This is an understatement.
The colleges create all the crazy competitions.
If the colleges don’t take action, the system will crash.
Hell will have more college admission officials than lawyers.
Yes! This is a huge problem. Now not only is it hard to get into the “top 10” colleges, or whatever people want to call the elite schools, it’s a problem for the next tier down, and the next.
Thanks @coolweather, I wonder if they feel the same way we do.
In other words, if they don’t keep finding ways to raise selectivity measures and so on, they will fall in the rankings relative to the other schools that do these things, which will make their alumni base mad and so on. So it is another kind of race to the bottom.
Indeed @MamaBear16 and it some point it will hit families who don’t have that many other options etc.
By the way, to answer my own question about where things are going, I had posted another thread that I suspected UC Davis might have been a little strange on admissions this year, maybe knocking a few candidates out that they thought would not attend. Only someone in the admissions office would know, but that is one thing I worry about - State schools getting more and more applications, and eventually deciding to play the “yield” game (“Tufts syndrom”). I still think most are pretty straightforward.
But if they decided to play games with yield, there would almost be no true safeties. Result? Even more applications everywhere.
Not to be a pessimist this evening.
I just want to say I appreciate all the thoughtful comments and perspectives on this thread.
Didn’t read through the thread - what if schools used a similar index to what the Ivy’s use for athletes.
If a student doesn’t meet a minimum standard index score published for that school they can’t apply.
Secondly schools would be restricted from marketing to students whose index score was below their school’s minimum.
Those two steps would greatly reduce the number of wasted applications.
But sometimes they take those students!
Most of the examples in that thread were of applicants with second-tier GPAs but high SAT/ACT scores. They misjudged UCD as a “safety” based on their SAT/ACT scores, but UCs emphasize GPA much more, so their second-tier GPAs made UCD a non-safety for them (and perhaps a reach for those aiming for popular majors like engineering majors). I.e. not “yield protection” (as attractive as it may seem to students who think that their qualifications are top-end, even though they are not), but straightforward not admitting applicants not quite as strong as others (by its standards).
sigh @ucbalumnus you have posted that many times, but you don’t know it wasn’t yield protection in ALL cases and I don’t know it was in any case. I don’t want to debate it with you on this thread, as it is not what it is for.
Have you read about this, the Harvard Graduate School of Education" Making Caring Common project? If you haven’t yet, read “Turning the Tide: Inspiring Concern For Others And The Common Good Through College Admissions” (find link on this page http://mcc.gse.harvard.edu/ below big photo).
There’s been some criticism of this reform. Most concerns I’ve read worry that it would place more stress on freshman and sophomore high school students. I personally, don’t think this would likely happen. If managed correctly, the reverse would be the case and those students in all socioeconomic categories would get college counseling early enough to make informed decisions about their high school studies. That is, begin making informed decisions to prepare themselves for higher education with the resources they have available, gain in depth knowledge about many colleges, what those colleges expect of viable candidates, gain enough self knowledge to assess which colleges might be a good fit and begin interacting with those colleges. This is a process that would play out throughout high school allowing for change of mind and heart along the way. Students would apply to those few colleges they already have relationships with. It’s a win win.
How is this relevant to this thread’s topic? It seems to me that this system or something similar has potential for reforming the excessively commercialized admissions process driving down excessive application numbers in part by minimizing ‘stealth applicants’ (defined in this article http://www.higher-education-marketing.com/blog/rise-fall-stealth-applicant).
edited for typos
What about this (wacky) idea: the most selective colleges would have a two-phase admit policy:
Phase 1: Publicly tell candidates that have qualified for selection. In other words, any candidate in this pool would be acceptable to the school.
Phase 2: conduct a lottery and select candidates from the pool.
This way, for the rest of their lives, even the candidates not selected could say “I was good enough to get into college X” and not have hard feelings about it. After all, it was just chance the prevented from getting a slot.
A nice idea, but it has many issues. This lowers the odds of the underqualified development admit, but it also makes the international physics olympiad medalist dependent on luck, with the same odds as a kid who wouldn’t be in the pool if his/her SAT was 20 points lower. I think if someone still feels the need to say “I was good enough to get into college X” after attending another excellent university, that’s an issue that runs deeper than the way college X makes its decisions.
Hi @mreapoe , thanks for bringing in that perspective. I have some concerns about this particular plan, but the broader goal of getting students focused on a lower number of schools could be helpful in slowing down this cycle. And I do agree with trying to reform the excessively commercialized process, as you refer to it! An example of that is the phenomenon ClarinetDad16 points out of excessing marketing to students colleges (statistically speaking) are not likely to accept.
I have to admit, though, I am sympathetic to the view that typical 9th - 10th graders are not ready for the pressure involved. But that is a debate for another thread.
@2sk211 isn’t that what already happens, except for the letting the students know they were in that group? Just kidding of course, but sometimes it feels like it for a chunk of the pool.
In fairness I think the admission committees have a really hard job choosing amongst so many amazing students.
There is a student on the Ivy Day thread (I don’t want to be too specific) who got into Stanford EA, but nevertheless plugged ahead and applied to all 8 Ivies. And a total of 16 schools. They said they got a likely call from the dean at Harvard, and was asking how often people get into all 8 ivies. I guess it gives a student a lot of press and splash to get into all 8 ivies. I worry that creates a “trophy-hunting” incentive.
