Pressure to be accepted into elite colleges is crushing our kids

I know more successful people who didn't get into the most prestigious elite colleges — the ones that every high-achieving student now wants desperately to get into — than I know who did.

Likely, so do you.

The people I know went to places like the University of Minnesota, Arizona State University, Evergreen State University, City College of New York, the University of Cape Town and, in some cases, no college at all.

If I lived in rural Wyoming it might make more sense. But I live in the San Francisco Bay Area with a practice based in Marin County, one of the highest per-capita-income counties in America. With Silicon Valley just next door, I am in the midst of arguably one of the most "educated' and "sophisticated" population centers on earth.

Most of these people have interesting stories of how they got where they are. The stories include setbacks like business failures and getting fired from dream jobs, as well as serendipitous encounters that opened doors — encounters they wouldn't have without the business failures and firings.

One was an immigrant from Soviet Georgia. He started as a San Francisco cab driver in 1990, speaking little English. By 1996 he owned three businesses, a 7,500-square-foot home and a Rolls Royce.

"When I came to America," he said, "I looked around and I asked myself one question: Who is rich? Not the people who work for the businesses; it was the people who owned the businesses."

It's not that these people's wealth ensures they are happier and more content than any one else. But they do have the one thing that many of today's youth obsess about: enough money to live where they want, drive the car they want, do what they want and own what they want.

And they did it without a degree from a prestigious college. They did it without being stressed about how every high school quiz and homework assignment might determine their future.

They did it without SAT prep courses and community service hours to bolster their college resumes. They did it without taking their friend's prescription Adderall to help their exam chances, or marijuana to sleep at night.

They did it the way most of these kids will if they achieve that level of professional success: By being savvy, disciplined and committed to self-education.

By taking smart risks, learning from errors, networking with the right people, being confident enough to ask for help and humble enough to understand the world owes them nothing.

These kids will attribute most of their success to real-life experience, dedication to ongoing training and to the value of excellent coaching and mentorship. They will speak about how critical it is to surround themselves with the right people.

In the mid-1980s I went to "one of those schools" — Colby College, an exclusive private college in Maine.

Most Colby students went there because they didn't get into Dartmouth, Brown or other Ivys. We were bright, highly accomplished, ambitious kids. We were just in the top 10% of our graduating high school class, not the top 5%.

None of us felt like losers or feared our lives were over because we were at Colby and not Cornell.

One of my Colby friends graduated, was hired by IBM and placed in a six-month training program. Why, after she spent four years at a competitive college, did IBM spend six months training her? Because real world success takes more than what's learned in the classroom.

After five years in IBM's Gold Circle of top sales performers, she shifted to the advertising industry, rising to become a major account manager at Deutsch, a premier Manhattan advertising firm. She was an English major with five years of sales experience who now oversaw million-dollar advertising. What gives? Today's conventional wisdom is she should have majored in finance or economics. Today's kids are taught that only those who went to Stanford or Yale get these jobs. That couldn't be further from the truth.

In the last two months of my mentoring practice, I have taken on high school and college-aged clients who burned out at places like Stanford and Yale, taking leaves to get their feet back underneath them.

I have met with high school students so distressed at having a B last semester or being unable to break the magic 2200 SAT score barrier that they unraveled and are on anti-anxiety or anti-depression medication.

Parents tell me stories of how their daughter "blanked out" during a midterm. How their son is so anxious he picks at his skin. I get calls from parents whose discouraged kids stopped going to school.

One missed 32 school days so far this year. Another didn't go for two months, doing everything remotely, yet somehow managed to keep some semblance of a GPA.

"Why even bother?" one 18-year-old recently explained. "I didn't get into a UCLA." That he got a scholarship worth nearly $60,000 from the University of San Diego was no consolation. UC schools in California are the prize choice for public schools, just as places like Stanford, Pomona and USC are the choice among private schools. The fact someone like Steven Spielberg didn't get into USC and "settled" for Cal State Long Beach is irrelevant to kids like this.

Working with kids who have such a distorted perception of life and of what it takes to succeed isn't easy.

They're often as irrational in perceptions and beliefs as a person who has an eating disorder and suffers from body dysmorphia. No matter how thin or attractive, they look in the mirror and see fat and ugly.

This current system is insane. And it's driving these kids insane.

One Ivy League student explained how a professor told them the department now regulated that only one-third of students could get A's. Since two-thirds of the professor's students had A's, he was implementing a system to resolve the issue.

I said, "You do realize that's insane, right?"

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"I mean, has it occurred to you that perhaps you're the sane one and that the whole system around you is insane? Think about it. You're a bright kid. Sort this one out: If you are the only sane one in an insane system, but the system thinks it's sane and you don't know any better, you're going to think you are insane, even though you're the only sane one there!"

"That makes so much sense!" he exclaimed after some thought. "I've basically bought into an insane system and believed what they've told me."

Suddenly, the spark was back. His eyes cleared. The future stopped being something to fear. A pathway out began to emerge.

Success, accomplishment, happiness, fulfillment, satisfaction are not only still possible for those who didn't get into their "reaches." They are more likely to happen the sooner these kids stop obsessing about impressing each other and meeting the standards of an insane system, and start focusing on what it actually takes to make it in this complex, chaotic world.

Those things are only learned in the one school that matters — the one Winston Churchill called The University of Life. Fortunately, that's a university for which no application, essay or test score is needed.

A school that is open to everyone and where all hope and possibilities reside.

Jeffery Leiken (Leiken.com) is the CEO of Evolution Mentoring International and is co-founder of HeroPath International. Leiken also is author of “Adolescence is Not a Disease: Beyond Drinking, Drugs and Dangerous Friends — The Journey to Adulthood.” He has presented at TED in Athens, Greece; guest lectured at Stanford University; and facilitated programs for teenagers on three continents and in seven countries, among other accomplishments. He has a master's degree in educational counseling.