It’s that time of year again! At the opening of the 2012 admissions season, U.S. News has released its 2012 Best Colleges rankings.

The rankings are an infamously controversial guide for comparing America’s colleges nationally, regionally, and across subject areas and other special interests. This year Harvard University and Princeton University are tied for first place among national stature universities, followed by a list of other Ivy League or Ivy-like universities. But you know that’s not particularly useful.

How to really use College Rankings
While I enjoy the festive competition of college rankings as much as the next guy, what students need to know from the rankings is not where a school stacks up nationally, or even regionally. It’s about all the underlying data and context.

“What is the best college?” is, and should be, a very subjective question. Seniors in high school should be thinking about what majors they want to study, whether they want to live in big cities or small college towns, and how far they want to be from home. Great colleges are scattered all over the country and all over the Best Colleges rankings.

To understand and explore what factors are most important to you about finding a good fit, I encourage all students, parents, and administrators to register for U.S. News College Compass before September 16 (while it’s free!):

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/store/college_compass_google_deal.htm

While we here at BetterGrads haven’t had a chance to check out the College Compass yet, hopefully (in addition to the full rankings) there will be some great tools inside for those that are college hunting this admissions season.

Perhaps someday U.S. News will even ask our BetterGrads mentors to weigh in on the rankings (like high school counselors). I would love to know what our mentors have to say!

BetterGrads College News & Views is a weekly collection of college-themed posts around the web. Our social media team, partners and guest contributors take part in providing this service to you.

This week, we came across several articles related to being ready for college, what students think of the price tag for a degree, and some tips students can use when gearing up for the semester.

College Preparation:

ACT Scores show 1 in 4 high school grads are unprepared for college (TIME)

Standardized tests are questioned by many as a legitimate measuring system for a student’s success, but this year’s ACT results are out, regardless. Nearly 30 percent fell below the college-level standards in English, math, science and reading. Is this reflective of a larger problem? Or are there other ways we can effectively test students’ college preparedness?

Getting ready for college (Freelance Writer Network)

This author provides a comprehensive rundown of basic–and super important–things to keep in mind when prepping to leave home for college. From the basics of money managing to avoiding getting your laptop stolen, this is a good checklist to keep in mind when preparing for a new semester.

The Value of College:

Women get more value out of college than men do (Reuters)

Of more than 2,000 people surveyed by the Pew Research Center, 77 percent said women need a college degree to have a successful career. Comparatively, only 68 percent of the group predicted the same for men. Perhaps an 11 percent discrepancy is not glaring, but is it reflective of the general perception of gender an the value of a college degree? The survey went on to say that half of women thought a hefty tuition is worth the slumping debt, while only 37 percent of males agreed.

Beating the odds (STRYVE Magazine)

Some students don’t have an easy road to college, and this inspirational story will uplift you if you’re feeling unsure about what you can get out of the college experience. There can often be more opportunities for you than you think… You just have to look.

College Tips:

The best college admissions Twitter accounts you aren’t following (Student Advisor)

Still looking to apply for college? Want to transfer? Then find your dream school’s admissions office social media networks. This article lists the top college admissions Twitter accounts that are eager for students to engage with them online.

Study habits for college (Junhax)

Tired of boring, generic advice? This article gives some super-specific suggestions on how to make the most of your study time! A good opportunity to prepare before you get slammed at crunch time during midterms in a couple months.

Do more than just the official campus tour, says ASU alum Annemarie Moody. (Photo courtesy tacvbo via flickr.)

If you’re lucky enough (and brave enough) to consider a school more than 10 miles from home (You are! You can do it!), you’re going to have to visit it at least once. If you haven’t decided on a school yet, this summer is a great opportunity to explore your options. If you’ve got the time this summer, use it! Wander campuses without a guide, and see as much as you can.