I don’t think “trophy hunting” is the primary cause of the problem we are discussing here, but probably contributes. What could help reduce that?
Stanford EA may not give them the financial aid they need.
But beyond that, there’s not much one can do to prevent students from applying to multiple top schools.
Ask them their reasons? One can claim financial aid reasons.
Place a limit? Then you’re hurting lower income students who are given more FA than at their state school.
Is it necessarily “trophy hunting” or could it sometimes be “financial aid hunting” to apply to multiple super-selective schools?
The trophy hunting is really not as big a deal as most would think. First, most of those high end school apps require a lot of effort. Most of the kids applying to these schools have a clear favorite and would be happy to not do the apps for the other schools if they didn’t have to. My son had a whole stack of HYPS level essay prompts sitting on his desk that he was going to do over Christmas break. His EA acceptance to his top choice meant that he could happily forget about doing any more essays and start planning for the next phase of his life. Most of his friends are in the same boat. They aren’t collecting trophies, they are aiming for a couple of top schools and want to forget about the whole process as soon as possible.
60% of the students at most top schools are full pay so for over half of the kids, it’s not about shopping for a deal or looking for FA.
More EA options would help limit applications. It would get a lot of kids out of the process earlier. It worked for us. A list of 15 turned into a list of 5 overnight when the first two EA acceptances came in.
Harder or more thorough applications would help too. The UC schools are a great example of a horribly inefficient process. All the kids have to do is check a box (and add $70) to apply to as many as they want. The downside is that it is impossible for the kids to signal to a certain school that it is their favorite. And it is impossible for the schools to figure out who is a serious applicant and who is just checking extra boxes.
The basic premise of the problem stated by the OP is correct: lower admittance rate -> greater number of apps to selective schools by a common pool of applicant -> lower admittance rates -> fear of getting rejected -> more applications as a vicious cycle. The US News and World Report rankings helps perpetuate the cycle as well. As much as I like the UK idea, I am a free-market person and believe that eventually, market forces will cause change, since the current model is ultimately unsustainable.
The ease of applying electronically has exacerbated the problem. By illustration, back in my day, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, it took some effort just to get a physical application. Then, the application needed to be manually completed, preferably with a typewriter, stuffed into an envelope and mailed in a timely fashion. To do this procedure for more than a few applications was impracticable. Therefore, we applied to 3-5 colleges max.
One can easily see that over the past 10 years, the total number of students applying to college has remained rather flat and the capacity of the top schools has remained steady; however, the numbers of applications at each school has roughly doubled.
For example, in 2005, Northwestern University had 16,221 applicants and admitted 4,819 for an admit rate of 29.7%. 1,952 student enrolled for a yield of 40.5%.
In 2015, Northwestern had 32,122 applicants and admitted 4,248 for an admit rate of 13.2%. 2,018 enrolled for a yield of 47.5%. The numbers of applicants is 35,000+ this year.
So, ten years ago, a strong applicant whose 1st choice was NU would have had a reasonable expectation to be admitted. He or she would likely have applied to an Ivy or U Chicago, maybe another school similar to NU and a couple of safeties, for a total of 4-6 schools. Today, reasonably, the same student would fear not getting into NU and apply to a host of other similar match schools like Duke, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, Carnegie Mellon, JH, Rice, WashU, etc., then apply to a few Ivy’s for good measure and two safeties for a total of at least 10 schools.
The emphasis on ED may alleviate a small portion of the chaos, but not much. More and more students will be wait listed and subsequently admitted as yields from the RD go down. Eventually, I believe that more well-qualified students will give up on the stress and look to quality liberal arts colleges, which would probably be to the benefit of many students and their families. Also, I think the universities will implement some method of dealing with the issue that will eventually improve the process, although I could be wrong. I doubt that more complicated applications are the answer. They will simply make it more time consuming to read each file. As an anecdote, the Stanford application had a multiple short essay prompts and numerous personal information sections, yet we all know how many students apply to Stanford.
Unfortunately, for my son this year, and my two others who will be going through the process over the next 4 years, the process is a chaotic mess! Heaven help you all who endeavor to gain entrance to the hallowed halls of elite universities!
One way that this problem is being attacked from the other side is that certain prep schools have a policy that if you’re admitted early somewhere (except for a state school with rolling admissions), whether or not it’s early decision, you can’t apply anywhere else. The prep school won’t send out any more transcripts, recommendations, etc., once you have an acceptance in hand. The only exception is if the financial aid is inadequate (generally less of an issue if the student is already attending private school, of course). Effectively every early application is an ED one.
This significantly reduces trophy hunting among the population at these prep schools (generally, once you’ve got an offer, you aren’t getting any more) and, importantly, enables the guidance counselors to assure the adcoms at the colleges that if they admit a kid, he’s virtually guaranteed to matriculate, which is a valuable advocacy tool.
The kids and their parents who are aiming for HYPS (which all have early action programs) don’t like this, of course, because it forces them either to (i) make a clear first choice or (ii) forgo the undeniable statistical advantage of applying early. If every high school were to handle things this way, though, the process would become less insane, it seems to me.