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University Daily Kansan
Nation/World
Monday, April 14, 1986
Seniors wait for college admission letters
United Press International
Lestie Wallott raced home from New York's Bronxville High School every day last week and searched the mailbox for letters from college admissions offices.
"I try to be calm but I can't," she said, expressing the admission jitters that affect more than 100,000 top librarians.
The mail today and tomorrow will bring the acceptance or rejection letters from the United States' most selective colleges, which cost an average of $16,000 a year to attend and the ones ten students aim for.
These schools include the Ivy League universities of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Brown and Cornell and such other top schools as Vassar, the University of Chicago, Stanford, Rice, the University of California-Berkeley and Michigan.
Those schools dump the "go" or "no go" letters in the
mail for expected arrival by April 15. At Yale, the letters went out at midnight Friday.
The waiting students suffer the pressure of selection, and guidance counselors and psychologists deplore that tension as an unreasonable demand on young people.
The tension in varying degrees is experienced by nearly all of the 1.5 million college-bound students. But for many, the choices have already been made, thanks to a process known as rolling admissions, which is in effect among the nation's 3,200 schools.
Under that system, schools accept candidates as applications are received throughout the year until all places in the entering classes are filled.
places in the classroom.
But for students such as Wallott, who want to go to a top school, there is no way to avoid the short circuits in the nervous system caused by the letters.
"If I get rejected this coming week by the school I really want to go to, I will put on a campaign," she said. "I will write letters, and maybe I'll even camp out on their lawn. Waiting is just the toughest part."
several of these schools already have said no.
Waltott applied to six schools, not an uncommon practice among top students looking for the brass ring.
Joshua Auerbach, 17, of Norwalk, Conn., a senior at the private, expensive Green Farms Academy in Westport, Conn., applied to four schools. Princeton accepted him, but he is awaiting word from Harvard, Yale and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
"It is a very personal thing," he said. "I want to steel myself for a loss or rejection, if I get a letter that says no, will I deal with that? I don't know. Rejection at any time is hard. Be turned down as a person isn't easy."
Psychologist Lee Salk, a professor at Cornell University Medical College and Brown University, says the tension for college applicants is worse now than ever, and a good deal of the pressure comes from parents.
"The threat to self-esteem is like being on the knife edge of failure," he said. "If a kid does not get in, it's hard on parent and child. Kids would be less on pins and needles if they knew rejection is not the end of the world."
Parental pressure sometimes is considerable, he said; and gaining admission to a certain school can be a family-status symbol.
Salk recommends that parents and friends offer gentle' support to the student if a student is rejected.
support to the student in a student-eye contact. Joseph Bischofski, director of guidance at Bronxville High, said the constant anxiety among students included emotions close to the surface.
"There are tears sometimes as some talk about the wait," he said. "The notion of not getting what they have their heart set on is hard. The parents now are maybe worse than the kids. There is so much reflected glory. You see it in the school stickers on the car windows."
New Coke faces uncertain future
United Press International
ATLANTA — Life has been short and not so sweet for New Coke, Coca-Cola's troubled stepchild that was greeted rudely at its debut and banished into virtual soft drink obscurity long before its first birthday.
The latest affront came from McDonald's, which announced last week that it would pull New Coke from its restaurants and replace it with old Coke, now named Coca-Cola Classic.
"No question about it," said Jesse Meyers, publisher of Beverage Digest and a respected industry observer. "This is not good news."
"I don't know necessarily this is the beginning of the end, but there is no way the company can celebrate New Coke's performance."
Hardee's fast food also said it would switch from New Coke to old Coke and observers expect other food outlets to follow suit. It is getting difficult to find new Coke on supermarket shelves in some parts of the nation.
In Arlington, Texas, Mike Curry, manager of a Kroger supermarket, said, "Classic outsells the new stuff by 5 to easily. Frankly, we do little business with the new. We set aside shelf space to the new product, but it's only in proportion to sales."
Bruce Longaneker, manager of Lincoln Park Foods on Chicago's trendy north side, said, "New Coke doesn't sell here because we don't carry it. It wasn't selling so we just decided to drop it."
Such moves reaffirm the attitudes that triggered the outcry that bordered on civil unrest among old Coca-Cola drinkers last year when the company removed original Coke from the shelves for the new and improved version.
But Coca-Cola officials, like sheepish parents trying to say something good about an errant child, savit it's too early to tell whether New Coke is a dud.
"The new formula Coke is an emerging product," said Randy Donaldson, a spokesman at company headquarters in Atlanta. "It is less than a year old. For the soft drink industry, that's a
very new product.
"We're still very much behind it. We're very optimistic about its future."
But, as Coca-Cola discovered, fiddling with a popular product is dangerous business.
According to latest figures compiled by Beverage Digest, New Coke has a market share of four in the take-home package business — not too shabby since that rating translates into more than $1 billion in annual sales.
