College Bound

I’d like to share some advice with you about that annual rite for all college-bound high school seniors - the College Readiness Application Process, or “CRAP.”  As a proud father of a high school senior, I’ve just spent twelve months in this process, and I hope you’ll learn from my journey as you contemplate your child’s life after high school.  My four-point plan is filled with nuggets of insight sure to make your experience as rewarding as mine.

Step 1: The List

You’ll quickly learn this quest starts with a solid list - everyone loves a good list.  Friends, strangers and family members will stop at nothing to find out about your list of schools, share theirs and ponder other people’s.  “What’s his list like? All private, I bet.”  “How many schools are on your list because eleven’s not enough.”  “Did she really add that to her list?  With those grades?”  Accept the fact that everyone else’s list is more balanced (“She has nine below the Mason-Dixon and nine above!”), more realistic (“Commuter Clown College of Topeka is his second choice, just after the Sorbonne”), and more enlightened (“Their STEM-infused curriculum will encourage my child’s love of nano-technology and hands-on research with a great weight room and a Smoothie Bar!”).  List Envy becomes a very real thing when you’re immersed in CRAP.

Step 2:  The Mailings

Based on a few checked boxes and preliminary test scores, your child will receive endless amounts of information.  For the next six months, you’ll see handfuls of pamphlets, packages, brochures and postcards arrive week, all with enthusiastic messages, like “Join Us!”  “Your Future Awaits!”  and, “Worcester’s Not That Bad!”  One college in Miami asserted, “Every day feels like summer on our campus,” with photos of students everywhere but the classroom, while a religious university in Langhorne, PA provided just four adjectives – “Authentic.  Wise.  Godly.  Professional,” with an action shot of what appeared to be a young woman getting a failing grade on her Deacon Duties quiz.  We learned abolitionists founded Bates College and that Skidmore College has an unlimited postal budget.  Its 30-page booklet extolled the virtues of Skidmore’s program in Samoa and Ho Chi Minh City with images of oddly handsome professors, lithe performers and sprightly athletes, and I wondered if we should skip college and just reserve a family vacation in Saratoga Springs now. 

 

We piled all the collateral in one big mound, and the mail continued.  SIU Carbondale admonished our son to apply early, Ave Maria University bragged about its “300 days of sunshine,” and St. Thomas Aquinas College shared just three simple words - “Best.  You.  Ever.” “This. Is. CRAP.” is the ideal internal response to such clever sales pitches.

Step 3:  The Visits           

Lists and mailings in hand, it’s time to head out for campus visits, those mid-week pilgrimages to schools too close for a flight and too far away to avoid the shouting match on the New York Thruway when the Andy Capp Hot Fries and Mountain Dew lead to air quality issues in the rented Altima’s back seat.  We chose the hottest days of the summer for Step 3 so we could experience this CRAP for all it was worth.  We saw school after school in the searing mid-Atlantic heat, each campus tour guide melding into a single sweaty, smiling, toothy, over-confident amalgam, answering such lofty questions as “Do you have WiFi on campus?,” “The laundry machines take quarters, right?” and “Where’s the library?” If you’re really smart, you’ll throw caution to the wind and visit schools whose offering are a mystery to you and your child.  On one visit, we joined scores of families for an overview from the Admissions office.  At the conclusion of the presentation, the speaker announced, “Anyone who wants to see the Engineering school, stand up and head this way!”  Everyone rose and ambled out, leaving only us and two other families to wonder when the Humanities golf cart would take us to the Grammar Lab. Oh CRAP indeed!

Step 4: The Payment Plan           

This process doesn’t end until you prepare to pay for college, the best part of the entire experience.  Your child will get in somewhere, and you’ll grasp that between the Best Yous Ever and the smiling religious flunkies in Langhorne, you never asked about cost.  Take my advice and start looking at the many scholarship opportunities that await you by the hundreds.  How about Italians with low incomes?  Or golf caddies with good grades in the greater Nashua area?  Kids with digestive impairments or ham radios?  Adopted children, future farmers, feminists or vegans, apply now!  Having the right profession increases your child’s chances for found money immensely.  If you work at the KFC drive-thru, at an A&W Burger stand, as a prison guard, for a US airline, a table grape field worker or an illegal alien in the greater Seattle-Tacoma area, your child can apply for and earn anywhere from $1000 to $5000 towards college.   

Arizona blacksmiths, sheep shearers, soldiers in the 4^th Infantry Division or sufferers of Black Lung rejoice!  Wake your college-bound children from their mid-morning slumber and start applying!  Well-intentioned committees await your child’s application and essay – and in some cases, proof you’re not allergic to wool. 

 

Left-handed students and kids who love animals, duck calling, sober driving or Amish Furniture or who can write 500 words about the wonder of medical devices (“An Ode to My Uncle Ezra’s Corrective Sandals”), safe driving, intellectual property, gun ownership or the joy of The Bill of Rights can win cash money for their education.  There are even scholarships for a slavish devotion to Ayn Rand, duct tape, Jane Austin or Bruce Lee, which sounds like a set-up for a really filthy joke (“So Bruce Lee walks into Mansfield Park with a copy of The Fountainhead in one hand and a roll of electrical tape in the other . . . “).

Sadly, as I dove headlong into the scholarship hunt, I learned this piece of the process would go nowhere.  Suggest to my son he make a three-minute video about a love of math?  Explain he can win $250 to conduct “extensive primary and secondary research on a topic related to legislative reform”?  Earn $100 for the Cumberland Farms Believe and Achieve Scholarship by writing an essay?  Do they pay out in scratch-offs?  Blowing a hundred bucks on lottery tickets seems a more prudent strategy than begging him to wax poetic on the importance of a vibrant domestic transportation industry (“Sitting in traffic on 93 North was when I knew I wanted to go to college to major in hovercraft design . . . “)                  

My hopes for a hidden scholarship were flushed away with the reality of my son’s apparently generic attributes, but this four-step process really did work.  He’s into a great school, the mailings have tailed off and although we can’t afford college tuition, we can pay for it.  And if this CRAP taught me anything, it’s that college is worth every penny, even in Worcester –at least that’s what the brochures said.