The Economics of Applying to Graduate School

Right now I am in the process of applying to grad school. That is, as with everything else, I am desperately trying to get things done before the deadlines. That's okay, my productivity increases when the pressure from an approaching deadline is on. For any questions on how to calculate the productivity, ask an economist or someone who took Econ 200 recently. But to get to the point: During the process of getting my applications done, I learned one thing that nicely matches everything I have learned in my econ classes: Everyone will try to rip you off.
I am not even thinking so much about the outrageous tuitions. That the schools are in some kind of crazy race for who can have the highest tuition is nothing new. What I almost forgot, however, was that there are other ways they can make a few bucks here and there. Let's talk about the application fees here. Believe it or not, I am actually able to relate this to the material from our class.
The application fees I had to pay so far where usually somewhere between $40 and $90 per school. I never hesitated for even just a second. I always paid, no questions asked. Why is that? Because there is only one supplier for the product "Ohio State Graduate School", only one producer of the good "USC Graduate School", and so on. I am a victim of the schools' market power and just have to pay. Even though, as we learned in class, it all depends on how you define the market. Sure, we could define the market as one for "graduate schools". I, however, would define the markets more narrow. After all, the universities are able to create enough product differentiation to make sure there are no substitutes for their products. So far, I have only found one school whose product features "Professor Keohane". I have also only found one school whose product has the "Virginia Football" feature - not that this would have been a factor for someone who comes from Ohio State. Let's keep this real. Anyway, the bottom line is that these suppliers of higher education have some market power that allows them to charge prices that are well beyond those of a perfectly competitive market.
The worst part is, it doesn't stop with the schools. As part of your application you also need to take the GRE. Now how many suppliers are there for this test? One, that's right. The consumers have two choices: Pay the ridiculous fee for taking the test, or not take the test. Unless you want to go to graduate school. Then not taking the test is not an option and you're left with the option of just paying the fee. ETS, who offers the GRE, pretty much has a textbook example of a perfect monopoly. Rather than being a price taker, the company sets its profit maximizing price at the point where marginal costs equal marginal revenue - at least in theory, because I doubt they have any idea of what their marginal cost and marginal revenue curves look like.
And now, last but not least, the even "perfecter" monopoly: The issuer of your undergraduate transcripts. Of course Ohio State can charge you whatever they want for printing your transcripts. They are the only supplier and they will remain the only supplier. After all, noone will ever be able to enter the market of making your official undergraduate transcripts, besides your one undergraduate institution. That's awesome, because now I don't even have to discuss Entry Deterrence (Chapter 12 in the book, for those who want to look at it anyway).
Turns out Ohio State doesn't even charge that much for a transcript. Maybe not everyone is all about profit maximizing, like economists try to teach us? Maybe those people at Ohio State have a heart for their students? Well, I quickly dropped that thought again when I saw the fee for rush orders. But then again, it's my fault for procastinating to the point where a rush order becomes necessary.