Dear Admissions Officer

Reprinted from Wicked Local

The College Trail Editor's Comment: this parent typifies many who want only the best for their child, and who are always reaching for the right strategy, solution and people to talk to. The College Trail can help. Finding the right fit for your student when planning for college is important. There are many choices, but finding the right one takes time. Let us help guide you through the process.

North Andover -

Dear Admissions Officer…

Do you have room for a regular kid at your university?

With so much pressure to be the strongest, the fastest, and the smartest — or to make yourself appear so — is it okay to just be yourself, no phony vocabulary words or marketing strategies — is it enough?

I’ll bet the applicant pool is overflowing. With some kids making a big splash while others are just trying to keep their heads above water. I’d say it’s thickest in the middle — where my son likes to swim — but what if his goggles get kicked off and he stops swimming because he can’t see where he’s going?

I’m struggling with how to advise him through this college admissions process. “Be you, only better,” I tell him, but that doesn’t sound right.

Kids are on a relentless treadmill since their entrance into preschool at age 2 — parents setting expectations so high that they need tutors in everything from soccer to language — with even summer camps concentrating on college prep instead of sailing.

From noodle necklaces to college applications that look more like the resumes for mid-level executives — where’s it all going?

Competition has been brought to new heights (depths?). I cringe hearing parents reminding 10-year-olds how good this or that will look on their college applications.

Television has turned everything into a contest, from dating to adoption — in this voyeuristic world, have fame and/or notoriety become the ubiquitous career goals?

What about the kid who hides behind his hair a little but stays the course nonetheless?

How does one stand out in a world where standing out has become the rule rather than the exception?

It’s a shame you no longer offer personal interviews to prospective students –— I was hoping you’d get to look into my son’s eyes and hear the words come from his smile instead of trying to decipher his voice in all the electronically received data that is meant to tell you his story.

I know you’re looking for students with a hunger for learning — who have a drive to make a change in their community, the world. But I’m pretty sure my son hasn’t discovered these things about himself yet.

I was hoping you could help him with that.

I want so badly for him to have this opportunity. He doesn’t know yet what he wants, just that he’s supposed to want what I want for him.

Through the years of his education I’ve had to keep saying, “Your only job right now is to get on the honor roll. It doesn’t matter if you think you’ll never use French or quadratic equations — just get the grades that will open the doors. Be interested and interesting — the rest will fall into place someday.”

I’ve wondered if it counts for more if you say a thing over and over.

My son played trumpet for more years than he’d have chosen, participated on more sports teams than I can believe I got him to, volunteered at Special Olympics horse shows when it was the last thing he wanted to do all those Saturdays, runs in one road race every year with his sisters, Husky and me to raise money for Lazarus House, and climbs mountains all over this country every summer despite his own alternate big ideas.

He’s getting there, I believe. And though attending college is the culmination of his life’s work and play up until now, it is but a beginning. The very start of him getting to know who he is, what drives him — what will set him on fire so he might also want to set the world on fire. Or at least understand that it’s a possibility.

Will you be able to tell from his record that he works at a thing until it’s finished — or that if he doesn’t know an answer he will search until he finds it?

How will you know that he’s the kind of guy who shaves without being asked when he’s going to see his grandmother, mows her lawn like his Uncle Nick taught him, and that when I was out running one Sunday and got caught in a rogue lightening storm, he set out in my Tahoe to come find me?

Where in his transcript will you see his quiet affinity for all living things — that he could never hurt an animal, and that he still waters a spider plant he got at a summer class the year he was 8?

He’s traded his trumpet for an electric guitar, misses his ride to school half the time because he won’t go to bed before midnight, and spends an inordinate amount of time online searching for a Camaro, Trans Am or a Mustang he can afford (or talk us into) while cranking Atreyu so loud the candle flame on my coffee table bends in time with the beat.

But he’s also the guy who removes inadvertent recyclables from the trash to put them where they belong, and wears a tie on Thanksgiving.

Do you have a spot at your school for someone like that?

The College Trail Editor's Comment: this parent typifies many who want only the best for their child, and who are always reaching for the right strategy, solution and people to talk to. The College Trail can help. Finding the right fit for your student when planning for college is important. There are many choices, but finding the right one takes time. Let us help guide you through the process.