<p>Fillipe:</p>
<p>The thing that lowers admissions rates isn’t neccessarily how many schools people are applying to. Population growth and more people applying to elite colleges every year lowers acceptance rates, not how many schools each kid is applying to. Think about how the population doubled over the last 40 years in America, yet the amount of 200 year old highly prestigous Universities hasn’t. It is really just a problem of suuply and demand and can be broken down pretty easily. If everyone doubled the amont of schools they applied too, yields would theoretically be cut in half and the admissions rates would change negligibly, now of course this is only theoretical. I agree with the poster who said the only negative thing this action does is hurt middle class students. Then again, fee waivers are an option and are most often granted. I don’t see how this action can really help kids applying to Harvard as harvard is free to everyone with a household income of less than $60,000 a year, but I do believe that is cuts down on the amount of cut throat antics that take place in college admissions. If Harvard and others wanted to truly revolutionize higher educaiton, they would distribute a couple billion dollars of their ridiculous endowment to smaller liberal arts schools.</p>