One way of going about this quest is to make a family vacation out of it, like I did. The younger siblings and the parents will probably drive you crazy, but have everyone climb in the minivan (so dorky, I know, I lived it), and hit the road. If you’re curious about a state or city rather than a specific school, this is a great time to visit several schools. Larger, more popular schools tend to be fairly spaced out unless you’re looking at Southern California or the East Coast, but that’s why they call it a road trip. If you thought you might want to make the Rocky Mountain state your home for the next four years, for example, hitting all three major schools (University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado State University in Ft. Collins and University of Northern Colorado in Greeley) is a way to get a taste of the options.

When I took a family road trip the summer after my junior year of high school, we headed down from Denver to Tempe, Arizona, where we took a tour of Arizona State University and also took in the blossoms at the Desert Botanical Gardens. Heading west, we toured the University of Southern California and also made time for a day trip to Disneyland. Later that summer, we headed east and visited Columbia, Missouri to try out the main campus of the University of Missouri.

Yelp and CitySearch can also help you get a good picture of the area, like where to find the best pizza during late-night study sessions or where all the cute guys/girls go. Try it now, when you’ve got an objective audience (Mom will let you know if she genuinely likes the food you’ll be having away from her), and you’re not living off of change from the couch cushions or dining points. (For those who haven’t memorized freshman catalogues, dining points are many schools’ way of making extra money off of hungry students by having them pre-pay for food to be purchased on campus, either in the dining halls or in the fast service restaurants. Free meals are something you may miss, so take advantage!

I really didn’t use the Internet much when I was deciding on schools, but the breadth of information makes it super easy now. My family sticks with food chains whenever possible (Red Lobster by the freeway in Columbia, Missouri, the Chili’s in Tempe, Arizona), but I now think it’s more fun and adventurous to try local cuisine or student hot-spots.

And there’s more to learn than just from the official campus tour! Find non-school activities to do when you’re in town as well. We hit national parks and Disneyland because that’s my family’s thing, but if you’re into hiking, do a hike. Museums and other educational experiences might be too much to ask for a summer-minded student, but that’s a great way to get some culture. Take in a baseball game or go shopping if that’s what you enjoy. You’ll feel more confident heading to school knowing exactly where to find both the necessities and fun.

Also, take pictures and make some notes every evening. I, for one, was not a fan of the summer weather in Tempe. It’s hot and dry and can hit 120 degrees during late July. It’s miserable. However, the other pros outweighed this when I decided to go to school there. Pictures will help jog your memory when it comes to decision time.

Never mind what the brochures and alumni tell you: the only tried and tested way of making the best, most informed decision possible about college is to visit in person. Take in more than the official tour, and try to have some fun with it!

With the college application season coming to a close, this is the question writer Jennifer Moses attempted to answer in a recent Wall Street Journal article. A video interview with Moses and the Journal’s Kelsey Hubbard can be found here.

The author, who was not a victim of the college application arms race, but did break his left ulna in a cycling accident

In the article, Moses outlines several expenses associated with her 17-year-old twins’ college application process:

• Total cost of her twins’ standardized test fees = $522
• Total cost of travel, including air fare, gas, hotels, food and incidentals, for both twins accompanied by one parent each = $3,9908.23
• Total cost for private college counselor = $701.25 (to date)

According to Moses,  ”If we hadn’t [spent money on SAT prepatory classes], what if, G0d forbid, some other kid who went ahead and got the tutoring and  inched his or her SAT score just enough  to bump our own kids out of the running?” In other words, why spend all this money on SAT tutoring and visiting college campuses (she admits she had the discretionary income to do so), when there is some child somewhere , with an overall, poorer college application, who will be admitted to the same elite institution one of my children has applied to, based on a legacy connection?” Moses finds the latter incredibly frustrating (as seen at the 3:20 mark in the video).

She concludes by asking two sobering questions: “Is going to a so-called better college worth it?” and “Is the system fair?” With regards to the former, she references a few studies and offers a resounding “It depends,” as her answer. With respect to the latter,  she adamantly opines that the college application process (and tasks required prior to the application process) is a mess.