But Coca-Cola Classic has a 15 share and Pepsi a 19 share. In the world of soft drink giants, New Coke is just another fizzy beverage.
"A four share for any other product after only one year would be an incredible industry story if it didn't have the name Coke on it." Meyers said. "A four share is nearly as large as all of RCola."
New Coke was introduced April 23,1985,under spy-like secrecy as the soft drink giant's new flagship product. Floundering sales simply won't do — especially since Coke and Pepsi are involved in a highly charged battle.
United Press International
Future looks bright for handicapped
NEW YORK - Stair-climbing wheelchairs, robots and voice synthesizers are products of the new generation of aids to help the physically handicapped be self-sufficient and productive, manufacturers say.
Many of the products at last week's International Rehabilitation Conference will make it easier for people with physical handicaps to live a relatively normal life, said participants.
celereate the integration of the world's 500 million disabled people into the mainstream of their communities," said conference chairman Emile Tubiana in opening ceremonies attended by Senate Majority Bob Dole — who has a withered arm from World War II injuries.
"There is an urgent need to ac-
The stars of the conference were the robots that spoon-fed volunteers, played records and fetched objects on command.
It will be years before robots for the disabled become commonplace, said Larry Leifer, an engineering professor at Stanford University. But
experiments with robot arms attached to wheelchairs have been successful and may soon be available commercially, he said.
The robot arms are manipulated by the chins of quadriplexes, allowing them to feed themselves or read a book without help, he said.
Another new product is a wheelchair that climbs stairs on a tread similar to that of a tank. Manufactured by NATCO Corp. of Foster City, Calif., the chair has been in the development stage for more than two years.
At $10,000, the chair is much more
expensive than a traditional wheelchair and, unlike a conventional wheelchair, cannot be folded for storage.
But people attending the conference said it may eventually replace the standard wheelchair because it offers mobility unimagined 10 years ago.
Not all the products at the show were for people who use wheelchairs. Sophisticated voice synthesizers and cochlear implants were indicative of the advancements made for the deaf and the mute.
LaRouche groups linked with fraud
United Press International
NEW YORK — A grand jury has found that followers of political extremist Lyndon LaRouche raised hundreds of thousands of dollars through nationwide credit card fraud, the New York Times said yesterday.
The Times, quoting a federal prosecutor's affidavit, said preliminary findings of a two-year investigation by a panel in Boston indicated that the LaRouche groups defrauded hundreds of thousands of people.
A spokesman for LaRouche called the investigation a witch hunt.
The FBI, the Federal Election Commission, the Internal Revenue Service and the Secret Service are looking at groups under LaRouche's influence as well.
An affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Boston by U.S. Attorney William Weld's office said the grand jury investigation's early findings "dicated an extensive nationwide pattern of credit card fraud by LaRouche followers, the Times said.
The Times quoted the affidavit as saying "hundreds of unauthorized charges apparently totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars" were made.
workers at stands in airports around the country would solicit people to subscribe to magazines, and other publications and encourage them to make this purchase by credit card.
"When these individuals got the credit card bills," the document said, "instead of $15, $20 or $25, they had $500 or some in cases several thousand dollar charges" on their bills.
The document said LaRouche
Lyndon LaRouche's ideas have gained new attention because of last month's startling Democratic primary victories by two LaRouche candidates in Illinois and the proliferation of LaRouche candidates across the nation.
LaRouche has said he thinks the Queen of England is involved in the drug trade, the United States is headed for economic collapse and the Holocaust is fiction.
He has labeled Henry Kissinger, Walter Mondale and others as Soviet agents of influence. He has said that Ferdinand Marcos fell from power because Marcos opposed him.
LaRouche, 63, a four-time fringe candidate for president, expounds these views in prolific writings and in a calm voice with a New England accent that grows excited when challenged.
It's a good time to choose sides. CLASS RINGS FROM BALFOUR
good thru April 18
Balfour 935 Mass.
Mr. Potatohead never had it so good
You can have your way with Mr. Potato-head every Tuesday in the Kansas Union Cafeteria.
Baked Potato Day means your choice of cold or hot toppings on a steaming hot baked potato.
Hot toppings like chili, beet tips and gravy, and cheese sauce with broccoli. And your favorite cold toppings like sour cream, shredded cheese, and bacon bits.
You've never had it so good either.
THE KANSAS UNION
CAFETERIA
level 3
NATIONAL RECREATIONAL SPORTS WEEK TEAM HANDBALL DEMONSTRATION (EUROPEAN HANDBALL)
MONDAY, APRIL 14, 6:30-8:00 p.m.
Courts 1,2,3, in Robinson Center
PLAYED IN THE 1984 OLYMPICS
will be offered Fall 1986 HPER 108 Team Handball
11:30-12:20 T-Th line No. 60587
CALL 864-3546 FOR MORE INFORMATION
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