There’s a new documentary on PBS called “Try Harder!”. It chronicles the lives of some students at Lowell High School, a prestigious high school in California with predominantly Asian students. Their goal–get into the Ivies or the UC colleges. Why? Because according to them, anything else communicates failure.

I was struck by one young man who said, “If I don’t get into one of these schools, I won’t make a difference in the world or be successful.” How sad. What type of message are we conveying to our students? Try Harder.

The LA Times explained the documentary:

The director and creator spent a year at Lowell following five students — four seniors, one junior — in the middle of application mania: juggling expectations (theirs and their parents’), insecurity, advice, guesswork, anxiety and regular day-to-day learning. Identity plays its part in the process too. The Asian kids sense a bias against them in college admissions — attributed to the stereotype that they’re academic automatons — while a biracial girl with a supportive single mom fights a perception among her classmates that her meal ticket is being Black, not her considerable intelligence.

Why only select colleges?

With over 4000 colleges in universities in this country providing quality educations, why is it the students at this high school aren’t even speaking about them?

In an article written by one of the students, four years after the filming, she said, “During the scene where Debbie asked me to tell her the colleges I was applying to and I matter-of-factly respond with a list of all the Ivy Leagues, I thought, “What a pretentious snob.” Most of the kids, did the same.

Not only did the documentary highlight the student’s aspirations, it also gave a glimpse into some of the parents. One student said, “This is definitely a Tiger Mom school.” One mom insisted her son apply to 25 colleges while adding ones as they applied. Another mom actually tried to bribe an interviewer by giving him tickets to a play. Her son was mortified.

What can parents and students do?

Widen your horizons. There are so many colleges to choose from. Colleges that value your student. Colleges that provide a quality education at an affordable price.

The “best” colleges are the ones that are a good fit financially, academically and socially. There are networking opportunities at every college AND the connections your child makes while in college can be made at any university. As in life, college is what you make of it. If your child takes advantage of the education, the networking opportunities, and works at internships during college, graduation will yield job opportunities. 

My Opinion

It’s no wonder teen suicide has increased over the years. The amount of pressure these students felt to get into the Ivies or other prestigious colleges with 4% admission rates is staggering.

With so many exceptional students applying to college these days, even the best of students can be waitlisted or deferred for no reason except quotas, or affirmative action, or the fact that one admission officer simply liked another student’s essay more. The whole process is so subjective it’s almost impossible to know what the outcome will be after applying to colleges.

Be wise. Keep your options open and support your student in any choice he or she makes. In the end, it’s not where you go to college that matters. It’s what you get out of the education and who you become based on that education.