$40,000 per year to attend a high school that will allow you to enter your "top choice university"?

I noticed a full page ad in the New York Times on Sunday. It was an announcement from Leman Manhattan Prep School that their newly graduated first class of “critical thinkers” will “enter their top choice universities.”

There was then a list of the top choice universities their graduates were going to attend. There are about 70 of them. They include:

Allegheny College

American University

Binghamton University

Bloomfield College

Boston University

University of Buffalo

Clark University

Connecticut College

University of Connecticut

SUNY Cortland

Curry College

Dickinson College

Drew University

Drexel University

Eckerd College

Elmira College

Elon University

Eugene Lang College

Farmingdale State College

Franklin Pierce College

Goucher College

Guilford College

University of Hartford

Hartwick College

High Point University

Howard University

OK. I am tired of typing. This is just A-H.

Students pay about $40,000 a year in tuition to attend Leman which seems to be capable of getting them into colleges that would take people who were paying a lot less tuition (or maybe just went to their regular high school.)

My main point is that getting into the “college that is your top choice” is so important that people have lost all of their senses about the fact that there are 4000 colleges in the United States most of whom are willing to take nearly anyone who applies. (Also going to college may not matter that much any more, but that is another column.)