Daily Beast college contributor Zac Bissonnette thinks high school seniors are obsessed with college, calling the college application process “one of the most emotionally wrought contests of their lives," which it might be for huge nerds. The UMass student also believes that college admissions people are sadistically dangling the possibility of admission with the intention of turning away many students and implies that applying to college requires non-recreational use of Xanax and a few therapy sessions.

Bissonnette writes:

If you’re one of the millions of families currently running the college application gauntlet, you’re no doubt familiar with these mailings: colorful, congratulatory brochures replete with love-letter language designed to make an anxious college-bound high school senior swoon. Reed College sent one a few years ago to students that schmoozed, "Listen: college admission people all over the country, including me, have decided that you are the kind of smart student they want."

How flattering! Until you take into account the fact that Reed summarily rejects two-thirds of “you,” which makes its invitation (worded as if it were practically an acceptance letter) seem downright Machiavellian. Isn't this sort of sly linguistic charade—"you are the kind of smart student" we want, not "the smart student" we want—a little cruel to impose on adolescents competing in one of the most emotionally wrought contests of their lives?

…Colleges engage in such aggressive marketing to get on students’ radars, of course, but also for a more cynical, fairly transparent reason: U.S. News & World Report's infamous guide to America's Best Colleges. One key statistic in this annual guide to the country’s top colleges is acceptance rate: the higher the percentage of applicants a college rejects, the more sought-after and exclusive it appears to be. How does a college lower its acceptance rate? By hoarding as many applicants as possible. The hell with the emotional turmoil—not to mention hundreds of dollars in wasted application fees—that this formula inflicts upon students and their families.

Um… “emotional turmoil”? Could Bissonnette be any more melodramatic? It’s college admissions, not being kidnapped at gunpoint and left in a sauna to listen to Spice World on repeat for eleven days on end. Yes it sucks getting rejected when you think admission is a shoe-in, but just think about how many times that’s happened to Andy Dick when he tries to gain admission into a woman!