Taking aim at admissions anxiety

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Though just teenagers, the applicants to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are a scarily accomplished lot. They have started businesses and published academic research. One built a working nuclear reactor in his garage. In their high schools, they have led every extracurricular club and mastered the SAT.

But surprisingly few have done what Marilee Jones, who actually decides which one in seven MIT applicants gets in, thinks 18-year-olds ought to be doing.

Not many sleep eight hours a night, or eat three meals a day. Few spend time each day just staring into space.

And Jones is blunt about the consequences.

The quest for perfection "is making our children sick," the MIT dean of admissions told a recent gathering of college-admissions professionals in Boston. She means it literally, snapping off statistics on the increase in ulcers, anxiety disorders and control disorders such as cutting and anorexia.

"Kids aren't supposed to be finished," she said. "They're partial. They're raw. That's why we're in the business."

For years, high-school teachers and counselors have been complaining about the emotional and physical toll of the competition for slots in selective colleges. SAT prep classes and a race of extracurricular résumé building, they say, are draining the fun out of life for their students.

College officials have been slower to see it as a problem, though that may be changing. A group of presidents from prominent colleges has been talking behind the scenes about possible steps to "lower the flame" — to use the buzz phrase — surrounding college admissions. And Harvard made a surprise announcement Tuesday that it would eliminate its "early action" round of admissions, partly on grounds that it contributes to admissions anxiety.

Nine years as dean and the mother's-eye view she got of college admissions last year have convinced Jones something is wrong. From the surprising pulpit of a university famous for its overachievers, she has become perhaps the field's most visible and outspoken champion of revamping admissions.

"Nothing will change unless we get up, look ourselves in the mirror and say, 'I'm responsible,' " Jones told admissions colleagues. "We have to look ourselves in the eye and say, 'Am I an educator, or am I a marketer?' "

The answer may not be as easy as it sounds. A 2005 survey by consulting firm Noel-Levitz found the average four-year private college spends more than $2,000 to recruit each student it enrolls.

"The thing we see over and over again is how tired [students] feel, the extent to which they don't enjoy their senior year, which is supposed to be the big payoff of the high-school experience," said Rod Skinner, college-counseling director at Milton Academy near Boston.

Troubling trends

The issue hasn't always been at the top of Jones' agenda. A scientist, she was hired by MIT's admissions office in 1979 to help recruit more women, then just 17 percent of the student body. By the time she was appointed dean in 1997, that figure had grown to 39 percent.

Now, nearly half of MIT's incoming undergraduates are women, as is its president. But as that issue's urgency faded, Jones began noticing other troubling trends.

The phone calls from parents seemed more frequent — and pushier. And Jones grew increasingly worried about the applications that crossed her desk. The students were remarkably accomplished, but she worried the résumé rat race had quashed creativity. Would future MIT graduates make world-changing discoveries, she wondered, or merely execute the discoveries of others?

"You don't see the kind of wild innovation from individuals you used to see," Jones said recently.

MIT faculty told her many students weren't much fun to teach. The issue of perfectionism was brought painfully to the fore at MIT by a series of student suicides. Students "want to do everything right; they want to know exactly what's on the test," faculty told her. "They're so afraid of failing or stepping out of line that they're not really good students."

Meanwhile, Jones was starting to see college admissions — the mailings, the emphasis on activities, the pressure to apply early decision — through the eyes of her daughter.

"When she was in sixth or seventh grade, I was every bit as bad as the parents I'm talking about," Jones said. "Little by little, I started watching her get affected by that pressure, and I realized that that pressure came from me."

Can one person change the admissions game?

"She's probably a little bit more bullish than I am, a little more optimistic," said Tom Parker, dean of admissions and financial aid at Amherst College, who has spoken on a number of panels with Jones.

She probably won't convince many parents that it really doesn't matter which colleges accept their children. Nor will it be easy getting other colleges to tone down recruiting. Many struggle simply to fill classrooms and don't have MIT's luxury of a limitless talent supply. And even MIT's highly selective peers care about rankings.

But there are encouraging signs. Five years ago, she said, nobody wanted to hear her talk about overscheduling; people just wanted to know how to get into MIT. Now she gets 10 to 15 speaking requests a week.

Changing emphasis

At MIT, Jones has tried, at least, to change the tone.

On MIT's application, students are still asked about activities but there are fewer slots to list them, and there is less emphasis on awards and prizes. This year she's dropping the lines for students to list Advanced Placement exams so as not to signal any expectation.

One essay asks applicants to write about something they do simply for pleasure. Another asks applicants to talk about an experience where they found value in failure or disappointment.

Jones also rewrote MIT's guidelines to interviewers, telling them to look for a good match, not robots with résumés. She has told MIT's admissions-marketing company to stop sending material to high-school sophomores.

Jones hopes someday to see MIT make standardized tests such as the SAT optional for applicants.

This isn't to say Jones is dumbing down MIT. Intel Science Fair winners and other academic superstars still prowl MIT's campus, and average SAT scores are still through the roof. Few applicants outside the top 10 percent of their high-school class get in.

But Jones won't hesitate to reject an accomplished student if she doesn't think the personality and MIT fit each other. She's also set aside about 10 percent of precious admissions slots for people with some kind of spark that the system generally does not reward.

"There are 70 students in each class (of about 1,000) who would never have been admitted in the old days," Jones said. "They don't have to have a million activities. They don't have to have cured cancer. They just need to be the right match."