Colleges: How to Be Interesting

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In theory, the colleges are absolutely right to seek students with some consuming interest. But the search for the new I.Q. (interest quotient) is clearly turning too many adolescents into premature phonies. Senior Paul Taylor of Newton (Mass.) South High School has a point in wishing that colleges would simply choose qualified applicants by lottery. As it is, he says, "one is almost ashamed of getting into a good college" because of the salesmanship involved. Whether or not a lottery makes sense, there is a way to rise above the college race. For those with steady nerves, the solution is to do something spectacular—scale Mount McKinley in a wheelchair, perhaps—and then refuse to mention it to the colleges.