You can't fake motivation

After three years working in college admissions consulting and speaking to more than 100 high school students worldwide, this is my biggest learning. Skills are easy to pick up. For those who can afford it, professors are willing to mentor, NGOs can be set up, hardware prototypes can be built, and diverse cultures can be learned firsthand. Even those without money can pick up skills through free online courses, bugging adults to share their expertise out of the goodness of their hearts, and run small projects to help out in the community.

As the resumes of students converge toward a list of such accomplishments, dig a little deeper, and one would find that a clear dichotomy exists between the two in conversations. The first group speaks with the conviction of "I have a clear goal of what I want to do and who I want to be, that's why I did all of these." The second group asks, "What else should I do to have a better chance at my target major at my dream school?" As consultants, we like the latter. They come in with clear-set admission goals, strong motivation, and a willingness to listen and execute.

But the more I work this job, the more I suspect that, once the offers are out and decisions on matriculation made, it is the former that thrives. They might be stubborn as customers, unwilling to deviate from who they want themselves as, even if clearly being advised against doing so. Yet, by not seeing "getting into college" as the ultimate goal, they do not get lost when they become college students. To them, college is just an extension of who they are now, a new platform and a set of resources to continue the same path with the same motivation.

No amount of consulting hours can craft this intrinsic drive out of thin air. Strategies serve to align essays, activities, and academic interests to create a thematic narrative. Whether that crafted narrative aligns with what the student actually thinks is only known to him or her. One thing is certain: those whose entire profile has been crafted from zero over the course of years have a better chance of communicating motivation on paper. Yet, that communication happens while turning the student into a passive recipient, to whom real motivation matters less than what the experts say "works."

A few painful years await those who have anchored their ambition on getting into a top college. It is not for the lack of skills and experiences. Rather, they now find themselves questioning why they had built them up, at great cost and time, just to be at a place where they cannot identify the next goal to hit. After all, after Harvard, there isn't another Harvard. Everything after that glittering acceptance letter, whether in the professional world or graduate school, cannot be simplified into a US News ranking. And whereas undergrad is a social norm that respectable families are expected to follow, not so for the path after.

It is a pain that I'm afraid to share with these youngsters. While my family never had the cash to hire strategists, they pushed for what they thought what "works" in college admissions and could be executed on a shoestring budget. Hundreds of hours of community service, impactful-sounding internships, and self-serving student organizations with big titles followed. But once in Yale, much of that narrative collapsed. I seemingly floated through the four years, not engaging with the engineering degree my family wished for or the banking and consulting careers fellow econ majors took on.

This is not meant to be a criticism of the extrinsic motivation of successful admissions. It's understandable that many 17-year-olds, like I was, do not have strong passions. And a manufactured motivation is better than none: going to a top school opens career possibilities and opportunities for experimentation. But for those who were fed motivation by consultants for years, they should not expect to be handed brand-new ones when they step into college campuses. And without motivation, any talent and skill could not be leveraged into anything productive.

Of course, intrinsic motivations disappear as well. The term midlife crisis exists for a reason. But as long as they last, they should be an object of envy. To be so sure of future directions keeps people focused, giving them the ability to spontaneously seek out what colleges can offer in academic and interpersonal resources, without needing the advice of professional consultants. Perhaps consultants, before strategizing for what gets those acceptances, can, when possible, first push the students to find what moves them forward within and by themselves.