Mr. NP and I are in Santa Barbara for a short, childless getaway.  Before we left home, we heard about two kids we know who were just admitted from waitlists into the colleges of their dreams.  One, a boy from CJ's school, was accepted at Georgetown after planning to go to Tufts.  Another, our friend's niece, was all set to go to Syracuse, until a week ago when she was offered a spot at Skidmore. 

Last night at dinner in a romantic garden patio, we were seated next to a table of loud talkers.  Their conversation topic, of course, was colleges.  The female loud talker mentioned that there would be a lot of waitlist activity this year.  Harvard and Princeton had announced they would each accept 90 students from their waitlists, and this would cause a ripple effect, extending to all the universities in the world.  Her cousin's son had just gotten into Princeton, she said, and he would now give up his spot at his second-choice school.  Where had he planned on going before he had the good fortune to be un-waitlisted?  Georgetown.  Yes, without a doubt, he had opened a place for the boy from our school.

Then the male loud talker told the group, with authority, that although this was an extremely competitive year for college admissions, students from Santa Barbara public schools had done very well. In fact, he had just heard of a local girl who just gotten into Vasser off the waitlist. 

At this point, our waiter approached us to see if we wanted more wine, and we had to stop eavesdropping.  But if we had continued to listen to the loud talkers, we're certain they would have revealed that the Vassar girl had provided the spot at Skidmore for our friend's niece.