<p>As far as I know, and please correct me if I am wrong, but most common apps to elite and selective schools do have required extra essays on supplements that must be filed along with the common app “generic” essays. Of course, some unversities opt to keep their own exclusive application (like Brown and U. Penn) and still others give a choice. I am not sure that adding more essays would make the admissions process any less stressful! I do agree though - this is one instance when less is more - more time spent on fewer apps. to carefully targeted schools. I have to wonder - what role do GC’s play in most high schools across the country these days when it comes to drawing up school lists and sending out transcripts? I suppose this is the part of the story where all the uncertainty and part of the frenzy comes in - I know GCs who were absolutely dumbfounded at the admissions results these past few years.</p>
<p>Another thought on this subject of multiple apps, the cost of sending SAT test scores to additional colleges is not cheap as it is and that would seem to be a built-in factor that would favor wealthier parents and students who don’t see that cost as much of a sacrifice.</p>
<p>The supplemental essay writing prompt is often also generic or can easily be adapted for other colleges. Some colleges have a Why xxx section. I do not recall my S’s Harvard application containing such a section. Perhaps because the Harvard adcom thought this was a superfluous question? ;)</p>
<p>Most app forms also ask for rather generic information. It is this part that would benefit from being common to all.</p>
<p>Marite: Yes - and I do think this is an important point. Most if not all, of the many essay prompts are “generic” asking about broad topics such as unusual life circumstances, books read, travel experiences etc. In the case of Harvard, I stand corrected, the essays on the supplemental app. are/were optional and not required since Harvard states deems the required information given on the common app. to be sufficient to make an admissions decision. As for the absence of the “why” question - obviously not a make or break question so there is no real need to waste time and money with that one :). Other selective schools don’t have a “why” question either on their supplemental app.</p>
<p>So, I suppose it is the individual’s approach to the “generic” that counts here - do you think additional required essays are in order?</p>
<p>Lloyd Thacker has single-handedly raised the consciousness (and conscience) of the higher education community about the perversion of educational values that current selective college admissions practices cause. The meeting of college presidents has resulted in a number of work groups and a commitment to continue to meet. This is a start. Thacker’s non-profit organization, The Education Conservancy (<a href=“http://www.educationconservancy.org)%5B/url%5D”>www.educationconservancy.org)</a>, is familiar to some of CC’s posters. Joining the Education Conservancy as a parent is a good way to show support for admissions reform. Finding a way to sponsor a presentation by Thacker in your area is another. He is a compelling speaker on the subject. Hanging out on CC’s forums is a way to learn and commiserate, but will not produce change. Supporting the EC is a way of acting on your views.</p>
<p>I strongly suspect that Harvard’s adcom looks closely at the supplemental essay and probably takes a dim view of apps that do not include this “optional” essay. It would be the equivalent of not showing sufficient interest. Unfortunately, the supplemental essay prompt is as generic as the regular essay prompt. In certain ways, these prompts make for very dull essays. My S wrote a better essay for Stanford, responding to the prompt about a picture that held significance for him (but then, he decided to turn down Stanford!)</p>
<p>I know that other apps such as Brown and Swarthmore do have a why Brown (or Swarthmore). Interesteddad posted before that this is where the student got to show his/her knowledge of the college, faculty and program, and was able to highlight the issue of “fit.”</p>
<p>Whoever suggested that people should only take the SATs once, that is just insane. I know that when I first took the SATs that I was nervous as hell. The 2nd time around, after not studying at all, I improved over 100 points. I think that the cap should be 2, maybe 3 times. People have bad days and should not be hindered because a kid woke up with a cold or something to that extent.</p>
<p>I really wish that essay prompts were very specific. I had a hard time just creating essays out of the blue for a general prompt. It was very frustrating since I would have 10 ideas spinning around in my head. An application like Stanford, which asked for 4 fairly specific essay prompts, were a lot better than just something that asks you to tell something about yourself…although I did get rejected from Stanford. </p>
<p>Also, I think that more that 1 or 2 essays should be required. There are thousands of people applying to common application colleges “just for kicks” who are taking slots from kids who have dreamed of those colleges for their lifetime. If each college makes the students write 3-4 original essays, then you wont have the 20% application increase that is occuring all over the place, and it will also give the schools infinitely more insight into the applicants. Even nowadays, I know that I was able to use a few essays to cover almost every required essay for the 15 schools that I applied to.</p>
<p>A couple things interesting about the UCAS system:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>For undergraduate education, a student can only apply to ONE of Oxford or Cambridge, and only to one program in one of them. So, essentially, in the UK the population of kids whose equivalents here are carpet-bombing the Ivy League can’t do that. They have one shot only at Oxbridge (but can apply to up to five non-Oxbridge programs).</p></li>
<li><p>“Specialized programs with low admit rates” – people applying to medicine, dentistry, veternarian programs are limited to FOUR choices, not six, although they can apply to two other non-med/dent/vet programs.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>In other words, in the UK people live with a lot of restrictions that would cause heart attacks here. What’s “normal” and “natural” is very dependent on culture and tradition.</p>
