THE college admission process is always stressful, often unfair and may well reward the wrong values. But the recommendations released last month by a Harvard Graduate School of Education project called Making Caring Common will only make things worse. In its report, “Turning the Tide,” the Harvard group suggested that kids take fewer Advanced Placement courses, that colleges should think about making the SAT and the ACT optional, and that all students should participate in what it calls “meaningful” community service activities.

Kids would then write college application essays about what they learned from these experiences. The report’s recommendations were triggered in part by a survey that found that only 22 percent of middle- and high-school students thought that caring for others was more important than personal happiness or individual achievement.