Mercifully, Merrell Noden ’78’s worrying “Admission Obsession” (feature, Dec. 12) tells only part of the story. Overall, the recent bulge in applications is a boon to American higher education.

I’ve been converted to this view by my experience as both a parent and an educator. Two years ago my oldest daughter and her friends — all smart, accomplished, interesting, self-motivated kids at the very top of their class at one of the best public high schools in the country — were turned away in droves from the nation’s most competitive colleges and universities. Those accepted at such schools (including my daughter at Princeton) largely were legacies.

A tragedy? Hardly. Students who a generation ago would have attended Ivy League schools are thriving at regionally known, private liberal arts colleges and universities and the impressive Midwestern state universities. They study with professors trained at the best graduate schools, participate in honors programs, receive merit scholarships and study grants, and — at small schools — conduct exciting research with faculty undistracted by graduate students.

In this new setting, obsessing over the perfect résumé is pointless. With our second daughter, we haven’t just dialed back the “college angst” — we’re actually exerting ourselves in the opposite direction. Don’t overdo AP classes, we told her. Leave time to do other things you love.  

And she is. She has applied to great schools, including highly selective ones. She’ll get into some of them. Wherever she goes, she’ll make a great contribution, she’ll get a wonderful education, and she’ll flourish. And that, in the end, is the point.

Regarding Merrell Noden’s article, “Admission Obsession,” may I question whether the current high-stakes college admissions are not making us a nation of poseurs? Should we not take the advice of Polonius to Hamlet to heart: “To thine own self be true”?

My wife and I have a 4.0-average granddaughter graduating in June. We have not suggested for her any Ivies nor major state universities, such as the University of Michigan, from which we both hold graduate degrees.

We are happy that she will be attending college locally in southern Ohio at either of the universities of Cincinnati or Dayton, at both of which she has full-pay four-year scholarships.

We were most offended by the coach quoted as advising kids against working for student newspapers, because such a time-consuming activity is a “huge time suck with too little bang for the buck.” As a lawyer and lifelong writer, I believe that high school journalism made my life, followed by editing and writing for the Prince. Why are we concerned with the “grouping” of the student’s activities on the application, rather than what freely chosen activities best develop the young person?

We try to teach our grandchildren to define realistic directions for their lives and to develop the perseverance toreach their goals. We urge them to become self-reliant, get trained early in a higher-paying job, and work and save to finance, as far as possible, their professional education, rather than to rely fully on financial aid granted by others or loans inevitably paid back later.

Cristina L.H. Traina ’83