The New College Try

"There is something that these very different students share in common. Just as the distance between the campus and the market has shrunk (perhaps not that surprising at Chicago, home of the market-based approach to almost everything), so has the gap between childhood and college--and between college and the 'Real World' that follows. To me, to Doug Mitchell, to just about anyone over 30, going to college represented a break, sometimes a radical one--and our immediate post-college lives represented a radical break with college. Some of us ended up coming back to the neighborhood partly for that very fact: nostalgia for four years unlike any we had experienced, or would experience again. Not for these kids."

For The New York Times Magazine's college essay contest, Rick Perstein wonders if going to college is less of a life-changing experience for today's students.