By a show of hands, how many of you would rather not have to wait for an interminable period of time to hear back from the colleges you apply to? Keep it raised if you find the ceaseless waiting period borderline ridiculous.

Don’t worry, the question was rhetorical. You can put your hand down now.

I’m going to go ahead and assume, though, that most students feel that way. And why shouldn’t we? By the time April decisions come out, we’re hard-pressed to even remember applying back in November or December. All right, that’s an exaggeration. But it certainly would be nice to hear back a bit sooner from our top schools.

This brings me to my soapbox position for today: admissions offices should increase the production of their latest phenomenon—likely letters. What are these mysterious pieces of college correspondence? Basically, an anticipative wink from the school hinting that "there’s no need to worry about getting in."

Now, different colleges have different ways of approaching these little diamonds in letter form. Likely letters range from completely straightforward ("We’re going to accept you.") to a bit more cryptic and sneaky ("Save the following date. Oh by the way, that’s an accepted students’ weekend.").

The bottom line is that there’s no reason for schools not to send out likely letters. We deserve the overwhelming degree of relief that they bring, and even the colleges that are most heavily applied to have ample time to send them out. It’s just one of those good ideas, like democracy.

The harshest criticism of these letters seems to be that their seemingly random deployment is unfair, and that the letters discourage the strong applicants that happen not to get them. Look, I agree—it shouldn’t be a crapshoot to figure out who’s going to receive likely letters; they should be sent to all deserving candidates.

As for the colleges that haven’t even adopted the policy of sending likely letters at all: get with the program! They’re all the rage—and they help schools rope in the particularly strong applicants who will have lots of choices. Relieve stress for the students while giving schools a head start on recruiting stellar prospective pupils? Sounds like a win-win to me.