Is The College Admissions Process Broken?

Adding to application volume means overwhelmed admissions offices (see Northeastern, who had to subcontract out application reviews last year. This results in less time reviewing each app (average time is 4 minutes), more room for error, and more uncertainty over the process. I would say that is a screwed up process. And creates more competition for spots, just what the schools want. Acceptance rate at UPenn in 1990 was 40%.

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What socioeconomic class were those caught up in the varsity blues scandal, and those paying large 5 and 6 figure sums for private college consultants, or those setting up unique ECs to best sell their kids to Ivy+ schools?

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Most poor and middle class families don’t even have T20 schools on their radar let alone obsessing about rankings.

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“Rankings” not schools. Kids at my school love HYPSM. Lots of apps. Prestige. They don’t really talk about Rice, Wash U, JHU, etc. few apps. Social circle prestige and lifestyle over formal rankings. Many here would choose BC instead for Boston/lifestyle.

It can be that way. Merit scholarships are intended to increase yield, so a college that uses many factors in admissions may use those same factors to determine the likelihood of matriculation and what effect a given amount of merit money would have.

At such a college, applying ED would reduce the likelihood and amount of merit money – why would a college spend merit money on an admit who is close to 100% likely to matriculate? Similarly, at colleges that track level of interest otherwise, an overqualified applicant needs to show enough interest for the college to believe that it may be chosen (as opposed to rejecting or wait listing to protect yield), but not so much that it does not believe it needs to spend merit money to attract the applicant.

Colleges that do this have no incentive to be transparent about it.

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Ok, got it. The wealthy, like the kids at your school, chase prestige. The poor and middle class chase rankings.

And Rice, WUStl and Hopkins don’t make the prestige cut.

Thanks for the clarification.

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Whatever. I’m telling you where classmates applied heavily and where they didn’t. Doesn’t follow rankings. Ivy then dig dropoff for all others, especially those perceived as less social.

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HYPSM are the top 5 ranked schools in the US.

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The abstract of the study at https://www.nber.org/papers/w18586 begins

"We show that the vast majority of very high-achieving students who are low-income do not apply to any selective college or university. This is despite the fact that selective institutions would often cost them less, owing to generous financial aid, than the resource-poor two-year and non-selective four-year institutions to which they actually apply. "

Local non-selective colleges are overrpresented and high-endowment/high-ranked college are underrpresented. It’s almost the opposite of chasing rankings.

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This is definitely an inaccurate generalization. People who are obsessed with rankings are obsessed with rankings. Some people are caught up with prestige. Some people aren’t.

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OK, but – is that six months out? A year out? Five years out? I have a lot of students who graduate and maybe find a job at Starbucks or wherever while they figure out next steps. But after a year, they’re in a relevant field, or maybe they’re in grad school or maybe they’re in a field that’s not directly related but still requires a college degree. Careers are not linear, so these statistics don’t tell us much without more nuance.

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Is the college admissions process broken?

No.

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My point was about the very high achieving ones that are applying to top colleges. Not in general. More reliant on ranks. Less on family history/opinion.

It’s broken because my kid didn’t get in, yet.
My friends say it’s broken because their kids didn’t get in previous years and they are still in shock.

It’s definitely not broken for those whose kids got their desired outcome.

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My kids both got into their top choice and I still believe the system is broken. Some of us look at the big picture.

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Just because someone doesn’t like the way it works doesn’t mean it is broken.

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I get that. It should not be thought of as being so random as to be a lottery.
Years ago, we all know who the top students in class are. Now no body knows. My son is pretty smart, but there are 17 other kids in his class of 161 who has the same GPA. One girl has an extra class so she stands alone in the class curve.

I don’t think it’s “broken.” I just think the rules have changed and we have to change with it.

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Well, we could substitute words like expensive, inefficient, time-consuming, overly complicated, or other terms rather than broken-I used broken only to start a new thread from a parent who had used that term, whose thread was closed.

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It is pretty clear at our school who the smartest kids are. Each of my kids knew the kids who were head and shoulders above other kids in their class year (and other class years, to be honest).

Was there always huge differentiation in GPA? I wouldn’t know
as our school doesn’t rank and it isn’t like kids are sitting around comparing GPAs. But everyone knew who the math geniuses were, which kids were best in FL, which kids were smart across the board, etc.

Just like it was clear who could actually sing in choir, who were excellent athletes as opposed to very good, etc. The kids know who is at the top (and the teachers do too). The only people who seem to be unsure are parents.

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