It's harder to get a job at Wal-Mart than it is to get into Harvard.

Tufts University, a former clown college that rose through the ranks to become one of America's most prestigious safety schools, likes to have fun on its applications. For years, it's been asking prospective students to submit quirky YouTube videos demonstrating how their quirky YouTube videos are better than other applicants' quirky YouTube videos. In 2010, it invited applicants to "create something" out of a sheet of paper. It's fun in the way your old job made you wear a sombrero on your birthday "because we like to have fun here!" It's just really, really fun.

College acceptance letters have begun rolling out for the class of 2016 and, as Steve Cohen of The Daily Beast notes, things are looking especially bleak for so-called "unhooked white girls."

The Common Application, an online college application system used by Yale University, the University of Virginia, and more than 400 other schools, is limiting the space available for applicants' personal essays to 500 words. We are all bloggers now.

A new survey reveals that U.S. colleges increasingly favor rich students who can pay their way without financial assistance even if they're dumber than poorer kids (unlikely). For you poor kids out there, this is good news: You can stop studying now. It doesn't matter anymore.

The hard-hearted dream-destroyers of Harvard's admissions office have spoken: Grace Oberhofer, the Washington teen who became a viral star begging to get off Harvard's waitlist, did not get into Harvard. Instead she will go to Tufts, where she will spend the next four years deflecting "safety school" jokes. [FlyByBlog, IvyGate]

You know how, when you applied for college, you sent the same bromide "Why I want to go to _____ University" essay to every school, because all colleges are interchangeable anyway? Turns out John F. Kennedy thought so, too.

Sarah Murdoch—daughter-in-law of Rupert and host of Australia's Next Top Model—has a very good explanation for why she announced the wrong winner on live TV: At the moment of truth, nobody told her who won, so she guessed.

Ken Mehlman, former Republican National Committee chair and George Bush's 2004 campaign manager, has admitted he's gay after years of rumors and denials. He shouldn't expect forgiveness anytime soon, though, from the gay community he's spent his career trashing.

Interested in going to Yale? Would you be more interested if some people sang and danced for your pleasure? The school's admissions department sure seems to hope so, if their "That Why I Chose Yale" recruitment video is any indication.

Updated: Fighting back tears, Mark Sanford explained that his mysterious disappearance was really a visit to "a dear dear friend in Argentina," a mistress he met eight years ago and fell in love with a year ago over e-mail.

Back in August, comedian Dane Cook assailed the marketing job for his upcoming movie My Best Friend's Girl, claiming that it was the "best / funniest film" he'd ever made but that its quality was overshadowed by a photoshopped poster that left his face looking like "Brittany Spears' [sic] vagina." Then, the film actually came out, and critics treated Cook's vulva-tastic mug like it was the least of the rom-com's problems. Now, co-star Alec Baldwin is leaping into the fray, admitting on his official website that he'd rather watch My Name is Earl than have to sit through My Best Friend's Girl again:

Would you like to know how to get into Yale? This interview with the Yale School of Management admissions guy seems like it should be helpful, but also sort of isn't. His advice? "Think hard about the picture you're trying to paint of yourself." Uh, really. [BW]

Meet Michele A. Hernandez, a former admissions officer at Dartmouth who is now the most expensive college coach in the country. "Few of the 4,000 independent college counselors now scattered around the country can match Hernandez' influence or earning power. Early on, she began offering college-admissions counseling for students in eighth grade—yes, eighth grade—an approach that is becoming more common. Since 2005, she has run application boot camps in Manhattan and Santa Monica, Calif., which this summer cost $9,500 and are sure to attract imitators. Hernandez says she earned almost $1 million last year." [BusinessWeek]