The New York Times has posted an interesting set of responses from college admissions counselors about getting into selective schools that might be of some interest to you. While some of responses seem like standard admissions-speak, the responses do contain some potentially valuable insight. One of the admissions counselors explained the process in a way that might change your perspective a bit:
Jeff Brenzel of Yale University: It is not well understood that we are not aiming to pick out the best candidate in a particular school or from a particular area, as measured by some predetermined criteria. Rather, we are trying to assemble the most varied and most interesting class we can from an extremely diverse group of close to 25,000 outstanding applicants. We do not aim to compare a student primarily with other students from his or her school; we look instead for students who will bring something of particular value to the entering class.
