College Admissions Mania & Buffalo Food Poisoning

Everything we feared is true. College admissions is just as whimsical and random a process as we always suspected, and an admissions director who has a bum meal in Buffalo will carry out his nauseated vengeance on applicants from that poor city. Or at least, that's what The Daily Beast's Kathleen Kingsbury says in her article "Dirty Secrets of College Admissions." The Daily Beast, as you may recall, is Tina Brown's ferocious foray into the online world - news, culture and the hallmark bravura style of the former editor of Vanity Fair, the New Yorker and Talk magazines. Among the horrifying, hilarious, appalling tidbits offered up in "Dirty Secrets" was this one from the admissions director of an elite New England college:

"If the [Pittsburgh] Steelers lost a game and I read your file the next morning, chances were you weren’t getting in... Those are things that you, the applicant, have no control over. Which makes it all the more funny — the frenzy that parents and students work themselves into around getting in.”

Wow. So not funny. But I did find the part about public vs. private school counselors absolutely fascinating - that private school counselors are in constant contact with college admissions directors, talking up students and making connections. Continue the discussion over on the "college admissions mania" discussion forum.