There’s a teenage kid
No matter what he did
Nobody ever understands
And he don’t measure up
And he’s had enough
Can’t be his daddy’s little man
So he pulls out that hot rod Chevy
Puts in his favorite cassette
He ain’t goin’ to no college
The world is waitin’ up ahead *
It's hard to believe it’s over 30 years since Bob McDill wrote those lyrics as part of the Leroy Parnell hit, On the Road—and while some of the references are dated (cassette tapes?), so much of it is still true today.
I’ve been thinking about that, as I complete year 40 as a college counselor. When I started, I saw what our work was doing for-- and, unfortunately, to-- so many students who weren’t at the top of the socio-economic heap. I remember chuckling to myself and thinking, well, all that will be fixed by the time I hang it up.
And then I went to my first College Board fall counselor update, the annual program that let counselors know what was new and exciting in SAT land. The presenter gushed, as she talked about how the SAT had been recentered, and was designed to better measure what it purported to measure. We then took a break, so I thought I’d let them know their message really hit home.
“Wow, it’s great to hear about the changes to the SAT.”
“Yeah” she said, warily.
“So, you can fix the cultural, gender, and racial biases in the test, and create a level playing field.”
She looked at me like I was the stupidest guy on the planet. “We’re not doing that” she scoffed. “If we did, there’d be no way to compare old SAT scores with new SAT scores.”
And that, my friends, is one of the major themes of the world of college counseling—we can’t change anything, because—well, we can’t.
The goal with some of the few changes (test-optional policies, college access organizations) was clear—to de-snootify college admissions. This is an uphill battle, since—let’s face it—there’s so much money and prestige involved in making college admissions an American caste system. It’s how The New York Times education section stays in business (its latest piece on college admissions in six words or less: Harvard is hard to get into); it’s how too many (and by no means all) independent consultants charge an average of $4200 per student; and it’s how test prep organizations guilt blue-collar families into paying way too much for a test they might not even need. The message is the same: College is about being one of them.
The funny thing is, I’ve tried to spend the better part of my career telling students—and many, many, many families—college isn’t about being one of “them”. College is about being more of yourself. College can help first-gen kids make more money, but it can also help them understand the world better, and maybe be more comfortable with the gifts they may have that make them remarkable—something that isn’t always embraced in our blue-collar world. College can help upper class kids find the grounding so many of them need, getting past who they think they are, or what their trust funds say they should be, discovering an air of authenticity we all long for.
That’s why I went into the field—so students could explore their college options, and see if it opened up avenues of identity. 40 years later, it could still be much better at doing that.
I may be at this for a while.
* from "On the Road" by Bob McDill © 1992 Bob McDill, PolyGram International Publishing, Inc. & Ranger Bob Music.
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