At some colleges, parental recommendations welcome
March 03, 2012 Justin Pope, AP Education Writer The letter recommending Christianne Beasley for admission to Smith College didn’t come from the most unbiased of sources. But there was no disputing the writer knew this applicant as well as anyone.“Christianne and Smith seem to be a perfect match,’’ wrote Nancy Beasley, four years ago, on behalf of her only daughter, now a Smith senior. She described Christianne’s “grace and dignity,’’ and explained why she thought the prestigious and diverse Northampton, Mass., women’s college was the perfect fit for the girl she’d raised.
Smith is among just a few colleges — among them nearby Mt. Holyoke and Holy Cross in Massachusetts, St. Anselm in New Hampshire, and the University of Richmond — that invite parents to submit letters on behalf of their children (either as part of the application itself, or in a follow-up invitation after the application is received). At Smith, finalizing this month the 640 or so members of the Class of 2016 from more than 4,300 applications, a little less than half include a parental letter. The college takes pains to emphasize such letters are optional and won’t make or break a decision.
This makes me so sick. The mood I've been in the past week doesn't help, but I'd never heard of parental letters.
ReplyDeleteI would have loved to have seen the letter my folks would have written.
"Hiram finished in the top 90% of his class. That he even wants to college instead of clown school makes him our third favorite child."
Vomit.
ReplyDeleteAnother symptom of the bleeding-heart 1960's liberal takeover and subsequent destruction of American education. Mommies and Daddies now get to plead on behalf of their more-than-ever disempowered children. God forbid ANY STUDENT should have to PROVE him or herself. God forbid it!
ReplyDeleteI suggest you learn to work with these liberals, since the conservatives appear to be fully occupied with dismembering and eating what's left of this country.
DeleteAnother way to look at this is that we liberals are the only people dumb enough to take the job. A society that turns against its teachers doesn't have a promising future.
Delete"The college takes pains to emphasize such letters are optional and won’t make or break a decision."
ReplyDeleteThey're feel good letters.
I can think of two good uses for such letters:
ReplyDelete--allowing admissions officers to compare the prose style of the letter to that of the "candidate's" essay, in hopes of identifying actual authorship.
--giving beleaguered applicants a way to distract their hovering parents so they can complete their own part of the job in peace ("hey, look here, Mom -- Smith says you can write a letter for me! Why don't you go work on yours while I work on mine"). You know -- sort of like giving a toddler hir own little vacuum cleaner or mower, as a distraction so the real work can be accomplished.
I think any candidate whose parents write a letter would have to be looked at again very critically. There's all kinds of bad reasons for this to happen, so few good ones.
DeleteI suppose it might help with homeschoolers....
This is so plugs-out loco, even by the standards of this forum, I also wonder whether this might be some kind of deception. As a science geek, human interaction was never my strong suit, so when I can spot a ruse, it's often extreme.
ReplyDeletePerhaps any student applicant whose parents write one of these letters gets 10 points off, since the parents have self-indentified as likely hovering nuisances? My (loving, intelligent, well educated) parents certainly would never have written one. I can just see my Mom saying, "WHAAAAAT?", and my Dad dismissing it by saying, "Too cheesy."
Or perhaps it's to generate more paperwork, to give some bloated administrations more to do and so justify their existence?
The only other purpose I can see for these letters would be that it's a brilliant new idea by a brilliant new administrator who wants something identifiable to justify that six-figure salary and facilitate the quest for a university presidency, to be forgotten as soon as the administrator does find another job, it is to be hoped? Much mischief in higher ed today gets perpetrated this way.
Dear University of Tuktoyaktuk,
ReplyDeleteMy dear little sprog would like to attend your fine institution
I want to get said sprog out of the house.
You want tuition revenue.
You are willing to take sprog off my hands, and I have money.
Deal or No Deal?
Yerz etc etc...
These letters are even more awesome at the grad level...particularly when the parent doesn't rate the offspring in the top tier.
ReplyDeleteIt always cracks me up when they refer to incoming Freshmen as "Class of 2016" or whatever year. Because about 20% of those Freshmen never become Sophomores, and a large portion will not graduate on time, if they even graduate at all. I mean, it's not like High School, where if you have a birthday and don't assault anyone you get to move up.
ReplyDeleteIf I were on the Admissions Committee, I know which students would NOT be coming to Smith College.
ReplyDeleteMaybe they only admit students whose parents are brave enough to write negative letters -- that way they know they're getting independent thinkers?
ReplyDeleteChrist. The last thing I would want an admissions committee to see is what my mom thinks is an appropriate letter of recommendation.
ReplyDeleteActually, wouldn't this be an easy way to identify what students belong to which class (as in society, not class in school)? After all, if your parents are college-educated they will write a better letter than not... and if they actually ARE considered in admissions it would certainly be easy to eliminate candidates based upon their parents' lack of education this way....
ReplyDelete....or maybe I just work at a school that is a *little* too harsh on our inner city students.....
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DeleteAlso, I was talking about class, not race. I'm white and my parents are not college educated. I literally had another prof tell a friend I wasn't invited to dinner at a conference because "well she tries, but she isn't really the same type of person as us, is she?" Both their parents have MS and PhDs. Perhaps I have class on the brain.
DeleteBut it matters. There are schools that don't want to work with students whose parents aren't college educated because they are a little harder to work with (their parents can't tell them what college was like, and may not have been able to give them good study skills. I argue against this, personally, as I always worked hard regardless of what my parents said.)
My Lil Proffie-- I'm totally with you. I work in one of those Ultra-Humanities usually reserved for people who start sentences with "When I was a boy and my nanny would take me to the Art Institute..." and have total prince-and-pauper fraud-syndrome. Glad I got a job in an Applied Mammal-fur Weaving and Design department at Middlin' State Comprehensive U and not a History and Theory of Hamster-fur-weaving dept at Big R1 Dog Eat Dog U, just for the generally salt-of-the-earth kind of people. Ugh.
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