Are today's students more pressured to attend top universities?

[decrescendo]

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If you find people applying to multiple Ivies and explaining how they fit into each environment, I bet you most couldn’t.

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<p>Precisely. For example, Columbia and Dartmouth. They couldn’t be more different! Yet both have the Ivy status attached at the hip, so you’re obviously going to have a large amount of overlaps in applicants.</p>

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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.

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<p>College admissions has become… an “industry”, as the above poster stated. I feel like the cutthroat competition, ridiculously high standards, and incredibly low acceptance rates all fuel the notion that, if admitted to a USNWR top20 school, you’ve hit the big time and your life will be a success from there on out, which is in no way the case. I mean, An0maly, you’re going to Yale so you can’t really talk, but… :P</p>

<p>Just kidding. :)</p>