With all the articles on the increasing competition to be admitted to college, it's no wonder that students and their families are anxious about college admission. And the anxiety level seems to be increasing every year.

But, if you look at the facts, you will see that it is really not as difficult to get into college as you might think. The reality is that a very small number of colleges and universities are more than moderately selective.

Stanford, NYU, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and schools like them are denying more students than ever before.

Although such institutions typically receive applications from top students, their acceptance rates are extremely low. Recently, some top tier colleges and universities have admitted just eleven or twelve percent of their applicants.

In fact, the very top colleges turn down hundreds of high school valedictorians every year.

Students with perfect ACT or SAT results are also frequently denied admission to top schools. The truth is that no student, however strong, is assured admission to a Yale, a Harvard, a Princeton or a similarly competitive college or university.

That's the bad news. The good news is that only students applying to the very most selective colleges have to worry about ten or twenty percent acceptance rates. And only they have to worry that SAT or ACT scores in the top five percent may not be good enough.

No magic or superhuman achievements are required to get into a good college or university. Although Harvard may admit just nine or ten percent of its applicants, at most colleges the percentage is closer to seventy.

So, your can worry needlessly about getting into college (which will do you no good at all) or you can virtually guarantee that you college search will end happily by carefully choosing the colleges to which you apply, and including at least two at which your high school grades and test scores virtually guarantee your admission.