Is admission to an elite university the be-all and end-all?

By Simona Chiose. How hard is it to get into Harvard? Only 6 per cent of applicants do. Yet hundreds of thousands of students in America have lives shaped by that statistic: The pressure, almost from birth, to acquire the foreign languages, volunteer stints, athletic accomplishments and grades that open the doors of top universities trickles down to almost every institution. Read more...