<p>PC, I would not invest too much time in such exercise, and this for a couple of reasons. First, the differences will not be as dramatic as one might think. Secondly, except for a few people who have an interest in transparency and consistency, most people could not care less about the accuracy of the statistics and the CDS. Heck, the fearless leader of the USNews Report does not mind a few misleading stats such as the one presented by Middlebury. </p>
<p>Having done this kind of exercise before, I would encourage you to use a different year for your comparison by going back one more year. This would allow you to use the numbers published by USNews, CollegeData, and the government numbers available at IPEDS. </p>
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<p>It does indeed depend on the school. And it also depends in the interest by the public to have exact numbers versus approximations. Going back to the notion of interest by the public, it just happens that people do care a LOT more about the statistics of highly competitive schools than about the large public schools that are less selective. For instance, except for reading an occasional press release, I have never tracked the admissions statistics of the large public schools because I do not find them particularly relevant.</p>
<p>^^ Agreed. The University of Minnesota is a rolling admission. Your competitive disadvantage with post Dec 15 applications is that the class could already be full. It is a very real possibility that someone with far weaker stats than you would be admitted simply because the early bird gets the worm. This said, I do not think it is even a question that huge state flagship schools (and those with reciprocity) have hugely increased numbers. I know quite a few people who applied to Harvard and Yale, but also are already admitted to U of Mn and Madison and will compare Financial Aid offers when the time comes.</p>
<p>I just caught a snipit on the news that UGA’s applications were up 3% this year (I think they said they received about 18,100 applications, but I am not 100% sure of that number-- I’ll listen out to hear if they mention it again)</p>
<p>xiggi,
Surely you’re not serious? Last year, the College Board said a little over 1.5 million of that year’s HS seniors had taken the SAT—presumably with the intention of applying to college if they did well enough. (This doesn’t even count the additional hundreds of thousands who took the ACT and NOT the SAT). About 27,000 of them applied to Harvard. That’s less than 2% of the SAT-takers, and a smaller fraction of college-bound seniors. Not everyone seeking admission to a highly selective college applies to Harvard, of course, but it gives you some idea of the order of magnitude. </p>
<p>What, maybe 80,000 HS seniors will apply to a highly selective private college this year? Fewer than that will be admitted, of course—I think there are something like 13,000 places at the 25 private universities and top 25 LACs combined. So of course the people in that group obsess about the admissions statistics at the highly selective schools.</p>
<p>But nearly two million graduating seniors will go to college. Some will go to open admissions schools. Most won’t. The Minnesota kid worrying about what a 15% increase in applications to the University of Minnesota will do to her chances of admission, after the past couple of years in which that school’s acceptance rate has already dropped sharply from 60-some percent to around 50, may be just as interested as the kid striving to get into an Ivy, and in my opinion is just as entitled to our concern and respect.</p>
<p>It may be that in the circles you travel in, people do “care a LOT more about the statistics of highly competitive schools.” But don’t make the mistake of thinking that extremely small subpopulation is representative of what people in general, or college-bound seniors in general, care about. Because it’s not. Not by a long shot.</p>
<p>BClinton, rather than attempting to paint me as an elitist, perhaps you should read my post in the context of THIS thread. As you probably know, I am very much aware that millions of students go to to process of applying to college. However, the world -or as you say the circle of people-- who have a profound interest in the more minute details of college statistics is particularly small. Most college students in the United States apply to fewer than a handful of schools, and most get accepted to the first or second choice --often to their only choice. Students who can rely on automatic admissions (such as the 10% rule in Texas) or on a system of rolling admissions such as your own school or say, ASU in Arizona, have little or no interest in analyzing the admission statistics or scrutinizing them in the same manner as the readers of CC do. </p>
<p>I maintain that the deep analysis of admission statistics is a futile exercise for well over 90% --if not 98%-- of the student population. Most apply to a well established stable of schools, and having the admission ratio dipping to 61% down from 63 or 65% the previous year does not make them lose any sleep. On the other hand, changes in financial aid can be traumatic, as well as the anticipated performance of the football team.</p>
<p>PS FYI, there were more than 226,000 applications to the Ivy League schools plus Stanford and MIT and close to 27,500 acceptances. But that is really not the point!</p>
<p>Just read the President’s February letter and found this section. This contradicts some other data already presented.</p>
<p>First,
Hamilton remains a school of choice for prospective students, as evidenced by the record number of Early Decision I applicants. And even though overall applications to the College are down about 8.5 percent, in which we are hardly alone, their total number is still the third largest in our history. Initial reports indicate that the academic quality of applications matches or exceeds the record standards of the past several years.</p>
