There are colleges on the list that pay huge amounts. But it is by no means the average. You can look it up.
And saying they are responsible for enrollment and yield is like saying any CEOis responsible for product delivery: that doesn’t mean they work on the loading dock.
Well, it was a surprise to me coming back here after a hiatus to find that the selectivity of certain colleges has increased. Like a lot of the state flagships, and the most selective colleges. The peak population of college aged kids was about 7-8 years ago according to demographic data. Since then the numbers have been going down.
I also see larger “discounts” at private schools. 15 years ago, it was not easy to get a 5 figure merit award. Now I’m seeing a lot more of those scholarships.
There are colleges that are closing, and more in trouble financially.
But the high name recognition schools are more competitive than ever.
I don’t understand why this is, but I see it happening.
Increasing college costs and the belief that the general economy is more competitive may be leading more to believe that college has to be either lower cost (mandatory for many students) and/or recognized/prestigious, so that private schools with high prices but little recognition/prestige may be seen as undesirable, particularly for majors without good major specific job prospects, while state flagships and prestige privates get more attention.
“I also see larger “discounts” at private schools. 15 years ago, it was not easy to get a 5 figure merit award. Now I’m seeing a lot more of those scholarships.”
The sticker price has gone up tons in 15 years. Offering scholarships allows schools to attract who they want without discounting for all.
“But the high name recognition schools are more competitive than ever.
I don’t understand why this is, but I see it happening.”
In a prestige driven society, the internet has allowed families/students from all quarters to do research, often driven by rankings.
Let us say you are right, @jym626. About 15% of NACAC members were unable to fill their frosh class, or possibly wrongly estimated their yield as to result in openings. No doubt at least 15% of businesses ( as you categorize colleges) in most industries have financial difficulties. Such is the nature of capitalism, supply and demand. No different than other businesses. A few executives will be paid very well to try to fix it, if unable to do so, the business will close. I’m not sure why you think colleges deserve special sympathy compared to other industries where this occurs regularly, with greater impact to more employees. And I bet the NACAC job both pays quite well and has plenty of applicants already so we do not need to help recruit for it
Straw man arguments are unhelpful, @roycroftmom. If you think I said anywhere that “colleges deserve special sympathy”, then kindly point that out, as that is nowhere to be found and not my opinion. We are talking about colleges here because that is the topic of the thread, and that is the focus of this forum.
I repeat, my response was to @vpa2019 who said the schools left holding the bag were few and far between. That seems inaccurate, given that at least 15% of the NACAC schools alone (yes, “lets say” this is right, since it is!) have not filled their classes. 15% is a large number, and looking at the number of schools with financial struggles (there are probably many more than hit the news), its pretty easy to understand, as is the fact that higher education IS a business. And whether or not other businesses in other industries struggle financially is irrelevant here. We aren’t talking about restaurants. We are talking about colleges and universities.
And who knows how many other schools that are not members of NACAC (and 2 year colleges) have not filled their class. As for all institutions of higher learning, the number is surely higher than 15%, which is significant.
Requesting again that we stay on topic.
The colleges that have openings are not flailing like some corporations or shops may be. So far, all anyone knows is these colleges have seats available. We don’t even know how many slots. Only that it’s enough to add their name to the list.
Far from enough info to pounce on.
So now we should be concerned about non NACAC members? And we have data on their enrollment status where?
Well, you can start with the info available on the NACAC list and look up a few.
Here’s a case where basic info is “handed” to you.
Or I suppose you could just take a position without. But Chapman, eg, has openings, while recently taking its endowment up 20% and on track to triple it (the total endowment.)
Ultimately, the question is not what one wants, but what one’s willing to do to pursue that info.
No, we don’t know what kids they need, what majors, etc. But sweeping analogies don’t work.
I don’t think the list posted in the thread on openings neccessarily means those schools have not filled their freshman class for next school year. For example, Penn State University Park has a waiting list for 2023. That means they have enough students.
Quinnipiac’s website does not state they are still taking applications for fall 2019, but have a later deadline for spring 2020. Oregon state is still taking applications, but not U of Oregon. Appalachia State is taking applications for the spring semester, but not for fall 2019. Those are just the few I looked up.
