<p>Not student unions in the student government sense … but of a different sort. </p>
<p>It struck me that a lot of the large state schools that are safeties have fairly good staff among the mediocre ones; it surprises me how brilliant and capable a lot of my professors are at the local university I’m currently dual-enrolled at. Of course when I first had them I didn’t even know how accomplished they were – until I talked to some of my high school teachers who had them when they were dual-enrolled too, and you hear a teacher recall how one of your rather humble-looking professors is a well-published mathematician in her heyday.</p>
<p>The thing that isn’t as exciting for the non-prestigious schools, I believe, is the lack of adequate peers, in addition to the lack of prestige. It struck me that there are apparently many eminently capable students, but not enough suitable schools to take all of them. Sure it’s not the end of the road to attend unprestigious school X with an average SAT score of 510, but you wonder if you’d really have fun with your peers. </p>
<p>It is a bit of a fantasy, but it strikes me it is the applicants that make the school, and often the top faculty of most schools (I’m excluding CC’s from the generalisation, but it’s well possible for them too) are otherwise well-equipped to receive bright and capable students. What makes the prestigious schools good? They forge a continuous culture, in a sense, that later on translates into prestige over time. And maybe they’re rich and can afford to fund large-scale research programmes – but this isn’t a huge obstacle as I will explain later (safety schools have the advantage of far lower tuition). </p>
<p>If you haven’t realised what I’m leading to already, is that any applicant pool to a prestigious school already has the power to empower themselves. What if the 2000 eminently capable people who got rejected from their dream school all decided to enroll at say, an arbitrary state university (that is at the center of the population mass?) They, the 2000 applicants were attracted to that school for many of the same reasons and the willpower to form a powerful subculture; some schools’ power lie not in their faculty or the facilities, but their culture and their students.</p>
<p>Bright and capable students, when properly organised, can turn ANY decent school into one of prestige. Why do the current schools enjoy prestige? The best students keep applying to them – naturally they stay at the top. I argue that these best students can collectively apply to some arbitrary state school and still receive most of the benefits of having applied to their dream school.</p>
<p>What happens when 2000 bright and capable students who are Ivy-League material enroll at a sufficiently large safety school? They will transform that school – properly organised they will effectively create an equivalent of a revolution in that school. You will also be certain that the administration of that school will not hesitate to take advantage of the opportunity – if you are missing facilities, missing staff – they will come; other academics and future employers will notice this capable group of new students, and other schools would hesitate less to facilitate a new cross-interaction programme. Many of the benefits of that prestigious school will be recreated.</p>
<p>Bright students who didn’t fare well in the admissions process, when diluted across the mediocre schools of the nation, have little power; but when properly organised and coordinated, can turn tradition on its head. Prestige will come especially when you are recognised as the group that collectively took initiative.</p>
<p>Bright and capable students of CC, stop being slaves to the system: organise and empower yourselves. YOU are the source of power to the colleges. It is YOU who supply the colleges prestige. YOU have the power to instead, empower yourselves. In the face of an ever more unreasonable and artificial college application culture, YOU must realise that the power to change the admissions process collectively lies in YOU, if only YOU would organise.</p>
<p>(After an extremely close shave with the entire process I feel obliged to post this; many people will of course be admitted to their top choices – but it is for those that will not that this is my suggested remedy. It is not for the current class and I hardly expect for it to be tried out in the near future – but is my belief it is the only way to turn the admissions process from its current [bad] direction.)</p>
There’s a bit of positive feedback involved – schools end up being good because they attract good students, based on reputation. Why not the good students just organise to choose common school to go together?</p>