Lies, Damned Lies, and College Admissions - First Chapter

Prologue

At first glance, the early 1900s had been great for colleges, particularly Ivy League colleges. Thanks to brilliant marketing, more and more people were hoping to attend college. Using the College Entrance Examination Board tests, colleges were trying to find and admit the hardest-working, most brilliant students.

That part was working. The most serious, brilliant, dedicated students were getting into American colleges. The problem was that an increasingly large percentage of those students were Jews. In fact, according to Malcolm Gladwell, by “1922, they made up more than a fifth of Harvard’s freshman class.” (“Getting In,” 2005)

If you know anything about Jews, you know that many of them have an annoying habit of academic excellence. Jews just love doing well in school, learning, and taking education seriously. They often excel at math, science, reading, and writing. And for whatever reason, that was grossly offensive to the admissions departments of Ivy League universities.

They needed to find a way to keep the Jews out. Perhaps they first thought about changing the admissions tests. But they quickly would have realized that the Jews would just adapt and prepare for the new tests. Basing admissions on grades alone wouldn’t really work either, since Jews would just get higher grades. Likewise, basing admissions criteria on swimming races would simply inspire Jews to improve their swimming techniques. It seemed that no matter what rational, objective, transparent, predictable admissions process universities used, Jews could excel at it.

Those on the admissions boards who were particularly farsighted recognized that this was not just a Jew problem. If Jews could excel, what would stop Spaniards, Poles, and Asians from excelling, and polluting the Ivy League with their excellence?

The colleges needed something completely subjective and arbitrary. Obviously, they needed to eliminate any transparency from the process; no one could know what the rules of admission were. Otherwise, the admissions boards might have to actually hold themselves to some standardized system of rules, and then Jews could just follow that set of rules. Obviously, the admissions criteria could not be objective, since any objective and intelligent criteria would let the best students in. And once again, those criteria would probably lead to the presence of too many Jews.

Eventually admissions boards developed the perfect system, one that would allow them to reject applicants based on any whim or prejudice. The process would have no transparency whatsoever, nor would it follow any kind of objective criteria. For example, according to Gladwell, in order to keep out Jews, colleges started looking at clothing, speech, and even “manliness.” This completely subjective system would allow colleges to keep out not only brilliant Jews, but also brilliant Chinks, Japs, Darkies, Injuns, Wops, and the like.

The modern American college application was born.

The Rot

“Your grades and SAT scores will get your application looked at,” I explain to the student, “But your extracurriculars, recommendations, and especially your essays will determine whether or not you actually get in.”

“Excuse me,” interjects the father in a Russian accent. Many of my clients come from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. He points skeptically at the common application printout. “Did you just say that the answer to these essay questions can determine whether a student gets in?”

It’s the same look of astonishment I have gotten from Indian, German, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean families. They are often graduates from some of the most rigorous universities in the world, and successful enough to afford my fees.

“Yes,” I reply. “To get into one of these schools your essay has to be excellent, and to convey certain personal qualities.”

He shakes his head. His son, my student, tries to explain, but the father demands, “But these questions are silly. How does the answer to this kind of question tell anything? You mean to say that a person can have the best grades, the best SAT scores, and not get in?”

“Yes. That can absolutely happen.”

“But that is ridiculous!”

I nod. Sometimes you need an outside perspective to remind you just how insane your own culture has become.

“Tell me, you have actually heard of this? A person does not get in because of the essay, but he has the grades and the scores?”

“Yes.”

He looks me dead in the eye, with a cold interrogational gaze.

“This has happened to people you know?”

“It happened to me.”

I once saw a painting called Systemic by American artist Billy Reynolds. The female subject of this painting has eyes that are slightly dull, teeth slightly discolored. But these minor surface flaws indicate that a deeper rot has spread throughout the entire body. The painting shows that the organs themselves are diseased.

