7/30/2019 GREessay3

1/2

Educational institutions have a responsibility to dissuade students from pursuing fields of study in which they are

unlikely to succeed.

Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim. In developing and

supporting your position, be sure to address the most compelling reasons and/or examples that could be used to

challenge your position.

***

The idea that educational institutions should guide students away from fields in which they will

not likely succeed makes a good deal of sense from the institutions point of view: it is in their

interest to avoid putting effort and money toward what they may see as students quixotic

dreams. Moreover, guiding those students toward professions likely to make the student

prosperous enough to join the ranks of frequent donors is an obvious potential benefit. But

from the point of view of the students well-being, there are multiple flaws in this view, all of

which are serious enough to make this attitude an unfortunate and inadvisable one. These

flaws lead me to conclude that educational institutions as such should have very little power

to steer a student away from her personal choice, and that guidance and career advice shouldcome from mentors and other knowledgeable individuals. (These mentors may perhaps be

partnered with the student by the institution, but even about this possibility I have

reservations, due to the possibility of a conflict of interest.)

The first of these flaws is that the standpoint that views the institution as capable of making

life-changing decisions for students is based on the assumption that the institution knows the

student in a deep and personal wayindeed, better than the student knows herself. Ascribing

this kind of omniscience to large, impersonal organizations is ludicrous. A students classmates

are likely familiar with her on a personal level; mental health professionals and advisors may

have both academic and personal familiarity; and professors will most often be familiar with

their students solely on an academic level. Someone in any of these positions is betterequipped to provide counsel to a student in need of guidance than the institution, which

would more specifically mean its administrationa detached and impersonal body which is

informed only by a terse and un-nuanced quantification of past performance; that is, by grades.

Myriad situations apart from a students academic fitness for a field can affect these data, and

institutions remain unaware of this necessary consideration. A student who needs advice will

likely understand this, and turn to any of the aforementioned entities (or to her family) long

before seeking the counsel of the administration. Indeed, the effect of an educational

institution taking it upon itself to inform a struggling student that she is likely to fail in the

academic field of her choice is unlikely to be a salutary one. In other words: even when counsel

and guidance is exactly what a student needs, educational institutions are among the entities

least well equipped to provide it, and to say otherwise is to place an incredible burden of

knowledge on the administration, whose attempts to act on its limited information may even

be deeply harmful.

Another flaw in the idea of educational institutions responsibility to steer students away from

concentrations in which they may not have particular aptitude is that, during the years that

people generally spend as students, skills and aptitudes may be incompletely developed. Before

7/30/2019 GREessay3

2/2

developing expertise, a student may have only her passion for a field as evidence that that field

is where she belongs. Into this category fall a number of famous intellectuals, who were

informed by educators that they would fail in the fields of their choice before they went on to

huge successes in those fields.

An interesting example of one of these individuals is that of renowned psychologist RobertSternberg. Throughout high school and college, Sternberg struggled with test-taking anxiety,

meaning that his grades were not in sync with his tremendous intellectual potential (an

example of the myriad other factors mentioned above.) Due to this difficulty, he was advised

to leave the study of psychology while an undergraduate at Yale. Instead, Sternberg made his

struggle the topic of his research. He began to investigate the different ways people approach

the experience of test-taking, and when it is and is not an accurate reflection of the skills it is

meant to assess. His groundbreaking research was the start of a brilliant career, in which he is

currently the president of the University of Wyoming. A reasonable response to this anecdote

might be to assert that Sternberg and similar late bloomers are not harmed by the attempts

of their educational institutions to dissuade them from their chosen paths; that their resolves

are galvanized rather than weakened by such counsel. Whether or not this is true cannot bedetermined in any categorical way. But what is clear is that institutions that predict failure in

this way will likely close off the possibility of a good relationship with the student in the future,

in the event that the student goes on to succeed. Rather than working in the institutions

interest, steering the student away from possible failure has in this case worked against the

institution.

The final flaw I see in the idea that educational institutions should guide their students away

from fields in which they deem failure awaits is a rather subtle one, one for which there may be

little empirical evidence, but which I nonetheless find compelling. That is, it could very well be

the case that famous late-blooming successes like Robert Sternberg are the exceptions, the few

who managed to ignore discouraging advice from authority figures; and that there are untold

masses of misplaced geniuses toiling in the careers into which they were guided by authority

figures during their studies. As I said above, there is little empirical evidence for this assertion,

but there is abundant anecdotal evidence to be found. It is easy to find people who feel that

their dreams were quashed by pessimistic and insensitive administrations and authority figures,

and surely among them are some who are not merely attempting to escape blame but are

telling the truth. It is orders of magnitude more difficult to find people who are willing to say

with gratefulness that a word of counsel from an educational institution turned them away

from goals they would not have reached and toward a better path.

Overall, though I concede that guidance is vital for students, I think that educational institutionsare generally ill-equipped to provide it. Mentors, family, and a students own convictions are

much more helpful and reliable.