Last summer I texted my son to tell him I was bringing home a copy of Colleges That Changes Lives. His reply, via text: “Shouldn’t all colleges change lives?”
I should end this post right here, because that says it all.
Nope. I can’t leave it alone, no matter how hard I try to not be one of Those Kinds of Parents. I can talk up a storm about SAT versus ACT, and I’ve been known to slip the phrase “reach school” into what you might think was a fairly normal conversation about your alma mater. Clearly book intervention is needed.
To help me keep things in perspective I checked out I’m Going to College … Not You, edited by Jennifer Delahunty, dean of admissions at Kenyon College. (Please note that I am resisting the urge to look up fields of study, professor to student ratio, tuition and acceptance rates at Kenyon.) Essays by parents – including authors Anna Quindlen, Jane Hamilton and Joe Queenan – are giving me the perfect mix of insight, humor and heartbreak, with occasional commiseration and a big dose of why it’s good to let go.
Before I hit this liberating point, I looked through many of the Library’s books on the college application process. Here are a handful of my favorites:
The Insider’s Guide to Colleges 2010: Students on Campus Tell You What You Really Want to Know by the Yale Daily News Staff. Probably of limited use, but still fun (for your student, of course) to read about dorm life and dining hall food. Oh, yeah – and classes.
Acceptance: A Legendary Guidance Counselor Helps Seven Kids Find the Right College by Dave Marcus. A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist follows a high school counselor working with kids to get beyond test score obsession and find what they really want. I found myself completely wrapped up in a couple of the kids’ stories.
College Unranked: Ending the College Admissions Frenzy, edited by Lloyd Thacker. The title says it all, with insight from admissions officers. Which leads us to:
Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz. Make no mistake: This is a novel. But the main character is an admission (no “s”) officer at Princeton and you feel her heartache whenever she has to squash an applicant’s dream. Another novel of note: Acceptance by Susan Coll.
To browse more, try the subject headings college applications and college choice. But don’t go there if you’re trying to ween yourself from the search. Otherwise you might be tempted by the forthcoming Crazy U: One Dad’s Adventures in Getting His Kid into College by Andrew Ferguson (coming in spring 2011). With blurbs by Christopher Buckley, P.J. O’Rourke and Christopher Hitchens, I couldn’t resist. Sounds like the perfect companion for our spring break college tour.
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