Ivy League Wannabes Await Offers High School Seniors, Parents Sitting On Pins And Needles

The race to win a spot at one of the nation’s elite colleges can drive a teenager to write about aliens, a father to attempt X-ray vision by holding an envelope up to a strong light and a mother to open her daughter’s mail.

Spring is the season of fear for high school seniors who applied to competitive colleges and now bite their nails waiting for acceptance or rejection letters.

Ivy League schools are among those that make offers in early April.

“It’s almost a lost cause,” said Lara Kjeldsen, a Mead High senior waiting to hear from Yale University. “I’m waiting for the rejection letter. I really want to go there, but I try not to think about it too much.”

Hard to believe that Kjeldsen wrote one college application essay on the subject of optimism.

As the students wait for the envelopes that could send them to school alongside the children of the nation’s wealthiest families, the adults in their lives suffer with them.

Tom Stembridge, father of St. George’s School senior Matt, confessed to trying to see the contents of an envelope from Dartmouth College by standing on the kitchen counter and holding the envelope up to the light.

His wife, Lynne, who caught him in the act, convinced him to wait until Matt got home, although she, too, found it difficult.

“It was the longest afternoon I have spent not in labor with a child,” she said.

Each spring, Janet Popham, career specialist at Lewis and Clark High School, rejoices with successful applicants and finds the silver lining for those who settle for state schools they applied to as a backup.

“There’s always a positive side. I tell them, ‘Maybe your mom and dad can send you to Europe this summer. You’re costing them less than half of what you would have been,”’ said Popham, a former travel agent.

Mischa Guenther, 17, a St. George’s senior, applied to five colleges and has heard from none.

“It’s stressful,” she said. “Sometimes I’m worried I won’t get into any of them.”

It has happened, said Popham. She remembers a straight-A student who applied to only Ivy League schools and was rejected by all. After some late-spring scrambling, the girl ended up at Washington State University.

Analyzing the signals

At times, the mail brings a cryptic sign. Jerome Hagen, a St. George’s senior, received a hand-written card from the assistant director of admissions at University of Chicago.

He can quote it by heart: “It was an absolute pleasure to receive your application.”

“I thought it might be good because they’re a pretty big school and the assistant director of admissions probably doesn’t write hand-written cards to everyone,” Hagen said.

His friend, Matt Stembridge, wisecracked: “Unless they hired an assistant director of admissions just to do that - get kids’ hopes up and dash them.”

Stembridge can afford to laugh.

He applied early and was accepted at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., the Ivy League alma mater of U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton, former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and Theodore Geisel - better know as Dr. Seuss.

Dr. Seuss is the one Stembridge tells people about. “Everybody loves Dr. Seuss,” he said.

Stembridge applied to Dartmouth in mid-November. A big packet with a first-class stamp arrived Dec. 12.

That day, Stembridge had a Knowledge Bowl tournament after school. When he got home, his father videotaped the moment of truth.

On the tape, Stembridge opens the envelope and pulls out the letter. He paces back and forth, his voice breaking and roaring as he reads:

“Congratulations! It is with great pleasure that I inform you of your admission to Dartmouth College as a member of the Class of 1999.”

Stembridge’s early acceptance and a substantial financial aid package meant he applied to only one college. His friends frantically typed multiple essays and aid forms.

With elite schools’ annual tuition, room and board topping $20,000, many students send applications to seven or eight schools, fishing for the best financial aid offer as well as an acceptance.

Parents add to anxiety

Any comment from an adult, particularly a parent, can be extremely annoying to a person suffering the knotted intestines of severe worry.

Some parents may go too far.

“We have to talk about it constantly,” said Lizzy Sadler of St. George’s of her parents. “Everything from a college they open.”

Another St. George’s student, Shyre Christensen of Post Falls, said her mother scolded her for tearing into a college envelope, insisting she use a knife as a letter opener.

Christensen’s mother, Holly Chick, has a different perspective: “She’s like a beaver when she opens them.”

Buffy Mann of St. George’s applied to five colleges, including Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., where her sister went, and Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, where her brother went.

She doesn’t find her parents’ reassurances very reassuring: “They say, ‘Jenny got in and you’re smarter than she was then.”’

Essay from aliens

Writing college application essays was an exercise in self-absorption for Sam Clarke, 18. His senior year at Lewis and Clark High began with teachers telling him to start writing.

“They kept saying, ‘Be yourself,”’ said Clarke. “I realized then how lacking I am in introspection. When I sat down in front of my computer my nerves were jangled. It’s difficult to ‘be yourself’ on call.”

Clarke applied early to Dartmouth, but was deferred; he still could be among the 23 percent of applicants who are accepted.

He’s wanted to go to Dartmouth for years. His father is a Dartmouth alumnus, and he feels a strange nostalgia for New England because of “memories that aren’t even mine.”

The decision depends in part on Clarke’s answers to five questions, one of which asked him to make up and answer his own question. Clarke’s question: “When you look in the mirror, what do you see?”

The essays require a psychological dance in which students try to guess what admission counselors want, while also striving to be unique, but not so strange that admission counselors question their sanity.

LC senior Rob Burr pushed the limit with an essay, written as an intelligence report on “subject 0013, the human Robert Burr.”

“PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE: Subject Burr is foremost an intellectual…. His primary concerns are those of the mind. The subject sometimes experiences agitation due to his seeming inability to attract a mate, but is more often given to fits of hubris.

“CONCLUSION: This subject would make an excellent administrator should we decide to invade Terra…. He possesses a flexible mind and a likable personality, and would therefore be an excellent liaison to the human slaves. He needs only training and education to set him on the correct path.”

The essay didn’t deter Loyola University, New Orleans, from accepting Burr and offering a $5,000-per-year scholarship.

“It was a bright and innovative approach that made him stand out in a positive way,” said Loyola admissions counselor Eli Clarke, who reads about 400 essays a year.

The admissions counselor said he was grateful for some variety.

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