Photograph by Kathy De La Torre

LGHS senior Rachel Sax usually studies on her bedroom floor. She prefers the floor because it's uncomfortable enough to keep her from falling asleep.

Applying Pressure

These days, it takes more than a 4.0 grade-point average to get into the best universities

By Sandy Sims

It may look as if no one has a thing to think about except the holidays. Think again. With about half the senior classes at Los Gatos and Saratoga High schools applying to private colleges and universities, some 300 students are staying up until the wee hours to fill out applications and write essays for an average of seven to 15 colleges and simultaneously struggling to maintain their grades.

For students determined to find a place at a top-tier university like Harvard, Brown, UC-Berkeley, UCLA or Stanford, this year is the last leg of a Herculean 100-hour-or-more-a-week effort that rivals that of the CEOs at Silicon Valley startups. In fact, the admissions process is becoming so competitive, venture capitalists are betting that helping kids get into college is a money-making matter.

What it's like

Two weeks ago, on a Wednesday morning, SHS senior Mariam Naqvi bragged that she'd stayed up until 5 a.m. "It doesn't impress anyone," she says. "All my friends stay up late." She'd even received a 2 a.m. call from a friend struggling with a college application. Naqvi says her senior quote for the yearbook is, "One thing I gained from this school is I'm now nocturnal."

Naqvi hadn't procrastinated about the research paper she stayed up to finish. It's her killer schedule. Naqvi has ratcheted up her activities and academics in hopes of getting accepted by a top-tier college. College applications heap on even more stress. "When I got the Stanford application packet, it was so heavy, I didn't want to open it," Naqvi says.

Naqvi is competing with the growing wave of bright baby boomettes who want top alma maters.

The glitch? The number of seats in these colleges hasn't grown with the growing number of boomettes, which means the admissions bar has risen considerably. This means these ambitious students cram every bit of their time with studying, community service, athletics, music lessons and student government. They take honors and advanced-placement classes. (AP classes are college-level courses taught in high school for which students can receive college credits if they pass a test.) AP classes can bump a student's GPA above 4.0. Last year, UC-Berkeley turned away more than 5,000 applicants with 4.0 GPAs, and the average GPA of UCLA's entering freshmen this year was 4.3.

When it comes to competing academically, LGHS and SHS are at the top of the ladder. "I couldn't believe the high level of academics at this school," LGHS senior Melissa Masoni says. When she lived in Manhattan Beach, in a wealthy suburb of Los Angeles, she was a top student in her school. Then she moved to Los Gatos in her sophomore year, and she was no longer at the top of the heap. Masoni is amazed that her LGHS friend, who got an outstanding 1400 score on the SAT, wants to retest.

"The parents push the kids a lot harder here," Masoni says. "That's why the kids take AP classes and get higher scores." Masoni was just accepted into Loyola Marymount. She's thrilled because "it's close to friends and family and has a good dance program."

LGHS senior Rachel Sax, who is at the top of the heap describes the situation as "a rat race." "Kids are applying to up to 15 or more colleges." Sax hopes to get into Brown University in Providence, R.I., where the student-to-teacher ratio is 8-to-1. To compete, she is taking AP classes this year in English, government, economics, biology, calculus and Spanish 5--a tough schedule even in college. Sax is the section editor of the school newspaper, writes for Reality Check (a LGHS student newsletter), works at Ace Hardware and participates in other community and school leadership activities while maintaining a 4.3 GPA.

She's worried that she will get her first B this semester. And to keep up with it all, she is up until 2 or 3 a.m. studying every night. "Mom tries to stop me from working so hard," Sax says.

"Rachel is self-motivated," says her mom, Maryellen Burr. "Just like her father."

Sax's father died two years ago. "He used to talk to me about the colleges in the east," Sax says.

"Rachel isn't the only one staying up late at night," Burr says. "Her friends are, too."

If these students want to attend the top schools, they must maintain these rigorous schedules. David Masson, a New Jersey college consultant, says, "They must take AP classes, not necessarily six of them, but at least a couple and do well to show they can do college-level work."

AP classes come easier for SHS senior Mimi Choi, whose GPA is 4.5. Choi wants to be a doctor and is applying to Harvard, Brown, Stanford, Princeton, UC-Berkeley and UCLA. However, to meet the activities grade, she packs her schedule with cross-country track, volunteering at Good Samaritan Hospital, heading up the SHS commission for new students, and serving as president of SHS's 90-member California Scholarship Federation organization. She attends Chinese school every Friday and belongs to a teen adventure group.

