Chilling report on college admissions

Spring break is a time for high school families to hit the road and tour college campuses. It is a time for college bound seniors, hopefully, to make choices about which school to attend next year. Our 10th grader is dropping in on a few schools just to get a taste for what lies ahead—and to have some fun on the road.

Against this familiar backdrop comes some chilling stats from the NYT: A Great Year for Ivy League Schools, but Not So Good for Applicants to Them

Harvard turned down 1,100 student applicants with perfect 800 scores on the SAT math exam. Yale rejected several applicants with perfect 2400 scores on the three-part SAT, and Princeton turned away thousands of high school applicants with 4.0 grade point averages. Needless to say, high school valedictorians were a dime a dozen.

For so many years I shrugged off the alarming reports of college admissions competition. Hyper parents get hysterical over just about anything. No need to fall prey to the collective neurosis, right? My kid's doing fine. Well, reports like this just have to give you pause. Times are pretty insane out there for college applicants.

The article notes that the record low admit rate are in part due to students applying to more and more colleges. Statistically this should lead to a massive game of musical chairs as the lucky kids who receive multiple acceptance letters make their choices, opening up seats for wait listed students. That may not be a very comforting thought for students that did not secure any of the admissions they were counting on, but on paper this should help a lot of kids that have been stung by the arrival of too many "skinny" envelopes. Good luck to you all. I know we'll be banking on that in a few years!