^^ the arguments are not mutually exclusive. Schools do both for different reasons
@SJ2727 - regardless of what Oklahoma lied about, they lied, and it was bad enough to strip them of their USNews placement. IMO, getting rid of USNews’ rankings would be a better goal.
They aren’t incompatible. Colleges want to make themselves more desirable (with lower acceptance rates) by inducing more students to apply. How do they induce students to apply? By convincing them that they all have a chance. That’s exactly how lotteries are run, even though college admission is certainly not a lottery. Ultra low odds of winning have never kept people away from buying lottery tickets.
@roycroftmom , I do not doubt that one can apply to some schools for spring admission but my understanding is that at many schools (Tulane and Middlebury, for example) one does not apply for spring admission. You apply for regular fall admission and the college offers you a spring slot instead. In that case, would spring admits be included in the fall stats? Seems to me that they should be.
As stated, the reasons and value for transparency in admission statistics differs from the reasons and value in colleges being truthful about acceptance rates. Whether splitting up admit rate stats for groups entering at different times (traditional freshman, deferred, transfers, …) adds value is a different issue than whether doing so is truthful/misleading.
The specific quote was “I do believe a minority of colleges use deferred admission in a misleading way.” For obvious reasons, colleges that use deferred admission in a misleading way don’t tend to make the specific numerical details available to the public, so it is mostly anecdotal evidence about how large a portion of waitlisted are offered deferred admission and how their stats compare to the overall class. This relates to me using the wording “I believe a minority of colleges,” rather than stating specific numbers for specific colleges.
One of the few instances where we do have specific numbers is from the Harvard lawsuit. We can see that deferred admits are typically on the Dean’s/Director’s Special interest list. In some years, as much as 70% of deferred admits are on this list. This group of deferred admission applicants have an average academic index ~1SD below the overall admitted class, which is the typical range for recruited athletes. Non-athletes are almost always rejected with stats in this range. However, deferred admits only make up ~4% of matriculating students. Including another 4% of students with stats in the typical recruited athlete range would change some of the reported low end range stats, such as CDS reported % of class with SAT/ACT below 700/30 type numbers. However, it would have little impact on the overall admit rate.
Again, when a college reports enrolled or matriculated students, that means enrolled or matriculated. A student off to a college’s first semester at the college’s program in London or Spain is enrolled in the college. A student doing junior year abroad is sitll enrolled at that college. A student who starts at a different school for first smester, first year or two years is enrolled in that other school, at that point.
^The issue being discussed wasn’t any of those example, looking forward.
It is someone who applies for fall, but doesn’t make the cut for fall admission, so the school offers them a chance to matriculate in Jan/Feb term (when the school has a few more vacant beds). There is no need for teh student to do anything academic during the fall term. No need for study abroad or anything else. Kinda like a ‘gap semester’ (instead of gap year). Student could chill at home or work retail. And then show up on campus in Jan/Feb to start college.
USC brings in ~600 of these students each year. Of course, students are encouraged to enroll somewhere else for a term so they can still graduate in 4 years, but they certainly do not have to. But, in such cases, they matriculate at the other school for fall.
The question then becomes, do these ~600 students, some of who have matriculated at another college for a term, belong in USC’s Common Data Set report for Fall?
https://admission.usc.edu/admitted-students/fall-opportunities-for-spring-admits/#/gap-semester
Same issue, different perspectives. You are counted as enrolled when you enroll. Not when admitted.
There are several ways kids do not start in fall and several comments I was responding to.
@bluebayou - the other question is: Are the schools overstating completion rates by backfilling the “admitted” class with the Jan / Feb kids?
It’s math, so either the issue is when to the jump into the totals (if at all)?
Many colleges’ institutional reporting departments will readily answer how they treat these types of situations, as well as many of the questions posed on this thread…just send them an email or make a call. One will find that different schools report things differently on the CDSs. Where things do not vary is IPEDs (enrollment, % grad in 6 years, etc)…although that data is not as timely as the CDS.
So @Mwfan1921 - you’re suggesting that if I contact a school and ask, they’ll explain to me how the January admits they ignored (or worse had hidden) for admission reporting purposes are integrated into their reporting for graduation statistics? I can imagine that call would take a while and doubt that I would get a full accounting of the process. I assume that in almost all of the cases where folks are disingenuous or lying, that one or two people manage all of the reporting, and the rest of the staff is a bit “in the dark”.
That said, I think that’s the point for many folks: “why do I need to send an email to confirm or understand numbers they publish”? Why isn’t there a standard, and without that standard, how transparent are the disclosures schools are making?
Picking a school is hard enough: having to audit their information to understand comparability between schools and how the information might impact your (or your child’s) chances seems too much to ask. At some point, you wonder why bother with all of the reporting?
- Rankings aren’t going anywhere. Without them, usnwr is essentially DOA. They don’t exist today without the rankings franchise.
- Oklahoma joins an illustrious list of rankings gaming or misrepresentation. Emory CMC and Northeastern come to mind.
- Also, Harvard Z list isn’t your run of the mill spring admit, fall overseas of deferred admission.
These are special cases of extremely famous, connected or rich beyond belief. They aren’t currently qualified and this gives them a year to do some things to sharpen the profile a bit and “we will let you in next year” type arrangement. It’s like a better and more specific soft denial with a Wl for legacy applicants.
Last thought about transparency and gaming. So many schools with multiple campus options all with different levels of selectivity. This further clouds the picture. And if both degrees have the same school listed - shouldn’t the acceptance rates be an average.
Also guaranteed transfer programs and cc to ug- which I love but offer a different and noble “back door”. It still results in the same degree in the end. Which is great. It might. be a good idea to post those stats, it would be interesting to see high school profile and cc profile to see what they averages and uptrends look like for this group… Maybe help someone choose that route and save some money too.