Thus, not at all accurate to say that 15% have not filled their fall 2019 freshman classes.
This thread has kind of been all over the place but I want to comment on the “wooing” of the student and then getting a denial. I know some of you don’t like anecdotes but here goes and I have to assume this happened to other kids. Our S19 applied to just one Ivy - Dartmouth.
He applied RD and sent his app at the very beginning of December. In mid-December, he received an email from the local Dartmouth alumni chapter for their Holiday Luncheon. It was on a weekday but we went. He missed two tests to go to the lunch. He was free but I had to pay $55 (and $42 for parking but don’t get me started on that.) At the luncheon, there were about 100 people total - older alums, some current students back home for break, and about ten ED kids who got in. We found exactly two other students who applied RD and were still waiting for answers. It was such a mystery. We were waiting for our car with these other two students and their parents and kind of laughing about it like what on earth are we doing here? Dartmouth couldn’t have possibly invited every RD candidate in the whole Chicago area who had already sent their app in if there were only three RD kids there. What did it mean?
Time passes and S19 does not get an interview. He emails the person who invited him to the luncheon and he gets a reply that says she is so, so sorry and she messed up and he will be contacted asap. He was indeed contacted that afternoon by an alum who lives about an hour from our house (which is kind of weird because we know Dartmouth alums in our own town who interview). Regardless, we trek up to Evanston in a snow storm so he can interview and the whole thing takes maybe four hours of our Sunday between the drive and the interview. He thinks the interview went really well. It was his eighth college interview so he was calm and ready. Again, we were trying to read into this. Why did he not get one originally? Was he already in and they didn’t need him to be interviewed? The alum who scheduled the interview was very apologetic in her email.
Two weeks before decisions came out, S19 sent an email to his AO with information about a new award he received. She emailed him back to congratulate him and to tell him she’s excited for him and will make sure that this info gets into his folder for the committee to see. Two weeks before decisions - so we are thinking he’s still in the running since it’s pretty late in the game.
He was rejected. I emailed the AO afterwards and asked her all about the alumni luncheon and the interview and she said that admissions had absolutely no idea that the alumni group invited ANYONE to their Holiday Luncheon. She said that she will reach out to that group and make sure that they never invite RD candidates in the future. I also told her I did not appreciate her email to S19 and that her wording certainly led him on. Didn’t she understand that kids read into every word of an AO’s emails? She again apologized. S19 was a good candidate for Dartmouth. He was accepted at schools with the same acceptance rate. He had a peer rec written by the son of a Dartmouth alum and the alum read it before it was sent and said it was a beautiful recommendation and would speak to the AOs.
My point is this - kids want to believe they have a chance. Schools need to be careful how they market to kids, of course, but the personal type of attention that S19 got really set him up for a surprise. He wasn’t even waitlisted. His grades and scores were higher than the two athletes they took from our school in ED. It wasn’t a giant long shot. I don’t think schools understand how much kids read into every interaction. And I also feel jerked around since we schlepped into the city for that lunch (I even bought him a green tie for the event!) and up to Evanston for the interview. Please don’t bother offering him any types of invitations if he’s not getting in.
He was lucky to get into the school he was secretly hoping for before the Dartmouth decision came out so it didn’t sting too much. We were pretty surprised though. And I was angry about all of the seemingly positive communication from them throughout the process. So did we get the last laugh? I still feel like we did. They don’t get to have him as a student. Their loss.
Or how to interpret the data, right? Baylor is on the list. Maybe fewer students wish to attend school in Waco. Maybe they miscalculated yield by 1 percentage point. Maybe they should not have paid their President Ken Starr over 5 million dollars in 2016 and put that money towards internship programs or financial aid or marketing instead. Whether it is struggling financially as a result of any of these decisions isnt necessarily reflected in the NACAC data, so why should we be all concerned about it?
Jym626 claims a significant percent of colleges are left “holding the bag”. Assuming 15% of NACAC schools qualifies as significant, and is somehow anomalous to prior year data, or even historical trends, I think several posters are placing unwarranted priority on that data.
And why on earth would I pursue the non NACAC data? I didn’t bring it up, and am not concerned about them.
