What's wrong with being a follower? Or a lone wolf?
By Tara Isabella Burton
The Atlantic - Jan 22 2014
Earlier this month, more than 700,000 students submitted the Common
Application for college admissions. They sent along academic transcripts
and SAT scores, along with attestations of athletic or artistic success
and—largely uniform—bodies of evidence speaking to more
nebulously-defined characteristics: qualities like—to quote
the Harvard admissions website—“maturity, character, leadership,
self-confidence, warmth of personality, sense of humor, energy, concern
for others and grace under pressure.”
Why are American colleges so interested in leadership? On the Harvard
admissions website quoted above, leadership is listed third: just after
two more self-evident qualities. So too the Yale website, which quotes
former Yale president Kingman Brewster's assessment that “We have to
make the hunchy judgment as to whether or not with Yale’s help the
candidate is likely to be a leader in whatever he [or she] ends up
doing.” Our goals remain the same today” before going on to stress that
“We are looking for students we can help to become the leaders of their
generation in whatever they wish to pursue.”
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