“Kids see that the admit rates are brutal and dropping, and it looks more like a crapshoot. So they send more apps, which forces the colleges to lower their admit rates, which spurs the kids next year to send even more apps.” This year, elite colleges turned away up to 95% of applicants. And it’s getting harder to distinguish between the credentials of those who got in and those who didn’t.

+ “You could take Mad Men: Media, Gender, Historiography, with me, and make your friends wonder exactly how you got your parents to pay for you to binge a show on Netflix.” What exactly do you get when you take a college course on Mad Men? Professor Anne Helen Petersen shares her syllabus.