U Oregon, OR State (main and Cascades) and Quinnipiac ARE on the list, “still have openings.” Some, yes, may reflect deadlines not reached.
@Homerdog, sorry for the disappointment. I know you tried to be involved. But no one can read tea leaves before the decisions come out. An alum holiday luncheon comes way ahead of that. It’s something CC talks about. Congrats for his finding a college he feels positive about.
Yes, colleges choose to be positive. What’s the alternative? A hint before Ivy Day?
@lookingforward it’s more than a college he feels positive about - he feels that he met his perfect match. Our family feels very lucky. 
And I hope you all can see how that storyline could still lead us to believe that he might have received a yes. I almost feel like there should be no communication between admissions and the student at all after apps are sent. At many of his other schools, he received a more-automatic answer when he sent updates. Just a “thank you for letting us know”. That’s a better way to respond. And the admissions office not knowing what the alumni are up to is also wrong!
Roycroftmom, are you now saying folks shouldn’t "[place] unwarranted priority on that data?"
Haven’t you been making this call, saying an endless supply of data should be made available?
Colleges are in it for themselves. At the most basic level they are businesses. They are PR/marketing machines. @homerdog is but one example of tens of thousands of emails and snail mail and outreach and “stringing along” targeted at students. I’ve done this 3 times and am so thankful I’m finished. I truly feel for the families that will go this process in the few decades because it isn’t going to improve any time soon.
Coming late to this and am done with this process, but the stress really comes from the kids and the parents. It is a choice to apply to a college with a less than 10% acceptance rate. Somewhere around 19,500 kids got a 1500 or higher on the SAT. One estimate puts the number of High Schools at around 22,000 in the US. That means 22,000 kids that are at the top of their class and a higher number that are in the top few percent. Of course, the vast majority of those students are not applying to or interested in elite colleges. The point is there is a lot of competition. You rhard working student who missed out on fun to study as hard a possible is not unique. Your 1550 SAT, 4.0 GPA student is somewhat rare and may be the “best” at your local high school, but there are many other kids in the same situation from other places. How would it ever be possible for elite colleges to admit on numbers alone? Is there a real difference between a 1550 and a 1560 or a 4.0 and a 4.1? Wouldn’t the kid that got a 3.9 while simultaneously running a club or being a 3-season athlete be perceived differently than the kid with a 4.2 that wasn’t involved in anything?
I agree that it can be misleading to receive information from schools telling kids to apply, when the kids have no real chance of admittance. A good SAT score does not trump mediocore grades or an absence of any meaningful activity beyond going to class. If a high school does not have a system like Naviance, it can be difficult for some parents to understand that their kids weighted 4.0 average does not mean they are at the top of the stats range for an elite college since the college will re-evaluate their GPA to their own criteria.
There is a huge advantage to going to a good HS with decent college counseling, vs a school with a high poverty rate where most kids do not even dream of going away to college. With that advantage comes higher expectations on the part of both students and parents. Going to the state flagship may be the school of choice in many areas, but for top suburban HS students in certain states, it is private or OOS public that is the prize.
But the list doesn’t seem to be accurate, based on the actual schools websites. Oregon state says you can still apply, ?U Oregon does not. They are not taking applications for fall 2019, they are taking applications for spring 2020, but that is not the same as saying their FRESHMAN classes for 2019 are not full.
I think the landscape is changing, but my predictive abilities are not good in this area. I did not believe costs would go over $50k. I didn’t believe what I thought were outlandish projections of private college costs back about 20 years ago. Yet, here we are. Some of the instate public costs are moving towards what I thought were private school maximums back then.
But then we have school closings, heavy discounting and schools admitting they are left holding the bag.
As for “Ivy Day” - why is it so stupid late? Why do those schools need so much time? We felt like we had to wait until Ivy Day to decide where to re-visit. S19 was sitting around with eight acceptances just waiting for Dartmouth because, had he gotten in, our travel plans for April would be different. The schools he would have decided to re-visit would have been different.
After Ivy Day, there were only three weeks to visit schools and many of S19’s schools had Admitted Student Days just one week after Ivy Day so sitting around and waiting for Ivy decisions also annoyed me. Seems kind of self important to me that they announce so late.