The college system is rigged. It’s time for parents (and students) to wake up and smell the coffee. Colleges are businesses and it’s their business to lure your student in, inflate their application numbers, and decrease the percentage of acceptances. It’s a simple tactic used in every business: make it more difficult to obtain and everybody wants it. These elite colleges have sold this view of success to most parents and students—”Get into one of our colleges and you’re guaranteed a great job after graduation, a wonderful life, and success.” It’s a bunch of bunk!

Applying to these colleges carries a steep price, and it’s not just when you get the tuition bill. The cold hard facts are that a small percentage of the best students get offered admission to these colleges. When your above average student who isn’t at the top of the applicant pool puts all his hopes and dreams into an offer of admission and the odds aren’t stacked in his favor, you and your family are in for some devastating weeks and months of disappointment.

In a statistical article discussing demonstrated interest in higher education from Social Assurity, Barnard College’s enrollment statistics were revealed:

Congratulations to the 1,088 students accepted to Barnard College’s Class of 2022. You are part of the most selective class in Barnard’s history. Barnard chose you from 7,897 applicants for an effective acceptance rate of 13.7%.

Barnard’s acceptance rate has dropped precipitously over the past four years. Twenty-four percent of applicants were admitted to the class of 2018, 20 percent to the class of 2019, 16 percent to the class of 2020, 15.4 percent to the class of 2021, and now 13.7 percent to the class of 2022.

Why do we allow our students to be used in this way? Why is it so important that they attend an elite university? Because for so many years, parents and students have believed the lie that says, “where you go to college determines who you will be.” And nothing, absolutely nothing, could be further from the truth. Where you go is NOT who you will be.

What your student does with the education he receives will determine his success or failure. It won’t be determined by the name at the top of their diploma or the name on the sweatshirt they wear for the next four years. The reality is there are thousands of excellent colleges who provide a superior education. These colleges change lives. These colleges provide students with degrees that work. These colleges provide large amounts of financial aid to all their students. These colleges give students opportunities to serve as they learn. They don’t have elite names on their buildings. But your student will receive a quality education at an affordable price.

Why would you want anything less for your student? Why would a parent make a decision to go into debt, encourage their student to go into debt, and destroy their retirement to send their student to one of these elite colleges? But it happens every single day as the colleges rejoice and applaud their efforts to milk parents out of a small fortune to educate (or often not educate) their student.

I hear these stories every day. “My student was valedictorian and he didn’t get into any of the Ivies.” “My student had a strong GPA, high test scores, strong leadership and community involvement and she didn’t get into one of the colleges she applied to. What did she do wrong?” It’s not the quality of the student, it’s the quality and the substance of the college list. They applied to the WRONG colleges!

Your college list can make or break the admission results. Apply to the wrong schools and your student will either not get accepted or get accepted and not offered any financial aid. It’s a guaranteed result. If you want this to happen to your student, populate their list with elite colleges. Apply ED to one of them and sit back and wait for the disappointment. It will most surely happen. If you want a different result, take a different course of action.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy, a college and financial aid expert, agrees and lays it all out for parents in her recent article: Getting Rejected From Elite Universities. Do yourself (and your student) a favor and read it. Do this before fall of senior year. Follow her advice (and mine) and expand your college list. Do the research. Choose the colleges that offer the best aid, the best education, and might not be on anyone’s radar. Employers don’t care where you went to college. They care that you got an education that prepares you for the work force.