An Admissions Surprise From the Ivy League — from nytimes.com by Frank Bruni ; with thanks to Mr. Jeff Kuhn for this resource

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

About three weeks ago, a group of more than 80 colleges — including all eight in the Ivy League and many other highly selective private and public ones — announced that they were developing a free website and set of online tools that would, among other things, inform ninth and 10th graders without savvy college advisers about the kind of secondary-school preparation that best positions them for admission.

What’s more, these colleges plan to use the website for an application process, in place by next fall, that would be separate from, and competitive with, the “Common App,” a single form students can submit to any of more than 600 schools. If colleges in the new group — which calls itself the Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success — have been taking the Common App, they would continue to, but would clearly be encouraging students to explore this alternate route.

“For every student from the entire bottom half of the nation’s income distribution at Dartmouth, Penn, Princeton, Yale and more than a few other colleges, there appear to be roughly two students from just the top 5 percent (which means they come from families making at least $200,000).”