Why Do Most College Application Strategies Fail? Because the Grown-Ups Are Making Rookie Mistakes.

By Anne Cochran, College Consultant

Just being blunt here. Why do the USA’s high school-to-college outcomes stink, despite shiny programs, forward-thinking teaching techniques, and institutional fanfare?

The short answer?

They don’t address the issue at its core.

Only about 63% of high school graduates enroll in college right after graduation, and of those who do, more than a third never finish. Public school counselors are overwhelmed, access is uneven, and far too many capable kids never get close to the futures they deserve.

The college application strategy in any given case is usually way off the mark, particularly in the category of highly competitive college admissions.

Talk of college list development eats up more bandwidth than ever. It’s in op-ed pages, parenting blogs, and the endless scroll of social media groups where anxious families compare notes and swap theories. These missives are full of tales of the arrow that missed the mark, the perfect college that said flat-out no.

I started noticing it years ago, back when my own kids were in school at a high-achieving private school, and even earlier, when my friends’ kids began applying to college from all types of schools, public and private. Local public high schools weren’t getting their students anywhere near the range or quality of college options that private-school students routinely accessed. The difference wasn’t just in outcomes, it was in expectation, access,and advocacy. And it hit me hard. I was a public-school kid myself, one who’d felt the sting of being overlooked, underestimated, and quietly shut out of doors I hadn’t even known were there.

By the time I hit my fifties, I couldn’t shake the feeling. Maybe, just maybe, I could do something about it, even in a small way. It was clear to me that the traditional college counseling model wasn’t just out of touch. It was broken. What students needed within practically every school model was a different kind of guide. Someone who could help them name what they wanted and needed, not just check boxes. Someone who knew how to read both a transcript and a kid’s soul.

At its best, college isn’t just about landing a job or choosing a major. It’s about becoming a more capable, curious, and resilient adult. It gives students time and space to wrestle with big ideas, meet people different from themselves, and discover who they are outside the boundaries of home or high school. Yes, it can lead to greater career opportunities, but its true value lies in shaping how a young person sees the world and their place in it. In a time when everything moves fast and attention is scarce, college remains one of the last structured chances to slow down, reflect, and grow in meaningful ways.

The problem isn’t just at the college gate; it begins much earlier, in the institutional machinery of high school itself. Too many teenagers are asked to make high-stakes decisions about their future with inadequate support, minimal guidance, and limited understanding of what’s at stake. The reality is, our school systems and choices often aren’t structurally equipped to prepare students for the emotional, academic, or financial demands of higher education. Let’s take a closer look at where those cracks begin.

• High schools are too large to meet counseling needs. Obviously, many school districts’ high schools are far too large for effective college counseling to occur, and the problem even exists in many private schools.
• More counselors need college admissions-targeted training. Significantly more school-based counselors need to be put on the job, not only to address college-related matters, but to mitigate the skyrocketing and overwhelming problems associated with teens’ mental-health issues. These issues directly affect schools’ abilities and effectiveness in delivering positive outcomes in just about every direction.
• Lack of exposure to current college knowledge at home. Most teens and their parents aren’t even a little bit educated about college choices or financial aid. The result? Missed opportunities, painful surprises, and too many kids stuck at the wrong school—or taking on debt they didn’t see coming.
• What, exactly, is college for? Most families can’t quite answer that. Somewhere along the way, the purpose of college  was recast as a kind of pre-professional assembly line, a direct pipeline to career security. The prevailing belief is that college should train students for jobs. But here’s the problem: the world, especially the tech world, is changing so rapidly that we can’t reliably predict what jobs will even exist five years from now, let alone what training they’ll require. Careerism may feel like a smart bet, but in a shape-shifting economy, it’s often a false compass.

