Taking the pressure off college admission, through the lens of Jewish values

If you keep up with the news, you don’t need to look too hard to learn that today’s teens are in crisis. There are numerous podcasts, articles, and books dedicated to the subject. The mental health crisis can be attributed to many causes: social media, the pandemic, social injustice, and a looming climate catastrophe are just a few examples. Another factor influencing teens’ mental health is the pressure around college admission. 

Elite schools get more selective every year, and with this comes an increased intensity in students’ and families’ efforts to gain admission. There is a widespread belief that if teens just work hard enough, if they load up on the most challenging courses and impressive extracurriculars, they can get into the most selective colleges. 

Aside from this being incorrect in many cases (admission decisions are often chalked up to the nebulous category of “institutional priorities” rather than any quantifiable measure), encouraging teens to approach their high school years this way is harmful. High school is not a means to an end; rather, it is a period in a child’s life that has value in and of itself. And we can actually treat it this way! It is possible to opt out of the hyper-competitive college admission culture without being doomed to a life of mediocrity. There is a viable alternative, and it aligns with the Jewish values of pikuach nefesh and tikkun olam.

Despite American culture’s disproportionate focus on a handful of extremely selective schools, there are many high-quality institutions that admit more than 50% of applicants. If teens simply go about their high school years selecting the courses and activities that fit them best without doing anything extra to win over admission officers, they can still go to college and have an enriching experience. They can also have a stable and prosperous career after graduation.

You might think that less selective schools offer an inferior educational experience, but this is not true. If they take advantage of all that an institution has to offer, students can get an excellent education at a wide variety of colleges, and they can gain admission without damaging their well-being.

In the strictest sense, the principle of pikuach nefesh permits Jewish law to be broken in order to save a life, but at the core of this principle is the idea that we as Jews care for the well-being of those around us. Giving teens space to go through high school without the pressure to get into a highly selective school is pikuach nefesh. 

Though it is certainly not the same as an acute, life-threatening ailment that requires urgent treatment, pressure to perform during their teen years gradually chips away at their mental health. Following a narrow path to success, a path that they do not authentically fit into, can also chip away at their well-being. 

The hyper-competitive college admissions landscape harms individual teens’ well-being, and it harms our society as a whole. There exists a fallacious idea that only students who gain admission to elite institutions will get an excellent education. This line of thinking implies that the overwhelming majority of young adults who attend college in the U.S. get a subpar education.

We need to let go of this idea, which has insidious and unjust implications. It creates an illusion of scarcity where there is in fact abundance, and with a scarcity mindset comes brutal competition. Here I will invoke the Jewish principle of tikkun olam, which encourages us to repair the world and take actions to advance social justice. Lowering the intensity of the college admission competition would enable us to be kinder and more generous to ourselves, our peers, and our children while still giving them the opportunity to get a great education.

We Jews can be an anxious people, so I will take some time to preemptively address your concerns. In Jewish communities, there can be a desire to position ourselves as advantageously as possible because we have faced every shade of bigotry over the thousands of years that we have existed, and we still face it today. We want to ensure our best chance of success because, at the very least, this will allow us to survive. What offers our kids a better chance of success than attending an elite school?

There are indeed advantages to attending an elite school. There are certain professional fields where it is a huge advantage if not a requirement for success. If your teen wants to be a baseball general manager, fund their startup through Y Combinator, or do management consulting with a prestigious company, they are best off going to an elite school (source: The Price You Pay for College by Ron Lieber). But if they want to be a teacher, an accountant, a graphic designer, a software developer, or an infinite list of careers I am not going to include here, there is no discernible advantage.

I understand the desire for your teen to attend an elite school so they will have all options, including baseball management, available to them when they graduate. But it is important to consider what it will take for them to gain admission and the costs that come with it. 

Along with that, I encourage you to consider all that can be gained from allowing your teen the space and freedom to design their high school experience without considering what a hypothetical future admission reader will think of their choices. 

They will likely be happier and more fulfilled. They will get accustomed to making decisions for themselves rather than for external validation. And, crucially, they will still be able to go to college and get an enriching education.