I would love to see the elite liberal arts college and universities move to a model more like the Match system for medical school residencies. I see how financial aid probably makes that a non-starter of an idea, but from a stress management point of view, it would have some benefits.
We have reached the point of insanity with the ED1, ED2, SCEA stuff and I think it has some negative psychological repercussions for students who get deferred or rejected from that first choice school in December and then have months of waiting before they get the bulk of their news from the elite tier. My kid is a junior, but I have seen what some of this year’s seniors have gone through.
What if prospective students could rank schools instead and be matched?
This would also mean that no one is holding on to eight elite tier acceptances while someone else has four elite waitlists, isn’t sure if they will get any of them, and therefore takes a slot at a competitive school in the next most elite tier, displacing someone who is waitlisted for that school. (Currently, we need kids to be able to get competing offers in order to play one school’s financial aid offer against another, but what if that somehow weren’t the case?)
My daughter would be equally blissfully happy at any of her top three (US News liberal arts colleges tied for #11, 30, and 41) and really, there are at least six colleges she would be overjoyed to attend. An acceptance to any one of them would make her heart sing. (And we may be able to add to that list as we visit more colleges.) I wish we could just submit all that information and say “She is willing to attend any of these with a big smile on her face” and have a result.
I will fully concede, by the way, that there are many excellent schools outside the elite tier. I am a professor at one of them, and I love my job. But for kids who are gunning for that elite tier, we certainly have devised a way to make this process stressful and agonizing. I feel like there could be a better way.