As colleges send out the last of their admissions news this month, expect to see the annual stories the press runs with all the admissions bad news. Acceptance rates dropped again. Accomplished kids are rejected. Gaining admission to college is more competitive than ever.
But those headlines are almost always referencing a very short list of highly selective colleges. Sure, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, UC Berkeley and other highly selective schools are still, well, very hard to get into. I don’t know why that’s front page news every year, but it is.
What deserves more attention is just how easy it is to get into college. NACAC’s State of College Admissions report showed that, in fall 2010, colleges on average accepted 2/3 of their applicants. According to collegeboard.com, there are 383 colleges who accept every high school student who applies. Whatever your GPA and test scores are, you can go to college if you really want to go. The only question is which one. That doesn’t jibe with the bad news in the headlines. But it’s true.
The quickest way to lose any sense of optimism about your college future is to focus on just the bad news. Instead, focus on the great news. There’s a school out there for you, probably one that will make you very happy. You just have to care enough about your future to want that for yourself and commit to doing the work to get there.