When you strip away the marketing and the myth, college is more than a place to learn marketable skills and secure a return on investment. Or at least, it should be. Ideally, college offers something rarer and harder to quantify: a transformative education at low or even no cost, with benefits that ripple through a lifetime. I could easily veer off here into a full tangent about college as “the place where the inside of your brain becomes a great place to live,” or the enduring value of the liberal arts, or any number of deeper reasons we struggle to articulate collectively. The truth is, higher education was originally conceived to explore exactly those kinds of questions: the big, abstract, human ones. After World War II, its mission expanded (or arguably contracted) into a more pragmatic focus: creating good jobs for the many. But maybe its original purpose, such as cultivating thought, perspective, and interior life, is still what it does best, and what we should most fiercely protect.

What can be done to make things better for our stressed-out college-shopping teens?

1. Extend the “college shopping lists” and craft ones that speak to individual needs. Right now, it’s a “Go Fish” game board. At elite private schools, the most marketable seniors are pointed toward the biggest-name prestige institutions (i.e., Yale, MIT, Stanford, USC, etc.), the next minuscule percentage down are dropped into tiny, nose-in-the-air niche places (i.e., Amherst, Williams, Kenyon, Reed, Swarthmore…), and the lower 75% “Go Fish” at the most expensive flagship out-of-state public universities (i.e., University of Colorado, University of Oregon, University of Wisconsin, etc.).

On the other hand, large public high schools tend to bring their top 9% (or less) performers to the best of the best in their state institutions. In California’s case, which is where I’ve focused my college consulting practice for the last two decades, those 9% of performers are pointed toward UCLA, UC-Berkeley, Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo, and their less-selective/same-campus-system brethren). The next 30% or so are more or less dumped without much subjective examination in the state’s second-tier public options. In California’s case, that means CSU-Northridge, San Francisco, State U, etc. The remaining 60%? GO FISH… and say “Hello” to your local community college. And yet, even at this point, the game of Go Fish isn’t over. Obviously, there are plenty of exceptions, but what I’ve described herein is pretty typical.

Which brings us to the real question: if college is supposed to expand a young person’s mind, why does the application process feel more like a rigged episode of Survivor crossed with The Bachelor—with a little Shark Tank thrown in for good measure? Students compete for limited roses (er, acceptances), pitch themselves like startup founders, and get voted off the island based on metrics no one fully understands. What should be a reflective, personalized journey has become a chaotic game of strategy, status, and guesswork.

2. Those visiting college reps at school and on campus visits? Learn to use them for good purposes.

College reps, student tour guides, even an overeager intern handing out stickers can flip a kid’s entire college plan with one well-timed anecdote and a free pen. I’ve watched students go from dead-set on UCLA to head-over-heels for Bennington after just a single artfully delivered pitch involving seminar tables and campus chickens. And don’t get me started on how quickly a school can get scratched off the list if the rep shows up wearing socks with sandals or accidentally uses the word “vibes” unironically. The takeaway? These encounters are potent, but they should be treated like reality TV: entertaining, occasionally insightful, and never representative of the whole story. A good parent should help their student use these visits as jumping-off points, not final verdicts. Because basing a $300,000 decision on someone’s handshake or hair part? That’s not a strategy. That’s roulette.

3. Community College? Most likely not your best idea.
   Let’s stop pretending community college is the magical, sensible alternative it’s so often sold as. It’s not. At least, not for most students who want the full, life-changing experience of college, and not just the credits. Let me put it this way:

Whatever happened to the idea that going away to college–actually living on-campus, on your own–is a key part of higher education?

Here’s what gets lost in the increasingly more common “save money first, transfer later” trade-off:

• Social and emotional growth. Staying local usually means still living at home, still eating dinner with your parents and sleeping in your childhood bedroom surrounded by relics of your former self. That’s not college. That’s high school with a parking permit.
• A delayed launch. By the time a student transfers into a big university, the social web has already been spun. Dorms are full. Friend groups are locked in. Clubs have their core members. And that junior transfer? They’re often left playing catch-up—socially, academically, even emotionally.
• The myth of the seamless transfer. Most students don’t finish in two years. Many get lost in a bureaucratic maze of prerequisites, missing credits, and vague advising. The so-called bargain starts to look more like an onerous detour.