Maybe just getting accepted by a top-tier, ivy league college is the brass ring--enough validation--because a number of students who are accepted opt to attend Berkeley or UCLA instead. "Somewhere along the way, they realize these schools are as good as the ivy leagues schools," Elsie Taketa, senior adviser this year at LGHS, says.


Photograph by Kathy De La Torre

LGHS senior Melissa Masoni, talks with academic adviser Elsie Taketa about college requirements.




A problem for the colleges

"It's a vicious cycle," says Nina Whitcanack, senior adviser this year at SHS. With each student applying to so many schools, the schools can't project their fall enrollment. In defense, many of the private schools have early acceptance programs. Students can submit an early acceptance application to one school (by Oct. 15). If accepted by that school (mid-December), the student must enroll for the fall.

SHS senior Jay Iyengar, who's also become a night owl, but naps in order to get eight hours of daily sleep, applied for early acceptance to Stanford. "I've wanted to go there all my life," he says. "My brother is a Stanford grad."

Iyengar shelved the other applications until the news came from Stanford. Last week, he received his acceptance and will not have to spend his Christmas vacation grinding through applications.

Rachel Sax is waiting for an early-acceptance letter from Brown University. In the meantime, she keeps up the work. "On the weekends, I crash and sleep," she says.

Some students at their limit

"The lucky ones crash and sleep," Alan Javurek says. Javurek, in addition to his private practice, co-directs school-based counseling at the Teen and Family Counseling Center of the West Valley. He sees teens who are stretched to the maximum.

"These kids just keep going," he says. "They have no time to stop and breathe. The unlucky ones wind up with eating disorders, hooked on prescription drugs or some other unhealthy outlet."

One senior, who contributed anonymously to the LGHS student newsletter, Reality Check, wrote:

I was committed to my pursuit of excellence, and nothing short of hospitalization was going to stop me. I thought I was passionately living one of my inspirational mottos--"Carpe Diem"--but instead of living my life, I was taking it. I became a binge eater. I verbally abused my family. And I seriously contemplated suicide. The following summer, my family and I went to Europe. For the first three weeks of our five-week trip, I couldn't take a deep breath, so embedded in me was my tension."

Aware of the pressure some of these high-school students are experiencing, the Teen and Family Counseling Center tried to start a stress-reduction group at one of the several high schools they serve. Students didn't show up because they were afraid to miss class. "So we moved the group to the lunch hour," Javurek says. But students didn't show up then because of their extracurricular and leadership activities. Javurek laughs when he says he is going to see if he can find a way to make stress management count for college credit.

"These kids are just doing what they see their parents doing," Javurek says. Parents are running, too. The ones who are working in Silicon Valley startups work 80 to 100 hours a week, he explains.

Nina Whitcanack also wonders how some of these high-achieving seniors will do in the long run. "These SHS students are amazing people," she says. They are so developed in all areas, academically, in talent, in awareness of community and in leadership skills, that she wonders if they are doing too much too soon.


Photograph by Kathy De La Torre

Alan Javurek, Ph.D. is co-director of the school-based counseling program at the Teen and Family Counseling Center of the West Valley. He tried to start a stress-reduction group for stressed-out college applicants, but no one had time to attend.




Advisers work hard, too

In fact, academic advisers are burning midnight oil, too. Since Proposition 13 gutted school budgets, the student-to-counselor ratio is typically 1,000-to-1. While LGHS and SHS struggle to keep the ratio down, the numbers are still high. Elsie Taketa, at LGHS advises a class of more than 350, and Nina Whitcanack advises a class of 285, plus half of the 10th grade. Both schools match a class with one adviser through the whole four years of high school.

"We get to know their dreams and hopes and their triumphs," Whitcanack says.

Jennifer Cheng, SHS senior who is shooting for schools like Cornell, Brown, Yale and Stanford, says it's easy to get an appointment with Whitcanack. "I go to her regularly," Cheng says. "She helps me a lot."

For every student applying to a private college--some 300 between the two schools--the advisers must prepare a secondary school report. This letter of recommendation is individualized for each student (and for every school to which the student applies). It includes information from teachers, parents, the student, transcripts, SAT scores and the student's community and leadership activities.

"I get some help from administrators," Taketa says. But she does the lion's share and will pore over them during Christmas break.

"Colleges don't know how to simplify the process," Whitcanack says. She recalls hearing a Stanford admissions officer reminisce about how they used to get charming essays from the students. These days, with all the outside help students receive, they are pretty well packaged.