On the surface, Moses does have a point: all of these additional expenses on top of the standard fees to submit one’s applications to various schools would seem superfluous. However, there may be situations where some of those expenses can be justified. Suppose one of Moses’ twins had a history of sub-par performance on standardized exams, such as the SAT. In turn, an SAT prep course would be beneficial for that particular twin in raising his or her SAT score. Additionally, there are nuanced experiences that cannot be found via a college’s website, therefore justifying a visit to a college campus. These include the feel of the neighborhood surrounding the campus and a more accurate portrayal of the student body.

However, what Moses fails to acknowledge in her article is that SAT scores and private counselors are only part of the college admissions decision. This was even more apparent in the Journal’s Feb. 12 “Letter to the Editor” section, in which one Ivy League alumnus who conducts student interviews notes, “Every student I interview has near-perfect SAT scores and a 4.0 grade-point average. What we look for is what makes you different.” The debate continued in one of collegeconfidential.com’s forums where one poster declared that  ”there was no real news here,” yet corroborated with the growing notion of competition and the accuracy in Moses’ discretionary expenses.

So, while it’s clear that some observers agree with Moses in her arms race observation, to others, this is just another common practice. Don’t bet on a Reagan-esque descendant to put an end to this cold war anytime soon.

The author, Elizabeth Cutler, displaying Trojan spirit.

I’m only 23, but I’m already a legacy.

By “legacy,” of course, I’m referring to the word that can become the bane of any high school senior’s existence: in this context, the term refers to a student’s family connection(s) to a given university. For some students, where their parents or siblings went to college doesn’t affect their interests or choices. For others, studying in the same library as mom or dad is extremely important—and for many like me, well, we fall somewhere in the middle.

My dad went to the University of Southern California and loved it. He also loved teaching there as a faculty member for more than 15 years.

I grew up wearing cute USC toddler gear and clutching my stuffed animal of Traveler, the white horse mascot that gallops across the field at home games. My older brother graduated from USC as well, and his stories and memories were woven into my personal USC narrative.

I’ve always been a bit of a planner. Okay, more than a bit—in 7^th grade, I went on my first college tour (long story) and used to scribble chronological life plans in the back of my Pocahontas journal. So it wasn’t much of a surprise when I started fixating on “the perfect college” pretty early on… and my model of the classic college experience? USC, of course.

I went through phases. As I started high school, for months at a time I would be positive that USC was the best place for me. I started to compare every other college against it. At that point, I was primarily interested in journalism as a career, and I also loved studying theater and Spanish, all of which are strengths at USC.

Then I would go through my “anti-USC” phases, the times during which I overdramatized feeling like I had to go there or was expected to attend because of my family’s history with the school. It’s taken me quite a few years to admit that it was pretty much all in my head. Moreover, I realize now that my family’s connections to USC had given me a particular deep and nuanced perspective on one particular school, making it my yardstick against which I measured all other schools. Once I let go of this way of perceiving my options, I started to realize that I actually wanted to go to a much smaller school. This is part of how I came to go to Oxy (Occidental College)—a small liberal arts college in the big city that I wanted very much to explore.

I think that, above all else else, the inculcation of one particular college into a child’s life serves largely to offer a tangible picture of what college is supposed to be. I would not trade my father and brother’s stories of challenging professors, quirky roommates and lifelong friends for anything. It’s part of why I looked forward to college—wherever I would go—so, so much.

At the same time, I know that the legacy experience is not always positive. I’ve heard many stories of students who are unhappy at Family Legacy U or who feel guilty about applying to a rival school. Each school is different, and so is every family. I can’t speak for all legacy experiences, but I can say that it does not have to have the slightly bitter taste that seems to permeate reports of legacy students being favored in admissions.

While I cannot speak for the complex ethics that swirl around issues of legacy applicants and admissions, I can say that the experience of considering going to a family college can be very positive. Years of stories about life at one particular school—even though it turned out not to be where I studied—helped me figure out what I wanted for my own college experience. Without those insights, I’m not sure that I would have ended up at what turned out to be my own perfect fit.

