My kids are dual nationals: US-Aussies. They should be in the US bucket for admissions rather than internationals. Does the Australian passport make them more “interesting”? They have never lived in the US.
I have nothing much to add except for how sad it is to read the dozens of posts every year from internationals with virtually zero chance of admission but have the same list of six or seven “need-blind for internationals” schools put forward as possibilities. This has gone on for years.
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Although a different school was used as an example, this was the topic of this 2019 post:
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I definitely do not think LACs, and a variety of research universities, marketing themselves internationally is primarily about manipulating their admissions statistics.
Instead, from reading around over the years, I think the bigger picture is that circa 2010, the domestic population of college-bound students basically leveled off. It is now due to actually decrease a bit. The most popular “national” colleges and universities have still experienced a rise in domestic applications, but the number of unique domestic applicants who are really what they are looking for has not necessarily risen at the same pace, or possibly not much at all.
Meanwhile, though, the professional class is exploding in many countries around the world, primary and secondary school systems are rapidly modernizing, and so on. So, the base pool of Internationals potentially well-prepared to succeed in a US college, and with the means to pay, is rapidly growing.
So, I think many institutions are looking ahead to future years, decades, generations, and so on, and seeing that their market opportunities are looking at best stagnant domestically, and growing rapidly Internationally. And because alums are a critical part of how they market themselves to new cohorts of students, they want to start developing their alum networks in other countries in advance of that future. And that means getting enough of them to apply and enroll now, so they can gradually build up.
And it is working–really well. In some cases, way too well. As in, they are getting many more International applicants than they actually want to enroll, at least for now.
However, I have seen a variety of pretty strong hints that a lot of these International applicants are not really competitive. Not prepared adequately, maybe don’t really understand the educational values of the college, and so on.
But to get a little cynical for a moment, I think some US institutions are basically letting full pay Internationals who are not necessarily as prepared as they should be take their chances anyway. Like, public universities often charge Internationals not just their normal OOS rate, but an additional charge on top of that. And if there are Internationals willing to pay that premium, I am not sure they are always super cautious about making sure those Internationals know what they are signing up for.
But the wealthiest and most selective private colleges don’t really need the money, they more just want to support their long-term International growth plan. At the pace they want to go.
Even so, I have been diving into CDS data and doing some back of the envelope calculations, and to me it looks like at even highly selective need aware college, full pay Internationals may have admit rates very similar to domestic applicants. So these sorts of colleges are maybe not needing to do much to limit full pay International enrollments besides apply their normal standards. And then they limit overall International enrollments just by not giving out much aid, except when they really want to.
Need blind colleges, though, seem to have full pay International admit rates much lower than their domestic admit rates. This implies to me that they are in fact limiting International enrollment generally, and that it is therefore harder for full pay Internationals to get into a college that is need blind than it would be if it was need aware. Which is not a real shock in terms of direction, but the magnitude seems pretty large sometimes. Like as in it might cut the full pay International admit rate to as little as a quarter, maybe even less, when a college is need blind versus need aware.
Anyway, again I really don’t think this is being driven primarily by trying to manipulate admit rates. I think US colleges are looking at their budgets now, looking at their marketing opportunities in the future, and determining International admissions policies in a way that is calculated to serve their institutional interests along these sorts of dimensions.
But what does happen, even if unintended, is that the overall undergrad admit rate is often significantly lower than the domestic admit rate because of a much lower International admit rate. And then at need aware colleges, that lower International admit rate might actually be almost entirely due to an even lower admit rate for Internationals with need, whereas at need blind colleges the admit rate for Internationals with need might be higher than it would be at a need aware college, but then the admit rate for full pay Internationals will be lower than it would be at a need aware college to compensate.
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This was my takeaway.
[Edited; directed at wrong poster]
And yet, most of these schools break records for applications every year.
And this right at the peak end of a swing towards the practical model for higher ed geared for the “I want them to be in an identifiable profession by graduation day” parents. Business schools, engineering, etc. Plug and play. One thing life has taught me is that what swings hard one way usually, eventually, swings back the other way. Imagine the popularity then! And we haven’t even touched on the increasingly powerful brand that is the NESCAC.
