article_snippet: Looking to give instead of interrupting the teacher or leaving the room child an edge, parents hire a college admissions consultant when parents is in the eighth grade and know the total tab will be roughly $50,000.
article_snippet: Student goes 8 for 8 in Ivy League college admissions .
article_snippet: For many families in the United States, the challenge isn't getting into the right college.
article_snippet: the challenge is being able to afford the school of many families in the United States choice, or any school for that matter.
article_snippet: But for many middle- and upper-income families, the college admissions process is as frenzied as ever with the belief that one school can make or break a child's future.
article_snippet: I had to ask author Frank Bruni, whom I met during my time covering presidential politics, how exactly college admissions became so insanely intense and ridiculously competitive.
article_snippet: We both laughed that the college admissions process was definitely not nearly as manic or as charged when we both went to college in the '80s.
article_snippet: " about where kids are going to go to school, whether it's exclusive enough and whether kids've "breached the inner sanctum.
article_snippet: I think all of that has made parents feel anxious on behalf of parents kids and has made parents feel like their kids have to have anything that might be a leg up, and if an elite school is a leg up, well, then dammit, let's get parents that.
article_snippet: Adding to the dangerous brew, says Bruni, is the "whole test prep and college coaching industry.
article_snippet: 5 ways community colleges are fixing higher education .
article_snippet: The final piece of the puzzle are the colleges, which have essentially become businesses, marketing businesses and using businesses acceptance rate as a bragging right.
article_snippet: So when you have colleges drumming up extra applications so that they can then claim an acceptance rate below 15%, that becomes part of the discussion that adds to the anxiety because you look at these numbers and you think, 'Oh my God, if I don't begin doing SAT prep as a freshman in high school, if I don't hire the private tutor,' " I won't get in -- or so the thinking goes, said Bruni.
article_snippet: " Is it possible to restore any sanity to the entire college admissions process?
article_snippet: Bruni said what we can do is try to change the conversation and begin to also talk about the negative consequences of this push to get into the most selective school.
article_snippet: If we talk about all the things that happen, all the negative things that attend an over-concentration on getting into an elite school, then maybe we will begin to not concentrate as much on getting into elite schools.
highlights_snippet: Author Frank Bruni blames the economy and colleges for increasing the stakes for admission .
  