THE BRIDGE TO COLLEGE
The Emotional Rollercoaster
By Robert A.G. LeVine
It happens every year, to everybody. The admissions season will put you on an emotional rollercoaster that won’t stop its end. The entire family – not just the student, but also the parents – needs support.
Nobody believes how bad it will be until the end of the ride, by which time you’ll be seasick. Please read the story of Liz’s mom – her tale of confidence, stress, anxiety, doubt and pain – as told by her emails to me.
It all started before admissions season, when I cautioned both Liz and mom not to apply to too many Ivy+ schools. Those applications require more work, and their uber-competitive admissions require more focus and effort. It was January of grade 11, months before the admissions season really began, and mom kept sending me emails about how Liz was developing her online magazine, organizing new events, leading the class in multivariable calculus, and building her resume in great ways. “Terrific!” I said, knowing that I would have to temper the enthusiasm because the strongest applicants all do similar things.
When we started discussing potential colleges, mom’s overconfidence started to show. “Liz’s school has a very good reputation. Every year, a good number of students get admitted to top 10 universities, so you shouldn’t worry about safety schools.” Uh-oh….
As Liz started essay writing, neither mom nor Liz loved her Personal Statement for the Common App. But we have a process, and as we progressed, they did come to love that essay. However, when Liz’s MIT essays were being written, mom was again unsure. “I really like the Personal Statement, but how can we make the MIT essays better?” When those essays were finally finished, mom’s response was, “Wow!”
Confidence now restored, mom turned back to Liz’s list of schools. “Columbia is definitely a school we should consider applying to, and I also think Princeton should be on the list.” So far, the list would include MIT, Columbia, Princeton … and other top schools too. I could feel danger lurking.
Just days later, the ups and downs returned, and mom was spiraling. “As time goes on, I’m still feeling a bit nervous about Liz’s college application process. Do you think her SAT might be a concern? She has not received an interview from MIT. Perhaps Liz should consider adding a few more schools to her list. What about UPenn? I understand the principle of focusing on a few well-suited schools, but I also wonder about the idea of casting a wide net.”
When people are anxious, it’s hard to convince them that “more” is not “better.” Liz was already intent on also applying to Stanford, and Harvard too, but mom kept looking for more Ivy+ schools, wondered about Yale and Georgetown and what about Swarthmore?
My response was what I’d said in the beginning: more is not better. “We discussed Swarthmore, but given the number of reach schools Liz preferred, I don't see the need to push her any more than necessary. We recommend trying for only 3-4 of those kinds of reaches, but Liz did 7 – MIT, Columbia, Harvard, Georgetown, Princeton, Stanford, plus other schools. You can see how hard it's been to keep your daughter doing her best work. It's overwhelming. Adding another would just distract her and lower the chances of admission.”
Once the applications were completed, the sailing felt smoother, but waiting for admissions decisions is awful, especially for parents. “Bob, based on your past experience, how strong is Liz's package for a top school?”
Then the decisions started coming in. “Bad news, Liz got rejected by Northeastern.” Then came “Liz was rejected by MIT today and waitlisted at CMU.” Followed by “Unfortunately, Liz was rejected by Georgetown.”
I held a Zoom call just to check on Liz, who obviously had been crying nonstop and could barely speak. For her part, mom tried to keep a brave face, but her pain was evident. “In the grand scheme of life, college admission results may not matter much, but at this moment, they feel incredibly important. We are all so deeply invested in the outcome. I just want to ask—is there something wrong? Why is it all rejection?”
Maybe because they grabbed too many gold rings? But then came some good news:
“Liz got accepted to Vanderbilt!!!”
Followed by “Great news! Columbia!”
Today, the family is extraordinarily happy, but the same grades and SAT score and resume and recommendation letters led to very different outcomes. To obtain your best results, give yourself the opportunity to do your best work.
(And be ready for a bumpy ride.)
Robert LeVine is the founder and CEO of University Consultants of America, an independent educational consultancy assisting students around the world with applications to colleges, universities and graduate schools. For more information, call University Consultants of America, Inc. at 1-800-465-5890 or visit www.universitycoa.com
FAMILY MATTERS
Communities and Milestones
By Anu Verma Panchal
A few months ago, I had the good fortune to stand by my parents’ side as they celebrated a significant milestone, their golden anniversary. One of my favorite parts of the event was that in addition to uncles, aunts and cousins, we had with us their closest friends, the extended “framily” that had helped my parents recreate a sense of home and family when they were thousands of miles away from the place of their birth.
Circa 1980, with a toddler and 6-year-old in tow, my parents moved to a little town in Zambia called Kabwe. They knew no one and nothing about this new country beyond my dad’s offer letter and one phone call with a relative who had once lived in Africa.
But on their very first evening, there was a knock at the door. It was a young Malayalee couple with two little boys our age. Hearing that a new family from Kerala had arrived, they had stopped by to welcome us. From that one introduction, my parents were immediately absorbed into a group of friends.
The same thing happened every time we moved towns. The news of our impending arrival reached before we did, and we were pulled into existing Malayalee social circles. Our weekends were spent at each other’s houses, uncles in safari suits swilling whiskey, aunties in sarees holding deafening conversations while we ran around and played. As the years passed, my parents grew into the veterans who welcomed new families and organized the elaborate cultural events that gave the community a sense of home away from home.
And all around town – and across the South Asian diaspora – others were doing the same thing. In Tamil, in Bangla, in Hindi, they created communities that served a familial function for each other. Community building seems to be in our genes. Or, as a friend once told me, “We’re like goats ... we can only travel in packs.”
During the college years and in my early 20s, plugging into the local desi community was nowhere close to being a priority; in fact, I reveled in the freedom from it. It was irritating, even, to see the insularity that I imagined permeated those associations. Why move to another country and only hang out with the same people? Why not at least try to assimilate?
It was only when I became a parent that I found myself searching, maybe even yearning, for some small level of connection. I wanted my daughters to learn Bharatanatyam like I had, wanted them to celebrate Hindu holidays and go to the temple occasionally. Does that mean that I want my communities to be restricted by ethnicity, language or religion? Certainly not. I am blessed with close “framily” from many backgrounds, and I enjoy Gasparilla as much as I do Onam and Navaratri.
Yet I am grateful for the generations who came before we did and established everything from the Tampa India Festival to the India Cultural Center so that we now have the option to dip a toe, an ankle or our whole selves in cultural life if we so desired.
A week before my older daughter was due to leave for college, I took her on one of our habitual visits to the Hindu temple here in Tampa. By a happy coincidence, the pujari on duty that day was the same one who had presided on the day that we had taken her on her first temple visit when she was a 6-month-old baby. “You’re the one who carried her to the front of the room when she was born, and now she’s starting college,” I told him. He beamed. “Look at that!” he marveled.
Look at that indeed. That kind of continuity doesn’t just happen. It’s the result of hard work from a lot of people who came before us, many of whom we’ll never even know. The roots they put down gave us the luxury to pick and choose how much we want to hold on to, because some variation of it has been preserved here for us.