Leading this rapid commercialization of college admissions are the rankings of U.S. News & World Report, along with those of several newcomers to the field of college rankings, the billion-dollar marketing and consulting industry servicing students and colleges alike, certain members of the media, and the corporatization of the College Board (a non-profit organization that sponsors the SAT and now offers online test prep, application prep, scholarship services, Advanced Placement (AP) exams, and enrollment management, among other things).

Curiosity, self-discipline, effort, imagination, intellectual verve, sense of wonder, willingness to try new things, empathy, open-mindedness, civility, and tolerance for ambiguity are some of the qualities that define and give value to being a student. They are the same qualities that colleges say they seek in admitting prospective students. Yet they are also qualities that have been betrayed and repressed by the business models that now guide much of college admissions.

The college admissions process has become almost entirely a test of your ability to please adults — or specifically the sorts of adults who are college admissions officers. There's nothing wrong with pleasing such people. But once you get out into the world, where there are no rules and things are not structured and your own initiative is more important than your ability to please, then everything changes. I do think we've seen that the top schools increasingly are producing extremely conventional people. Not that there's anything wrong with producing conventional people, but you might think that graduates from Yale or Wellesley or Amherst would be the ones to go on to be really artistic and creative or become great engineers or inventors and make important discoveries. You're seeing instead that the important discoveries and the artistic creativity are coming from people out of places like Colby and Colorado College — because they haven't gone through this process of sacrificing their lives to conventionality.