When I first started writing this book, I intended it to be almost exclusively about the college application process. But as I started writing and researching, I realized that such a book would be a half-truth. It would be like discussing American racism without discussing slavery, or discussing the American Revolution without discussing taxation.

The college application process is like one of those minor surface flaws that indicates a deeper cultural rot, and this rot is the true subject of this book. The following chapters analyze college admissions, college education, high school education, and other aspects of current American culture to show the far reaching and pernicious effects of the modern college admissions process.

The modern college application was born from anti-Semitism, but that does not explain why it continues to exist. Take a look at other anti-Semitic groups. The KKK continues to exist, but it has lost most of its power and relevance. At the same time, colleges have gained more dominance. A university degree is required for most white-collar jobs. Other forms of higher education—apprenticeships, etc.—have lost their positions as significant competitors to college-based education. In fact, there is a pervading sense that education doesn’t count, unless it comes with a college’s seal of approval. Simply put: we now believe that you don’t really know something unless a college says you do.

Despite its roots, the modern college application is no longer a manifestation of anti-Semitism or racism. It has become something far subtler than a tool of prejudice.

My own fascination with college admissions began with my own experience. In high school, I had the highest standardized test scores in my graduating class. I had the highest PSAT and SAT scores—790 in math and 790 in verbal. I earned the highest possible score on ten different AP tests. I had started a few clubs and organizations, and risen to the top of other ones. I took my first college course at age 13, and by the time I graduated, I had taken four college courses and gotten all As. My grades were among the highest in my graduating class. When you considered my course load, my profile looked even better—I was a year ahead in math, a year ahead in Latin, and had taken the hardest science, English, and history courses that the school offered. I had done community service in the United States and in India. I played varsity tennis, and played the flute in the school band. I was on excellent terms with most of my teachers. Everyone expected me to get in everywhere.

When the rejection letters started coming in, I was nonplussed. I was rejected by many of my reach schools, but more surprisingly, I was even rejected by schools the college counselors had considered to be my safety schools.

By some miracle I got into my second choice school, Brown University. Although things had worked out, I became obsessed with understanding what had happened. I quickly figured out that I had been one of those unfortunate situations of “great product, bad marketing.” I had completely failed to present myself effectively in my essays.

I resolved to learn exactly how to do good marketing. I read books on the subject, took the most relevant classes, and even got internships to learn better methods of presentation.

When I founded Arvin Vohra Education in 2001, I was able to translate that knowledge into financial success. I began teaching others what I had learned and helped them develop the kind of essays that actually worked. Because of the program’s early successes, it rapidly became one of my most popular offerings. As demand for my services skyrocketed, I had to raise my rates again, and again. Despite those increases, there was soon a six-month waiting list for my tutoring and college application development services.

By the time I was 24, I had bought an expensive sports car, a Rolex, all kinds of expensive electronics, and various other things that 24-year-olds consider cool. The very system that had initially frustrated me was now making me financially successful.

But that system was also troubling me. As I became more involved, I learned about the sheer amount of dishonesty in the process. Few students wrote their own essays. Instead, essays were often a collaborative effort that involved the student, the parents, friends, siblings, teachers, and professional writers. (In high school, I had made the mistake of writing my essays on my own.)

I had a policy that I would not write anyone’s essay. I would teach each student how to write an essay, help him through each part of the process, and help edit the final product. However, my goal was to educate, not to do students’ work for them.

Unfortunately, most college application companies did not have the same moral restriction. In fact, many companies simply required that the student submit a resume and general essay topic, and they would take care of the rest. Other companies did not even require that much. They would make up the whole thing. These services started at around $10,000, and were obviously only accessible to the wealthy.

Two things surprised me about this. The first was just how widespread the practice was. Among the upper-middle class and the upper class, it was unheard of to find a student who wrote his own essay without help. The second thing that surprised me was the lack of outrage over that practice. Can you imagine what would happen if it were known that the wealthy could simply purchase higher SAT scores? Not get training, or practice, or tutoring, but actually flat out buy the higher score? Can you imagine the fury if it was discovered that many students had their parents take the SAT on their behalf?

