What Are We Doing to Our Smart Kids?

One former student’s med school essay exposed more than bad writing—it revealed the rot at the core of higher education.

Why I Help Students Get Into a System I Don’t Trust

I’ve long thought college in America is a scam akin to a pyramid scheme, where a majority of graduating high school students are sold on “investing” four years of their time and focused attention—and hundreds of thousands of dollars they have yet to earn—based on the promise of material and social gains that, even under the best circumstances, could never amount to a positive ROI for most of them. So you might find it odd—bordering on hypocritical even—that a large segment of my tutoring business comes from high school seniors who need college essay coaching. After all, why would I want to participate in the scam?

Believe me, I’ve asked myself the same question, but here’s the answer I’ve come up with: most people—parents especially—disagree with me, so their children are going to apply with or without my help. Therefore, maybe, just maybe, if I help them—if I teach them to think more clearly while we’re working on their essays—they will not only profit more from their college “investment,” they’ll be inoculated against the pernicious groupthink so prevalent on America’s campuses.

Hubris? A gross rationalization for hypocrisy? Perhaps a little of both, but worst of all—if the experience I had last week with a former student is any indication—my reasoning has been wildly optimistic.

The Last Time I Thought I’d Made a Difference

Four years ago, I helped a student write the essays that got her into an Ivy League school. She came to me with a draft of her personal statement that was grammatically correct and structurally logical—either of which alone would’ve made it above average compared to the work I usually see, but together made it superior. Still, she wasn’t confident she was expressing herself as well as she could. We spent a lot of time talking, with me asking questions like: “What’s the most important thing you want the school to know about you, so you’ll be sure they’re accepting the real you—not some version you imagine they want to see?”

I ask all my essay students this because writing what they think the school wants to hear is what almost all of them do—and it’s obvious. Spend five minutes talking to them, and you see the mismatch between the person in front of you and the persona they’ve crafted on paper. The only difference with this student was that she’d used proper grammar and logic to tell the story of that persona, which ironically made it even easier to perceive how “fake” it was.

One thing I never do is lie to a student. I’m diplomatic in my criticism, but I won’t waste their time—or insult their intelligence—with false praise. Knowing what I know about K–12 grade inflation, most of the students I see have had enough of that. They deserve the truth if they’re going to get anything out of the “education” available in college, if only to hear what it sounds like so they can detect bullshit when they see and hear it. So I told her I wasn’t convinced the person on paper matched the person in front of me, and I suspected she knew it.

Her response surprised me: “Thank you! My college counselor told me to emphasize my ethnic and cultural heritage, but that’s not what I want to talk about! I don’t want to tell the ‘[Ethnic]-American girl’ story—I want to be ME!”

Like so many students over the past decade, her teachers and counselors had emphasized group identity over individual agency, and social justice over personal achievement. She struggled to write her true story because their programming kept interrupting her thought process with self-doubt. Even though she thanked me for my honesty, over the next few weeks she kept asking, “Isn’t this arrogant?” “Shouldn’t I talk about how I want to help others?” “Am I really allowed to talk about myself like this?”

No. Only if it’s true. And yes.

After a few more sessions, I convinced her that writing about herself as an individual—separate and apart from any identity group—was neither offensive nor subversive. Her final draft was clear, concise, and compelling. It earned her an acceptance letter from her first-choice school.

When the Med School Essay Arrived

Despite my misgivings about the Ivies in general, and her destination school in particular, I was happy for her. Surely she’d remember how good it felt to tell the truth in her writing, and that feeling would inspire her to take other intellectual risks and protect her from groupthink for the next four years, I thought.

Fast forward to last week. The same student, now a college senior, texted me for help with her medical school application essay. She sent me her draft answer to the question “Why do you want to go to medical school?” I was flattered to be asked—but given how strong her essay had been four years prior, and the fact that she’d had four more years of education, I never expected what happened next: the draft she sent was shockingly bad. Beyond myriad grammatical errors and a lack of logical structure, she hadn’t answered the question.

