Selected Reading from My Spam Folder

As you’d expect, I receive lots of email. In fact, I receive so much email that I pride myself on having constructed an elaborate system of filters and folders to help me set priorities and provide reasonably swift responses. I cobbled together my own system from select principles in David Allen’s much-praised Getting Things Done (GTD to the initiated), the spirit espoused by Merlin Mann over at 43folders.com, and several esoteric choices that reflect nothing more than personal style (e.g. the IMAP folder in which I retain such oddities as the solicitation for us to advertise W&M on a website for snake enthusiasts).

At some point I’d like to chart the increase over the past several years of the email I receive from vendors who want to help the admission office grow the applicant pool. I suspect that trend would reflect the alarming degree to which many of us see the admission process becoming increasingly commercialized. Most of the focus on that issue centers on the rise of independent counselors and the charging of families for specialized services beyond what their high schools provide in order to help them navigate the application process. For some families, these services have become akin to hiring a wedding planner.

Although not all independent counselors are motivated by profit alone, I often worry that their business models essentially take advantage of middle class anxiety. Sometimes such services provide the sort of advice that is at best unhelpful and at worst absurd. My favorite example of the latter comes from a 2007 AP story in which an independent counselor was quoted as having advised his clients to place a deliberate typo in their essays in order to convey authenticity. People actually paid for that advice.

On the other side of the process, however, college admission offices are similarly deluged with offers from outside experts who want to help us meet particular metrics in recruitment and/or enrollment. And that leads me to today’s select reading from my spam folder:

“Power Words ($150) – Prospective students rate the favorability of 95 words that are commonly used in college communications. Learn the words and themes that have the most favorable impact and develop communication strategies to leverage them. This 20-page report is an invaluable reference tool for admissions and public relations personnel alike.”

Let us table the intriguing question of whether the information about the favorability of these 95 words is priced correctly at $150 if in fact it is “invaluable.” Of greater interest to me is whether anyone working in college admission actually has interest in how a group of prospective students, who may or may not reflect the demographic to which an institution aspires to appeal, rated a set of terms devoid of any institutional context whatsoever.

Ted O’Neill, Dean of Admissions at the University of Chicago, has pointed out to me before that one of the problems we face now is that students tend to apply to college in the generic sense, not to particular institutions for particular reasons. Unfortunately, every college and university that markets itself in a generic manner contributes to this problem.

We need to put aside the Power Words in favor of our Particular Ways.

– Henry Broaddus