When I tell people about the practice of having professionals write a students’ college application essay, there is never that kind of outrage. In fact, even as I write these words, I myself don’t feel particularly outraged. I don’t think I ever really did.

I don’t think it is apathy or general indifference that makes people so indifferent to this practice. I think it’s a deeper recognition of just how absurd the system, as a whole, has become. While few people particularly like the SAT, and while many have criticized its methodology and relevance, most people generally agree that it is reasonably fair and objective. If you get a problem right, you get a point; if you don’t, you don’t get the point. The recent analyses that the test may have cultural biases suggest at most that the test is slightly slanted, not fundamentally absurd.

But no assumption of fairness or objectivity exists with college essays. At a deep level, we recognize the process as so fundamentally lacking objectivity that when a student buys a college essay, it is seen as a relatively small dishonesty compared to a bigger Dishonesty. Sure, it’s unfair that Fred had his mom, who happens to be an English teacher, write his essay. But that is much less unfair than the fact that essays are such a major part of the application in the first place.

The parents of many of my students are Asian and European immigrants who are unfamiliar with the American college application process. When I first explain to them the importance of essays within the college application process, they are often astonished. How is it possible that something so arbitrary and weird determines something as important as college admissions?

The college application has become one of the unreasonable absurdities that we are supposed to accept. Just as we are supposed to accept that tax money will always get wasted on the dumbest projects imaginable, we are also supposed to accept that our answers to silly essay questions will determine which colleges we get into. Just as we accepted our government’s invading Iraq after America was attacked by groups in Afghanistan, we are expected to accept a college admissions process that places more emphasis on “intangible qualities” than on facts.

You can tell how mentally oppressed a people are by how absurd a practice they are willing to accept. The fact that we, as a people, accept the current college admissions system is an indication of just how helpless and fearful a people we have become.

But our college admissions processes are much more than indicators of this kind of helplessness. They are actually part of the cause.

In this book, I am going to challenge our cherished image of college education. But to make sure that doesn’t suggest that I hate education, or am looking to rationalize recent academic shortcomings, I’m going to share a little bit more of my background.

My focus on education and academics continued after college, as did my performance on standardized tests. I earned perfect GMAT and GRE scores. I finished the GMAT with an hour and a half to spare, and I finished the GRE with an hour and forty five minutes to spare. I used to work as an actuary. Actuaries use intensive math and economics to calculate risk. Part of the process of becoming an actuary is taking the legendary actuarial exams. I took two in a single testing period, and passed both.

Since 2001, I have run a private educational company. Our innovations include adaptive vocabulary and language learning software based on an algorithm that I developed (Vocabulary Synapse, Mandarin Synapse, etc.). I also developed an approach to speed reading that actually works on advanced material. In fact, I used it to finish the GRE and GMAT as quickly as I did. My educational system, called the Vohra Method, allows individualized education in a large group setting, and other companies have licensed parts of my curriculum. A large fraction of my students get perfect scores in one, two, or all three sections of the SAT, as well as on SAT Subject Tests and APs.

My other book, The Equation for Excellence: How to Make Your Child Excel at Math has been published in both the United States and China, and even featured on Channel 9 (cbs) News in the Washington, D.C. area. Just for the record, I don’t mention my standardized test scores and those of my students to suggest that I consider them my greatest educational achievements. I don’t—real educational achievement has much more to do with creative and independent thought, which is unfortunately much harder to quantify in a few sentences.

This book will analyze the current college situation in terms of economics, psychology, history, marketing, religion, and culture. I will discuss high school education, college education, economic policies, and even medieval history. Through this multi-pronged analysis, I hope to shed light on the fundamental problems in our college admissions system, as well as the massive and devastating repercussions that system has had on American education as a whole.