As it happens, two of my best friends went to colleges where they had close family alumni—and they had incredible experiences, too. Ultimately, it’s about individual preferences, choices and those gut feelings we’ve all had at some point.

Shortly after I made my decision, my dad brought home an Oxy sweatshirt. His and my mother’s support for me in figuring out my next chapter was the best legacy that they could ever leave for me.

How about you? Did you go to college where someone else from your family attended? Did you grow up learning fight songs and college traditions? What do you think about the legacy controversies in college admissions?

It’s silent, but deadly. Its victims are rendered helpless and are dependent upon a team of highly skilled individuals who can be anywhere from 10 to 3,000 miles away to resolve the matter. The victims can tweet and update their Facebook status to their heart’s content, but at the end of the day, there’s still not much they can do.

Oh, server-related crashes. Last week, a server outage knocked out Skype, the hosted-VoIP solution that allows users to make free calls over the Internet for several days. Skype engineers determined that the root cause was the inability for several cluster servers to interact with Windows 7 users (a jargon-laced, technical explanation from Skype’s CIO can be found here).

The author expressing his frustration that somewhere a server crashed

And given that today, December 31st, is the final day for many high school seniors to apply for college via the Common Application website, they too might be concerned about server-related issues.

Rather than lament over what could happen to the Common App site between now and 9 p.m. PST, we felt it would be appropriate to celebrate the joy and happiness from those diligent and hopeful high school seniors who can officially begin to enjoy their remaining days of winter vacation, after many months filled of brainstorm sessions, rough drafts, revisions and finally, a polished personal statement.

Check out these tweets from select high school seniors who can now relax (read: not slack off), for the next several months as they await their acceptance or rejection letters.

Just_insanee The common app needs an iPhone app

pfurb possibly the most beautiful thing i have seen recently are those little green triangles on common app next to my colleges telling me im done

christoper OKAY plan: work on my common app during the NYE party. I GOT THIS UNDER CONTROL

JackBroChill17 the Common App has made me appreciate green arrows

sunnydaylove There are people who look at the UChicago prompts, close the Common App website, think for a long time, and cry.

indyfilms17 About to hit SUBMIT on my LAST COMMON APP(NYU)!!! This is nerving. #lastminutecollegeapps

_Fred_Erick_ Ah! Finally done with this common app :D now, winter hw -___- lol

benjisa The Common App should hire me to redesign their entire website and interface. It’s such an unintuitive mess.#commonapp

Wishing lots of luck to folks adding the finishing touches to their personal statements, extracurricular activity sheets and supplemental essays! We hope the Common App website has plenty of server redundancy to prevent a website crash of sorts. And if all else fails, there’s always Greendale Community College. Dream big in 2011!

Photo by Patrick Theiner via Flickr

…doesn’t exist.

Hollywood visions of undergraduate college often evoke historic brick buildings of lore, gently sloping campus paths lined with seemingly-erudite trees. Besweatered students rest on the grass with leather knapsacks, frisbees flying overhead. A young frat pledge hands out half-sheet flyers as students file into the dining center.

With the exception of the satirical new TV series “Community,” a clear-cut stereotype of the average undergraduate college student rests comfortably in the American mindset: age 18-22, bachelor’s degree track, middle-class, full-time student, beer enthusiast, likes to sleep in. Perhaps a sprinkle of Marxism or newfound love for performance art thrown in to spice things up.

But like any other demographic pool, the fish are much more diverse than your average koi pond. The Chronicle of Higher Education recently released an interactive infographic that plots undergraduate college students by age, gender, level of attendance, race, income and most importantly, type of institution. Their findings are based on the 2007-8 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study by the U.S. Department of Education.

Here are some unstereotypical highlights:

• Less than half of all undergraduates attend college full-time.
• More than 40 percent of all undergraduates are 24 or older.
• More undergraduates attend 2-year colleges than 4-year public or private universities. Hello, community college!

