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“What do you mean by “top” colleges?” people often ask when they come to my book signings or college admissions talks. “Your college book’s subtitle is ‘272 Secrets for Getting Your Kid into the Top Schools.’ What constitutes a top school, and aren’t you only talking about the Ivies?”

No, I explain emphatically. A top school in my book is a college that offers the best opportunities for the student applying—according to that student’s interests and dreams.

If, for example, your child is interested in film animation, some top schools might include NYU, USC, UCLA, CalArts and RISD—none of them an Ivy. If your child is interested in robotics, top schools might include MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Johns Hopkins, Harvey Mudd, Olin, Rensselaer Polytechnic, or Rose Hulman. Or for a student interested in Peace Studies, some top choices could include Swarthmore (Peace & Conflict), Wellesley (Peace & Justice), UC Colorado (Peace & Conflict), Brandeis (minor in Peace, Conflict & Coexistence), and Bryn Mawr (Peace & Conflict).

How about a college where the students travel around the world—Global College—gaining firsthand experiences? While some colleges may offer semesters abroad, or even entire years abroad, Global offers four solid years of travel. In the first year, students live in Costa Rica.

What I want high school seniors to know is that many, many wonderful programs exist outside the Ivies—an important concept in this most competitive year of college admissions—and new opportunities are opening up in various parts of the country.

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We’re in for a dramatic change in the high-end college admissions pattern this year—that’s my prediction—as a result of Harvard and Princeton’s move to eliminate Early applications. The way I envision this year’s admissions process shaping up, Yale will receive a record number of Early Action applications—not just a 10 percent or 20 percent increase. But from my tracking of the situation, I’m expecting the number of Single Choice Early Action (SCEA) candidates to Yale to more than double, maybe triple.

Although a Yale admissions spokesman said that the numbers aren’t in yet and he couldn’t yet quantify the increase, he said the university is indeed seeing increased action this year in the days before Nov. 1, the SCEA application deadline. More students have been showing up at info sessions and inquiring about Yale. And Yale’s website is “strongly” advising SCEA applicants to get their materials in sooner this year, as Yale “will begin reading applications after mid-October,” instead of waiting until Nov. 1 to start.

In a “typical year”—if such a year ever existed—Yale claims to attract more than 20,000 applications for 1,300 freshman spaces. This would seem to translate into a 7.5 percent acceptance rate, and 92.5 percent rejection rate. But actually closer to 1,800 are accepted each year by Yale, and about 30 percent of those choose not to attend. So in a so-called “typical year,” about 9 percent are accepted, leaving a 91 percent rejection rate. But this is no typical year, so expect the rejection rate to increase dramatically.

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Elizabeth Wissner-Gross is our guest blogger for the week of October 22nd. If you have any questions for Elizabeth Wissner-Gross, add a comment to any of her posts. Here is some brief information about What High Schools Don't Tell You - 300+ Secrets to Make Your Kid Irresistible to Colleges by Senior Year: 

The headlines prove it: Competition for admission to America's top colleges is more cutthroat than ever. Gone are the days when parents could afford to let high school guidance counselors handle the admissions process alone-gone, also, are the days when a student could wait until senior year to prepare for it. As Elizabeth Wissner-Gross, a highly successful educational strategist, knows from working for over a decade with hundreds of middle- and high school students and their parents, if you want to raise a kid colleges will compete for, you must act, early and aggressively, as opportunity scout, coach, tutor, manager, and publicist-or be willing to watch that acceptance letter go to someone whose parents did.

What High Schools Don't Tell You reveals 250 strategies to help parents stack the admissions deck in their kid's favor, gleaned from Wissner-Gross's expertise and from interviews with parents of outstandingly high achievers-strategies that most high school guidance counselors, principals, and teachers simply don't know to share. From identifying exactly which academic credentials will wow an admissions committee to which summer programs and extra-curriculars can turn an ordinary applicant into a must-have, What High Schools Don't Tell You demonstrates how hands-on parental involvement early in a child's high school career is essential to achieving college admissions success.