Boston College extends their deadline

[scottj]

<p>Dear emotup : From the January 17th edition of the Boston Globe, the following text appeared covering the new essay.</p>

<p>

@Boston Globe

Colleges and universities in the Boston area are seeing an overall increase in the number of applicants this year with the exception of Boston College, which had a 26 percent decrease in applications. </p>

<p>Boston College officials attributed the decline to a new 400-word essay requirement, according to an article in the BC Chronicle. </p>

<p>Last year, Boston College received 34,051 applications for 2,250 spots. This year, about 25,000 students applied. </p>

<p>John L. Mahoney, director of undergraduate admissions at BC, said the drop in numbers was a good thing. The quality of the applicant pool did not diminish, he said. </p>

<p>“Probably what we’ve done is right-size our applicant pool,” he told the BC Chronicle.
Mahoney said the essay is an evaluative tool as well as a way to suppress frivolous applications. </p>

<p>“It seems that we’ve lost the ‘Why Not?’ applicant,” he said.

The idea that 34,000 applications were processed to fill a class of 2,250 students always felt excessively skewed to me. One would have to agree with Mahoney that a pool of 25,000, committed to completing the extra essay, eliminated a number of “Why Not?” applications. Further, we should infer that the 25,000 would be substantially more receptive to an acceptance letter.</p>