Man on a Mission

I'm on a mission these days to put the college application process into some perspective. (Full disclosure: I have two daughters currently looking at colleges and have been through the process twice before with their older sibs. I counted up the other day -- all told, I have toured nearly thirty colleges in my life.)

The anxiety surrounding this ordeal is way out of kilter. Common wisdom seems to be that colleges are filled up with a race of superhumans such as you have never encountered in this lifetime, and your smart, creative, wonderfully balanced pleasure-of-a-kid has virtually no chance to get in. At the same time, our mailbox groans under the weight of recruitment junk mail. What's wrong with this picture?