These stats were pulled before the economic crisis of 2008, so perhaps the next study will reveal even more unstereotypical undergraduate findings, as more people rushed back to school when the job market plummeted. Perhaps freshman dorms will begin to offer more daycare facilities for undergraduate parents, or community college will stop being known as an automatic funnel for post-high school slackers.

The undergraduate college demographic is changing, whether Van Wilder likes it or not.

For specific stats, check out the infographic here.

Cutthroat boarding school interviews.

Life-consuming college applications.

A controversial essay about obsessing over getting into the “perfect college,” published in Newsweek magazine when she was still in high school.

Screening thousands of college application essays (a.k.a. personal statements) through her job at Yale University’s admissions office.

These are just some of the experiences that color writer Hannah Friedman’s experience with education.

In 2009, Friedman published Everything Sucks: Losing My Mind and Finding Myself in a High School Quest for Cool, a frank memoir of her teenage years at a prestigious boarding prep high school and the ruthless college application process that created a frenzy among her senior classmates. College degree now in hand, the 24-year-old is working on her second book, which will discuss the pitfalls of standardized testing and other evaluation methods that she argues fail to help students succeed.

Hannah took some time to chat with BetterGrads and lend her thoughts on the college application process, writing a personal statement and how we evaluate student success.

Here are some highlights from our conversation:

How honest should a student be in a college application essay or personal statement?

You want to be as honest as is prudent.

I think that inherent in the process is this collapsing of a person into pages and numbers, and you have to kind of go with that. You have to work your angles so that you can communicate all of your uniqueness in that very limited format.

From the admissions point of view, we definitely wanted to see people who were unique and who expressed themselves in a way that stood out. But nobody wants to hear your radical views for overthrowing the government. You wanna be unique to a point. You wanna be PC [politically-correct] unique, which is kind of disappointing, because it would be nice to think that there’s a school that really wants to embrace the full you, but because there are so many applicants, more than ever before. There’s just not enough time for one person to absorb the beautiful uniqueness of thousands and thousands of people.

Unfortunately, you have to really be your own PR agent. And you have to boil everything about you that’s unique down into this pitch, essentially.

Which personal statements stood out in your experience working at Yale Admissions?

I’ll tell you about one that didn’t work but that definitely stood out. There was a guy who … was a carver. And so he did an application essay on his handicrafts and his tool and his woodworking, and he mailed us a canoe. A real huge 7-foot-long canoe! And it sat in the office. We were like, “What do we do with this?” He air mailed it. It must have cost him God knows how much money. It was enormous. It was bigger than me. That was an example of how it was a lot of love and time and effort, and he really was trying to show his passion, but it just did not go over well. It was a grand gesture, but it was not well received. That’s an example of going too far to show that you are unique.

Then there was someone who did a graphic novel as an essay, and I think that can go either way. It can be a total disaster, or if it’s really well-crafted and interesting and thoughtful, it can really make a big impression. There was one that stands out in my mind that was pretty great. And that did go well. They let him in.

What did you write in your personal statement?

I wrote about my grandma and theater, and how it was important to me growing up. That was my personal statement. The personal statements that really fly are usually very personal. If people try to talk about their view on like, Marxist philosophy, that gets really old really fast.

I would try to be as candid as possible, but also, with that second side of: “Is this gonna make me seem like a crazy person, or a good asset to the university?”

When you’re reading so many formulaic kinds of things, it stands out when someone attempts to be genuine. But then, it can go a little bit over the top. … This sounds really flippant, but sometimes it’s too personal. And then it’s not so much about the student, and it seems like a sob story, and that doesn’t work either. It’s hard!

What do you think stands out about this generation (Gen Y, millennials)?

I would say the merits of this generation are that we are global. We are a global generation, we have access to the Internet and to each other in a way that is unprecedented in the history of the world. In the best scenario, hopefully that will lead to more empathy, more intellectual curiosity. You don’t need to ask permission to learn things. It’s just all at your fingertips. I’m hoping that will lead to a more compassionate generation.