The essay began with a graphic story about a childhood illness for which she’d been hospitalized. But it shed no light on why she wanted to go to medical school. She pivoted to describe experiences that had allowed her to show “empathy” for others, one of whom was a patient in a clinical setting. I thought, “OK, here we go—here’s the answer.” But it never came. Instead, she detailed a heartfelt account of advocating for the autonomy of a very ill man, without ever connecting it to her desire to become a doctor.

Now, don’t get me wrong: compassionate patient care matters. Most of us would prefer doctors who consider the whole person. But this wasn’t an essay about what’s important in patient care, or even what kind of doctor she hoped to be. It was supposed to explain why she wanted to be a doctor in the first place.

After all, physicians aren’t the only ones who empathize with patients. Nurses, PAs, physical therapists, rehab specialists, and volunteers do too. If her motivation was to care for people, medical school seemed like the longest, hardest path to that end. Getting in is difficult; most applicants apply to thirty schools just to increase their odds. Then there’s seven to eleven more years of schooling, plus residency. Add a fellowship, and it’s even longer. So I found it hard to believe what she wrote was the whole story—or even most of it.

The Feedback That Was “All Good”

I took a chance that she’d come to me because she remembered—and appreciated—how direct I’d been the first time. I redlined her essay with a ruthlessness most people haven’t seen since the late 1980s. When we met on Zoom, I began by expressing my sincere hope that she knew my goal was to help her, but to do that I had to be honest. My gamble paid off. She thanked me, just as she had before.

But what she said next made me so sad and angry I didn’t know whether I wanted to cry or scream. She told me her pre-med advisor had read the essay and said, “You’re all good! It’s fine.”

“All good?” “Fine?” How? In what alternate universe is it “all good” to submit an essay to medical schools full of grammatical errors? Why would “fine” be good enough for an Ivy League pre-med advisor? I was gobsmacked.

Then she told me she’d come to me because her advisor’s reaction seemed “off.” Instead of relief, she felt kind of “icky” inside. She didn’t want vague reassurance, she wanted real feedback. She knew her writing was missing something, and she hoped I could help her find it.

We spent the next hour just talking about why she’d written what she had, and her answers were telling. She’d been told—again—to emphasize emotions: compassion, cultural awareness, and empathy. Rather than say, “No, I’m writing what’s real,” she’d caved.

A Whispered Truth, Nearly Buried

Towards the end of the call, as we discussed her real motivations, she leaned toward the camera and, even though she was alone, lowered her voice to a whisper and said: “The truth is, for as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be an expert at something.”

My immediate reaction was: What (or who) on earth made you feel like having ambition should be kept secret?

I kept that thought to myself so as not to interrupt her because she had already begun telling me a childhood story about a specialist who treated her successfully when her regular doctor couldn’t. She remembered being awestruck. That, she said, was when she realized she wanted to pursue expertise, and since medical science fascinated her, that would be the domain in which she would pursue it.

What We’re Stealing From Bright Students

Throughout our meeting, all I could think about was how many students don’t have someone getting between them and the people telling them to hide their light behind platitudes about helping others. How many of our best and brightest are filled with self-doubt because they’ve been told to “focus on others, not yourself”? What do we lose when any one of them caves to that pressure, hides their ambition, or squashes it altogether?

Before we signed off, she thanked me again and said: “It’s so hard to find hard graders in college! I feel like I’ve regressed. Why don’t professors give this kind of feedback? Is it because they’re not paid enough?”

Oh, If Only It Were That Simple…

It’s not just about pay. If it were, the fix would be easy. The problem is deeper. It’s cultural, philosophical, and institutional. We no longer reward excellence; we apologize for it. We no longer challenge bright students; we placate them. We no longer tell the truth; we soothe, affirm, and protect. Somewhere along the way, the goal of education shifted from cultivating individual potential to reinforcing collectivist narratives.

So no—it’s not that simple.

And maybe it’s not hypocrisy that keeps me in this business. Maybe it’s hope. Not hope that I can change the system, but hope that I can reach one mind at a time before it’s too late.