Questioning Education

As Portia heads home from the Office of Admission, she observes the students on the campus grounds and wonders to herself if she could match the admission files to the students. Princeton is a highly selective school, and these students were admitted because they conveyed in their application that they had something worth contributing to the university. But Portia muses that when they arrived on campus they each seemed like any other student from any other university: "They were good kids, ambitious kids. But they were so ordinary, too."

I feel like this reflects how college applications are becoming "a game." I wonder if the college application process can really measure things like creativity, earnestness, integrity, intelligence, passion. Is there a way of determining who deserves or does not deserve to attend college? Decide between these: someone who has an impressive resume, and someone who is committed to the pursuit of knowledge. The first is able to display something concrete: here's a list of all my activities and accomplishments. The second person? Maybe not. I am suggesting that there are so many talented and intellectual people out there who slip through the fine cracks of college application simply because they did not have anything concrete to show for their interests, or because they were never given the opportunity to further these interests. And I think this is a great pity.

It seems as though the selection process is to pick out those who are already outstanding, to make them even more so. Maybe this makes sense, but I feel sympathetic towards the case of those who do not gain college admission. I was very intrigued by the students at Quest School: their education system is so extraordinary and different from that which I have been accustomed to, and yet it is capable of producing intellectual students. But the school is unknown, and has never sent anyone off to college. Portia's visit to the school throws light on the fact that there are so many people who "deserve" to go to college but, for various reasons, don't or can't.

At the same time, I am both amused and saddened by how the world works today. At least in the society I am acquainted with back in Malaysia, we all go through the same stages in life: kindergarten, primary school, secondary school, college, work. In some ways you could say that I didn't actually have an undying desire to go to college; I'm here at Carnegie Mellon because going to college is what people do after secondary/high school. Also, in a broader sense, the general perception is that college is part of the pathway to getting a successful job or even to changing the world. And it's true -- college can help us do all that. But it's become an unspoken rule thatnot going to college makes you a relative failure. That's not true at all. We can change the world in huge ways without attending college (like Bill Gates), and we can change the world in small ways that go unseen and unrecognized (also without attending college) -- I think both are equally laudable.



"And what, as whole people, do you intend to do with your lives?" Portia said testily.

"Live them," said a boy on another couch. "Live them well, tread lightly on the earth. Leave the planet better than we found it."

-- Admission, pg. 37