More than likely,yes, @ucbalumnus: My children also had about three schools which waived the application fees for those who submitted either 1)by a certain date, or 2)through the school’s online portals.
What is the limit of schools to which one can apply through the Common App?
If one really wanted to reduce this college madness, one should look at the colleges. Many colleges ask and attempt to gain as many applications as possible, this is part of the problem, since all they want t do is reject more students to increase their rankings. So for colleges that demand applications fees, they should be made to return part or most of the application fee to the applicants that are rejected. This would make colleges think twice before sending out all those brochures.
Remember colleges are non-forprofits, why do they get to pocket all this money? Many colleges have endowments close to a or MORE THAN A BILLION Dollars. So I wouldn’t feel bad to make them return $50. It would also help families that don’t have the ability to just had their kids the credit card.
Within that month’s time between all notifications being made, and the deadline for accepting the offers of admission, why doesn’t each family simply consider it an ethical move on behalf of others still waiting to give notice to colleges that the kid is simply not that into anymore? Why not consider it an ethical move to simply get back to schools as soon as one knows that the school has dropped off the kid’s radar? (This wording suggests that it would be unethical not to do so, but that is not really what I seek to imply.)
No economic incentives needed to do that. Fewer kids are moping around thinking they were denied admission because they simply were not “worthy.”
I know that many families need to know how the numbers are going to play out for their kid, so not everyone can instantly accept that MIT admission offer before they see what else may come in.
But, just thinking about your (unseen, unknown) neighbor could be a kinder, gentler way of working this thing.
@waitingtoexhale , that’s the problem, no limit. And @ucbalumnus , one school had no additional essay. The other two are top choices with essays, so she only wrote one extra essay. And yes, we did have to pay for test scores to be sent. Anyway, as I stated earlier, I think there should be a limit to how many apps anyone can submit on common app.
Nay, rather I hope the cycle increases.
I totally disagree with most of you, especially @Lindagaf . For starters, we live in a free-market society and should embrace the fact that their is complete freedom to apply anywhere with no restrictions. The US system’s holistic admissions is completely different from pretty much anywhere in the world. That means that anyone has the possibility to get in anywhere. I read this thread and can’t believe that people would rather be TOLD how many schools they can apply to.
A few points:
HS seniors do this once in their lives. Once! It would simply be foolish not to maximize one’s opportunities.
The colleges do this every year. They KNOW exactly what they are looking for (x number of minorities, x number of tuba players, x number of cornerbacks, etc). The applicants have no idea about these special requirements that the schools have. Yes, the CDS helps a little, but it is mostly a “black box of admissions”. Schools are not required and certainly not eager to share their ‘secret sauce’.
Money matters (as has been mentioned before): If price of admission hadn’t gone through the roof since the 90s, this over-applying phenomenon wouldn’t be happening. And with this, the top schools are the ones with the money and resources. EVERYONE wants to follow the money.
Yield protection is real! (Tufts Syndrome): Though I can understand schools wanting to protect their yield and admit students that really want to attend, low yield really doesn’t really hurt the school’s ability to fill out a class. Just look at the number of applicants these colleges waitlist. And the small number of students admitted from the waitlist. Some schools waitlist 40%'ish of their applicants (Richmond is an example). The schools do not need to worry about filling their class.
The colleges WANT you to over-apply: Why else would UChicago send boatloads of recruitment materials to kids that will NEVER HAVE A CHANCE!!! They love getting to say “We received the most applications every and we admitted the lowest percentage ever in the history of dream u”.
The students are NOT the problem. The schools are the problem. Anyone who thinks otherwise has a child that got into their dream school or equivalent with no issues. This is not the norm for most people.
Even people whose children were happily admitted to their dream school - or to that many others have dreamed about, anyway - can see that schools create the foment, including the problem of the ‘get-the-heck-out-of-here!’ ever advancing stats and ECs.
Seeing such does not mean the rest of us cannot practice a little hung jury nullification and drop schools officially so that, with enough notice, the schools can tell the next kid to Come on Down.
Doesn’t mean there aren’t other measures to entice the schools themselves to get in gear and play nicely, whatever those other measures may be.
Some moderately selective schools, although they do not promise admission decisions before April 1, release decisions considerably earlier, since their admissions can be done by a computer program once all applications are in.
But those do not seem to be the schools that people on these forums obsess about.
Wait, you mean we’re not even talking Duke, Wellesley, Swarthmore, UCLA, USC, etc?
They let plenty of kids know earlier than April 1st, many of whom would surely also have applied to the schools with worldwide prestige, for sure. But many of the kids in their applicant pools would be in 7th heaven for the chance to say ‘yes,’ not having applied to HYP-.
