Love Thee Notre Dame

Getty59
Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:31:34 +0000

Excellent points made by the previous posts.

There is one point in MiPerson’s post I would dispute – the inference that ND is greatly disappointed that they did not get 17k applications this year (ended up around 14.4k, targeting about the same class size as previous ~2250).

Two thoughts I would share:

1) The common app is a much more efficient way for students to apply to many schools with minimal incremental effort. However, ND’s common app was different from all the others my D applied to (Holy Cross, BC, American, Fordham, Washington & Lee). ND required submission of the “Supplemental” part first and their supplemental required an incremental essay that any serious candidate would have to spend real time on. All the other schools’ supplementals were pretty lame – some additional personal info principally about understanding any legacy links to that specific school. Some schools required no supplemental. Net, any pop from being in the common app I believe was greatly reduced because of the essay required.

2) Since ND is not making any significant change in year over year enrollment, what is the value in getting more applications??? During our tour and info session, the Admissions official stated quite clearly ~75% of all applications are fully qualified to be enrolled at ND. The profile of each class seems to strengthen year over year. By contrast, BC (Fredo to those of you familiar with ndnation.com), gets 30k applications – accepts ~7800 to end up with a class of ~2700. Oh, and offer wait list to ~2000 applicants. I am confident the bottom 15000 applicants for BC are not highest quality, why else would they have to accept 7800 to yield 2700?

For full transparency, my D remains on the ND waitlist and my wife and I are both alumni.