Editorial: 03.16.2000
March 16, 2000
Editor
The Chronicle of Higher Education
1255 23rd Street, NW.
Washington D.C 20037
Via fax to 202-466-1389
Dear Editor,
Bill Paul in "Another Roadblock for Equal Access to College: the
'Counselor Advantage'" decries the role of private counselors because
of their "unfair" influence in the application process. In the name
of equalizing access to higher education, he urges colleges to discourage and
even punish applicants’ use of these professionals.
Why? It would appear from Paul’s article that only inadequate counseling or
incompetent assistance is allowed. Why should equalizing access equate to
dumbing down the counseling process to the lowest common denominator — the
overworked public school counselor with too many students and too little time?
Paul half-heartedly attempts to answer that question by urging the colleges
to create what the private services have already created. While criticizing
organizations like Princeton Review, Kaplan, and Achieva for providing
one-on-one assistance, he advocates that colleges step in and provide admissions
advice available to all over the Internet. Good idea. He conveniently ignores
the fact the Princeton Review and Kaplan along with a number of other sites,
including Accepted.com for grad students, provide extensive advice and
information on their Web sites. FREE. None of the private or public colleges
provide anything approaching the quantity or quality advice provided freely by
the services that Paul so roundly criticizes.
And minority students avail themselves of this quality assistance. For
example, an applicant who never used Accepted.com’s fee-based services
recently thanked Accepted.com for the advice offered at its Web site. He
believes it helped him gain acceptance to top MBA programs and provided him with
a "great shot at the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management fellowship
as well." He is not the only one who has benefited from the freely available
advice and information offered at Accepted.com and similar sites.
Are Paul and the colleges really opposed to students using the advantages
money can buy? If so, how can Princeton, whose admissions dean was particularly
pained by the influence of money, and many other private colleges charge over
$100,000 for a four-year degree? Presumably the students and their parents are
paying for a superior education and the life-long advantages that it will
provide. If not, they are spending a lot of money for nothing. Is that tuition
bill providing an "unfair" advantage in life?
Educators should aim for excellence. Excellence in education, research,
teaching, or counseling requires money. Disseminate high quality and value as
widely as possible across the socio-economic spectrum, but don’t prevent
everyone from having access to it in a flawed, misguided effort to eradicate
inequities that are simply a part of life.
Sincerely,
Linda Abraham
President
Accepted.com
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