Intensive College Admissions Prep course

treemaven
Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:17:12 +0000

Today my sophmore got a Princeton Review postcard in the mailing soliciting her to attend The Princeton Review College Discover Experience—“an intensive college admissions prep program” for rising juniors and seniors, supposedly now in its 42d year.

Gosh! for $3400-3500, she can spend two weeks living “on campus like a real college student” and "learn everything [she] needs to know about the college admissions process. She also can do essay writing workshops, ‘review key concepts with The Princeton Review’s renowned test preparation for the SAT and ACT’, and go on guided college tours.

Oh, goody! goody!

Having just been through a college admissions cycle with our older kiddo and trying to apply what we learned there to this second one, I must say I have come away very, very jaded about the racket that has grown up around college admissions. :(

First, the multiple taking of the SATs, the additions of the SATIIs, the expensive SAT prep course—most of which seems to me to obliterate the original purpose of the SAT (to determine some threshold basis of comparing students from different schools/states/systems–but perhaps I missed the whole original intent of the darn test). Nowdays, it appears that the purpose of the test is to line the coffers of The Princeton Review and the Collegeboard folks. The test is more about learning its tricks and “key concepts” than it is about displaying the innate abilities of the test taker. But, I digress.

NOW, are we suppose to buy into this expensive college admissions prep course, too??? Woe to the student that doesn’t invest in the SAT prep course. We’ve given in to that. We’ve even given in to applying to boo-koo colleges in the hopes of having one or two actual choices. But, now an admissions prep course!!!

Is that process rigged as well? Personally, I find this ridiculous. Why can’t the students simply fill out the admissions forms, present their best foot, have the guidance counsellors provide the academic-type support, and go from there. Why is this added layer of ‘admissions prep course’ being tolerated by the colleges----and the parents???

Give me the good ole days where we took either the ACT or SAT once, filled out the applications of the schools we were really interested in, received an acceptance (or not) and then went to school. Let’s see, cost of applying to college: one SAT or ACT test fee, two or three college application fees.

Jaded and naive,
treemaven

P.S. I know most of you are light years ahead of me on this college thing. But its all pretty new to me - - -and very frustrating. We haven’t been involved in this aspect of schooling for over 30 years, and we haven’t had