<p>My not-entirely-serious proposals above are intended to focus people on two things: There are real social and demographic factors which make admission to elite colleges more difficult, and there is also a vicious cycle by which the practice of over-applying clogs the system, lowers the quality of institutional decisionmaking, and makes admission look more hopeless than it is. That’s what causes the frenzy. To address the frenzy, you would need to adjust supply to the demand more effectively (“build more dorms at Harvard”) and/or limit over-application.</p>
<p>Of course, limiting applications is cosmetic. It doesn’t mean that more kids will get in to top collleges. For one thing, yields would go up (since there would be more likelihood that any admitted student would attend the admitting school), so schools would probably have to reduce the number of acceptances they handed out. But the admissions rate would go up, too. So things would presumably feel less hopeless and lottery-like for kids, and that would reduce panic. It would also tend to reduce situations where kids saw themselves in direct competition with their friends, since each kid would be applying to fewer “top” schools, and again I think this would mitigate some of the psychological pressure kids feel, and limit the number of “How come X got in and Y didn’t?” events at particular high schools, which have a lot of effect on the rising seniors.</p>
<p>Brits tolerate a degree of governmental control that Americans would not. An example is restricting applications to either Oxford or Cambridge.Why?</p>
<p>If we look at the number of universities in Britain and the number of universities in the US, allowing British students to apply to 6 is actually overkill in the British context. How many British universities are there altogether? 30? Another issue is that British students are expected to specialize early on. A student who wants to read Classics would not want to apply to Bristol where Classics has been allowed to disappear. A student wanting to study PPE would not want to apply to Imperial College. So the range of universities a Brit would want to apply to is actually even more limited than the total number would suggest. Other concerns that Americans have are fairly insignificant in Britain. The weather in East Anglia is not that different from the weather in Exeter. Travel to and from home is not the same issue as for American students.</p>
<p>Instead of working by numbers, look at proportions:
Think about allowing Americans (4-5 times the population of the UK, more American students attending college than in the UK proportionally to the overall population) to apply to 1/5 of all American universities ( 10 times the number of UK universities). By this standard, a student applying to 20 is actually not being profligate–not that I advocate applying to 20, just pointing out equivalence.</p>
<p>do you have any research to support your statement: “there is also a vicious cycle by which the practice of over-applying clogs the system, lowers the quality of institutional decisionmaking”? Would HYPSM and the top LACs concur that their decisionmaking is lower?</p>
<p>bobbbob: while the CA MAY clog the app system, an acceptee can only attend one school. If a kid who walks on water applies to and is accpeted all 8 Ivies and Stanford, MIT, and CalTech, and the rest of the other top 30 Unis and LACs, s/he can only attend ONE school, and thus, take ONE slot. Might these kids impact yield, most certainly. Might they impact the WL – possibly. Are they taking slots form kids who have dreamed for that specific school, No.</p>
<p>They sure are. They are taking acceptances from people who have cared much more about an acceptance to that school. Some of those acceptances are bound to be accepted by the student even though that student has no desire to go to that school (this is especially evident for Ivy league schools). Im all for someone with mediocre stats applying as a reach, but if someone loves Princeton and Dartmouth, but ends up applying to all 8 Ivies “just to make sure”, wherever that person gets accepted, up to those 8 schools, that person is taking admissions slots to kids who actually care about the admissions of the other Ivies.</p>
<p>I really think that the best way to curb people applying would be to increase the length and/or difficulty of applications.</p>
<p>HUH? The math just don’t work. An applicant can only attend ONE college. Could some folks double depost, sure. But, in September, they only show up at ONE college. Therefore, yield and WL are affected. But, it is a physical impossiblity for them to take more that one slot come Orientation Day. [Although I’ll admit my college physics is rather rusty, I would assume that both Einstein and Newton would agree a student can’t be in two colleges (aka “slots”) at the same time.]</p>
Really having just finished applying to universities I have to strongly disagree with that. College applications are hard enough thank you especially having to do it all alone (I had no college advisor and my parents didn’t really help in anything not in choosing universities indeed they only thing they did was proofread my essays and pay for the applications). It isn’t easy with the gazillion other things you have to do to manage your time (I had to do my SAT, SAT2 and school exams all in a 30 day time period) and making them harder is unneccessary. Even the common application isn’t ,uch help because all the universities I applied to had an extra section with at least 2 essays. So I agree there is a problem with the college application process but making the process more difficult sure isn’t the answer.</p>
<p>My D wrote about 3 essays. She was able to modify them to fit all the specific essays for several schools. Most of the short answer sections were quick to complete. Considering that my D also did several interviews and several music auditions, the time needed for apps was relatively minor.</p>
<p>“Btw, it looks like the Education Conservancy got grants from both the Spencer and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundations.”</p>