^ Some of the schools you’ve mentioned (like UCLA and Duke) are actually very well known internationally. Some Ivies like Brown and Dartmouth don’t really have international reputations.
IMO the issue isn’t that serious and your solution’s not gonna change much of the situation.
There’s something called “yield rate”, i.e. colleges accept many more students than the actual class size. If there is a decrease in the number of schools each student applies to, there will be fewer offers declined by accepted students. The yield rate will rise as students are more likely to matriculate. Consequently, the school will reduce the ratio of the number of acceptance letters they give out to the number of students they plan to enrol, thus cancelling out the effect of the fewer offers declined. The acceptance rate will not change by much.
@lz57c4 , my kid has no clue yet if she is accepted to her dream schools. Maybe your kid applied to nothing but lottery schools and got in. If you were happy to spend thousands on app fees, no problem, your choice. But you still can’t escape the fact that the huge increase in applications dilutes the pool, that colleges offer the same applicant a spot that the applicant really has no intention of taking up, thus eliminating a chance for another applicant who possibly really loves a certain college. They offer admission to the same high stats kid, while possibly ignoring an equally great kid with maybe a 34 on their ACT instead of a 36.
Many extremely high stats kids apply to top 20 colleges not because they actually really love them, but because they want prestige. Look at CC any day to see another thread asking “how can I get in to a top college?” A kid in my D’s class is one of these kids. Luckily she has been accepted to one of the nation’s top colleges, and no doubt will be accepted by others, and more power to her. And it isn’t her fault that, as you rightly say, colleges court students they know will never be admitted. I do think it’s wrong for kids to apply solely on the basis of prestige. In a ideal world, kids should only apply to colleges they have genuine interest in, not just becasue they are called Harvard. The Common App gives people the freedom to apply to anywhere, with no consideration to genuine interest. You think that’s fine, and I don’t. I think if there were a limit to how many apps a kid can submit, it would force students to throughly research a college and have a good understsnding of why they want to attend. Colleges would get fewer, but stronger applications, and it would be more equitable to everyone. Note my use of the word ideal. This is all a matter of opinion, and nothing we say here is going to change anything.
This is related but it might belong on the most annoying posts thread. I get annoyed when bright kids complain about not getting accepted into a school with tens of thousands of applications then in the same sentence say they weren’t planning on going anyway. I understand you had a 34/35/36 on your ACT but the school you applied to gets thousands of such applications! Unless they’re HYP or other top school they know that many of those students have little interest other than “to settle if they have to” with their school. I believe that everyone needs a safety or two but if you don’t want to go don’t apply. And for heavens sake the Ivy League schools are different from one another. What compels a student to want to apply to every school in a sports conference. I wonder how many student brag that they applied to every B1G school or every ACC school? It pains me to see the “what is wrong with me” type threads that showup this time of year. Most are great students but schools have to make some decision from the group of students with similar scores that all apply to some grouping of the same 20-50 schools. I wonder what this process will be like for my grandkids?
@lvvcsf: Bravo/a
@NerdyChica: Oh, I know the schools I mentioned are well known, I just don’t know how even despite those mentions we only seem to always be talking about the Grand Ole 8.
The number of kids applying to 15+ schools, while growing is still small. There are many more kids applying to less than 5 schools vs more than 15.
And some kids are out there shopping for the most aid or merit they can get, because they truly need it. Why put an arbitrary limit on them? Some of the most selective schools give the most merit which is one reason (among others) that they get so many apps.
While I do think kids should release a school they will not attend as soon as possible, I don’t think they should be limited to a certain number of apps.
I noticed that some people on this thread advocating for a limit had a child with a large number of apps. Why is that number ok, but a higher number wrong? It is a personal choice, based on a lot of factors.
@ucbalumnus More than likely, the schools that offer a free application will waive other requirements for the student as well. The two schools that I applied to with a free application did not require essays at all, even though I submitted them anyway since I applied through common app. Also, the one college that required short answers did not require them for me.
@marie122: Would those waivers be through the college directly, or through the College Board, or NACAC?
I’ve been through this process twice, and nothing besides the application fee was waived when submitted under the terms I listed above.
Another factor at play is that a significant portion of the overall increase in applicants per school comes from foreign students, many who are courted by the schools. The WSJ did an article on this topic a few days ago.
@2muchquan wrote
The result would be the same if each kid is allowed to apply only to a limited number of colleges.
The higher the number of students applying for merit scholarships, the lower the chance of getting the scholarships and vice versa.