The date is fast approaching when students will receive their college acceptances from the most competitive colleges in the country. Most students have already heard from several colleges as all but the most competitive let students know much earlier than the beginning of April. Only 3% of the four-year colleges and universities in the United States accept fewer than 25% of their applicants and these schools enroll fewer than 4% of all new freshmen. This is a very small group of students and schools but the publicity surrounding these schools has lead many people to think that it is impossible to get into college and has resulted in great angst among students and parents about the college admissions process. On the other hand, 18% of the four-year institutions and all of the more than 1,000 community colleges in the U.S. are open admissions which means they have minimal admissions criteria and accept almost all students who apply if they have graduated from high school and complete all the required paperwork. Why do we have such misperceptions about getting into college? Too many people think that all schools are like the Ivies and the Little Ivies but that is far from true. There is a school for everyone and, in most cases, many schools that will be a good match for you. It is quite easy to predict your chances of getting in to a school as most schools accept all students who meet their stated criteria and have scores that are close to the school’s average scores. There are very few schools who have the luxury of turning away qualified students who meet their criteria. The very selective schools are able to fill their freshmen class many times over from their applicant pool while most others struggle to fill their class and find that they have to discount their tuition significantly to get the number of students that they need to operate in a financially viable way. The average discount rate at private four-year colleges is almost 50% meaning that on average students will pay only half of the published tuition