<p>My daughter went to her GC with a list of 6 schools to apply to. Her GC suggested that she apply to more. In the end she applied to 11. She was rejected at 1, waitlisted at 3, and accepted at 7. The schools that waitlisted her all sent letters telling her this year they received more applications than ever before. I’ve read in other threads that some students apply to 20 or more schools. Does anyone know if this is an upward trend that has been occurring for years? Is this year just over the top? Any thoughts about how this affects yield?</p>
<p>It does seem that kids are applying to more schools. I think they have to since admissions is getting tougher, and what used to be a match is a match no more.
Our GC likes the number 8, with the UCs counting as 1 of the 8. This is quite enough if a student is interested in a lot of state schools.
This upward trend seems increase the number of waitlisted students, as one might expect.</p>
<p>I think people apply to way too many schools - I applied to four last year, knew one was a reach and got accepted to the other three; many other people in my class applied to eight to twelve</p>
<p>Seems to be a trend. Many attribute it to the Common App.</p>
<p>We cap it at 10, but most people apply to 5 if that.</p>
<p>I think our GC’s got tired of parents getting angry when junior gets rejected from every school. Now they want to make sure there is a choice. The problem is this: School A gets 15,000 applications for 1500 spots. They expect 50% of the accepted applicants to enroll. They accept 3000, waitlist 1000. Because the students have many choices, only 1200 enroll at school A. Half of the waitlisted students accept a spot on the waitlist. By the time the waitlist is activated, many of them are happy with the school they chose and if they are finally accepted from the waitlist, they decline. School A then has trouble filling its freshman class. I dont think this would ever happen at the Ivies, but what about a Tier 2 school?</p>
<p>Maybe they have changed it, but doesn’t it cost like $30-$60 to apply to a college. If you applied to 20 schools thats at least $600!</p>
<p>Joev -</p>
<p>yea, the’ve changed it. It’s more like $50 - $70 now. Multiply $50.00 times 24,000 applications and you have a nice revenue source.</p>
<p>I agree that the trend seems to have students applying to more schools. DD, a junior, is being encouraged (by us) to apply to five schools…maybe six. We have told her that only one reach should be on the list. Every other school should be a match or safety type of school for her. In the end, I suspect she will only apply to five schools. She is looking at the schools more seriously than she would if we said “apply to however many you want to apply to”. If she comes up with a list of 7 schools will we say no? Probably not…but she has indicated that she would rather do a good job on 5 applications for schools that she really cares about.</p>
<p>The fact that applying to the selective colleges is more of a crap shoot has led to the need for students to apply to more schools. For every applicant accepted at the extremely selective schools, there are four or five who are almost that person’s identical twin who are denied. It is ironic that the better the applicant is, the more schools that they need to apply to.</p>
<p>This year, at S’s school, in our area, kids I know are increasingly applying early. At S’s school 70% of the kids applied by November 1. S’s friend applied to 4 schools early, and if her ED choice came through, she would have been done. If her second choice came through (rolling), she would have only sent out 2 more apps. Otherwise, she would have sent out 6 more apps. Well, she did not get into any of the 4 schools. ED rejected, 3 others deferred. Which really got her into a frenzy. In addition to the 6 apps she had ready to go, she added another 6 “safety” type schools. She no longer felt she had bearings as to where she would be accepted and she wanted to have some choices among these schools she did not initially consider when the time came, rather than just picking one as THE SAFETY. So, this young lady ended up with 16 schools, something that her parents told me they would have thought was ludicrous a year ago. </p>
<p>She ended up getting into two of her deferred school, 4 of her original picks and all of her safeties, so it was an over reaction, but no one thought so in December.</p>
<p>I seem to recall an international student (eastern Europe) who last year applied to 40 colleges. Never did hear the results.</p>
<p>A recent article identified a UCLA study which estimated that the number of kids applying to more than 6 schools had risen by nearly half over the last decade. It’s a response to lower odds of admission by top colleges. As the colleges attempt to look selective, they damage thier yield. I’m expecting to see yield decline at a number of good schools this year.</p>
<p>It’s a cycle. As the number of applications increases, the colleges accept a lower and lower percentage. Then due to the random nature of being accepted at any one college, kids have to increase their number of applications. (This is only a problem at the top, most selective, schools.)</p>
