Is the New York Times on Glue?

If not, what would possess them to run a front-page story, not at all fact based, featuring a couple of upscale high school students from a Boston suburb trying to get into the most competitive schools in the country? Who admit that being smart is cool, but being hot is still better than being smart. OOOh, stop the presses! Young women feel pressured to look good!

OK, NY Times, when you start bashing Smith, you go too far.

The story centered around a woman, presumably a good student, whose mother attended Smith College, someone who was a role model to the daughter. She was rejected from many of her first-choice schools, but was admitted to Smith, not her first, second or even her third choice. And why not? The article doesn't say. Smith is a top school, and a name brand. What's the problem? The implication is that the same-sex school is not a draw.

While all-women’s colleges are not for everyone, and women of this girl’s mother’s age had less of a choice of schools to attend, it is still a worthy competitive option for students considering the best colleges in the country.

I recently attended my 15-year college reunion. I conducted a survey of my class, which showed that almost everyone who responded would recommend the school to their daughters, their neighbors, their local high schools. It is a school that is not stuck in its past, but continues to evolve in order to give women the most competitive edge upon graduation.

In an environment where women make up the majority of students and feel pushed out by smaller elite schools worried about gender balance, Smith is not saddled with this issue. Students aren’t isolated by their single-sex education. On the contrary, students take advantage of a 5-college exchange, a lively offering of arts and cultural activities, and yes, even parties where men are invited.

Don’t believe me? Go visit. You’ll be impressed with the multimillion dollar, state of the art student center, the engineering program, the newly renovated art museum. But most of all, you’ll feel the energy of all those smart young women, who continue to make the campus as lively and extraordinary as the days when students like Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem and heck, even my class, roamed the quad.

Women’s colleges are not an anachronism. They inspired the women's movement, and may be the stomping grounds of not just the first ladies of Bush and Reagan, but the first woman president. (Hillary Clinton is a graduate of Wellesley.)

I would urge all promising young women to give these campuses a second look. It’s better than you think.

It's time to school the NY Times that these microcosm story presented like a kind of universal experience, or anything new, is not just annoying. It's not good journalism.