Is having an identity in college admissions wrong?

A recent New York Times articles discusses the packaging or branding of students applying to selective colleges. The article is critical of private consultants for using "Madison Avenue" language in helping students who are applying to colleges. But as the article points out, the colleges themselves have been engaged in this same activity in their admissions activities.

The problem is not that students are being helped to show colleges who they are and what their focus has been. Rather the problem occurs when some consultants attempt to make a student into something that they are not. Feigning an interest in a particular topic to appear to be a better candidate for a particular school is wrong and should be discouraged. The article mentions an Eagle scout who was encouraged to engage in AIDS related volunteer work. If the student had and interest in such volunteer work then that is great. But most admissions officers are smart enough to understand that not all boy scouts are homophobic.

Students need to put together a college application that clearly shows who they are particularly when applying to a selective college. Whether they are using a private consultant or not, the failure to put together such an application is an invitation to a thin envelope in the spring.