Originally Posted by CFK
I think maybe people are getting too caught up in the college hype.

The reality:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/lucielapovsky/2014/03/28/getting-in-to-college-why-all-the-hype/

"The facts are the 75% of students attend their first choice college..."
The acceptance/rejection threads on College Confidential where applicants post their stats and application results are frightening. One can debate aspects of the admissions policies of the most prestigious colleges (weight of extracurriculars, legacy preferences, race and sex preferences, ...) but the hard math is that the number of places at the "top" 10 colleges has been about constant over the decades, while the population has increased and as students throughout the country vie for schools that used to be more regional. So it just keeps getting harder to get in to those schools. To stay sane you (umm, I) need to convince yourself that doing so is not make-or-break.