Forty years ago high school students from Berkeley enrolled in UC , smoked pot, and participated in street theater on Telegraph Avenue protesting against the draft (with a supporting cast provided by Gov. Ronald Reagan and the National Guard.)

Eventually they graduated, deferred marriage while they explored the world, had kids when they were in their forties and sent them to Berkeley High.

This weekend those kids turned the tables on their parents and showed us, in a couple of one-act plays at the Berkeley Rep School of Theater, what it means to graduate from high school in 2008. Alerted to the plays by a glowing preview in the San Francisco Chronicle we caught the opening night of Perfect Score and El Soldado: the college admissions process meets Iraq.

Perfect Score - College Admissions from a teen point of view

Berkeley High School senior Katie Henry has written a wonderful play about college admissions from the viewpoint those most affected by it - the students themselves.

It follows four high school teens as they fret over college and struggle with parents, counselors and application deadlines. Hannah is the kid with a 4.0+ GPA who is desperate to get into Yale - where her mother once walked to classes on Science Hill before her untimely death when Hannah was in fifth grade. James is the rebel who cuts class and is disgusted by whole applications process. Alex bets his future on bending it like Beckham and scoring a soccer scholarship. Ivy, who has the best lines in the play, is the retro-hippie whose principles rub up against reality.

Katie Henry told the Chronicle that the play:

was fueled by “a lot of frustration about how unfair the entire college process seemed, and how difficult it was and how it shouldn’t have to be so difficult.” She was irked by the absurdity of some of the college-application questions - one asked which was more interesting, a gorilla or a guerrilla - and having to describe herself in 200 words.

“Those questions are real, and they are ridiculous,” says Henry… “I couldn’t describe who I was in 200 words. I didn’t know what they wanted from me. I didn’t know how to tell them what they wanted, and at the same time, I didn’t want to tell them what they wanted to hear. I was just angry and frustrated.”

Her anger and frustration are wonderfully articulated by the talented cast. Insights into the absurdity of the applications process include:

• Having to explain the on-line applications process to parents who know they couldn’t get accepted with their GPA’s if they re-applied today
• Wondering why you’re obsessively applying to brand-name colleges when you refuse to wear brand-name clothes
• Watching your Dad hands over wads of cash to a private college counselor who pats you on the head and spouts platitudes
• Being weighed down by college admissions books the size of telephone directories
• Pinning your hopes for a higher education on your ability to kick a ball between two wooden posts.

As absurd and frustrating as the college admissions process is, it’s not a life or death decision. But increasing numbers of 18-year-olds today do make life or death decisions - in Iraq.

El Soldado - soccer moms of soldier girls

Roxie Perkins’ play followed Henry’s on the bill. It’s a multi-media pastiche which combines a razzle-dazzle spoof on high school wrestling with the agonized soliloquies of a teen girl whose infatuation with a soldier boy leads her toward the recruiting office. The suburbia of mini-vans and manicured lawns is overlaid by images of desert warfare and death in the sand. Albany meets Al Amarah.

The two plays describe experiences of different universes of teens today. Forty years ago there was no differentiation. Getting into college kept you out of Vietnam. Today the war is being fought mostly by kids whose families can’t afford college.

These two plays show the two sides of the same coin - decisions faced by eighteen-year-olds in America. in 2008. As the house lights went up the generation that protested Vietnam applauded. Outside the streets of Berkeley were quiet. That might not last if Iraq turns into a hundred-year war. Be careful who you vote for in November, kids.

The laws of statistics mean that this is time of year when many high school seniors must learn to deal with rejection. Selective colleges, as is well known, are rejecting more applicants each year. 2008 has been called the “perfect storm”. The lucky few get the fat envelope right away, most deal with at least a few skinny envelopes.

So what can parents do to help students deal with rejection?

Forbes has a useful article which helps families keep things in perspective. They quote National Speakers Association expert Elayne Savage who says:

Feelings of isolation and despair are typical accompaniments to rejection, according to Elayne Savage, a communication coach and author of Don’t Take it Personally: The Art of Dealing with Rejection. Parents should encourage their children to hash out complex emotions in conversations with other adults or capture them in words in a journal or blog–and they should be careful not to intensify those emotions by projecting their own disappointment onto their children.“It’s going to feel like they are the only person going through it,” Savage says. “In families, anxious feelings can get passed around from person to person. So, if the parent is reliving past disappointments and rejections, and as tension builds, the teen may be picking up, absorbing, the parent’s fears.”
 

The article includes a list of eight useful tips on dealing with rejection from a variety of top experts:

1. Put your rejection into context.
2. Parents should emphasize finding the right “fit”–even if it means applying to transfer.
3. Rejection has biological impact that takes time to subside.
4. Talk or write about your feelings of rejection.
5. Don’t take it personally.
6. Take steps to remove yourself from the waiting list.
7. Focus on the schools that did accept you. Consider graduate work at those that didn’t.
8. Get into problem-solving mode.

Each tip has a paragraph of suggestions on the best next steps to take when the skinny envelope falls out of the mailbox.  Timely advice.

What’s it like to try and live at Stanford University on $5 a day when other of your classmates are legacy kids from some of the wealthiest families in America?

An article in Monday’s San Francisco Chronicle told the story of Jason Scott who did just this. He’s from a low-income family and qualifies for financial aid - paying just $2,500 a year to attend the $50,000 a year institution. But this is a big chunk of change for a family that lives on just $19,000. So there’s no money left over for the usual student fun stuff.

In fact, at the end of freshman year he had to survive on $50 for two weeks before his pay-check from an on-campus job arrived. During this time “he lived in his Jeep parked around Stanford’s grassy Oval, with its grand view of the campus’ sandstone arcades. He showered in the gym. He ate peanut butter sandwiches.”

Scott says that his frugal lifestyle is an issue he’s learned to deal with at Stanford. But it’s a far more serious issue before he ever got to college:

As much as money matters, Scott said, it matters most before students ever try to enroll. Kids who grow up with money attend good high schools. They understand the importance of mastering the violin or excelling at soccer. They have SAT preparation and sometimes professional college application consultants. Those advantages help smooth the way at the most prestigious of the West Coast’s major private universities.

“We struggled to get there and once we got there, it was a culture shock,” said one of Scott’s friends, Tanya Koshy, a recent Stanford graduate. “Once you get over the initial shock and accept the fact that you’re different and come from a different background, you can propel yourself forward and nothing can hold you back.”
Stanford University officials have said they want more economic diversity. And yet one measure of that - Pell Grant numbers - has remained steady at around 12% Stanford vs. 31% of the student body across the Bay at UC Berkeley.

Students like Jason Scott are to be congratulated on overcoming the odds and sticking with what is obviously a challenging situation for the four years they mingle with the sons and daughters of America’s wealthy elite.

It’s obvious from the statistics that family income level plays a huge part in the college admissions process. When the admission ticket to private education is nudging a quarter of a million for four years this is inevitable. Meanwhile, there’s strategies available to help level the playing field. Find out all you can about financial aid packages. Don’t take no for an answer and learn to love PNB sandwiches if that’s what it takes.