"You do realize that you won't get in."

I am absolutely furious. Sitting in stunned disbelief, I listened to one of our students (straight A's at a very competitive high school) as she and her mother described what an admissions representative (Ivy League school) recently told their campus tour group. It was the exact speech I heard 20 years ago when I brought my son to the same campus.

“You do realize that you won’t get in. The kind of student that gets in here is the boy from Idaho who starts his day at 5am, jumping on his tractor plowing the fields on his family farm."

I almost remembered that speech word for word and the effect it had on the students and parents sitting in that room. It was very similar to the speech I heard at another esteemed institution, where the admissions rep said, “Let‘s see a show of hands for those students who had a perfect score on their SAT’s (many hands went up), who are the president of their classes (more hands), who are the editors of their yearbooks. More questions, more hands go up and the sinking feeling begins once again. Yes, we got the point.

Varsity Blues is not exclusively the parents’ fault. I blame the college admissions representatives themselves for ramping up the anxiety of students and their parents, spewing the speeches of exclusivity. Twenty years later, the same speeches, the same anxiety. We all know that students will get into the college that's right for them. There are so many articles written these days on how to control student and parent anxiety relating to college admissions. Well I say, let’s stop this insanity where it begins, with the colleges themselves.