These past few weeks, Choate has welcomed many of its accepted applicants and their families with open arms and a Niagara of information for Spring Visits. The school encouraged and invited current students like myself to participate in panels, take prospective students around classes, serenade the families, and simply be on our best behavior. As a rising senior for next year, I was eager to help out and get to know some of the people I would be going to school with. On the other hand, the whole experience raised a few questions in my mind. Who were we trying to impress, and what for? How much of it was actually genuine?
It’s easy enough for insiders at Choate to realize when the school is about to host a significant number of outsiders, whether they are parents in the fall or adolescent prospects in the spring. All we have to do is look for tablecloths and flowers in the dining hall and flags lining the PMAC pathway. I still remember being impressed by the classy menu and appearance in the dining hall during my first meal at Choate. Since then, I’ve probably only had five meals that were quite that exquisite.
I don’t think Choate is trying to deceive its guests so much as it is showing them the best things about the school. And Choate is certainly not alone among prep schools in this endeavor to sell the school to anyone interested. Every school is advertising in the same ways and using the same manipulated statistics to draw the best kids in. It’s all about that first impression of the school, and Choate gives excellent first impressions.
It’s human nature to want to make a good first impression. We frequently ask ourselves questions all the time, even if we aren’t always aware of it. What should I wear? How should I portray myself? When the does personal become too personal? We’ll go out of our way to ensure that we are seen in a good light the first time around, showing much less care as we get better acquainted and more comfortable with people. After all, they say that we have already formed our opinion of someone within the first fifteen minutes of meeting them.
I find this phenomenon rather unfortunate, because I’m one of those people who gives one of two first impressions to people. I’ll either be paralyzed in fear and looking for the right words or caught in the act of making a fool of myself through some bodily awkwardness. Before I know it, those crucial first fifteen minutes are up! Never do I get lucky enough to be caught as the eloquent, charming, and sexy person that I ordinarily am…in my dreams. I like to think I would have many more friends if I were a little more deceptive around new people.
It’s only through occasions like Spring Visits that awkward people like me are able to give good first impressions. Instead of being at the center of attention, we are comforted by the fact that most of the students we meet are probably too intimidated or overwhelmed to remember us come next fall. All we really have to do is get the guests comfortable enough to do all the talking, at which point we simply regurgitate every positive thing about Choate we can remember. When they ask us about sensitive topics and bad things, we look for the answers that are most likely not to scare them away from the school.
That being said, however, I think it’s a shame that we are obliged by the competitive nature of applying to boarding schools to impress our visitors with only the best that we have. In an ideal world, prospectives would be allowed to witness the school from a two-way mirror, with students and teachers free from the pressures of “being good.” If the sole reason a student decides to come to Choate is because of statistics and fresh flowers on the tables, then perhaps the student is better off elsewhere. Probably the most important factor to consider is whether they want to come or not. And when we seek to impress the visiting families, we tend to distract them from their own motives to send a son or daughter to this school. By the end of the visit, the students will start seeing and thinking blue and gold, lulled into a false sense of what Choate is all about.
Now that the visiting period has ended, Choate students and faculty members can breathe easy again and take pro-Choate sentiments to the normal levels. I know for a fact that some of the families were more impressed by the school than others. Maybe some of us managed to convince a few on the fence to choose Choate over Deerfield or Exeter. If that’s the case, then we should feel obligated to show them what Choate truly is about when they arrive in the fall.
