It’s big, it’s here, people are in tears and screaming, it’s the new March Madness: it’s…the college process. As seniors, some ecstatic and some disappointed, get their letters, they instill trepidation in many a fifth former. Sitting in the common room the other night, I watched a college-bound group anxiously run back and forth to their computers, call their friends, and discuss odds and surprise endings amongst themselves. This, of course, made me think about my own college process, just heading into the woods of junior spring.

I wasn’t kidding about March Madness. This year, more juniors than ever spent spring break on a grand tour of colleges, some forsaking the Bahamas entirely. After a while (15 colleges) it began to feel like I was getting my passport stamped in the customs of many strange airports without ever entering the countries themselves. The information sessions tended to offer exactly the same content as the most generic college reference guide. The insipid talking heads called college administrators hardly ameliorated the situation. On a few occasions, a gem of an inspired student led the discussion, answering questions with candid enthusiasm, but these were rare. Walking tours proved a little more successful, affording a glimpse of students in their natural habitat. Even this felt contrived at times, as exemplified by my experience at a small Massachusetts college. My tour guide was praising the diversity of room selection, when a passing student (not on the schools payroll) enjoined that this ‘variety’ lay in the choice between no heat and crumbling walls. Worse yet, another tour guide whipped out his cell phone, took a few steps to the right of our enormous group, and answered “I’ll call you right back, I’m just touring another group of s#$@s who aren’t getting in.” Charming. Of course, those are just two easily dismissible s ituations. But when there are so many schools to look at, any small turn off can be fatal. From other juniors, I’ve since leaned the way to get a true feel for campus energy is to spend the night. While this is certainly less tidy than the three-hour talk-tour combination, it uniquely affords deeper connections with the school and its students.

Then there is the parent factor. Many a lunch conversation has centered on hard-driving moms and snidely mocking dads. The most common complaint, however, is constant inquisitorial hounding: “How do you feel here? I mean right now, in this instant-Could you be happy here?” Three minutes after setting foot on campus, most of us are still taking in the view, trying not to look stupid, or ogling the twenty-something tour guide. Now is not the time to answer soul-searching questions. Many parents are also unaware of some colleges’ changed reputations, causing disconnect from their interested children. What used to be a safety school could now be a highly selective university. Worse yet, other parents offer advice for ‘getting in’ as the group marches, rather like Titanic passengers sharing notes. The definition of appropriate parent-student-college search relationships is a nebulous one. Quietly chauffeuring does not seem to be on the menu.

Between dancing around like a bear (read visiting colleges), swallowing insider’s guides, and taking a bewildering number of standardized tests, it’s a wonder we have time for school at all. I heard one girl vociferate in the library: “I just couldn’t do the work for all my classes, you know? I had too much college to do.” While funny, the irony here is on the warped side of disturbing. I don’t do admission, but presumably ‘they’ want you to—say—learn something your junior spring. Call me a Buddhist, but isn’t it sad to spend a year preparing for another instead of living the first? But I digress. If we shuttle the bulk of our reading and visiting into the summer and next fall, as we are advised, that leaves only the SATs, SAT IIs, ACTs, and APs to be tackled this spring. When you add all these scores together and divide it by the year of your graduating class at Harvard, apparently, you get the value of your soul.