seek 'authenticity' in hopefuls

If there's a sign of the times in college admissions, it may be this: Steven Roy Goodman, an independent college counselor, tells clients to make a small mistake somewhere in their application — on purpose.

"Sometimes it's a typo," he says. "I don't want my students to sound like robots. It's pretty easy to fall into that trap of trying to do everything perfectly and there's no spark left."

What Goodman is going for is "authenticity" — an increasingly hot selling point in college admissions as a new year rolls around.

In an age when applicants all seem to have volunteered, played sports and traveled abroad, colleges are wary of slick packaging. They're drawn to high grades and test scores, of course, but also to humility and to students who really got something out of their experiences, not just those trying to impress colleges with their resume.

Prove you really really wanna go to our school. Screw that. Humility? Yeah right, that's a quality colleges look for in a top scholastic or athletic prospect. It's the other 95%, the hoi polloi, that have to jump through hoops. All through grammar & high school they've been regurgitating facts & trying to parrot their teachers' views in reports & essay test questions, & now they're supposed to worry about their "authenticity," too? Some schools are just about being smart or talented enough to get in. All schools want to brag about the applicant to acceptance ratio. The problem is getting the potential student to actually enroll at the school. There are several thousand first rate, competitive colleges in America below the "elite" level, most of them small compared to public schools, most promoting themselves as more selective than they really are, touting their Princeton Review rankings ("Top 20 for Professors making themselves accessible."). No kid with a solid academic record should need to kiss or jive ass to get into them. Private schools not in the top tier ought to stop with the sincerity games & just offer discounted tuition to anyone they accept who puts down a nonrefundable deposit by April 1 for the Fall semester.