Wall Street only needs so many analysts. The tech model is under some stress even here where I live right in the middle of it. And the AI ball isn’t even really rolling yet. Let’s see what happens to the kids who graduate knowing how to write well and who are accomplished learners and good critical thinkers. There is something to be said for that crowd and it’s not a novel observation on my part. Hell, even Mark Cuban thinks I might be on to something here.
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While it’s true that SEC schools are gaining popularity, I cannot imagine folks are choosing University of Arkansas over Williams. It’s just not the same demographic is it? And where are the new applications to Williams coming from if everyone is heading to University of Arkansas instead? Asking as a proud Georgia resident.
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I’m pretty sure Bates is smaller than Amherst and Bowdoin although they are all similar in size.
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You’re right. At >1900 students, Amherst is bigger than I thought.
Has Colby’s administration explained why it no longer publishes CDS information?
Can there possibly be a good reason why it doesn’t? Competitive advantage? The data can be misconstrued?
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And where are the new applications to Williams coming from if everyone is heading to University of Arkansas instead?
Abroad?
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Not that I’m aware of. I find it very sketchy.
What do you find sketchy?
That they don’t publish the CDS but selectively tout their own stats. For example, they tout their low admissions rate but don’t disclose what their ED admissions rate is. Thus one has to presume they play the UChicago/Northeastern game of taking very few people in RD and then making offers off waitlist only to people they know will accept.
All that could be true, and the list of schools that don’t share ED admission rates is longer than your two examples. Some are more aggressive marketers than others though, I agree with that. Barnard filled 60% of its spots in ED last year WashU 66% just to take 2 examples.
Northeastern’s CDS doesn’t include NU IN, and all the schools with second semester starts don’t include those students. Definitely don’t take anyone’s CDS as gospel.
If anyone asks Colby why they don’t publish a CDS, please share the answer!!
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I also think NEU is sketchy. And I’m skeptical in general of these schools that admit spring classes and don’t publish the data or have multiple campuses and don’t publish the data.
I have no problem with schools taking a huge portion of their class in ED. Just be transparent about it.
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^^ agree. I dislike any deceptive/manipulative behavior on the part of schools (or people, for that matter!).
I take @Mwfan1921’s point, made in other threads, that some schools almost need to do this in order to survive, or to thrive in a competitive environment. I still don’t respect it.
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As I see it, the main drawbacks of admitting a large percentage of the class ED are the possibilities that: 1) the student body will be less socioeconomically diverse (because students can’t shop around aid); and 2) the student body will be less academically qualified (because you’re enrolling the majority of your class from a smaller pool that may or may not be as qualified).
Let’s say for argument’s sake that a college can control for those two factors (e.g., they’re maintaining the same percentage of students on financial aid with the same average award amounts and enrolling a class with the same or better academic qualifications).
The benefits to the college are many:
- You end up with a student body filled with kids who want to be there–not who are there because they weren’t accepted by their top choice(s).
- The college can better manage enrollment and yield.
- The college can better manage the makeup of the class, ensuring they have the right balance when it comes to things like gender, athletics, interests, oboe players, etc.
- The college can accept only the best candidates in RD without having to worry about losing too many to competitors such that it significantly impacts acceptance rate and yield.
Of course this also means that many qualified kids who aren’t ready to commit in the ED rounds will end up rejected or waitlisted. But in the end, the colleges need to do what works best for them.
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I personally cannot wait for what I think is inevitable: a renewed appreciation for the broadly educated person.
People don’t know what they don’t know. There are limitations to the other model, whether people want to acknowledge it or not. I am a LAC fan of the stripe who has no axe to grind with business and engineering schools. But for the life of me I can’t understand why their fanbase is so myopic on this subject. My LAC “tech” kid who is in consulting now is flying, and time and again, both in grad school and now at work, she is singled out for her ability to communicate well, both in the written and spoken word, and for being able to think her way through to creative solutions to intractable problems. She was a astrophysics major with grad school in straight math but the kind of education she received as an undergrad at her LAC rounded her out in a way that she was not before entering college.
The biggest joke I’ve read on this forum is, “Oh, they can get the humanities in high school.” Not only tone deaf, but literally ignorant. There are not just a few peacock proud parents of R1 comp sci or other engineering graduates who are unaware of their children’s limitations, and many, many do have them. You actually do get something out of a LAC education. You don’t get everything from a LAC but then again you don’t get everything with the other model either, especially the highly narrow.
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