Every fall, as another college admissions season begins in earnest, high school counselors witness a predictable pattern. “Everyone’s list just gets longer,” Norma Gutierrez, a college counselor at Minnetonka High School in suburban Minneapolis, told me. That mind-set makes acceptance to a highly selective college feel like a game. Fewer than a tenth of applicants win that prize of getting into one of the nation’s most selective colleges. If that weren’t enough, every year elite colleges move the goal line with new rules for getting across it.