The Electronic Lowdown on Colleges

By Michelle Slatalla

The New York Times

March 9, 2006

LET me say from the outset that my college-bound daughter has never won an Olympic medal for speed skating.

And even if she had, she could cross Harvard off her list.

Across America this is how parents of high school juniors are thinking.

We live in a time when the competition to get into a good college is so stiff that Harvard deferred the application of Joey Cheek, the Olympic speed skating champion, who won a gold this year. We read that the credentials of Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, a onetime Taliban envoy, were only enough to get him admitted to a nondegree program at Yale and that Manhattan toddlers are applying to "safety" preschools, and we wonder if there is any hope.

"I'm so glad we didn't encourage her interest in snow sports," my husband said. "She's way better off making documentaries."

My daughter stands on the threshold of the college application process. Before her is a rich landscape of possibilities — nearly 2,200 four-year colleges and universities, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education — to sift through to find the right fit.

This would be a daunting undertaking for most 16-year-olds, even if the terrain weren't littered with the shellshocked bodies of all the seniors they know, who are still recovering from the trauma of retaking the SAT's six times and devising algorithms to calculate the relative probabilities of their being accepted during the early-decision round.

My daughter asked me the other day how I picked a college.

I told her I applied to two that didn't require an admissions essay and chose the one with the prettier campus.

"Any other advice?" she asked.

That's how she ended up on the Internet, visiting dozens of college and university Web sites, trying to discern their personalities. But instead of playing up idiosyncrasies, the sites sounded remarkably alike. It turned out that pretty much every campus in America has a clock tower, a historic brick building and a flowering tree under which students sit and read.

With nearly all of the 2,200 colleges and universities looking for students who exhibit creativity, curiosity or diversity, which they promised to nurture or encourage or challenge with new experiences, keeping them straight was daunting.

Far be it from a woman who was too lazy to write a college application essay in 1980 to dispense advice. But as a parent, I thought my daughter was going to need help to get through this process.

"Schools don't like it when the parents get involved," my daughter said, as she filled out online registration forms to request visits, interviews and campus tours of three Midwestern colleges.

"O.K., I'll stay out of it," I said. Then I sneaked off to my computer, where I secretly filled out the QuickFinder survey at Collegeboard.com to find perfect matches for her and paid ThickEnvelope.com $89.95 to predict her chances of being accepted at 10 highly selective colleges of "her" choice.

I also spent a couple of hours reading the posts on the discussion forums at Collegeconfidential.com. I was unable to tear myself away from the naked longing with which students discussed their chances of being accepted. ("I have a real hook," Harvard2011 wrote. "I'm from South Dakota and I'm from a low income family.") And with which parents discussed their children. ("Thanks for writing," momofthree wrote. "If S2 got such an e-mail, he has not mentioned it. I do know he has a complete file as his dad called to check!")

Eventually I found my way to Hernandezcollegeconsulting.com, run by Michele Hernandez, a former Dartmouth assistant admissions director, whose tell-all book "A Is for Admission" (Warner Books, 1999) described in intoxicating detail the obscure formula Ivy League schools use to evaluate applicants.

Now a college counselor specializing in fine-tuning applicants to top colleges and universities, Ms. Hernandez this year advised 15 clients who applied for early admission to Ivy League schools.

Fourteen got in.

I phoned her.

"I don't want to interfere," I said. "But this whole college admissions thing is stressful and crazy."

"It's crazy, but I try to take the craziness out of it," Ms. Hernandez said.

Then she rattled off statistics: "Harvard has had 22,000 applications so far this year, Yale over 20,000, Cornell, 28,000. It's crazy."

For the highly motivated Ms. Hernandez offers a costly four-day summer boot camp, which she describes as her cheapest option, during which she will oversee students as they complete applications and write essays early, so that during the fall semester of senior year they can concentrate on getting good grades.

"Did you say $8,200?" I asked.

"For the Santa Monica camp," she said. "New York is $7,800. For that they basically get most of what's in my junior package, which costs $22,000, except for weekly phone calls from me."

Or you could buy her book for $9.74. I did and found it crammed full of practical suggestions that any kid who's college material should be capable of highlighting in yellow. She covers how to prepare for college interviews, what not to write about in essays and how to make your application stand out from all the other valedictorians with perfect SAT scores who are on the verge of curing cancer.

Before she hung up, Ms. Hernandez recommended another Web site, Collegeprowler.com, which publishes and sells Off the Record guides in which students grade colleges in categories that range from the traditional, like Academics, to the more unusual, like Drug Scene and Nightlife.

"The missing ingredient from most guides is real students," said Christina Koshzow, the editor in chief of College Prowler. "This is the kind of information kids really want to know before they pick a college. Otherwise they're just learning what the school wants them to know from its brochure."

What kind of inside scoops do the guides reveal? Ms. Koshzow mailed a few for my daughter to evaluate.

"Dad, it says here that there are a lot of potheads at your college," my daughter said.

"That's true of all good liberal arts colleges," he said.

She thumbed through another guide. "Not this one." She read, " 'Not as many people do it as you think.' "

"Let me see that," he said. He read: "Health services. Condoms at 10 cents per condom."

I flipped through the guide to the university where my husband and I attended graduate school. "What are you most likely to get caught doing on campus?" I read.

"Drinking from an open container?" my husband guessed.

"Bingo," I said.

"Can we keep these?" my daughter asked.

Smart girl. Maybe some school will overlook the fact that she didn't attend a prestigious preschool.