<p>My, my. Aren’t we being condescending now? Fact is, I know quite a few Minnesota kids, and parents, who ARE losing sleep over whether junior will get accepted to “the U” now that the admissions rate is dipping toward 50%—56.8% in 2007 and lower than that last year though I don’t have the exact numbers, with applications this year reportedly up another 15%. That’s a HUGE change in a university being transformed from “everyone’s U” to a rather much more selective institution. There’s deep ambivalence about whether this is a good thing, and a lot of consternation among kids and families who are hit by it. Ignore it, put it down, but it’s as real as the anxiety of the kid worrying about whether he’ll get into his first-choice Ivy or “only” some other elite private.</p>
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<p>OK, and my guess is that out of those 226,000 applications the median applicant applied to at least 3 of the Ivies/Stanford/MIT, plus some additional “match” and “safety” schools generally among the elite privates. So I take this as rough confirmation of my ballpark estimate of 80,000 or so kids in this pool in the aggregate.</p>
<p>xiggi-- good point about the availability of data for the Class of 2011 via US News, IPEDS, etc. Unfortunately, the flip side of availability of info is in initial reports of app numbers via press releases & newspapers, which were collected, conveniently, last year via the Apps Growth 2012 thread…I’ll have to do a bit more research to recreate the “breaking story” so to speak for '11, but when I get a chance, I’ll try…(just because I can)</p>
<p>Mass Maritime Acad +25%
U Mass Amh +10%
U Mass Bos +25%
UMass Dart +10%
U Mass Low +23%
Providence Col (5%)
Mass Col of LA +60%
Mass Col Art&D +35%
Emerson flat
Bost U slightly down
Bost C expected even</p>
<p>BClinton, again, you make a real effort to make a point that is simply not there. </p>
<p>Your quote conveniently dropped the most important sentence of that paragraph, “I maintain that the deep analysis of admission statistics is a futile exercise for well over 90% --if not 98%-- of the student population. Most apply to a well established stable of schools, and having the admission ratio …” </p>
<p>My point is about people who spend time analyzing --or publishing-- statistics, not about people worrying about college admissions. It would be easy to establish that EVERYONE does worry or has worried about getting a fat envelope from the chosen college. However, do they spend time *scrutinizing *the press releases and statistics reports? </p>
<p>Right here in Texas, I also know that many worry about getting admitted to UT or TAMU. However, only an incredibly small percentage of those people would be able to tell you if the admission ratio has changed since 2002 or even since 2007. </p>
<p>If you consider my comments to be condescending or elitist, so be it!</p>
<p>BC, I agree, that many children who apply to any Ivy, likely apply to more than one. I suspect as there is more angst regarding college applications, the number of applications goes up. Last year, schools were diving down the waitlist and I suspect it will happen more this year. Nothing wrong with that, its just the system. </p>
<p>And yes many children who are not looking at selective schools will take SATs. Where I live, the local CC requires it for placements, and the HS GC s advise taking it early. I think that is great. If it identifies children who might have hidden abilities, its greats. The HS are good at advising who is entitled to fee waiver.</p>
<p>I think the trend is becoming clear. Apps to publics as a group are way up, though not everyone is sharing the wealth. Apps to the very top privates with the most generous FA policies are also up. Apps to LACs are generally down, with notable exceptions. It’s all about the money, I think. As it probably always has been to some extent. I’d summarize it in two points: flight to quality, and flight to value. Schools in the sweet spot where quality and value coincide are going to do very well in this market. Others, not so much.</p>
<p>Amherst (~1.2%)
Boston C expected even
Boston U slightly down
Bowdoin (1.7%)
Bucknell (~5%)
Brandeis (10.8%)
Brown ~+21% (still approx)
Carleton (4%)
Carnegie Mellon up maybe
Chicago ~+7%
Clemson +7.1%
Colby (7%)
Colgate down
Columbia ??
Conn Col up slightly
Cooper Union ~+8%
Cornell +3%
Dartmouth +8.9%
Davidson +1.3%
Duke +17%
George Wash (2.3%)
Gettysburg ~(15%) (maybe just RD)
Hamilton (8.5%)
Harvard ~+5.6%
Kenyon (10%)
Lehigh (13%)
Macalester (9.7%)
Marquette +15%
Middlebury ~(12%)
MIT +17%
Northwestern ~+2% (count incomplete, 3-4% expected)
Notre Dame up slightly
NYU +0.3%
Penn State ~+4 so far
Princeton +2.3%
Providence (5%)
Rice +12%
RPI ~up, but not quantified yet
St Olaf (1.5%)
Stanford +20%
Swarthmore ??
Texas A&M +6.7%
Trinity Col down maybe
Tufts ~(3 to 4%)
Tulane ~+17% at least, more growth to count
Union (8%)
UC Berkeley +0.4%
UC Davis +4.4%
UC Irvine +4.0%
UCLA +0.5%
UCSB (5.0%)
UCSD (0.7%)
UConn ~+9%
UGA ~+3%
U Illinois ~+12%
U Mass Amh ~+10%
U Minn ~+15%
UNC +17%
U Oregon ~+20% so far
U Penn (0.4%)
USC down slightly
U Texas +6.2%
UVa +16%
U Wisc Mad (3.2%)
Vanderbilt +13.6%
Vassar +2.7%
Wellesley +3.6%
Wesleyan +21.6%
Whitman “about flat”, maybe up
William & Mary +3.6%
Williams (20.5%)
Yale +13.6%</p>
<p>The Williams numbers do surprise me. It has experienced the largest drop in applications reported so far, and yet has both a good reputation and excellent FA. Even though last year’s numbers were very high (7552), this year’s application numbers are actually lower the those of 2007-08 (6001 vs 6478).</p>
<p>Using average SAT scores as a rough measure of selectivity, there was almost no change between the 2007-08 and 2008-09 enrolled student stats, even though applications increased by almost 17% between those two years (in fact, the 50%tile was very slightly higher for the less competitive year). It will be interesting to see if the even lower number of apps this year has any effect on student quality, given, too, that the school has been talking about admitting more freshmen. </p>
<p>Pap Chicken called it earlier - the school trumpeted its increased ED numbers, but released its RD numbers late - and buried them in an ED numbers press release! Obviously, the steep decline has confused Admissions; there’s no logical explanation for it.</p>