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| United World College, Duino, Italy |
Here is a guest blog from a wonderful friend and colleague. She has worked in schools in various parts of the globe and has been a co-presenter on two occasions with me at NACAC (The National Association of College Admission Counseling) on writing helpful recommendations for acceptance to selective colleges and universities.
In addition to her work as a dean at a highly selective university,
she has been for over a decade on the other side of the desk. She knows a great
deal about the admission process and has been lucky enough to work with an exceptionally
diverse group of star students from different kinds of secondary schools—a United World College, a
private school school in Zurich, and now a French School in the States. Her
expertise and experience is enough to humble almost anyone in the field.
She takes up the issue of whether students should do service
locally or whether doing service around the globe is looked upon positively or negatively
by admission officers at highly selective schools. I am sure you will find her
remarks both enlightening and surprising. I sure did.
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As a former admission officer and now a private-school
college counselor, I can feel both sides of this issue. I agree with the College Confidential writer
that volunteering in one's own community is (usually) easy work to find, costs
nothing, can be much more long-term, and can open a young person's eyes to the
issues faced by a group of people different from himself. I agree that there is no reason to look any
further than one’s own community for a way to serve or to learn.
As a counselor now at an international school, where
community service is not the norm in high-school culture, I tell students that
they can do anything that shows they are conscious of the world outside
themselves, their classes and their regular school day. Since what our students usually do in the
summers--as part of expat families in the US--is go back to France or Morocco
and hang out with their families and their cousins, and perhaps travel--the
concept of getting them to do anything beyond have a normal, relaxed, happy summer
is new to them. Others may stay in the
US, but haven't planned anything. (Oh
for the days when we didn't feel as though we had to fill every minute of our
summers with something college-related)!
So I am happy with anything I can encourage these students
to do. If they are visiting their
families in Jordan and are able to volunteer at a Palestinian refugee camp for
two or three weeks (even if they're driven each day by their aunt's driver),
that's fantastic. The young woman I know
who did that—she was the youngest volunteer and had to figure out by herself
how to teach English classes—came back to school changed, her eyes wide open
and impatient with what she saw as Western trivialities.
Another young woman whose family stays in the US in the summers
managed to find a month-long volunteer and trekking program in Peru when she
was fifteen; she went not knowing anyone and matured greatly. Even though she only had a
"homestay" of a day or two with an indigenous Peruvian girl, those 24
or 48 hours impressed her forever. It
doesn't take long for a sensitive student to realize how big the world is, and
realize both the sameness and the overwhelming foreignness of someone else's
life. (The latter was the case for my
student, but that’s a lesson that stays with you longer and gets under your
skin more).
Last summer three young men in my class went to Corsica with
a European Boy Scouts group sponsored by their French Catholic church in
Bethesda. They volunteered at a
monastery in Corsica, a place for monks who are mentally or physically
disabled. The boys planted gardens,
moved rocks, built fences, whatever was needed, for two weeks. Who wouldn’t want to go to Corsica in the
summer? But they went from a genuine
desire to help. They went by themselves. They came back and told me how unusual and
new and satisfying it was. They worked
with people in a remote place who needed their help.
I've also had several students go on an expensive month-long
academic program at the University of Oxford.
They take two classes, live in housing, and do cultural events and a
college fair. When they are the first
students to see me in September because they've been so energized by the new
stuff they learned, I don't care how much their parents paid for it (and for
some parents, it's not so easy to fork out that $7,000). Those students are excited about this new
subject of psychology or neuroscience they loved; they improved their English;
they focused their thoughts on college.
I went into admission work with the biggest chip on my
shoulder you can imagine, about the advantages money can buy kids as they
prepare for college. I still get
frustrated with my students when their and their families' horizons regarding
anything outside their own studies seems so short. (A month in the summer doing
anything is a big deal for them. Taking
the subway into downtown DC to volunteer with people who might be scary . . .
that's a tough one to sell).
But in the end each kid is a kid. Period.
Mine happen to have come from a cultural background that often has the
money to send them somewhere but doesn't know the value of doing that. When I see a privileged kid come back
changed after whatever he’s done, I'm happy because that young person has
learned something. Then, it's my job as
the counselor to convey that to the college admission rep who, believe me, is
just as jaded as the College Confidential mom.
I have to remind them that the
$7,000 summer program is a fact of life and the most important thing is what it
did for the student.
Parke Muth knows that I used to think K-12 private schools
in the US should be illegal (and I still do)!
But as long as they aren't, our goal as educators is to work with what
we're given, and try to help the families see what will change the lives of
their particular sons and daughters.
Amy Garrou, August 2,
2012
University counselor
at the Lycee Rochambeau/French International School, Bethesda, Maryland
Formerly a member of
the UVA undergraduate admission committee, 1993 – 2000
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