There are other strategies, too. Duke rewrote its application this year, giving students less room to list the number of their extracurricular activities, and more room, instead, to describe why those activities mean something to them. Rod Skinner, a college counselor at Milton Academy, a highly competitive preparatory school outside Boston, tells of a father who took a year s sabbatical from his job to manage his daughters college application process. The fear is that the process has grown increasingly inequitable, with the advantage accruing to those students able to afford tutors, test preparation courses, elaborate summer camps or consultants to help shape their college essays. They are stressed, they are sleep deprived, they are depressed.
Pressure has always existed, the colleges say.
But now they see it wearing through more on students when they arrive on cam I pus. Harvard, among other places, increased its provision of mental health services last year, promoted by concerns about student stress, often resulting in binge drinking or eating disorders. We don't imagine this as a new phenomenon said Marlyn McGrath Lewis, director of admissions at Harvard. Colleges advising high school students to relax, Of course, is a little like the fox telling the hens to quit their nervous clucking. Small colleges feared that they would be forced to close, and even the most prestigious universities worried that they would not be able to attract enough top students.