Just our of interest: How much time and effort goes into these university applications in the U.S.? It seems incredibly difficult and annoying, from what I've been reading in this thread.
it is its own massive industry. children of the upper-middle class or the bourgeois are often forced into cupboards, devoting the soul of their existence to the goal at the tender age of 16-17. it's cruel stuff and goes a long way to pacifying the future managerial/political class, harvesting attitudes of submission to authority and a more general fatalism.
