tl;dr - reduce the cycle of over-applying by giving an incentive for students to release their unneeded admission spots earlier than May 1st.
THE PROBLEM:
In a nutshell, I think the primary culprit is students applying to more and more students.
The number of graduating students has not increased materially, nor have the number of college seats decreased materially. But admission rates have been falling each year at the most competitive schools. Why? I believe primarily because students are applying to more and more schools, ala http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/nyregion/applications-by-the-dozen-as-anxious-students-hedge-college-bets.html?_r=0 .
Even if the average number of acceptances remains constant, it causes much more variance in the outcome, with some students getting shut out, and others getting into to many more places than necessary.
So to be clear, I am arguing that the expected value of the number of most competitive school acceptances for a top student, i.e.
(the admission rate to "most competitive" schools (say, top 40) for a top student) times (the number of top 40 schools being applied to by a typical top student)
has likely remained constant over the last 10 years for top students.
Consider a thought experiment where there are 10 similar schools with 10 spots each and 100 similar students. If the students each apply to 2 schools, the average acceptance rate will be 50%, because there are 200 applications written and 100 acceptances, if we assume for simplicity that the schools will get 100% yield (I realize this won’t be true even for this simple example).
Now imagine that each student starts to get nervous, after seeing a few students get shut out, and applies to 4 schools. Now there are 400 applications and 100 acceptances. Each of the schools now has a 25% acceptance rate, even though on average each student gets into a college.
But then the nervousness of students not being sure they will get into a top choice or any school at all (and not knowing where they stand until results come out - for example, are their recommendations good?) means they hedge their bets and rationally apply to more and more schools, which then lowers admissions rates further.
Unfortunately, I think this causes a vicious cycle. Today’s safety’s becoming tomorrow’s matches, and today’s matches becoming tomorrow’s reaches. In fairness, at the top end, the students are also doing more and more (see http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/03/the-math-revolution/426855/ for instance).
So how can we stop this “race to the bottom?” The students are behaving rationally at an individual level, but the aggregate affect is very unpleasant and chaotic.
PROPOSED SOLUTION:
Students who are accepted by a school that they no longer have any intention of going to could be given an incentive to “release” their spot before the admissions season is done.
So for instance, they would get half of their application fee back if they turned down their admission offer by a certain date. A sliding scale would probably be even better (you get more back if you release your spot earlier), but is probably too complicated.
Alongside this, we would need the most competitive schools to release their results earlier in the cycle. For instance, I would argue that having the Ivy League schools release their results SO late in the cycle is rather harmful. Similarly, schools would need to get their financial aid estimates down much earlier in the cycle so that students can know where they stand.
Admitted student days would have to be done more often as well, and on a less grand scale. And to be honest, I am not sure the gigantic dog and pony shows are that helpful to the students, compared to a more low-key visit that let students know what they are actually in for.
Essentially, this is moving more students to apply earlier, and bringing what happens in the wait list phase to an earlier part of the application cycle. And admissions would have more of a rolling aspect to them. Clearly the wait list experience is extremely unpleasant for the students and their parents.
The hope is that students who apply to 4 reaches, 10 matches, and 2 safeties could release their matches and safeties if they got into a reach and were happy with its financial aid. Those new openings would allow other students to get in, which means they in turn release their unneeded spots. Hopefully we could get the students sorted into their colleges more efficiently.
What do you think? It would take a massive amount of cooperation amongst the colleges… And there are probably lots of other stumbling blocks that I didn’t think of.
Early action and restrictive early action probably help with this problem and are a step in the same direction, but only to the extent students reduce the number of schools they get into after getting into their EA/REA choice…