Admissions brochures routinely tout the benefits of small class sizes, with pictures of lab-coated undergraduates doing beaker work alongside science professors in safety goggles. I’ve always wondered: Is the research, like the image, staged or real?

I want for them a sense of super-abundance borne not of the horde of possessions on which they rest, but of the competence and creativity they are even now developing, the sense that they can do without some things, can toss whole essays into the rubbish bin if they need to.