<p>Papa Chicken</p>
<p>In the cases you describe, it was the students (and maybe their parents) who made the admissions process into something deceptive. My son didn't feel he <em>had</em> to do anything dishonest to enhance his chances. He chose schools that were a good match for him and all of them agreed because they accepted him. The process of figuring out who he was and wasn't was very growthful (is that a word?) for him. Choosing colleges because they are at the top of a list in a magazine and then trying to fit yourself into that mold is not growth-producing; it's stultifying and yes, deceptive.</p>
<p>I think the process is good for smart underacheivers, people who finally say OMG, I'm twice as smart as that guy getting into HPYS, but since I have played WoW for my first two years of hs, I'm headed to a school ranked below 20th. Then the student gets on it, because us smart but lazy people need our ego to be stroked by more than a 2400, so we bring our gpa up, do a bunch of **** we don't care about, like building homes and playing a sport/instrument. </p>
<p>The admissions process gets ppl off their butts, and by job time, most ppl tend to do okay if they learned their lessons.</p>
<p>The most positive thing about the admissions process is that kids finally get to feel what rejection is like. Our schools and kid sports leagues have devolved to a point where everybody is a "winner" and nobody is being told they suck. Hopefully by experiencing rejections while still in their teens they don't become serial killers when the inevitable rejections come later in life :D</p>
<p>I can relate a personal episode when my D fell behind with her school and we went to talk to her teachers. She had a C in French at the time, and her French teacher never stopped blabbing about what a great student D is. Great student my ass... it was infuriating to hear a teacher make it look like a C was a perfectly normal and acceptable outcome.</p>