Competition the cost of free love

Free love is making a mess of college campuses (so to speak). According to the Greenwich Times in old-money Greenwich, Conn., 2008 is the peak of the "baby boom echo," the children of the baby boomers. There are more 18-year-old Americans around this year than ever before, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This is bad news for collegebound seniors, all fighting for a limited number of college seats that haven't increased in number much to reflect the booming population.

According to Census Bureau projections, there are 4.5 million 18-year-old Americans this year, a peak that will decline in upcoming years. The number of births in 1990 was the highest recorded since the baby boom days of the early 1960s, according to census data. Indeed, Chicago recently announced it will close as many as 75 elementary schools over the next five years due to plummeting enrollment rates.

With that many current high school seniors, says the Times, students can forget about their parents' days of applying to a few schools and believing something would work out. These days, even a grade point average well above 4.0 (due to the weighting of Advanced Placement courses) doesn't guarantee a spot at Ivy League schools.