At graduation ceremonies across the country, speakers are telling students they must master AI to survive. But at Harvard University’s Class Day, comedian and Daily Show host Ronny Chieng took the microphone and gave the exact opposite advice. He looked out at the graduating Class of 2026 and declared: “The mission of your generation is to destroy AI. Kill it.”

For high-achieving parents—especially those of us with analytical, tech, or STEM backgrounds—the road to college admissions can feel like an optimization problem. We naturally want to build the perfect inputs to ensure the best possible output: Top GPA + Perfect SAT + Extracurriculars = Elite University Acceptance. But according to Julie Lythcott-Haims, the former Dean of Freshmen at Stanford University and author of the bestselling book How to Raise an Adult, this approach can backfire.

Every year, parents and students approach college applications with the same traditional playbook: get the highest GPA possible, stack up extracurriculars, take the SAT, and write a solid essay. But over the last two years, a quiet tectonic shift has completely fractured the elite college admissions landscape. The traditional playbook is officially broken. Today, the strategy you use to get into a top-tier public university (like a UC school, UVa, or Michigan) is fundamentally different from