<p>While Lloyd Thacker’s has been keeping his organization running based on hollow promises and heavy publicity, I hope his days are numbered. From the very beginning, I hav been highly critical of both the person and the merits of his plan. As I wrote then, the Education Conservancy is about the education of Lloyd Thacker and his paycheck. Nothing more! Two years later, the website still contains the same information and there isn’t a simple workable solution in sight. I did not expect much, and I am not disappointed.</p>
<p>Let’s not be fooled by the participation of a few prominent schools in a conference; the reps propably enjoy a nice opportunity to see one another and discuss subjects they really care about … at the cocktails. If all fails, participating is not bad publicity! However, take a look at who is absent and who does not support Thacker’s “group.” I hope that 2006 would be the last year we have to read about this guy on CC or in education magazines.</p>
<p>For the record, I am a huge advocate for a simplification of the admission process. My negativism towards LT is based on his absence of qualifications and personal examples. His own lackluster college career and his years as an unheralded college guidance counselor do little to make him a LEADING expert on the subject.</p>
<p>Lloyd has done NONE of those lofty things. This organization is not worth supporting - something that is highly visible from his dwindling list of supporters.</p>
<p>Parents should indeed seek to support worthwhile non-profit organizations; this is simply not one of them, and on more than one account.</p>
<p>Regarding the ideas to eradicate the frenzy, I believe that most of them have been tossed around on CC with great regularity. We have debate AA ad nauseam, and are none the wiser. We have demonized the SAT and other tests, and there are more of them than ever as the consensus is that everyone should take both as a stratecic measure. We could get on and on. </p>
<p>I believe that we have to be realistic about a few issues: </p>
<p>Applications will continue to climb and AA won’t go away. Let’s look at a few examples at schools that are hyper-selectives. Richard Shaw recently made a presentation to the Stanford Senate during which he unveiled a plan to increase subtanstally Stanford outreach programs and boost minorities applications. One could expect Stanford to sit on their laurels and enjoy their stratospheric ratio of applicants to matriculants. What is happening at Williams, Amherst, and Pomona? New efforts to admit candidates via programs such as Questbridge. And, of course, we all know about the financial packages offered by Princeton and Harvard that mostly seek to increase the number of applicants they may not have reached in the past. </p>
<p>FWIW, I believe that the application process itself is not as big of a problem as the heightened expectation in preparation are. It is not unusual for students with 10-12 AP to feel non-competitive. And, of course, there is the message sent by the selective colleges that amply reward the super angular students who were molded into the perfect applicants for the HYPS of this world. From BWRK to IB/AP slaves via the now foreclosed Suzuki Stepford Children Prodigies, the keys to the pinnacle of our education are changing. But what does not change is that parents and students simply have to react to the colleges desires. They are the ones setting the tone!</p>
<p>Xiggi, FWIW, I think your posts absolutely nail the inherent contradictions and irony that characterizes the admissions imbroglio. Elite and selective colleges both want and need admissions policies aimed to boost applicant pools in order to compete for the best and the brightest. It is hardly realistic to think that these policies will be jettisoned because they are, ironically, in the public interest - namely diversity and holistic admissions. Many of these aggressive policies to target greater and more competitive applicant pools were put into motion during the 1990s and are, undoubtedly, extemely effective but, as everything else (including the interminable debates on AA and the SAT) there is a downside to the upside – and the downside is, as you so aptly put it, setting much of the tone surrounding admissions these days. While this may indeed be a case of wanting your cake and eating it, too, I doubt seriously at this point that neither the Education Conservancy nor Thacker can be so easily dismissed. He set out to attract attention to his cause through the media and to rally the support of college presidents and heads of foundations active in higher education - as far as I can tell this, at least, has not been a hollow promise. The tiered lists of sponsors on his website are impressive (and includes names such as that of William Fitzsimmons of Harvard). That said, I wouldn’t expect swift or even radical change across the board but, and I think you will have to agree, that any paradigm shift in the admissions world will take time and will also have an upside and a downside. FWIW, I believe that the opportunity for discussion and debate must remain open throughout the process.</p>
<p>Oh, and just another little udate: Apart from a pending grant from the Mellon Foundation, the Education Conservancy did get grants from the Spencer Foundation as well as one from the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation.</p>
<p>The message I take from Lloyd Thacker isn’t that revolution is easy, but that it’s worth the upheaval. Do you doubt that colleges lie and manipulate their stats to improve rankings? Is that manipulation in the best interest of students and education? Do US News & World Report rankings accurately reflect teaching quality, or are rankings mainly about hype and dollars? Thacker raises these and other issues in “College Unranked” and it’s hard to argue with his facts or his logic. My D’s college recommended “College Unranked” for parent reading, along with standard texts on sending kids off well prepared and then letting go. D’s college took a big first risk by refusing to submit data to USNWR. We’re hoping to see other excellent colleges follow suit. As Thacker says, “benign collusion” among colleges can bring some sanity back to the admissions process.</p>
<p>Test prep is a billion-dollar industry. College consultants have become a billion-dollar industry. I suspect Thacker’s foes are mainly to be found in the marketing field.</p>