Scott Brinton

Surviving the 'college admissions mania'

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New York Times columnist Frank Bruni drives home a singular point in his recently published book, “Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania”: A student’s chances of getting into an Ivy League school –– no matter how stellar his or her high school résumé is –– are slim to none.

“Your control over the outcome is very, very limited, and that outcome says nothing definitive about your talent or potential,” Bruni writes. “To lose sight of that is to buy into, and essentially endorse, a game that’s spun wildly out of control.”

Admission to an Ivy League institution is often an arranged marriage, Bruni argues. Children of donors, celebrities and politicians receive preferential treatment, as do the offspring of alumni and professors, as do elite athletes, as do many of the affluent teens who complete the prep-school pipeline.

How to get in, then, if you are none of the above? According to Bruni, nothing less than perfection is required. Perfect grades. Perfect SAT/ACT scores. The perfect combination of athletics, activities and work.

Perfect students are rare, but they exist. They get in. Or do they? Bruni notes, correctly, that a student could push all the right buttons and still be rejected, which often leads to devastation, possibly even depression.

Tens of thousands of high school students from around the world apply to the Ivies and their elite Tier 1 counterparts annually, with 6 to 12 percent accepted. For every 10,000 students who apply, 600 to 1,200 get in. The rest don’t. Most every student who applies to an Ivy believes he or she is worthy of acceptance –– and most are.

Bruni is asking a critical question: Why do so many students endure the angst-inducing application process required to enter an Ivy, for which they must jump through insanely narrow hoops, when the majority of America’s 4,700-plus degree-granting institutions of higher learning are exceptionally welcoming, with many fine schools admitting 30 to 70 percent of students?

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