University Arms Race -- Let's End It, 2
Keep in mind that behind the headline-grabbing record low admission rates, signs of success for American universities, are hundreds of thousand rejected students, many who have spent the last two years completely stressed out as they prepared for SAT/ACT tests, and planned and organized their application documents to schools -- that had no intention of taking them in the first place.
While thousands of children feel like rejects, the schools sit pretty, at least for another year, on US News & World's Report's "Best Colleges List" which helped start the University Arms Race funnily enough during the height of the Cold War in 1983 by being the first to start ranking universities. University chancellors and deans were horrified at the time, begging the newspaper to stop its list, but eventually they adopted "if you can't beat them, join them approach", becoming as corporate as they could in the quest for more consumers, oops, students.
But okay let's look at these low admittance rates, the Ivies' bragging rights, what's being touted. Let's break them down. For example, the official rate at Harvard 'there-is-a-place-for-you' University is 5.2% which equals 2,037 students. Out of that, it's feasible that around 1000 are those who didn't make the grade the year prior, but since they are full payers, hey-ho, bargains are made and deals struck, to defer enrollment for the following year. So this immediately brings the number of available slots down to 1,937. Now approximately 1,000 of those spots will be taken by legacies, alumni's children, or big-donor children. Yes, it could be as high as 1,000. If Harvard or Stanford, Columbia, Yale or Princeton want to provide a more accurate account, then please share.
So instead of the headline 2,037 number of students accepted, the true figure is more like 937 once you strip out deferments, legacies and donors. Less than a 1,000 spots were actually even open in the regular admissions process in which, don't forget, quotas must be met on race, sex, gender and of course geography. How else to brag on press releases about incoming students coming from all 50 states as well as overseas? This, from a pool of 39,000 applications. That 'New York Times' columnist joking about Stanford's admission rate of 0 wasn't really joking after all.
None of the Ivies wanted to discuss this with me, and you can see why as it shows just how ridiculous and absurd the higher education process has become and makes a farce of all their talk of inclusivity. It also shows what big business it's become and in the worst possible way, too, by peddling dreams and fantasies to children, knowing full well the majority won't make the cut and knowing that this works exactly to their advantage. You'd see their Arms Race, their Hunger Games, end really quickly if just a fraction of students refuse to play anymore by just not applying in the first place.
Worth the stress? Be sure to shave a couple of percentage points off each college's 'official admittance rate' and now look at your child's chances. 
All of these children benefit universities in other ways, too. Since a school's admittance rate is the key statistic used in college rankings, how a college itself 'scores', it's incumbent for these universities to play Pied Piper with talk of you-have-a-chance-to-get-into-our-prestigious-school so as to get more and more children sending in applications. The more children a school can reject, the lower its admissions rate falls and its ranking rises. Climbing up one 'best college' list after another adds yet more magic dust to their images and creates a snowball effect of ever more exclusivity, ever more demand. Let the University Arms Race continue!
Roots To Shoots
Standing Splits or utthita eka pada hastasana
The leg goes over the head in the final end position of standing splits or utthita eka pada hastasana, but many people when they first see this pose can't get their head around the leg. All they see is leg, leg, leg and can't get over how straight up it goes. They have the impression that this is some daring-do feat of flexibility.
The leg though is a side effect of the activated root chakra, the first center at the tip of the tailbone. It's out of powering this chakra, this energy center, that makes the leg shoot up.
It is from the root chakra, the base, the 'Earth' of our spine, that we learn to guide the leg up in an upward, vertical direction. By bringing one leg upright against gravity like this, there is a direct use of the will, of putting action out into the world -- literally in this case.
Once the intention becomes strong within, the root, activated, then the leg carries itself up and up, the same way a spring flower shoots through the ground.