The Five Stages of College Admissions: Getting Close to the Final One

If you’ve ever taken a Psychology class, you probably have at least a vague memory of the Five Stages of Grief. Known as the Kübler-Ross model, and introduced by Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, it offers a series of emotional stages experienced when someone faces an impending death.

It suddenly dawned on me this weekend, as the parent of a child mere weeks from making a final decision about college, that these stages are entirely appropriate for the whole college applicati...