Last week I embarked on a peculiarly American rite of passage: the college tour.
My husband, daughter and I logged more than 1,200 miles, nine states and 10 university campuses in seven days, from sunny Washington, where students at Georgetown University sported shorts, to Brunswick, Maine, where the central quadrangle of Bowdoin College was covered in snow.
Our odyssey was far from unusual, thanks to the unpredictable and highly competitive nature of the US admissions process. (Stanford accepts under 4 per cent of applicants, and seven of the eight Ivy League schools take below one in 10). The same instinct that allegedly drove parents in the “ Varsity Blues” scandal to pay $25m in bribes to help their children win places leads more law-abiding families to visit a dozen campuses or more in the hope of gaining a leg up.