According to William M. Chace, who served as president at Emory University and Wesleyan University, the top-tier universities in the U.S. have the highest rejection rates. In 2012, Stanford University rejected 33,415 applicants and only accepted 2,427, while Harvard accepted only 2,032 and turned down 34,302. Many high school students invest an inordinate amount of time and effort in academics and extracurricular activities in preparation for college application and admission. However, the capricious criteria for admission and the sheer competition can lead to unexpected rejection. Students may be emotionally traumatized when the college of their choice sends them a regret letter.
Legacy preferences offer student applicants -- whose parents are alumni of a college -- an upper hand in the admissions process. Even though legacy preference is not an outright college admission requirement, many Ivy League schools apply this policy in the selection-and-recruitment process. Legacy preferences in the top universities do not keep non-legacy students from being admitted, but these preferences significantly lower the admission chances of equally qualified non-legacy students, notes Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior Century Foundation fellow. More students are losing faith in their capacity to be accepted in these elite colleges, even though they feel adequately prepared, reports Bloomberg Businessweek.
For many students, preparing, choosing, applying and waiting for college admission is a daunting and exhausting process. In an attempt to attain perfect grades, students spend hours studying for exams, sometimes with little sleep. Students are also expected to be involved in a wide array of extracurricular activities to enhance their personal portfolios to meet college admission requirements. Academic stress related to the college application process has seen students suffer from anxiety disorders, stomach and headaches as well as sleep deprivation.
Due to the high value placed on a good college education, many parents are deeply involved in the application process to ensure that their children meet the elusive college admission requirements. Dr. Wendy Mogel, a well-known clinical psychologist and author of the "The Blessing of a Skinned Knee," observes that parents’ zealousness in ensuring their children are admitted to top-tier universities places undue pressure on the children. Parents who are obsessed with college admissions demand perfection and constant hard work at the expense of their children’s mental and physical well-being. Mogel contends that once in college, such students exhibit antisocial behavior including substance abuse, obsessive-compulsive disorders, anxiety and phobias.
The ever-increasing competition and intense entry requirements in most colleges means that students spend most of their high school years doing what they think is right to get into college. Marilee Jones, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology dean of admissions, says that due to the demand for perfect grades for college, students no longer attend school to actually learn, explore their creativity, develop their social lives and enjoy extracurricular activities, all of which are essential to their personal development; they do it just for college. However, college admission counselors advise that students should not take classes just for the sake of meeting college admission requirements; enjoying the coursework is equally important.