Forbes article: New ideas for letting schools know you'll go if they take you

lolabelle · May 5, 2007, 7:22pm

An interesting article from Forbes Magazine. The article is for Forbes.com users only so I’ve copied and pasted it in full, below:

Forbes.com: “Cupid and Colleges”
Ian Ayres and Barry Nalebuff 05.21.07, 12:00 AM ET

Lee Coffin has a tough job. He is the Dean of admissions and enrollment management at Tufts University. He has 15,300 applicants for 1,275 spots. The enrollment-management problem isn’t just who to choose, but how many. The early-decision applicants are easy–the ones admitted have to come. That takes care of just over 400 slots.

The hard part is filling the remaining 860. Last year Tufts accepted 3,700, expecting a 23% yield. While Tufts accepts roughly 26% of the applicants from its nonearly pool, only 23% of those students accept Tufts. In short, while it is hard to get into Tufts, it is even harder for Tufts to get those admitted to enroll.

The problem is that students have no good way to signal that they really want to go to Tufts. They can visit classes or read the course catalog, but other than committing themselves via early decision, they can’t prove to Tufts that they really want to attend. Therefore Tufts and just about every other college have to play a guessing game.

Colleges aren’t the only ones facing this challenge. Women find themselves bombarded on online dating services. Who is serious and who is just ■■■■■■■■? Universities looking to hire faculty find themselves overwhelmed with applicants. Which ones should they interview? It doesn’t help to interview people who ultimately won’t accept an offer. Thus schools try to guess who is good enough to hire but not so good as to get a better offer and go elsewhere.

When talk is cheap, everyone claims to be interested. A solution to this mess would be for an applicant to send a credible signal, something that would make sense only if the school or the partner really was a top choice. This theory of signaling led to a Nobel for Michael Spence. For example, the value of an M.B.A. education is not just what you learn but the statement that you were willing to invest two years in school. That says the person is committed to a career in management.

In the case of online dating, professors Muriel Niederle and Dan Ariely advised Cupid.com to give each guy two electronic roses a month. Hence when a woman gets an e-rose, it means that the guy is really interested.

With the help of Harvard’s Alvin Roth, the economics profession tried something similar this year. Candidates for assistant professorships were given e-buttons they could send to two schools to indicate serious interest. In trying to decide which of the myriad applicants to interview, the schools could give priority to those who had signaled their interest with an e-button.

Why not do the same thing for college applicants? The College Board or another nonprofit would give students the chance to pick two schools. The schools would be notified as to who had picked them. Another school wouldn’t know which others the applicants had picked, only that it hadn’t been picked. (Students could also elect to opt out, so that all the schools would know that the student hadn’t given out any roses.)

As with academic positions, most applicants wouldn’t use their roses with Harvard or Yale. Those schools are confident that they will get the majority of their admits. Instead, students who truly prefer Tufts over Amherst or Columbia, either as a first choice or as a backup, would have a way to show it.

Today students have few opportunities to send such signals. National Merit Semifinalists and Commendation awardees get something like roses because the testing firm gives them the chance to rank their top two schools. Everyone else can signal with an early-decision application. This is a very strong signal, as it requires the student to accept if admitted (subject only to adequate financial aid). Then there is early action. Students are not committed to accepting, but in most cases they can apply to only one school.

Now, with schools from Harvard and Princeton to the University of Delaware eliminating early decisions, fewer students know their answer in December, and the remainder apply not to 5 or 6, as their parents did, but to 10 or 12. Enrollment management becomes even harder as student decisions become less predictable.

Waiting lists are ballooning because schools know that in the summer many of their admits will melt away. (The “melt” is the time that higher-ranked schools finally clear their waiting lists, and students who have put down a deposit elsewhere finally learn whether they got into Brown, for instance.) The whole process could use some help.

Roses. Everyone gets only two, and they can’t buy more. The e-roses will smell sweet indeed to Lee and his colleagues.

