14. Playing the Gender Card

We have told today’s young women that the world is their oyster; the problem is, so many of them believed us that the standards for admission to today’s most selective colleges are stiffer for women than men. How’s that for an unintended consequence of the women’s liberation movement?

—Jennifer Delahunty Britz, dean of admissions and financial aid at Kenyon College

My daughter was a junior in high school when I read an op-ed piece in The New York Times that was written by a mother whose daughter was upset that she had been wait-listed at one of the five colleges on her list.

The essay grabbed my attention because the mother was hardly the average parent who rails against the inanity of the college admission process. ...

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