"… Last March marked the heart of the college touring schedule, when auditoriums capable of holding hundreds were commandeered for admissions sessions attended by hopeful high schoolers and their families. My family saw Harvard, Yale, Princeton, UPenn, Vassar and Tufts in five days, plus at least 15 others in past years. At each, encouraging admissions officers and perky students preached that each school is heaven on Earth, yet admission is possible for common sinners. …
"… On these trips, you size up the competition. One family we kept running into, at Harvard, then Yale and again at UPenn, was adorable, and featured a good-natured, redhead son. But the third time we exchanged hellos, I began weighing the boy’s Californian geographic diversity against my South Carolina, his presumably 4.0 GPA against my long-misdiagnosed vision impediment, his obvious exceptionalism against my glaring normality. I wanted a T-shirt emblazoned “It’s Been All A’s Since Reading Therapy!” to show that family I was as good as they.
Like us, they had been going from tours to info sessions to cars filled with Clif Bar wrappers and empty Dasani bottles and the wailing Waze." …
https://www.courier-tribune.com/opinion/20190304/filler-chasing-validation-in-ivy-league