Ivy League Logjam Trickles Down

Top-tier colleges are getting more applicants than ever, the Times reports, allowing a new class of schools to court—and reject—the overachievers increasingly turned away from the Ivy League. Universities like Bucknell, Colgate and Lehigh are tightening standards as students with top SATs and grades seek higher learning lower in the rankings.

"High school students are looking more and more at these schools the way they used to look at the Ivies," says one senior who opted to apply to Tufts over tonier (and tougher) Brown. At schools like Pomona and Kenyon ("the Williams of the Midwest," as one counselor calls it) applications are way up, as are rejections. (More college admissions stories.)