<p>I recently asked my son if he was interested in applying to any Ivy League schools and he looked at me like I was dense and said something like, “I did, I applied to MIT.” Now, his academic credentials are sufficient to apply to and be considered at any school very credibly. What this tells me is that the “Ivy League” brand is a little wobbly in the mind of at least some very bright teenagers. Anyway, I explained that technically the Ivy League includes only the schools of the Ancient Eight athletic conference, and named them for him. But none of those schools have particularly interested him at this point. (In fact, on a recent visit to MIT he didn’t even want to take an hour away to run over and look at that other school in Cambridge.) His perception is that all of the Ivy League schools are very different from MIT. Whether that’s true or not, I think that is very discerning on his part. I cannot imagine any reason other than the “window decal factor” for applying to all eight of those schools. It would be the exceptionally rare personality that would fit all of them.</p>