Has the college application system ever been worse? Here’s how to help your kid | Opinion

Summer is a temporary reprieve before high school seniors begin the agonizing process of applying to colleges, which then either admit or reject them in any number of ways. Few who have gone through the grueling ordeal think we do the “kids-go-to-college” thing right. The application process is increasingly chaotic and confusing, expectations are unrealistic and the experience can seem unfair.

From what I’ve personally observed, high school students apply to too many colleges. Why not? All you have to do is check one more box and pay an extra $50. I have watched a young person close to me claim to want nothing more than to go to college near the beach and then decide to apply to the University of Vermont. But though it’s a relatively small cost to the student to apply to different schools, it’s wasting time for everyone to process the application.

We must either somehow limit the number of applications, be forced to list all the schools being applied to or charge more for the application.

The College Board suggests students apply to five to eight colleges. I don’t know any college-bound seniors who applied for that few but apparently, they are out there. One study found that the average student applies to 5.8 colleges. But applications overall are up 30% in just four years; and 55% of all applications come from 20% of the nation’s most affluent zip codes.

My alma mater, the University of Southern California, sent out an announcement in late March bragging that they had “the most impressive class yet,” and that their admission rate hit a record low of 9.9%. Well, when 18-year-olds are just “taking a shot” at a tremendous number of schools, the denominator of that admissions percentage skyrockets and becomes a misleading statistic.

So why are kids applying to more and more schools? I think it’s because students and their parents don’t see the admissions process as providing any sort of standardization. Universities would clearly argue that they look at the “whole applicant” in the 15 minutes they spend looking at the application, yet every parent I speak with has a story of some academic decathlon gold medalist with a 4.7 GPA who is somehow not getting into a major university. Yet, shockingly, the student with the 3.6 GPA who was the assistant treasurer of the chemistry club is getting a full ride to the same major university.

In tax policy we argue that people who have the same income should pay about the same tax. That is vertical equity. People with higher incomes should pay more tax. That is horizontal equity. If we are now going to measure students by GPA without test scores, I don’t see too much vertical or horizontal equity in the current system. If two students have the same GPA, we see huge discrepancies in the universities they are accepted to.

As taxpayers, we deserve better explanations from universities on their admission processes. Billions of dollars are being poured into the university systems, and many parents hope their children will one day be able to take advantage of the state higher education system.

Though most people can agree that the university admission process is flawed, many folks have to agree that we, as parents, contribute to this mess. The social pressure of where their kid goes to college is becoming overwhelming. There are approximately 50 colleges in this country that are really hard to get into. After that, there are 500 great places to go to college. All of those places educate future astronauts, nurses, college professors, bank executives and Academy Award winners.

It is not uncommon today for many families to hire college admissions counselors and for parents to be the ones actually writing the essays while the student is mostly disengaged. None of this seems healthy or honest.

We would be far better served if we embraced learning for the sake of learning and guided youth to colleges and universities where they can thrive on a career path. We should ignore our competitive natures and give youth a healthier perspective on rejection and opportunities. More and more applications is simply not the answer.