How Not to Impress an Elite College

Sometimes what families do to get into the nation's most elite colleges and universities makes me want to vomit.

The most recent example came last week when The New York Times, which seems to believe that its duty is to closely chronicle the anxieties of Ivy League worshippers, ran a front page (!) story about yet another way that wealthy teens are trying to finagle their way into the Ivies and other impregnable higher-ed fortresses.

The story shared that parents of rich teens are underwriting educational summer experiences -- I prefer to call them expensive vacations -- so that their kids can have fabulous things to write about in their college essays. The article mentioned students who spent the summer in places like China, Rwanda, the Caribbean and Italy studying such things as the Renaissance and the Ming Dynasty.

I have always been puzzled why families would think that these pricey global frolics or brief volunteer stints in Third World countries would impress colleges?

Admission Essay Turnoffs

At a recent college conference in Los Angeles, I asked an admission representative from the California Institute of Technology his opinion of these expensive educational trips that he saw on college applications. With few exceptions, he said that the only thing that these summer experiences proved was that the students' parents were rich. For those wondering what the exceptions are, he mentioned summer programs where it take more than money -- i.e. brains -- to get accepted, such as the Cosmos summer program offered at some University of California campuses.

What the Cal Tech representative was more impressed with, he told me, was when he saw a kid who worked at a job like McDonald's.

Don't you think it's sad when there are few kids applying to elite schools who have actually worked for minimum wage?

Lynn O'Shaughnessy is author of The College Solution, an Amazon bestseller, and she also writes her own college blog at The College Solution.

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