What’s next for you?

I’m working on another book about educational evaluation. Basically how the whole grading system was invented to expedite the evaluation process and not to help students.

The whole system that has emerged from linearly ranking students is awful, and I think it’s bad for the kids who don’t get good grades because they’re constantly told that they’re stupid. And it’s bad for the kids who do get good grades because it becomes this addictive validation, and you don’t really know how to be happy. You just know how to follow rules really well.

Education has become a business, and I don’t think it’s in the best interest of the students. The SATs, Princeton Review, Kaplan, the GSE, the Regents. All of these tests, all of these evaluation methods, they have billion-dollar industries supporting just this test. I mean, you don’t achieve anything, you don’t gain anything from taking the test. You just kind of go over this hurdle. But it’s become this major milestone in education, and now we value it really highly just because everyone else values it really highly.

Hannah Friedman is the author of teen memoir Everything Sucks, winner of the 2007 Yale Playwright’s Festival and the 2008 NY Television Festival, star of the Lifetime original series Flying Solo, and she remains one of the youngest people ever to be published in Newsweek magazine for an article that shared her insight into the college application process. She received a bachelor of arts degree in theater studies from Yale University in 2008.

By U.S. Department of Education (Public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

That’s right, taxpayers. A new report shows that states appropriated almost $6.2 billion for four-year colleges and universities between 2003 and 2008 to help pay for the education of students who did not return for year two. Specifically, the study shows that states sent $6.2 billion in general funds and $1.4 billion in grants to colleges and universities for first-year students who did not return. The dollar figures are taken from government data and aggregated by the nonprofit American Institutes for Research.

Looking further into the matter, some experts believe the root cause can be pinned to one core issue: state imposed budget cuts. According to California Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell, state-imposed budget cuts that have slashed classes, increased student fees and reduced staff are more of a hindrance.

And how does this impact students? An economist might look at this situation and argue that the marginal cost of students continuing their studies after their first year of college far outweighs the marginal benefit of these same students continuing their studies after their first year of college. In other words, it’s likely that students will not feel incentivized to continue their academic pursuits, knowing that massive loans, coupled with the absence of required classes to transfer to 4 year colleges, will only set them farther back.

And it’s clear that students are not the only ones who are suffering. An appropriation of $1.4 billion dollars of tax-payer funds to cover the cost of grants for students who do not return after their first year results in an enormous loss in social welfare to taxpayers too.

So, what’s the point then of continuing to learn when both students and tax payers suffer? Well, there are several reasons, but all fall under the umbrella concept of learning for the sake of learning. As cliched as this sounds, students fall into the trap thinking that any educational opportunity beyond high school is the sole ticket to a rewarding and fruitful career and lifestyle.

And that’s problematic-this attitude that higher education is the only solution, rather than a key piece to the solution. In a youtube video that I have grown to love, Daniel Pink, author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, discusses a case study, where MIT students were subjected to a series of tasks, some rudimentary, some highly cognitive. The students’ reward was based on their performance. Those students who demonstrated below average performance received a a small monetary reward, followed by larger rewards for the middle tier and elite performers.

And what did this experiment reveal? For rudimentary tasks, the carrot-on-a-stick model works well to optimize student performance. In other words, a greater reward results in more output by the performer. However, the model breaks for highly cognitive tasks. Put another way, when students did not have to perform a basic mechanical task, their performance in response to these financial incentives dropped significantly.

Pink’s video presents a potential solution to the collegiate attrition problem: change the way colleges market higher education, and perhaps students will feel incentivized to continue their studies after year one. For instance,  placing a greater emphasis on the learning for the sake of learning instead of rehashing the same old study highlighting the financial benefits of higher education, may incentivize students to return after year one.

And how does Mr. O’Connell recommend we begin to resolve the issue? “The fact that we have these numbers helps with accountability and transparency,” he said. “We should do exit interviews with students and learn why they leave education.”

