For seniors, the months of July to December signal the hassle of logging onto the Common App and submitting supplemental essays in a flurry. With the immense weight of having to make a decision that would determine the rest of their lives, high school seniors drown under the stress during these months. In recent years, the increasing competitiveness of getting into top-tier colleges has led to toxicity, ironically leaving students more burnt out and unsure of what they really want to do in life.
The deadlines for college applications force high school seniors to chase time. Most students begin their applications in July or early August, allowing them approximately two months to meet early decision/action deadlines and five months to meet Regular Decision deadlines. Seniors juggle applications with work hours and symptoms of senioritis, leaving them more burnt out than ever. Not to mention the depth of these college applications. As most essays require deep reflection of students’ lives and passions, students spend hours just introspecting, which in itself requires immense energy and time.
However, 17-year-old students usually do not have their lives in place. They are unsure of what they want to do and have spent the majority of their lives under their parents’ guidance. It is humanly impossible to craft a ‘perfect’ college essay that both encompasses the dense lives of students and their entire persona. Many students scrape up last-minute passion projects and reflections to create something that would please the admission officers.
The ‘modern’ college application is derived from the early 20th century, when Columbia University first introduced personal detail questions about one’s religious affiliation, photo, and family background (The New York Times). At first, the questionnaires were merely to see beyond a student’s test scores and grades and to find a perfect ‘fit’ for their school. Colleges wanted to see real interest in their institutions and the personal qualities of their students.
In the modern era, this idea has evolved drastically as many parents and students worldwide dream of an Ivy League college due to its prestige. In the pool of tens of thousands of applicants, top-tier colleges are forced to look for something unique. This creates the notion among students that one has to cure cancer or fly to space just to have a chance of being considered for an Ivy League college.
For competitive students, everything they do during their early years revolves around the college they want to attend. From playing sports and learning a niche instrument to founding businesses and interning at top companies, students do everything in and out of their power to become competitive candidates.
This also led to the development of college consultants. These consultants help students with everything from high school course planning to finding extracurricular activities in the student’s interests, and essay coaching. However, there have been especially many ethical concerns that revolve around essay coaching.
The issue of college consultants writing students’ essays has always been persistent, but everyone seemed to have agreed to turn a blind eye to it. College coaches exist to offer students a helping hand along the way, to augment their passions into something tangible that colleges can verify. However, instead of simply offering guidance to students’ essays, some coaches entirely craft or fabricate their students’ stories. By completely disregarding a student’s personality and life experiences, these essays distort the purpose of the college application process: whether to find a perfect fit for a college or to get in with a fake persona.
A major concern is also the discrepancy that college consulting creates between students based on wealth. Wealthier students can pay for higher-quality college consultants, giving them an unfair advantage in being admitted to colleges. Instead of honestly reflecting and writing about themselves, affluent students can simply pay their coaches to fabricate something colleges would like to see.
This creates an ongoing dilemma. As the percentage of students attending college increases year after year, college admissions are bound to become increasingly competitive. The college application process should be a time for a student to reflect on their experiences and choose a school that will best aid them in achieving their life aspirations and prospects. However, instead of its positive intentions, the college application process has become toxic, simply adding to the burnout and uncertainty in high school students.
