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Equally out of date is the fervent wirepulling that once plagued Ivy admissions men. Princeton's Director Edwards turned down one father's offer of a $500,000 geology building, along with his son. Not even a proffered letter from the President of the U.S. on behalf of one applicant moved M.I.T.'s Director of Admissions B. Alden Thresher ("The thicker the folder, the thicker the student"). He insisted on a letter from a math teacher instead. And the point has sunk in. Says Amherst's Dean of Admission Eugene S. Wilson: "I haven't had any payola offered to me in years—not even a chocolate bar."
In the circumstances, real planning (and saving) for college is essential. Gone are the days when an Ivy League dean could mutter: "If the check is good and the body is warm, he's in." By a process that Yale's President A. Whitney Griswold calls "Calvinistic," today's aspiring freshman is weighed and tested for academic content, percentiled for promise by electronic gadgets, and harried by word that average admission standards will soon rise by one full year. Much worse, his cost for four years at a residential college may soon double to the price of a couple of deluxe Cadillacs—$16,000 or more. Little wonder that in his panic to get into college—and in his wild search for a scholarship—his mind boggles. Result: 60% of those who do become freshmen drop out of college. They choose the wrong school—for them—and have to start over again elsewhere. The cost to everyone is incalculable.
When should college planning begin? Parents may ponder the answer of M.I.T.'s Director Thresher: "At approximately the age of one year." Thresher warns parents who set impossible goals: "There is no surer prescription for failure in college." He means only that a child's innate curiosity should be nurtured sanely from the start. If he grows up wanting to learn, "he does not have to be 'entered' in a college. He enters himself."
GET DEDICATED
Today, formal college preparation should begin by twelve at the latest. If a child has an IQ below 110, his parents may wish to take him out of the race (90% of college students have higher IQs). But a college-capable child, most educators agree, should begin focusing on his goal in the eighth grade. This is none too soon to visit campuses, and none too soon for an instructive glance at application blanks. Typical question: "If you have not studied all of these subjects, how and when are you planning to make up deficiencies?"
No makeup is needed if an eighth-grader starts at once on the "solids" (English, history, math, science, foreign language), and especially on English composition. English is the key to college work; by 1970 an estimated one-fourth of applicants may be rejected because they get so little of it. This is why the most important college board exam today is the verbal aptitude test (scored from 200 to 800). Falling much below 500 is bad news—"infant damnation," cracks one educator.