“Are you ready to be impressive?” Well, sure, I thought, snapped by the question out of a mail-sorting trance. I’d been standing at the kitchen counter, mindlessly opening envelopes of which there seemed to be more than usual. Without paying much attention, I’d been ripping and skimming: No, I didn’t want another Visa card. No, we already have car insurance. Blah, blah … oh, but yes, I want to be impressive. I do!
Alas, that piece of mail from Goucher College was not intended for me. Neither were the letters from Fordham University, St. Mary’s College, Wake Forest, Northeastern, Providence College, or the University of Chicago. Nor were the ones from Columbia University, Davidson, the University of Miami or those in the stack still waiting to be opened.
Almost overnight, as if someone, somewhere, silently pulled a trigger, great waves of mail have begun hurtling through the postal system toward households like ours that contain college-bound high school juniors.
“As a bright student with many talents and interests …”
“… You will have the academic choices and intellectual freedom …”
“If you’re looking for a college that challenges you on every level …”
The pitch of the letters varies from warm to jaunty to obsequious – though, it must be said, the more prestigious the institution, the cooler the tone. A small Southern school hopes to win “a talented student like you.” A large Northern school dryly observes that, “you may be competitive for admission.” Note the “may.”
All contain “action” elements in the hopes of fostering a sense of connection. Your child is given special passwords to log in to the school’s Web site, as if he already belongs.
Schools are wildly keen to send by return mail a guide to some aspect of the mystifying college-admission process. Please, no postage necessary! Rollins College offers “Insiders’ Tips About Getting Into College,” Wake Forest University hopes to send your student a guide to “13 Signs of a Top College,” Mount St. Mary’s presents, “7 Insider’s Secrets of Selecting the Right College,” and Goucher will send “Four Steps to Acceptance” if your son or daughter is ready to be impressive.
It’s all rather fun, this ambuscade, but wow is it intense. A friend’s son who began the application process last year had the foresight to set up a separate e-mail address for college love letters. He stopped counting after 3,000.
And flattering as it may be for a student and his parents, for him to be wooed so ardently, there’s also something unsettlingly indiscriminate about it. This is not real love based on the rare and beautiful qualities of any particular teenager, after all, but expensive marketing built on the cruder mechanism of the scores and rankings he achieves — and the tuition he may pay.
Still, why not enjoy it? We parents of high school juniors can surely get a certain vicarious pleasure from the cascade of academic billets doux. They’ll certainly make opening the mail a lot more amusing for the next little while.
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column appears on Sunday and Thursday. She can be contacted at [email protected].
