RECENTLY I SPENT hours sitting in college admissions offices in Massachusetts and New York, waiting for my older son to finish another campus tour.
I was going through that stage of parental life known as the kid's college hunt. The college hunt is a springtime mating ritual in which prospective students, mostly high school juniors, visit college campuses with their parents. There the kids mingle with representatives of the colleges, mostly perky student tour guides who can walk backward and talk at the same time. Both sides are looking for signs of a potential match.
I am still not entirely sure what those signs are. As best I can figure, the experience is similar to buying a new pair of sneakers. Adults focus on cost and structure. But teen-agers look for a sense of style, picking up vibrations and nuances lost on their parents. On our recent 1,200 mile swing through the Northeast, I often thought of the story told to me a few years ago by a friend who had just finished taking his son on college visits. He told me that shortly after driving several hours to a far-flung campus, he was quickly informed by his son that they could leave, this school wasn't right for him. The dad complied and wondered what had been wrong. Eventually he got his answer. The kid had seen "too many sandals" on campus.
On our trip, I was the wheelman, the driver who got us to a college in time for its morning tour. Having deposited my wife and son at one college admissions office, I immediately began plotting the route to our next stop, another college admissions office.
My wife was the saleswoman, whipping out facts pulled from Web sites, capsule comments from the "Princeton Review: The 310 Best American Colleges," consulting a list of colleges compiled by the high school counselor, and generally encouraging us to haul ourselves to one more campus "just to see what it looks like."
The kid was the client, keeping his options open, his opinions largely to himself and keeping his eyes closed as he napped in the front seat of the car.
The object of the excursion is to learn about colleges, but like so many other family undertakings, it ended up teaching you things about yourself. I learned, for example, that during a college hunt, your prejudices pop to the surface.
I heard my wife, who virtually grew up in the South, suddenly proclaim she did not want any of her children to go to college there.
As for me, I got steamed when a college admissions official in Boston repeatedly described the school as "somewhat unique." Unique means one of kind, I fumed, and I can't send my kid to any college that abuses the English language.
The kid seemed amused by these displays of parental bias. He announced that he also wanted to check out colleges in Texas and Louisiana, which, the last time I looked, were in the South. As for the "somewhat unique" college, it is one of his favorites, at least so far.
Visiting colleges also gave me an insight into how "clingy" I was. I had to face the question of how far away from home I was willing to let my kid move. I decided I want my kid to be close enough to be able to come home for a weekend, but too far away to drop off dirty laundry.
After our trek through the Northeast, I was tuckered out. My wife, however, began laying the groundwork for a blitz of Pennsylvania colleges and an airlift into Texas and Missouri. The kid said making a trip to the University of Hawaii sounded appealing.
Somewhere along the way, we have to deal with the issues of getting admitted to, and paying for, the college of choice. Right now, we are sightseeing and the situation is fluid or maybe chaotic. I was hoping this college hunt could be wrapped up in a couple weeks but it appears to be a process that lasts several months.
And so after a couple weeks of participating in the hunt for higher learning, I seriously considering dropping out.
Pub Date: 3/27/99