Graduation season is upon us, and with it a ritual that did not exist a generation ago. In recent years, thousands of high schools have built out something called “Decision Day”: an event where seniors arrive in college sweatshirts, assemblies are staged, matriculation lists are published, and social media accounts celebrate elite acceptances with logos and school colors. Parents film it. Administrators promote it. Local news covers it.

The ritual is presented as a celebration. It functions as something else: a public ranking of adolescents by institutional prestige, staged and amplified by the very schools that claim to be forming them.

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