Reading the Admissions Tealeaves

Now that the admissions decisions for this fall's freshman class have gone out--and many decisions off the wait list have been made--it's a good time to stand back and see what trends are emerging in college admissions.

Newsweek ran a fascinating piece on this a few months ago -- full text here -- but a couple of particularly interesting trends have emerged: Home schoolers are hitting college application age for the first time en masse, and are doing well (generally). Public universities are accepting more out-of-state students, generally making them more difficult to get into.

And potentially most interesting, as the top-tier schools become almost impossible to crack into (<10% admission rates for many), graduate school is the new goal. The argument: Since getting into Harvard as an undergrad is almost impossible (6% accept rate overall, which is actually higher than it is for the general population, if you consider the number of alumni kids and other "special cases" applying each year), focus instead on being a rockstar at a state school and go to the Harvard graduate program of your choice.

Which raises the interesting (or frightening) question: Is graduate school admissions the new undergraduate school admissions? Do you now have to kill yourself for four years in high school to get into a top college--so you can then kill yourself for four years to go to Harvard Law (where, yes, you have to kill yourself for three years to get onto law review and get the best job... where you kill yourself for eight years--you get the idea).

It's enough to make you want to step off the hamster wheel and do something fun and enriching, isn't it? --CJ