Easing the College Admissions Mania: Columnist Frank Bruni Speaks at Smith Oct. 20

New York Times op-ed columnist Frank Bruni, who has written provocatively and compellingly on higher education and other issues for The New York Times, will discuss increased pressure around the college application process—and his proposal for a more balanced approach—in a Presidential Colloquium at 5 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 20, in Weinstein Auditorium, Wright Hall. The event is open to the public at no charge.

The topic is one that’s close to Bruni’s heart. Bruni writes often about education issues in his columns for The Times, exploring, among other issues, the admission frenzy, the purpose of education and the value of liberal arts colleges.

Bruni also is the author of Where You Go Is Not Who’ll You Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania. Published this past March, the book examines the increased frenzy about getting into a “good” college and proposes a different way of thinking about education and success.

“College is a singular opportunity to rummage through and luxuriate in ideas, to give your brain a vigorous workout and your soul a thorough investigation, to realize how very large the world is and to contemplate our desired place in it,” Bruni writes. “And that’s being lost in the admissions mania, which sends the message that college is a sanctum to be breached—a border to be crossed—rather than a land to be inhabited and tilled for all that it’s worth.”

As a writer, Bruni has a wide range of interests. Now in his 20th year at The Times (and his fourth as an op-ed columnist), Bruni has served as the paper’sWhite House correspondent and the chief restaurant critic.

While a staff writer for The Times’  Sunday magazine, he profiled J. J. Abrams and a health-obsessed billionaire who planned to live to 125; as the Rome bureau chief, he kept tabs on both Pope John Paul II and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. As a Times columnist, he reflects on diverse topics: American politics, higher education, violence in football, gay rights and his own life as a gay man in a close-knit family.

Bruni’s pre-Times interests were similarly peripatetic. At The Detroit Free Press, where he worked from 1990 to 1995, Bruni served variously as a war correspondent, the chief movie critic and a religion writer. In addition to Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be, he is the author of two New York Times best sellers: Born Round, a memoir about family and food; and Ambling Into History, a 2002 chronicle of George W. Bush’s first presidential campaign.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead Scholar, Bruni earned a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.

Bruni’s visit to Smith is part of the college’s Presidential Colloquium series. The event is open to the public at no charge.