Videos of trees and stone towers play and replay. The American collegiate mosaic forms and reforms each year, but today some pieces are clearly missing. Alumni children, like male athletes, remain a protected group. Well-off suburbanites, any sort, need not waste a fine warm Sunday. With adequate grades plus open-handed parents, college doors everywhere will swing wide.
Overachievers can sleep in, too.
For the supremely ambitious, prepped to exhaustion by vocabulary trainers and interview coaches, junior-year summer is a marathon's final lap. Imperial domains like Harvard and Stanford, name-brand enclaves like Wellesley and Oberlin, will often skip these open events, too. If they chose, they could sell every seat many times over, at any price. But 95 percent of American colleges are not at all selective, cannot luxuriate in debates over admitting smart versus talented versus energetic students. Beside the show floor is a roped-off advising area.