Is the 'push' mentality warping higher ed?

Michael Newton ran the marathon.

Not the 26-mile kind, but the years-long race for admission to a big-name university. Working around the clock for top marks at a New York prep school, he also mentored local schoolchildren, met with a tutor to gear up for the SAT, and honed snappy essays for his college applications.

The long hours paid off. Dartmouth College, an Ivy League school that selects fewer than 1 in 4 applicants, admitted him in 2000. Mr. Newton became one of "the winners."

Typical of a new generation of pressed-for-success American kids, Newton did all the right things to win admission at the top. But that doesn't mean he endorses the process. On the contrary, he believes the cradle-to-high-school competition for admission to the Ivies threatens to ruin something he loves dearly - college-level learning.

"I played the game, and it worked out for me really well, but I feel grossed out by it," says Newton, now a junior majoring in government. "I think there's a real negative impact on college. Kids aren't as prepared for college as they could be, because they spent the last four years playing the admissions game. They might be able to write a mean admissions essay, but that's different from a 30-page research paper."

One thing Newton prides himself on is his integrity. He says he never participated in a high school activity just because it might look good on his college application.

But that motive is enticing to many, and the urge to mold themselves into perfect applicants can follow them into college, changing - some would say warping - their perspectives on education.

One of the first casualties is the love of learning, Newton and others say.

Students may simply see college as a time to accumulate credits and grades for graduate school or their future career, tossing aside a deeper exploration of subjects as inefficient.

Educators are also concerned that the pressure students feel from parents, peers, or themselves sometimes just keeps building until it undermines their mental health.

Gerald Smith, a professor and adviser at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., tells of a young man who scored a perfect 1600 on his SAT but lasted less than a year at the liberal-arts school: "Even though he made straight A's that first semester, he came to my office sobbing. He didn't know who he was, what he wanted to do, and was never taught to think outside the box."

Twenty years ago, students who tuned their young lives to a perfect pitch for admission to a Top 10 college were still an unusual breed. Not anymore. Harvard now sometimes turns away more valedictorians than it admits.

The competition intensified in the 1990s, driven in part by college marketing and the emergence of rankings such as those in US News & World Report. More parents had the money to sign up their kids for private schooling, tutors, and college consultants. With bulging 401(k) plans, they became more intent on "the best" and less deterred by $30,000 annual price tags.

That "Ivy League or bust" mind-set may be softening as the economy weakens, but you wouldn't know it from the continuing avalanche of applicants to the University of Pennsylvania. The admissions staff must scrutinize each applicant's file to distinguish the "average outstanding" student from the truly amazing.

"It is possible to detect when there is genuine passion," says Lee Stetson, dean of admissions. "When something seems out of place and the student's application is too glossy, it can yield the opposite of the intended effect."

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