That’s a start, but it’s obvious that it will take more than exit interview or survey for any real change to occur.

Recently, Howard Schultz, the venerable CEO of coffee behemoth Starbucks, was asked about job characteristics he looks for when hiring. “First off, I want to know what you’re reading, and then I’ll ask you why,” he says. Hypothetically, if the potential new hire were to reply, “Well, Mr. Schultz, back in high school, I started the “T. Wolfe Pack Club: I was the founder, president, and only member (hint hint, I have read every Tom Wolfe novel)” and stopped right there, odds are that the interview would end momentarily.

Photo courtesy of ndupress from Flickr

The aforementioned parable, at its core, is an execution issue. Had the potential new hire continued to explain why he enjoys Wolfe novels and connected this passion with some related experience in the business world, he or she may have opened the door to a second round interview.

The same could be said for placing similar quirky yet potentially applicant-killer extracurricular activities in a college application. A few days ago, in The New York Times Education blog, “The Choice” Rebecca Ruiz shared some of the comments aggregated from the following open-ended question posted on CollegeCofindential.com: “Does your on-paper persona reflect your truest interests? Are there certain hobbies, passions or accomplishments you’ve excluded from your college application, feeling they’re not worthy or relevant?”

At its core, the decision of whether or not to include select extra curricular activities in an one’s college application is an execution issue as well. Interestingly enough, this exercise in creativity is not a fad. This is a trend that is here to stay. As discussed in a previous BetterGrads post, universities are giving their future first year class more creative freedom in their applications. In particular, Tufts gave students the option to submit YouTube videos covering a variety of topics (sample videos can be found here) last year.

However, as mentioned in a previous post, these videos present an ethical dilemma for many college admission departments. Similarly, listing quirky and intriguing extracurriculars that are completely unrelated to anything else in the student’s application with the hopes of piquing an admissions officer’s interest can do more harm than good for students looking to spice up their list of accomplishments.

Now, I am not advocating slamming the door shut on any attempts to showcase wit and outside-the-box thinking in an application (this is coming from a staff writer who discussed in one of his college essays how his passion for Legos as a child led to a wonderful volunteer experience building homes with Habitat for Humanity).

However, individuals who identify themselves as blatant resume fillers should proceed with caution. What do I mean by this? I’m sure you know of an individual who did the following: realized during the fall of senior year that there were no clubs or medals attached to his name, decided to start an [insert obscure sport or pop culture reference here] club, held one meeting, never organized a game, and listed in his college application that  he was the founder, and club president, for four years. Mr. and Mrs. Resume Filler, one day you will learn that titles and positions are meaningless, unless you have evidence of accomplishments or proof of the work you completed during your tenure in that position.

This happens to touch a larger ethical issue, which John Reid, who posted the following comment to the original NY Times blog post, cleverly points out:

But there is a larger problem in this conversation that most of the contributors have not mentioned: the idea of gaming the system. Again, this is common and comes in many forms, some borderline honest, and some clearly outrageous. This is the sad side of the college admissions scene today: the frenzy, the hunt for your own private hook, the gimmick, the need ultimately to win some prize called College X. What is the price to a student’s self-respect (not the same as their self-esteem, which will be rewarded by admission) if they play the game this way? Sure, they may never notice what they have done, but they have trivialized themselves. What kind of an introduction to the adventure of higher education is this? I respect students who keep the process in perspective and don’t lower themselves to this level. I don’t honestly think it help them to get cute, and I think it hurts them in another, more subtle way. It’s like fighting an election by defaming your opponent. It might work, but is it worth it? And is it good for the general welfare?

So, do I support creative extracurriculars in college applications? Absolutely, so long as they support a larger portion of the application. Again, this is a simple case of execution. However, I do not condone this practice of “gaming the system” and simply listing out-of-left-field activities as the silver bullet hoping to sway the admissions officer in his / her decision.

What’s your take? How did you handle listing quirky yet potentially intriguing extra curricular activities in your college application? Share your stories and thoughts below!