Of course, as admissions officers are quick to point out, you can be an infinitely worthy candidate and still get a no. In a Los Angeles Times Op-Ed article March 30, Stanford's Richard Shaw, dean of admission and financial aid, wrote of the "many exceptional youths who did not get offered one of the 1,650 slots in the class of 2011," and he characterized the selection process as "as much an art as it is a science" (in other words, not quantifiable in terms of grades or test scores). But an April 1 story in the New York Times, about a handful of stratospherically high-achieving female students in affluent Newton, Mass., suggested that in many academically rigorous high schools, "exceptional" is now the norm.

Believe it or not, the National Assn. for College Admission Counseling's most recent Annual State of College Admission Report shows that the median acceptance rate for four-year colleges, private and public, is about 70%. Do less flashy schools provide a faulty education? Do they lack high-quality professors? Judging from the brilliant academics I know who would be grateful to get a job anywhere, I doubt it.

So why are we so fixated on the places that don't seem to want us? Lloyd Thacker, executive director of Education Conservancy, a Portland, Ore.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the college admission process, points out that the ranking system came about in the early 1980s, when enrollment was down, federal aid had diminished and colleges were looking to market themselves.

The best form of advertising, he suggested, was to increase applications so they could say no to more people — and hence seem more exclusive. And boy, did we buy into it, not just with money (many of these schools now cost about $45,000 a year, by the way) but with our entire sense of self-worth.

"Why should we judge a college's quality by how many kids they can say no to?" Thacker asked.

That's a good question. But we've been fed the gospel of the ranking system for nearly 25 years, and redefining "a good college" will be a lot like cult deprogramming. Until then, opening those notification letters will probably remain a defining educational experience. It's when we're likely to learn that we don't want to belong to any club that would have us as a member. And that's a lesson that sticks for life.