Now that my daughter has completed the college search and admission process, I saw first-hand the culturally-induced stress that kids and parents experience about getting into the “right” college. It’s toxic and unhealthy for our kids. We rely on third party and subjective and unverified rankings about a particular school and treat them like gospel. And I can’t help but think that colleges participate in the smoke and mirrors to increase its stature. For example, do colleges adhere to the same criteria when calculating their acceptance rates? If not, then their published acceptance rates are not trustworthy. My D got on the waitlist of a certain prestigious LAC and she received the following message: “This was the most selective year in the history of the college and we likely will be going to the waitlist later this year as we were aiming to slightly under enroll with plans of using our waitlist to meet the overall enrollment goal.” In fact, the admission officer told my D that the school would be going to the wait list in April. I can’t help but think this college chose to accept less students on April 1 to keep its “acceptance rate” low while dipping into its “wait list” only a few weeks later to complete its enrollment. Is this college gaming the system or is this a legitimate practice?
The final acceptance rate published around October should include students accepted off the waitlist.
sure, any college and fib their numbers, but most do not.
Colleges are always concerned about yield: too many students accept an RD offer and they run out of beds; too few, and they run short of cash. Thus, they use teh WL to try to get to fill 99+% of the beds. With smaller numbers, LACs have to be more conservative. Moreover, there appears to be a trend for HS seniors to prefer urban campuses; thus, any rural LAC has to be even more conservative in teh RD round.
You can google ‘UniName Common Data Set’ to see the actual, reported numbers.
Thank you!
They do occasionally offer spring admissions, overseas first semesters and satellite campuses both in the USA and overseas to add more opportunity/revenue but manage admissions statistics.
Colleges have lied. There have been exposes on those caught, but who knows about what has not been? This Admissions cheating story that has been in news truly was bigger and more outrageous than what aid expected. And much more systematic.
Yes, the waitlists get gamed. They are a way to control yield and I do believe that sometimes they go too far. Yes, the gaming that involves underaccepting and then managing the waitlist is legal. They can do that.
You have to deal with the info that IS out there. See what the colleges say, not USNews or bloggers. You look at college courses in a major, prof backgrounds, campus activities, etc…
Not, “third party and subjective and unverified rankings about a particular school and treat them like gospel.” It’s your choice.
Waitlists are not just a way to game. Some posters seem to think a U runs on media rankings. Nah. But it’s hard to manage enrollment from year to year. Why admit a surfeit if they all may enroll? A wait list is a buffer.
As an example Northeastern University was overenrolled in 2017 by 300 students and did not go to the waitlist. In 2018 they were more conservative in the RD round and accepted students off the waitlist. This cycle they have stated that they will not go to the waitlist. (Hopefully they have it on target and are not overenrolled again.)
One thing that many students and parents do not realize is that many colleges do not have one big admissions bucket. They may have multiple admissions buckets, defined by major, division (arts & sciences, engineering, business, etc.), (for state universities) in-state versus out-of-state, or automatic admission versus non-automatic admission. Admission selectivity in different buckets can be greatly different, and overall admission stats may not give an accurate impression.
Also, admission rate is not necessarily an accurate indicator of admission selectivity, since the strength of applicant pools matters. A low admission rate from a weak applicant pool does not necessarily mean that the college is hard to get into.
@ucbalumnus this post should be pinned for all students and parents. Well done UCB!
And the inverse is also true. Don’t be deceived by Georgetown ND BC and CAL UCLA and oos UVA UMich admit rates compared to some others with lower rates. It’s just as tough to get into Gtown in some majors as a Hypsm. It’s not a great comparison tool unless the stats by major line up and to also normalize for big time athletic recruits.
I know a school that did exactly what the OP describes this year. It may be the same school. Last year the school made a change to the admissions process that resulted in a greater number of applications. The school expected the yield to go down or at best stay flat but instead the yield rose and the school was badly overenrolled. This year they decided to play it safe and underaccept to guard against another too-large class. They had a record number of applications and once again the yield rose but they had given themselves a bit of a buffer so they are going to the waiting list for a limited number of slots. Had their yield been even one percent greater they would have once again been oversubscribed, something they couldn’t afford while still digesting the large current freshman class. Enrollment management is a tricky thing and schools don’t always get it right.
If placed under scrutiny, many colleges might fall short of published data:
Wow.
Re: #11 and how incomplete applications are counted
Some years ago, some (maybe all) CSUs reported admission rates including incomplete applications in the denominator. Some of the CSUs had very large numbers of incomplete applications for some reason, resulting in low admission rates (like around 20% for a non-impacted campus that admitted in-state applicants at CSU minimum eligibility where stats like 3.0 HS GPA and any or no SAT/ACT score or 2.5 HS GPA and 900 SAT CR+M at the time could meet).
But I think cases of questionable numbers are not enough to call it all dubious.
@ucbalumnus “Also, admission rate is not necessarily an accurate indicator of admission selectivity, since the strength of applicant pools matters. A low admission rate from a weak applicant pool does not necessarily mean that the college is hard to get into.”
A good example is UMN versus UIUC. The acceptance rate of UMN is 45%, while of UIUC, it’s 66%. However, the academics of the students bodies of both universities are the same, with UIUC’s engineering having higher GPAS and SAT’a than UMN’s engineering. The two universities have similar standards and requirements, and are equally selective (except UIUC engineering), but UMN has a weaker, and relatively larger, pool of applicants.
In the 2018 cycle my son applied to a school but never completed the full application (never sent test scores after they were requested) because he wasn’t interested in the school. They gave him a free waver so he hit “submit” on the Common Ap but never went any further. Yet, the school sent him a rejection letter and obviously counted him in their reject pile.
I believe this is what merc81 is speaking to. I believe more schools are doing this than Washington and Lee.
When I read the CTCL book a few years ago, I think they said that this was the normal practice at colleges. I was surprised but was also thinking that if the common app is the whole app (only optional supplements), it is probably less of an issue than it initially struck me to be.
This illustrates the need for transparency perfectly. Applicants need to know whom they’re competing with. Who actually applied? What are their profiles? If we don’t know what their denominators are comprised of, acceptance rates mean little.
^^ I would love to know how many applications that are incomplete actually get real consideration. If one LOR is missing but it’s otherwise a great application from a kid who looks like a perfect fit for the school 's needs, does that kid have a real shot?
Realistically, we’ll never know, but there are gradations here.