Don't overapply to colleges — do research first

We've all read newspaper articles and editorials and heard the office chatter; the recently completed college admission cycle is dominating public conversation. What follows is an attempt to identify the realities of college admissions today, and offer possible solutions for high school juniors who are creating a list of colleges.

The reality

•Unreachable Schools: Highly selective colleges used to be called "reach schools" because even the most qualified students were more likely to be denied than accepted. After hearing about record-low acceptance rates from colleges this year, I've renamed them "unreachable schools." The acceptance rates at many Ivy League colleges are now in the single digits, so I think it's safe to say that they are now nearly unreachable even for top students. Low selectivity has affected liberal arts colleges, too. Three years ago, Hamilton College in upstate New York admitted 36 percent of applicants; this year, it admitted 27 percent.

•Irresponsible Lists: Applying to an excessive number of schools or an unreachable school (when students are clearly unqualified) exacerbates the situation. Here's why: Elite colleges say that they could fill their freshman class several times over.

Harvard received nearly 23,000 applications this year and admitted about 2,000 students. While that is a sad statistic for the 6,000 "highly qualified" applicants who were respectfully denied, it's actually even sadder that the others who were denied — the remaining 15,000 underqualified applicants — even bothered to apply. They were simply tossing the dice when they applied. Harvard might want 15,000 superfluous applications to keep its selectivity rate high, but why would students with borderline grades and scores willingly put themselves in the position to be denied at colleges that deny thousands of students who are more qualified than they?

•Girl Power Hurts: Girls are applying to college in record numbers. At many co-ed colleges, 60 percent of applicants are young women. If colleges have more female applicants, and they balance their freshman classes by gender, that means the acceptance rate for women will be lower than it is for men. Conversely, most women's colleges still have reasonable acceptance rates.

•Grades and Test Scores Matter: Colleges are looking at the individual unweighted grades on the transcript as much as they look at the overall unweighted GPA. One admission dean told me that a "C" on a transcript, especially later in high school, makes them question a student's ability to do college-level work.