The high schools have a dizzying program of support--lunch sessions to help with applications, career centers with information about colleges and other options, college information nights each year for parents and students, financial aid information nights, etc. The Parent Teacher Student Association at LGHS has developed a program called Edge that offers organizing and SAT-prep classes for a fee. One student at SHS says her English teacher even made one college application essay an assignment. West Valley and De Anza colleges come to campus and explain their programs.

In fact, more and more students, including top academic students, are opting for community college, where they sign transfer agreements with a four-year college of their choice. Taketa says every single student who leaves LGHS has a written plan. Even if the student plans to go to a community college, the school ensures that he or she is registered for the fall.


Photograph by Kathy De La Torre

LGHS student Meghan McCarthy reviews college forms with Susanne Moore, the school's career-center coordinator.




The crunch is spreading

Students applying to second- and third-tier schools are also running into fewer seats and higher standards. Donna Ziel, interim director for San Jose State University's Student Outreach and Recruitment Center, says SJSU applications increased by 14 percent last year and will increase further this year. Chico and San Diego State universities are impacted and stopped taking freshman applications Nov. 30. Although the California State University system has agreed to take one third of graduating seniors, these two schools may raise their GPA and SAT score requirements next year.

By the year 2010, Ziel says, some 700,000 additional students will be attending state universities in California, and the only new colleges on the horizon are a University of California campus opening in Merced within the next few years, and a CSU campus opening in the next couple of years on the site of the former Camarillo state hospital near Ventura. Some of the lesser known CSUs will grow, she says.

Still, CSUs are trying to remain accessible to California students, Ziel says.



Outside help

Many parents are willing to spend money to get their child into a good school. With average application fees $55 a pop, plus $60 for SAT tests and $20 a copy for each school, plus $70 for AP tests, the basics add up. But there's more: 10-day college-admissions prep camps for around $1,000; SAT prep courses from private tutors, classes, or over the internet for up to $1,500, expensive tours to campuses around the country and help with essays at all prices.

And now there are the college consultants--a business that is shifting to the big market. Achieva College Prep Centers, based in Palo Alto, has just acquired its second round of venture capital, and plans to go public. Its California chain is going national in 2000, says Steve Feuling, Achieva's vice president of marketing. Achieva charges $3,000 for full service and partial fees for specific help. Feuling says the business is growing fast.

Some consultants specialize. Catharine Aradi's Collegiate Softball Connection matches colleges with softball players. Kim Rose, a Leigh High School softball pitcher, wound up in Alabama, where they needed a good pitcher. One of Aradi's students will be a catcher at West Point next fall. Aradi's fees range from $29.95 for her book to $450 for her step-by-step guidance.

Virginia Luthman of Los Gatos has been a college consultant for 14 years. She charges a $1,200 flat fee ($1,500 next year) and has all the business she can handle. She works with several students from Los Gatos and Saratoga. LGHS senior Leslie Schiefelbein, the third in her family to work with Luthman, says, "Virginia helps take a lot of the stress out of the process. I feel more secure working with someone who knows what has to be done."

"I don't remember this frantic pace when I started as a consultant," Luthman says. Some of these kids are all wound up, jumping from one activity to another, exhausted, not savoring their experience, she says. She works against the fast pace and the power of the colleges. "I tell them to think of the application essay as a piece of writing they will look back on at age 40 to see who they are at this age."

She encourages them to explore activities they would enjoy, to find out what their passion is, rather than think of what the college would want. Luthman says the application process can be a rite of passage, a time when students can get a sense of who they are.

LGHS senior Meghan McCarthy, one of Luthman's clients, is applying to 10 schools. "I'm burnt out with high school," she says. "But the application thing is going OK. I thought it would be a lot harder." McCarthy is interested in law and film, and UCLA is her first choice. "Virginia helped me narrow down the schools that match my goals." She says she understands the application process now and finds herself helping friends. "I feel like an expert."

Patty Hughes, former assistant principal at LGHS, says if the students don't make it into the school they want, they may find themselves much better off in the long run. She recalls one outstanding senior turned down by Stanford. "I couldn't believe he wasn't accepted," Hughes says. She even called Stanford but didn't get a satisfactory answer. The boy went to Occidental, where they wanted him in four different sports, and the English and science departments both wanted him. "He was a bigger star and had more opportunity there than he ever would have had at Stanford," Hughes says.

Come Jan. 15, some seniors will have early acceptance, others will be finishing up applications. That's when the juniors come in to sign up for their SAT tests and begin shuffling through the college bulletins. And, says Susanne Moore, the director of the LGHS career center, "It starts all over again."

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