The college admissions process teaches students how to express themselves during interviews, how to describe their best qualities in application essays. It may also make them wary of college marketing campaigns, and skeptical of being treated as a statistics, due to the large role played by standardized-test scores and grade-point averages. Such dichotomy has prompted the Education Conservancy, to develop plans for a major research project to explore the messages that selective colleges send to prospective applicants, and how those messages influence the attitudes and behaviors of high-achieving students. The findings of a preliminary, qualitative study suggest that college applicants absorb both good and bad lessons, which may shape how they see themselves and society. Researchers devised a list of questions, including "Why is the college admission process so important?" and "Is there anything you have done just to enhance your admissions probabilities?" A research firm took those questions to eight high schools, public and private across the country. At each stop, researchers posed the questions to chosen groups of 12 high-achieving seniors, all of whom had applied to selective colleges. Among the positive findings was that the admissions process gives students opportunities for self-examination and personal growth. The students in the study also tended to believe they had to make many sacrifices when applying to colleges. Because they felt pressure to be well-rounded, many said they had participated in some extracurricular activities solely to improve their admissions prospects. An independent researcher who worked on the preliminary project, concluded in a separate analysis that colleges may do some things that elicit, or reinforce, lying, cheating, and cynicism among potential applicants, and that aggressive recruitment efforts might convince students that colleges are self-serving businesses, not institutions with educational missions. The researcher also speculated that standardized tests may promote dishonesty and resentment among students who think the requirement overshadows their creativity, hard work, and motivation. One potentially fruitful question of the broader, longitudinal study may be to examine whether negative admissions-related experiences continue to affect students after they enroll in college. The study might try to examine whether elite institutions take too much blame for applicants' competitiveness, anxieties, and tactics, which may amount to a reflection of human nature as much as a result of systemic flaws in admissions. Some higher-education experts believe that the Conservancy project could hold a much-needed mirror up to the admissions industry. At least one college association president feels that colleges would benefit from hearing what more students have to say about practices such as early decision and mass marketing. "Some students have learned not about education or how to think, but about how to build a resume," says one advisor. "What are colleges helping them to learn?"