<p>In the film Good Will Hunting there’s a quote I always remember:</p>
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<p>After talking to a bunch of kids on CC I realized that most people apply to top schools for the brand name and the “idea” of a great college. Most of the overachieving kids here are aiming for HYPSM + the other great schools. They’re not great fits everywhere - that’s impossible because schools are too different. If you find people applying to multiple Ivies and explaining how they fit into each environment, I bet you most couldn’t.</p>
<p>There definitely is more pressure to attend top schools, at least among the students aiming for those. I had a bunch of interviews and all of them spoke of how you just woke up one day and took the SAT - nobody studied for it. Now there’s a whole industry for preparation. Overall more kids are funneled into college, and competition to get into the best schools is ridiculous. I feel like such an old person but the stuff about kids being delusional is often true - going to a USNWR top20 school doesn’t mean people will bow down to your very presence.</p>
<p>The only thing better now than before is that top universities have built excellent financial aid programs, and that really opens up the doors for high achieving middle class kids. Yale costs less for me than my state flagship [University of Florida]. That wasn’t true in the past.</p>