Ian Ayres and Barry Nalebuff are professors at Yale Law School and Yale School of Management. Ian’s newest book, Supercrunchers, will be coming out in August.

friedokra · May 26, 2007, 10:40pm

I have a great idea:

Let kids apply to say 8 schools tops. Make that a national standard supported by the association of college admissions officers. Make kids DISCLOSE which schools they have applied to on EACH application and then rank them for their personal preference and make it consistent. Such as on the common application.

That way, it forces kids to be selective about the colleges and to think hard. It forces them to consider “fit” more than “prestige”.

Its complete NONSENSE that you can only get a superb education at “your school” which of course is more prestigious than the next one that your nemesis down the street is applying to. The entire admissions process is a sort of neurotic sickness.

And given what we know about what REALLY goes on (and how some people can hide assets, or hide warts, or hide problems in school, or how some private prep schools bolster transcripts or grades or gpa/rank) it is imperative that we level the playing field.

And making kids disclose THEIR intent early on, even if its not binding, is a step in the right direction.

Roses or ranking…pick your weapon of choice…but if kids were made to disclose their preferences, it might clear up the process a lot more.

Too many people apply to too many schools for ego stroking or prestige seeking…and locking out kids who REALLY want to go there (be it Tufts or UVa or Cornell or Stanford etc) and would be excellent students.

I know life is not fair. But the admissions process is really unfair. If Tufts (or any other school) knew ahead of time that someone was going to BOLT for Duke or Harvard or some perceived “more prestigious school” in the early summer if they got off a wait list, then perhaps they wouldnt admit them to begin with. I am not saying that wait lists should be abolished or that someone is bad for wanting to go to Duke or Harvard. I am just saying its important to indicate your preferences early on and rank them.

I subscribe to the rule of 2’s. 2 reach, 2 match, 2 safety…and 2 acceptances. Pick on as your deposit school and one wait list (if applicable).

I would bet all my petty coins in my piggy bank (lol) that an education at Tufts is as good as an education at Duke, or that one person’s fit is another person’s hell. Its silly to say, I am leaving Tufts for Duke because its ranked higher on some ridiculous media list.

I know one kid who decided to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond so to speak and opted for a school off the beaten path, where he will be more likely to make Phi Beta Kappa and get into a superb graduate school, than to go to an Ivy (unnamed to protect the innocent) and be one of thousands of kids with very high stats and feel always under pressure and looking over his shoulder to stay alive…and survive. Smart move, if you ask me.

blucroo · May 27, 2007, 12:17pm

Lollabelle: you should post this in the Parent’s Forum for some interesting discussion.

bluirinka · May 27, 2007, 1:49pm

The rose thing is interesting, but I’m not sure what the point of ranking your only eight schools is. If you’re a crappy student with nothing to offer, and apply to the eight Ivies as your sole eight, and rank them according to preference, that doesn’t mean any of them are going to accept you. Cornell is not going to say, “oh hey, they liked us better than Harvard, they’re in!” if you do not have any credentials. It sucks that while the number of people keeps growing, the number of spots available at these top schools remains the same, but that’s why kids apply to so many places, because they do not feel confident about being let in anywhere. I’m not sure why people are against applying to over ten schools - it’s your goshdarn future, and you should apply to enough places to have a chance of getting into one good one.

sam927 · May 29, 2007, 10:17pm

I hate this idea, mostly because I know it would have screwed me over. I had no idea where I really wanted to go until the end of April. I put off deciding because I knew that I could be happy at most places anyway, so I waited to see where I got in and what financial aid I could get. And even then, I decided that I was set on one school in February only to visit again and find out that I really didn’t want to go there. The rose idea only works under the assumption that everyone applying to college really only wants to go to 2 of the schools they apply to and are reaching for others, which is bull. I wanted to go to every school I applied for and couldn’t make a decision until after acceptances.

MBJ · June 1, 2007, 2:18pm

Doesn’t going ED jeopardize one’s chances of getting any ( some ) merit scholarship $$ ???

Forbes article: New ideas for letting schools know you'll go if they take you

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