In short: the “just go to community college first” plan often shortchanges the most valuable part of the college experience, namely, the chance to grow into a young adult in a place built for that exact purpose.

4. Ignore what the neighbors say. Take the media’s reportage with a grain of salt.

For all the fence-line gossip and breathless headlines about the “unfairness” of college admissions, the truth is far less scandalous. In most cases, admission outcomes are fair, reasonable, and even positive–even if most are unwilling to acknowledge this.

If a student builds a smart college list with a healthy spread of Reach, 50/50, and Likely options–and that list is based on real research, not fantasy–good outcomes almost always follow. This is especially true after May 1–once the dust settles–when final commitments are made and everyone can breathe again.

Still, I hear it every year when a parent corners me to vent:
“Sally didn’t get into Tulane. But the girl across the alley did, and she goes to [fill in name of the purportedly substandard] High School–and I’m pretty sure she’s not even that smart. So what gives?”

Here’s what gives: college admissions is a business. And like any business, it operates behind the curtain. No parent, counselor, or neighbor knows what’s happening on the other side of that spreadsheet. I can’t tell you exactly why the girl across the alley got in, but I can tell you this: it wasn’t random. And it wasn’t unfair.

The student who didn’t get in? That decision had nothing to do with their high school, their counselor, or any college consultant. It had everything to do with what that college needed at that moment. And that’s a game only the admissions office gets to play.

5. Parent your own kids. Don’t expect your teen’s high school to do it for you.
   One hard truth I’ve learned: you can’t override a household’s micro-culture. Not with counseling, not with policies, not even with a well-timed assembly. So take this however you see fit. But here’s the thing: too many parents now assume their teens’ high schools will handle the heavy-lifting of emotional, social, moral, and practical development that they’re unwilling or too distracted to do themselves.

As you might imagine, this mismatch of expectations can lead to parent requests that just are absurd on their face. In one memorable case, a parent asked us to make daily wake-up calls to their junior so he’d get to school on time. I wish I were joking.

The bigger point: successful college outcomes don’t start with Naviance or AP classes or essay coaching. They start with adults at home who are willing to be adults. The school can guide, support, and advocate. But they cannot and should not be asked to raise your child. And they certainly can’t hit “Submit” on the Common App or even fill out your FAFSA.

As a final note, parents should keep in mind that certain school personnel can in fact play a major role in your student’s college outcome. In some cases, a counselor, principal, or teacher can wield more power and influence than you might realize. As with all school faculty and staff, it’s best to view them as partners and not adversaries.

Here’s where Graduwit comes in.
This whole venture was built on a simple, human promise: to help teens craft college applications that celebrate not only who they are, but where they are at and, most importantly, where they want to go in the larger sense. We can help them discern, select, and ultimately delight in their college choices. Not just the shiny ones. Not just the ones that impress the neighbors. But the ones that can serve their academic and developmental needs now and over the course of their undergraduate careers.

Do we always win? Of course not. But our batting average is astonishingly high, and it’s not because we’re magicians. It’s because we’ve ditched the outdated model and replaced it with something better: personalized, responsive, and real. Graduwit meets every teen and parent exactly where they are, right now in their competitive college admissions process. No pre-set tracks. No one-size-fits-all shortcuts. Just clear-eyed strategy, generous support, and the most forward-thinking tools available. Today’s college list development needs these supports to make them sing.

And as for all those rookie mistakes? The good news is, they’re fixable. You don’t need to start over—just start smarter. When parents get clear, calm, and collaborative early on, the whole process changes. Students feel more confident, less cornered. Strategies get sharper. Outcomes get better. And most importantly, college becomes a match—not a battlefield.

That’s what Graduwit does best: we create the right college application strategy for each student, not in theory, but in practice, one real kid at a time.

Author’s Bio

Anne Cochran is the Founding Executive Director of Valley International Preparatory High School in Los Angeles, and a nationally recognized college admissions strategist with a track record of guiding students toward elite outcomes with authenticity and impact.