Spring college admissions- 4/6/2009
It seems as though spring has finally arrived – flowers, grass growing again, baseball, softball, lacrosse, spring break, longer hours of sunshine….. It also brings college admissions letters and an end to what has become an increasingly stressful process for many high school seniors and their families across the United States. While all of the decisions have not been collected yet, it appears that Herricks students again did quite well. The hard part, of course, is that even those who were admitted to top schools may not have been admitted to their first choices. Acceptances in general do not tell the frustrations and disappointments for individual students or the toll on most students and their families from the process itself. It is time consuming, stressful and can seem illogical.
As with my feelings about Herricks students in many areas, I have been deeply impressed with how well Herricks students handle the admissions process. They do what they have to and with a level of balance which is impressive.
The good news, as Jay Matthews of Newsweek noted when he came to Herricks, is that the quality of education offered at a great many undergraduate institutions in the United States has improved significantly over the past 25 years. The quality of education a student gets out of college is, in fact, far more dependent on what a student chooses to make out of the opportunities he or she is given than on the specific college that a student is attending. While some colleges are a better fit for a student than others, there are great opportunities at a larger and larger number of colleges. A college education is unique to each student and it can be great, mediocre or poor depending on what he/she chooses to make of it – the choices they made, the opportunities they took advantage of and how much of themselves they invested.
I hope that everyone enjoys the spring break, most especially the seniors and their families.
