Selling a School

Around campus, it seems as if everyone’s talking about the same thing: College. With mere minutes before the May 1st decision deadline, I find myself feeling a bit nostalgic. The college process isn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination. Indeed, for an entire year (and maybe more for particularly motivated students), the senior class of 2009 has written application after application, waited for decisions, faced disappointments and victories, all while trying to find the perfect “fit.”

It’s an impossible task, really. The monumental pressure we put on ourselves to go to the best school is enough to make even the brightest of minds break.

As Phillips Academy students, we actively go into the college process knowing that it’s a lot of work, knowing that it’s one huge potshot, knowing that it’s just a numbers game for admissions officers. And yet, many kids seek the Ivy League acceptances with a fierce determination and a focused gaze. In fact, at Phillips Academy, many kids apply to terrific schools they don’t even like; they just want to see if they can get in.

How do Andover students choose which schools to apply to? Is it based on a generic formula where kids only apply to the colleges or universities that are right for them?

Call me cynical, but I’m sure it’s not. High achieving students are sold from the time they complete first grade that the best schools are in the Ivy League or in U.S. News and World Report’s Top 25 colleges. They’re gift wrapped and packaged as the places where the best of the best attend. People are told they have the best facilities and the best teachers. Graduates supposedly lead the best lives and have the best jobs. Right?

Not necessarily. But this is the idea that is generated by the Ivy League hype machine. Through brochures and packets and artfully designed websites, we’re fed an image and a name rather than any substantial information about a specific college. Everything on these college websites has a glossy, plastic feel. I wouldn’t be surprised if the actual college experience is nothing like what the brochures tell you about.

You don’t have to look at colleges to see the advertising of education in action. In fact, examples are close to home. Just visit andover.edu.

The redesign of Phillips Academy’s website features a faux-parchment heading and student spotlights reveling “insightful” comments into life at Andover. As an actual Andover student, the entire site reeks of inaccuracies; life on Andover Hill is nothing like the descriptions on andover.edu that have an eerie, “Stepford” quality about them. In fact, I know many of the featured students on Andover’s website, and they aren’t nearly as perfect or content as that website might make them seem.

But the thing is, schools aren’t trying to accurately portray campus life. They’re trying to sell a prepackaged, processed, homogenized product.

When we fall in love with a school, are we attracted to the actual experience or are we hypnotized by the rose-colored ads? Probably the latter of the two. After all, wouldn’t it be nice to believe that the ads depict the campus in its actuality?

With May 1st almost here, I wonder if my own college choice was based on truth or a mirage that ad companies have created over the years. I feel that I’ve done my homework. I’ve emailed people, read reports and reviews, watched videos on each school’s programs. But I could have just scratched the surface, missing the actual essence of a school.

But that’s the beauty of these ads. How could you ever know?