Under pressure: College hopefuls urged to follow their own paths

Published 5:00 am Sunday, October 3, 2010

HACKENSACK, N.J. — At the 20th Annual College Night at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Hackensack, N.J., eager families waited on line for a Harvard University alumnus and crowded around the Cooper Union table. The aisle of universities from Arizona to Scranton, Pa., was jammed and buzzing as more than 3,000 high school students and their parents flooded the event.

“Everyone knows what you need from Day One to get into college: rigorous course load, high SAT scores and extracurriculars,” said Dominick Gliatta, director of guidance at Mahwah High School. “Coming in from freshman year and beyond, students are already padding their resumes just for the end result of getting into college — this added pressure builds the competition and that just feeds the monster.”

Feeding the monster, indeed.

As the floor got more crowded, Francine Mintzer-Dolber and her son Eric Dolber, a graduating senior at Pascack Valley Regional High School, stopped to greet Goucher College admissions representative Kimberly Gordy and to let her know Eric’s application will be coming soon.

Away from the table, Eric said Goucher isn’t his first college choice, but he’s applying early action and feels comfortable with the small Baltimore school’s 85 percent acceptance rate.

“We learned from the first time with my daughter that we’re not making all the same mistakes again,” Mintzer-Dolber said “We’re looking at more liberal arts, smaller schools.”

Eye-opening process

For high school students and their families in the heat of the college application process, statistics and rejection stories abound. They can be daunting or motivating, but they are always eye-opening.

“Apply early — that was the best advice anybody could have given me, because a lot of colleges fill up their pool and it’s filled,” said Lisa Mazzella, a secretary in the guidance office at Pompton Lakes High School, who has a daughter at Marist College. “If you’re looking for a particular school and you think it might be difficult, I would say apply as early as you can.”

Ivy League schools routinely admit fewer than 15 percent of applicants, with Harvard’s acceptance rate less than 7 percent this year. Private college tuition costs are spiking over $50,000 annually. Under the headline “Acceptance rates DROP at highly selective schools,” the Huffington Post reported in April that the number of applicants to prestigious universities such as Princeton, Duke, Brown and the University of Pennsylvania jumped 20 percent for the 2014 graduating class.

Starting early

Jill Kravitz, president of the Parent Partnership Organization at Bergen Technical High School in Teterboro, N.J., has been working to help her son find the right college since he was a high school freshman.

“We’ve visited 27 schools; it’s an insane amount,” Kravitz said. “It was excellent that we started really early, in freshman year — the summer before sophomore year. I know it’s crazy to have seen so many schools but we learned something at each visit and at every information session.”

For Kravitz and her son, Adam Kirsch, starting early opened their eyes to the variety of options and a number of schools they might otherwise have overlooked.

“I really feel that wherever Adam goes will be the right place for him, and if he gets rejected somewhere, it’s for a reason,” Kravitz said.

Many paths

Guidance counselors and other professionals say they are trying to emphasize the following points for stressed-out parents and students: There is no single right school for anyone, parents must cede some control to the child and to fate, lifelong success is not predicated upon Ivy League admission and the best choice must suit a family’s financial limitations.

“Hopefully, people are starting to think outside the box,” said Larry Wolff, director of student personnel services at Glen Rock High School and coordinator of the college fair. “In changing economic times, people are hopefully looking at other kinds of opportunities.”

Patricia Saul, a clinical psychologist who works with adolescents and families in Allendale, N.J., urges parents to let their child follow his or her own path in the college application process and to let go of the idea that a name-brand college is the only choice, or even the most suitable one.

“Parents have so many unrealistic expectations,” Saul said. “We think that somehow our children are an exact and precise reflection of who we are as parents, which is nonsense. Clinically, what I do is I let the kid learn the lesson that they’re teaching themselves. I don’t try to stop them. Sometimes they have to learn that as much as they may want to go to Harvard or Princeton, they may also have to fully embrace that the school may not want them.”

Finding success

Nauman Ahmad, 15, a student at Bergen Tech, is taking Advanced Placement courses in calculus, physics and chemistry. He has his sights set on the Ivies but is also investigating alternatives. It may be early in the process, but not too early for him.

“I feel a lot of pressure,” Nauman said. “I’m an only child; I have to prepare for my future and for my parents’ future. Anxiety does have something to do with it because I see each and every year the competition gets harder and the scores go higher.”

His guidance counselor, Karen Rae Steele, tells Nauman what she tells all of her students and their parents: Find your reach schools, but don’t overlook less competitive schools.

“Apply to a school where your SAT scores are 100 points better than the average kid’s going to that school and your GPA is a point or half a point better,” Steele said. “You’ll be an honors student in that school, and you’ll have a good chance to get a merit scholarship.

“A happy kid is a successful kid,” she added. “Parents, you can’t live your dreams through your kids.”