College Application Panic

Five Tips To Ease College Application Panic
By Alexandra Robbins

Recently, I returned to my old high school to follow students throughout the college application process for a book about the pressure on today’s students (and parents) to succeed. What I found there mirrored what I saw in schools across the country, from Vermont to New Mexico: widespread panic over admissions. After speaking to hundreds of students, parents, admissions officers, and counselors, I’ve compiled some tips that can help families through this often stressful time.

1. Ignore The “Rankings”

Several publications claim to rank colleges in precise order on a yearly basis, lists that often influence students’ decisions about where to apply. These lists are a sham. The rankings have been fixed since they began; when the algorithm for the first U.S. News ranking produced a number-one school that was not Harvard, Princeton, or Yale, the magazine dumped the formula (which rewarded diversity) and the statistician who created it. The factors that many publications use to rank schools today do not necessarily have any bearing on the actual undergraduate experience – and many colleges cheat on their data, anyway.

2. Don’t Talk