Each, year thousands of students receive rejection letters from their top-choice colleges or are relegated to a waiting list that may never give way to admission. In light of this, the Office of Admission at Middlebury College has written a fantastic email to parents discussing the sensitive issue of not getting into the number one choice. Below, The Admission Centre has posted (with permission) the second half of the email for your consideration.
Ours is a culture that attaches enormous significance to where we go to college. That is not to say that it is not important. Of course where our children go to college is important and can make a difference in their lives. As parents, it is natural for us to want them to have what is best for them so that they come as close as possible to realizing their own individual potentials.
However, in doing so we can sometimes attach too much significance to these decisions. In this country we are blessed with hundreds, even thousands, of first-rate institutions of higher learning which provide wonderful opportunities for our children to expand their intellectual horizons. Sadly, too often there is a perception that only a small fraction of those institutions are “good enough,” as if they alone have some kind of a magic formula about how to educate young adults. And that mindset can detract from what may be the most important recognition of all: that it is not so much the institution that one attends, but rather whether one takes advantage of the opportunities that are available at that institution, that truly determines the quality of one’s educational experience.
In this context I am reminded of a statement attributed to James Conant, a former president of Harvard (but that he allegedly wrote during his freshman year there!): “Education is what is left over after you have forgotten everything you ever learned.” It is this broader definition of “education,” involving learning how to think, read, and write critically and objectively and to solve problems creatively, that can presumably take place at many educational institutions.
I suppose this is a long way of saying that I deeply believe that Middlebury offers extraordinary educational opportunities and hope that we will have good news for your son or daughter at the end of March. If we don’t, however, I trust that your child will have other attractive options available to him or her. Historically, one of the benefits of our American educational system has been that it allows students to define “success” at a personal, individual level, and that is as it should be. The fortunate reality is that almost all students end up attending a college where they are happy and where they thrive.
