The story begins in the heat of summer 2009 in a small townhouse in downtown Bangkok. As a college counselor, I had been thrust into a landscape of evil, a sort of fantastical adventure where the distinction between good and evil is so clear, you have no reason to doubt the hero. For so many families in Bangkok, the only way forward on the college application was to pay a “consultant” to fabricate literally everything. I knew this was wrong - how could I not join in the fight?
So I gathered a small group of honest fighters to approach the process driven by character and integrity. But it was nearly impossible, as the pervasive cheating culture ran fear levels super high. Of my inaugural group of 4, half dropped out when they saw the "right" way meant not going about things the "write for you" way. I was ready to give up, deterred by the sheer pervasiveness of the cheating culture.
Yet, there stood this one student, this innocent yet strikingly brilliant Thai teenager, desperately seeking the right path forward. She knew what those around her were doing went against what her character stood for, and she didn’t want a part of it. So together we worked and together we struggled, to plot a course through the jungles of the unethical. Once or twice it got tenuous – rumors of a classmate fabricating his Stanford app (her dream school) - but no matter the obstacles, she held out hope that by doing what was right, she would prevail.
There and then, I saw the proof. A decade and hundreds of successful students later, the results are in. By approaching the process as a way to build your character, and then tell your application story, you can be more successful than you imagined in your admissions outcome. And the good news is, colleges recognize this too.
Josh has worked in college admissions for 20 years, founding one of the most successful admissions counseling firms in Asia, that helped thousands of students gain admissions, and helped revolutionize the way colleges use an ethical lens to evaluate international applications. He is a graduate of Brown University and the Harvard Summer Institute on College Admissions.
At the Harvard Summer Institute of College Admissions, one of the hallmark programs is a mock admissions committee of real past applicants, complete with real Deans of Admissions leading break out groups. One of the primary takeaways from Harvard's highly subjective last stage admission step, was the idea that Harvard believed that any student who had the chance to attend Harvard would be better enabled than most of the population. In other words, these people would have the ability and power to enable significant change/innovation/impact in and upon the world. To be fair, they are probably right. The Harvard alumni network alone contains over 3,130 people each with an estimated net worth greater than $30 million (roughly $94 billion) - not to mention the countless politicians, world leaders, scientists, and other change-makers.
This led the admissions committee to believe that they had a responsibility to enable (read: "admit") people who might create the greatest impact on the world for the better. And it's not just Harvard that feels this way. Admission officers on the whole believe that the education at their universities is so powerful that they hold a responsibility to perform a sort of “social engineering” (enabling "a change-the-world-for-the-better" attitude).
In a NACAC Journal of College Admissions article, Ted Spencer (U Michigan), Bill Fitzsimmons (Harvard), and Jean Fetter (Stanford), declared:
This may seem a loaded concept, yet this rings true for the vast majority of admissions officers. They pride themselves most on the admitted kids who will truly make a difference for society. In their eyes:
Most college admissions officers believe their university's education encourages students to build this balance, helpful in the transition to an adult that contributes to society. So what does this mean for the applicant?
In short, it is beneficial for applicants to think of themselves as having a positive impact on the world, and their place in it, in 10, 20, or even 30 plus years.
The problem however, that just like with any system, garbage in garbage out. As colleges have given into more marketing style tactics, the consequences have surpassed their ability to control them. Cheating, scandals, dubious ethics, exclusion – this is just a fraction of what’s gone wrong. You see with social engineering, you have to make a certain set of assumptions about the content of the application. They must ASSUME this came from a place of honesty and integrity, and this has become increasingly difficult. So colleges are updating their systems.
Recently, Harvard, Yale, Brown, and a slew of other top schools, have endorsed two reports, called Turning the Tide: Inspiring Concern for Others and for the Common Good Through College Admissions and Turning the Tide II: How Parents and High Schools Can Cultivate Ethical Character and Reduce Distress in the College Admissions Process. In them, this group of over 175 universities have called for a renaissance in college admissions.
This updated admissions process aims to reward true citizenship, deflate undue academic pressure, and redefine achievement as actions that create greater equity. They aim to know if students are ethically responsible and concerned for others.
They wish to evaluate that applicants have developed empathy, altruism, and other key emotional and ethical capacities. They wish to know how activities or service engaged the students’ concerns and developed awareness and commitment to others.
They have finally codified what my student knew to be true all along: that by building your ethical character, and acting with a Mensch Mindset, you will be best positioned for admissions success.
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