This is a miserable time of year for high school seniors who want to go to college. Most have just finished, or are about to finish, submitting their college applications. Even if they appear on the outside as if they’re relieved, on the inside their frazzled psyches are suffering. For many of them, it’s the first time they’ve ever compiled a resumé. One side of me says they should buck up and get over it. Another, however, sees precisely how ugly a moment this is.

Fueling the high level of interest (and anxiety) of the college-bound and their parents are the editors at The New York Times Q&A blog, who yesterday posted on the topic of college admissions. They asked a panel of four admissions deans at highly selective institutions—Yale University, Pomona College, Lawrence University and the University of Texas at Austin—to answer a few questions about “the admissions process.”

The Times editors asked the deans about whether they think their admissions processes are fair, whether or not the current financial situation will affect admissions, and their advice on what applicants ought to do and not do in their applications. Each of the deans offers some bon mots, and readers are invited to respond. The panel will select a few of the responses for comment. I first caught the Q&A at around 7:00 p.m. last evening, after it had been up for only a couple of hours. By then there were around 50 comments. This morning there are well over a hundred.

These deans don’t say anything about college admissions you don’t already know. They’re perennially in search of the Holy Grail of diversity—a class made up of smart people who have a wide range of interests. They admit up front that they’re imperfect in their search, but they want us to know they are doing their best.

There’s nothing wrong with the criteria now used by colleges to assess an applicant. Grades, SAT’s, letters of recommendation, participation in sports, years of playing the piano, leadership in clubs, volunteer service, the college essay and interview—taken together, they form a blurry but reasonably decipherable picture of an applicant. What, precisely, could colleges be forgetting?

By measuring applicants against predefined categories, colleges leave out only one potentially intriguing group of students—those truly quirky sorts—late bloomers equipped with very quiet and private souls who frequently perform in a rather mediocre way on tests and as often as not don’t earn particularly good grades. Out of this pool an extraordinary group of individuals will eventually emerge, although early prediction is nearly impossible. For most colleges, it’s not worth the time, effort and risk to ferret them out.

Getting into college has become a high-stakes enterprise. Smart students hit the 9th-grade streets running, taking no risks and doing no wrong. They eagerly direct, and often dramatically distort, their youthful lives in order to look good when summed up on paper.

The young and college-bound have a sense of urgency all right, but fearing the waste of time, they rarely look up at the sky.

(Brainstorm illustration incorporating photos by Flickr users impious and portableantiquities)