"When did the process of getting into college shift from being just a challenging rite of passage into the academic version of the Hunger Games?"
That's how the host of a new podcast, following a diverse group of high school students in New York City as they apply to college, frames the drama of the college admissions process in a promo uploaded Tuesday.
"Getting In" is hosted by Stanford's former dean of freshmen, Julie Lythcott-Haims, and premieres Thursday on iTunes and Slate.com.
The series will chronicle in real-time the steps students on the show take to get accepted and choose the college best suited to them. (Hint: they don't have to fight each other to the death.) It'll also offer those high school seniors — among their ranks an athlete, an aspiring actor and a first-generation immigrant — the advice of former college admissions officers and high school guidance counselors.
The show promises to help students and parents listening "re-take control of a process that all too often seems to be working against them," according to a statement from Panoply, the podcast network producing the show.
Adding to the difficulty of the process is the fact that the ratio of students to guidance counselors in large public schools across the country is nearly 500 to 1. Experts told the New York Times that ratio hasn't changed in more than a decade. Recognizing the deficit, New York City hired 250 new guidance counselors last year.
Still, we have to ask ourselves whether the most disadvantaged students will download a podcast. (The medium may have seen an explosion in listenership after the true-crime series "Serial" became a pop culture meme last year, but it still caters to liberal middle-class America.) Will "Getting In" be giving the best prepared students and parents extra ammunition?
Either way, with the start of the new school year, let the games begin.
