ABSTRACT
The consequent rise in college applications has of course been distributed unevenly among America's colleges. Instead of setting admissions requirements, they have to develop an admissions policy by which to choose from among the excess of well-qualified applicants. The situation is aggravated by a number of interactions between the colleges and the high schools. Students, aware of the increasing difficulty of obtaining admission to their chosen schools, begin to make multiple applications in order to protect themselves. The colleges have been making their task still more difficult by their attempts to adopt objective, nonparochial criteria of admission. Aware of the tragedies of secondary education, many colleges have begun to make room in their admissions policies for a controlled measure of irrationality. The temptations of the admissions race must be destroyed. As the undergraduate population swells, the admissions squeeze reappears at the best medical, law, and graduate schools.
