Past Forward: Why Students Still Want to Get Into 'Hot' Colleges Harvey Mudd. The University of Richmond. The College of Charleston. Elon. They may be unfamiliar names to many, but according to Marjorie Hansen Shaevitz, a college admissions counselor and the author of "Admission Possible: The Dare to Be Yourself Guide for Getting Into the Best Colleges," they are all examples of schools that "have suddenly come into the hot scene" for high-school seniors applying to college, something they're working at right now (most early-admissions deadlines are Nov. 1). What do we mean when we say a college is "hot"? And why do we care about hotness anyway? Michael Winerip, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author of "Adam Canfield, The Last Reporter" and creator of the new Booming blog at The Times, took up these questions in 1984. In his article for the magazine, "Hot Colleges and How They Get That Way," Winerip described what many ambitious high-school students (and their parents) were thinking in the mid-'80s: One of the "hot" schools mentioned by Winerip 28 years ago happened to be the University of Virginia, the subject of Andrew Rice's cover story in last weekend's Education Issue, which, according to its recently-fired-then-rehired president, "still ranks as one of the best public universities in the country." Another school that appeared in Winerip's article was Brown, reported to have had "a policy to eliminate grinds and nerds" from being admitted in favor of "outgoing, confident and positive" applicants. Students cited factors like pleasant weather (Stanford) or having "their own ski slope" (Dartmouth) as part of what made colleges "hot" in their minds. I asked Tessa Adler, a senior at Point Loma High School in San Diego, what she considers to be the hot schools. "People in California always mention U.C.L.A., Berkeley and U.S.C.," she said. But Adler's criteria for the right school include snow, a fairly small student body and a strong science program. She is considering places like Yale, Brown, Middlebury, the University of Denver, Washington University and Bowdoin. She had contacted me to ask about my alma mater, Vassar, another place she is considering, and agreed to be interviewed for this post. I assumed, based on the other schools Adler is interested in, that she would also like Williams College in Massachusetts. I was wrong. "It seems too handholdy there," said Adler, who visited Williams. There were posters in the hallways with little-kid phrases like 'You Can Do It!' When people at the college described the emphasis on freshman counseling and bonding, it struck Adler as "more like baby-sitting than college." Shaevitz - who advised me years ago when I was applying to college - says that in her 20 years of experience, she "didn't see the panic" around finding the right college until the economic downturn in 2008. Then it became so palpable that it was like the permanent elephant in the room. I asked Winerip to revisit his article, now that nearly three decades have passed, and give me his reaction. "The first surprise is I was right," Winerip wrote to me. Second, it could have been written today. . . . All the insanity we have attached to the process was as true then as it is now. He went on: When I wrote this, I saw things as the students did - I'd just graduated college in 1974. Now I see it as a parent who's watched my four children go through it. My heart goes out to these kids, it's terrible to put them through this. On the other hand, I've also come to realize how much less important all this is. One of my children was lost for a while, dropped out of college, made mistakes, came home to live, then took classes at the local community college. There, he fell in love with learning, graduated and was accepted to a top university. There are so many ways to get where we're going.