Getting Invited To Dinner

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“God, who gets invited to dinner at your place? How do we get on your guest list?”

“Walk straight, act right, tell the truth. Don’t hurt your friend, don’t blame your neighbor; despise the despicable. Keep your word, even when it costs you, make an honest living, never take a bribe. You’ll never get blacklisted if you live like this.”

 – Psalm 15, Eugene Peterson, Translator

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Okay.  I’ll admit it.  This piece isn’t about getting invited to Easter dinner, but it is about getting invited to attend a college.  We call this the admissions process where students, after years of testing, studying, part-time jobs, and practice, apply to places like UD and our community’s other terrific schools. 

Parents worry, and often travel many miles to clarify a decision—unless—they don’t.  Instead some parents elect to bribe coaches, administrators, or test-takers at places like Yale, Stanford and USC.  And it’s not about the superior learning, as we learned from social media influencer, Olivia Jade Giannulli, who attends USC for “game day and parties.” 

It’s about networking, and beginning one’s career with a corner office to go along with their platinum spoon.  And though it disgusts me, imagine how a lower income kid who was waitlisted at Yale feels.  This is why I have, for years, been vocal about rejecting US News and World Report rankings.  Take a look at the top schools in those rankings.

But there is another way to experience higher education, and it will cost far less than a bribe.  Brandon Busteed most recently was a researcher for the Gallup-Purdue Index where he identified six critical experiences which increase the probability that students will have a meaningful education, and live a vibrant life.  And most relevant for our current moral crisis, students who have these experiences, but attend Timbuck U, for example, are more successful than students who attend Yale but have fewer of these experiences.

These six experiences are:

1. I had at least one professor that made me excited about learning;
2. My professors cared about me as a person;
3. I had a mentor who encouraged my hopes and dreams;
4. I had a long-term project taking a semester or more to complete;
5. I had an internship or job where I applied my learning;
6. I was extremely involved in extra-curricular activities and organizations.

Here’s what we know through Gallup’s database of over 80,000 college graduates:

1. Graduates who were emotionally supported during college (1-3 above), have more than 2X the odds of being engaged in their work, and are nearly 3X as likely to be thriving in their personal well-being;
2. Graduates who have experienced deep learning (4-6 above), are more than 2X as likely to be engaged in their work; and that
3. 82% of graduates who had all six experiences strongly agreed that college prepared them for life, in contrast to just 5% who had none of the “big six” experiences.

My point?  The experience students have in college is vastly more important than its name or its U.S News ranking.  These rankings and Ivy-like names, the mystical prize for which these high-flying parents are willing to make bribes and break the law, have nothing to do with the intellectual formation or quality of life a student lives after college. 

Instead, they reflect the values of America’s coastal aristocracy, but not the morals of the majority of students and families who earn all that America has to offer the old-fashioned way by “…walking straight, acting right, telling the truth, keeping their word, and earning an honest living.”

[7/29/19 Update] Just 3 months after publishing this article, US News and World Report announced that they have removed UC Berkeley from its College Rankings for Misrepresenting alumni donation statistics as far back as 2014.