Heidi Stevens: This college season is 'the craziest ever,' experts say. But do kids want to talk about it? (Hint: Nope.)

The kids who were in eighth grade when COVID-19 locked down our world are graduating high school this year.

The kids, that is, who largely ended middle school in their bedrooms. Whose eighth-grade graduations happened on Zoom. Who grabbed their diplomas through rolled-down car windows. Who had a feeling this was all weird and sad but maybe not as weird and sad as losing a 12th-grade graduation and prom and all things senior year? But, wait, would this still be happening by their senior years?

Speaking of high school, what would that be like?

It was weird. Some of it was masked. Some of it was remote. Some of it was trying to figure out why they were instructed to stay home for the greater good when they felt sick a few months ago, and now they were being instructed to get the heck to school, sniffles and all, if they didn’t want to lose homecoming privileges.

Some of it was prepping for ACT and SAT tests and wondering if colleges even cared about those anymore. Some of it was wondering what anyone cared about anymore. Some of it was grappling with all of this after losing a parent or a grandparent or a friend—to COVID-19 or another illness or circumstance that felt, like a lot of life, utterly and completely out of their control.

So it’s fitting, maybe, that getting into college this year is also a hot mess.

“As this year’s college-admissions season nears its close, with decisions arriving from schools this month, it is already shaping up as the craziest ever,” Jeffrey Selingo, author of “Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions,” writes in New York magazine. “Applications to the 1,000-plus colleges that are part of the Common Application are up 6 percent over last year’s total, which was already a record.”

Selective schools have become even more selective, Seligo writes, and less selective schools have started deferring or denying students when they sense they’re being used as backup plans.

Throw in the botched rollout of the revamped FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid, although I’m sure one of those Fs should stand for something else) and you’ve got a perfect storm. Of anxiety, mostly.

“A series of blunders — from a haphazard rollout to technical meltdowns — have left students and schools in limbo and plunged the most critical stage of the college admissions season into disarray,” the New York Times reports about FAFSA.

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