The promising Class of 2017

By Nicolaus Mills

Like a number of faculty at my college, I have been reading the folders of students we have admitted and e-mailing those who have expressed an interest in the fields I teach - writing and literature - to see if they have questions I can answer. It's an important undertaking.

Colleges like mine naturally want to admit the best students they can, but equally important is making sure students who seem like the right fit are just that. The more contact prospective students have with faculty and upperclassmen at the college they are considering, the better it is for everyone. Nobody wins when students enroll in a college in which they are unhappy. They make life miserable for themselves and bring down morale before transferring out.

In reading folders last week, I was struck not only by the talent of the students I came across, but their compassion. Time and again, the figures the students wrote about - from the 19th-century feminist Margaret Fuller to Atticus Finch, the courageous, Southern lawyer in Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird - were individuals characterized by their empathy.

Of course, no student trying to get into a college is going to write in praise of Hannibal Lecter, but the students whose folders I read weren't trying to game the system with their essays. They didn't just write movingly about history and literature. They wrote about their parents and friends with a level of understanding and detail that is impossible to fake.

The student writing I came across was consistent with what polls say typifies the closeness the millennial generation (those born from 1982 to 2003) maintains with both their parents and one another.

A 2010 Pew Survey, "Millennials: A Portrait of Generation Next," showed 63 percent of millennials believe adult children should take into their own home an elderly parent if that is what the parent wants; 57 percent had volunteered over the last year.

Even better, the millennials have continued their thoughtful take on social issues. A recent Pew survey showed 70 percent of millennials support same-sex marriage, and a February Gallup poll reported that Americans age 18 to 29 are the least likely group to own guns, with just 20 percent saying they possess one.

In her new movie, Admission, Tina Fey plays an overworked Princeton admissions officer. In one scene, students emerge - thanks to the magic of film - from the folders on her desk and, like desperate actors, vie for her attention by hyping their talents. Reading even a small sampling of student folders, as I did, is a happy antidote to this cynical view of the lengths students will go to in order to get into college.

What jumps out from the folders I saw is the grace today's students show in dealing with a college admissions system that can unnerve even the most confident applicant.