New York Parents Club Founder, Pam Wolf

Greetings New York Parents Club!

I’ve recently begun making the college rounds with my sixteen-year-old son, an experience I went through with my eighteen-year old daughter last year.

When in the thick of visiting campuses across the country, reviewing application expectations and feverishly researching acceptance odds at each university in consideration, I cannot help but marvel at how competitive the process has become.

There are basically three schools of thought when it comes to competition. Competition is:

·  healthy, necessary and character-building,
·  unhealthy, unnecessary and responsible for adversely affecting  our children’s self-esteem or
·  healthy or unhealthy contingent upon the situation.

Why has college competition become so vigorous? And can it possibly be healthy for our children?

I have to wonder when I read headlines such as “Families seek counseling for college stress.”  In fact, a recent education.com article tells the story with similar media headlines: “Colleges send record number of rejections; competition for admission soaring,” and “Student agony grows along with top colleges’ wait lists.”

Personally, I believe that a moderate level of healthy competition is necessary to prepare our children for life’s inevitable win/lose situations.  However, too much emphasis on winning and always “being and achieving the best” can lead children to tie their feelings of self-worth to external sources of affirmation. So it’s a good day when he or she wins the race, lands the lead in the school musical, sets the grading curve on a math exam or takes the trophy in a school spelling bee. But when they lose, they lose a bit of themselves.

It might surprise you to learn (as it surprised me) that the college competition driving media headlines is not due to the fact that prerequisites have gone up and/or we are running out of space for our growing population of eighteen-year-olds at all of our accredited four-year universities…it is due to the fact that our children are largely competing to win admission into around the same 100 schools; the ones perceived as the best.

As Bill Mayher, author of The College Admissions Mystique succinctly put it, “It’s hard for kids to get into colleges because they only want to get into colleges that are hard to get into.”

Your turn! What do you think?

Is competition healthy for our children?

If so, how early, how much and to what end?

LET IT OUT!

Pam Wolf