It’s Time to Give It the Old College Try
While others were counting down the days, hours and minutes to the new year, Genevieve Slunka and thousands of high school students like her were wishing that time would stop--or at least slow--so they could do one last spell check, print one last draft, sign the college application and mail it with the all-important, on-time postmark.
Not that Slunka, a 17-year-old top student at Irvine High School, had been slacking off. But time is scarce when you’ve got a major role in the school play and you’re taking a full slate of honors classes plus calculus at a local junior college.
So Slunka has been knocking off her college applications one at a time right on deadline.
The first was for the University of California on Nov. 30, then Stanford University’s on Dec. 15. Then Harvard University and Pomona College were looming on New Year’s Day.
Today is the application deadline for most Ivy League and many other private colleges. With post offices closed for the holiday, Slunka mailed her envelopes Wednesday afternoon after finishing up a last essay on Ben Franklin. That ended three hectic days.
“I am right smack in the middle, pushing it to the end,” Slunka said with a grin Monday evening as she worked on three versions of her essay for Harvard. Her cat, Max, kept her company as she typed and listened to the soundtracks of “Braveheart” and “Dances With Wolves.”
Some rituals never change. There will always be those who panic, find inspiration or do both as the clock ticks. But Slunka’s case also highlights the latest trends in university admissions.
She tried to use UC’s new electronic application system, called “Pathways,” which opened to students worldwide this year on the Internet. Slunka was applying to UC San Diego and UCLA, her mother’s alma mater. But, like 1,254 others logging on near the due date, according to UC officials, she ran into an online traffic jam and had to get a two-week extension to do it on paper.
Slunka also considered and rejected early admissions, an increasingly popular tactic for those seeking spots in elite schools. At Harvard, the number of early applicants has more than doubled since 1990. About half of the 2,100 students who get offers to enter the class of 2002 will have applied before the early-admission deadline of Nov. 1, though officials say the early birds have no special edge.
Many schools in recent years have started similar programs. Stanford and some others demand an early commitment in exchange for early admission. Slunka said she opted for the regular deadline because she didn’t want to rush her decision.
In addition, her parents wanted time to ponder financial aid offers. They worried that early admission would cut Slunka’s flexibility. Tuition at Harvard, Stanford and Pomona is more than $20,000 a year, not counting room, board and books.
That would be a steep bill for Tony and Sherry Slunka. They run a modest civil engineering business out of the two-story brick home they have owned here since 1973, and they have their retirement and 14-year-old son Edward’s education to consider too.
“If she gets in, we’ll obviously face the same financial straits that most other middle-class families face when their children get into a good private school,” Sherry Slunka said.
If. That ominous word.
One college admission analyst, Seppy Basili of Kaplan Educational Centers in New York, estimated that 2 million students annually apply for higher education slots in the United States. As many as half of the applications, he said, come in just around the due date.
“When you push back to a deadline, it creates a lot of stress,” Basili said. “Over the last couple of weeks, in many homes, the dining room tables have been covered with food and all kinds of stuff, but right now, they’re filled with college applications.”
For students who aim for the Ivy League, this week is the last chance to show their stuff. There is fierce competition, even among those with the best credentials. Knowing that more of their peers than ever have already scored with early admissions makes this week’s applicants all the more nervous.
“They’re scared,” said Jennifer Carrington, a counselor at Irvine High School. “Those who are confident are few and far between. Students are afraid that no one wants them. Whether you’re dating or applying to college, no one wants to be rejected.”
More than half of Irvine High’s graduating seniors expect to go to four-year colleges or universities. Slunka, an aspiring chemist or physicist, is carrying a grade-point average above 4.0 and scored 1510 out of a possible 1600 on the Scholastic Assessment Test (760 verbal, 750 math). But she is not the school’s top-ranked student. Others, she said, had notched a higher GPA by taking more Advanced Placement courses.
Earlier this week, wearing a blue T-shirt imprinted with butterflies, Slunka acknowledged harboring “wild” fears.
“I’m running out of time,” she said. “What if something happens and I can’t get my application done? Or if I forget to back up my computer files and I lose my essay? Leaving it to the end is a fingernail-chewing, lip-biting stress problem. But it ended up that way.”
Slunka’s bedroom is filled with model horses, piles of Agatha Christie and Star Trek books and, these days, college application materials in neatly indexed folders. On Monday, she was just bearing down on her Harvard essay.
The topics Harvard suggested were open-ended--for example, “Evaluate a significant experience or achievement that has special meaning to you.” But the length was not: 250 to 500 words.
For UC, Slunka had written 1,365 words on her acting experience in the role of Helen Keller’s mother, Kate Keller, in “The Miracle Worker” at school. For Stanford, she turned in 793 words on an antique Janssen piano she inherited from her great-grandfather.
This week she was fiddling with her WordPerfect files, piano.txt and miracle.txt, to see if a shorter version of either might do. She was also working on something called nature.txt, but it was also very much in the nascent stage.
“It started out about nature, but then it kind of mutated into social responsibility,” she said. The latter was the topic she ultimately chose.
After Harvard, there would be two essays for Pomona--the one on Franklin and another on a day in her life--then the Harvey Mudd College application, due by Jan. 15.
Sherry Slunka, who helps her daughter with proofreading and sorting, fretted at the workload.
“It would be nice if you could just submit the same essay for everybody,” she said.
Harvard actually shares a common application form with more than 100 other colleges. But many also assign supplemental essays that are optional in theory only. Harvard’s chief gatekeeper offered some solace for Slunka and thousands of others laboring to meet deadlines.
“We do want them, if possible, to have a postmark on there by Jan. 1,” said Bill Fitzsimmons, Harvard’s dean of undergraduate admissions and financial aid. “On the other hand, we are fully aware that people have personal emergencies. We don’t want people to get paranoid about the deadlines. They should do the best they can.”
