College admissions get crazier every day!

It's time for some common sense to make an appearance in the college admissions world, and it would be nice if we (schools, students, and parents) would stop fixating on the same colleges and universities every year.  We all know - and this article backs it up - that there are a very small number of schools with ridiculously low admit rates.  So Stanford had a 5% admit rate; Harvard and Yale came in around 6%. Does that really make a difference in the quality of education?

Have you ever really thought about why it's so competitive? Consider the quote in the article from the Duke University dean of undergraduate admission: "One of the ways that colleges are measured is by the number of applicants and their admit rate, and some colleges do thing simply to increase their applicant pool and manipulate those numbers."  What does that mean? Well, the more applications you receive, the more students you can turn down. When your admit rate is lower, people start to think you're better than everyone else, and then more students apply, thereby driving the admit rate down every further.  That's often the way Americans think: if it's hard to get into, then it must be better than all the others. But you know that's necessarily the case!

Why are you going to college?  For the bragging rights and/or a bumper sticker?  I'm not discounting the excellent education you can receive at any of the ultra-competitive institutions, but hopefully your college search has more meaning than that.  I have visited too many colleges around the country and have found that incredible things are going on at campuses from coast to coast, not just a select few.  If one of the competitive colleges really is a good fit for you, then that's one thing, but I want to suggest that there are other equally excellent opportunities out there.

Over the last few years, we have discovered some amazing colleges: the University of Tulsa, Quinnipiac University, the University of Dayton are just a few of those.  They may be known to others, but we were not as familiar with them, and once we visited, we loved what we saw.  Consequently we now have girls attending those institutions (or in the case of Dayton, one on her way), and they are loving their experiences and already doing great things on campus.  I have no doubt that because they were willing to expand their horizons, the future will be bright. (By the way, those girls received some great scholarship offers at those three schools.)

The admissions process doesn't have to be so crazy.  If you're willing to consider a wide variety of options and perhaps think outside the box, the process could be easier than you think.