<p>I have heard of some high schools limiting the number of colleges to which they will let any one student apply. This would seem to help, but it just disadvantages the students who go there.</p>
<p>reasonabledad -</p>
<p>Is there a reason why you would expect yield to decline this year? Can’t colleges adjust year to year? Dufus3709 said increasing applications and selectivity only a problem at top schools. I think it is just as much a problem at tier 2 schools. One kids match is anothers safety. My daughters classmate applied to BU as a safety, with no intention of attending. My daughter was waitlisted. She got into colleges that someone else would have loved to attend. The kid that doesnt get into an Ivy goes to Tufts or BC. If they dont get into BC they go to Villanova. If they dont get into Villanova, they go to Providence. If they dont get into Providence they go to Stonehill. The list goes on. I read an article about Providence College. One year they had a record number of applications and they were selective with their admits. But the yield was low and they didnt fill their freshman class. In the end, students can only choose one school. We didnt send Christmas cards last year just applications. My son is a freshman. If he starts his applications now, maybe hell finish by his senior year. In the meantime, Ill get a second job to save for the application fees.</p>
<p>It doesn’t take longer to apply to 10 schools now, than to apply to 5. The Common App is becoming so “common” that students just need to fill out one app and send to all. This definitely has a down-side with lowered yields - but it makes it easier on the students applying.</p>
<p>At this point in history, so many people are concentrated on getting into a small number of schools. There are 1.2 million graduating seniors and all the top schools together have room for only about 50000 freshmen. When every high school student with a 4.0 and a 1450 on their SAT applies to all three of HYP, the process starts to look like a lottery. You have better chances in a lottery by buying more tickets. I agree that this scenario is bleeding down into the tier 2 schools.</p>
<p>wgt:</p>
<p>the high school senior class is supposed to peak in ~09, so next year’s app pool will be larger…</p>
<p>In addition the Common App which inflates apps to private schools, we also have ‘California common app’ – one app to apply to as many UC’s as a kid has money for…which really inflates UCLA’s and Berkeley’s numbers since many kids who have absolutely no chance of admisssion, send in $60 for a chance at a lottery win.</p>
<p>Yeah… but then there’s also the growing tendency towards applying early to schools, which I think adds to the inflated admissions numbers of the really “high up” schools.</p>
<p>For example, I applied early to Georgetown and was accepted. If I wasn’t accepted, I would have applied to probably 10-12 other schools, mostly matches, a few safeties, and a couple reaches. However, since I did get in, I applied to 3 uber-reaches, just since I could “afford” to- i.e. I didn’t need any kind of security (and this in turn inflated those schools numbers since I would have never thought about applying if I didn’t get in early somewhere).</p>
<p>My twin brother, however, didn’t get in early and ended up applying to 19 schools. Yes, 19!</p>
<p>In the end, he got accepted to about 9 of them. Many of the schools he applied to were randomly chosen because they were on the common app. The ones he got accepted to were the ones he had actually been considering, and the ones he applied to randomly ended up waitlisting or rejecting him- I guess they could see that he was just not a “match” for the school.</p>
<p>Just my 2c. :D</p>
<p>wgt ~ I expect yield to go down at highly selective schools because the number of seats at these schools is not rising very much at all, but kids are applying to more schools and there are more kids…so the total number of applications per school rises quite a bit.</p>
<p>Ignore the EA/ED side for a moment. Most top schools have maxed out this option anyway, filling up to half of their incoming class Early. The remainder of the enrolled students must be found from the Regular applications. Top kids among the regular application pool are sending more applications per kid, so the raw numbers of kids with multiple acceptances to equivalent top schools is also rising. As this number rises, the colleges react by admitting just a few more than they did last year for the same number of seats, and voila, yield drifts down, slightly.</p>
<p>The drivers are:
- increasing numbers of total applicants
- increasing numbers of applications per applicant
- frenzy as kids realize that points one and two above affect their chances of success negatively at any given school…</p>
<p>The only option for colleges which allows them to keep high selectivity and hold yield constant is to strongly increase the use of the waitlist every year. Since there is a deadline, and since colleges also compete with merit money, there is a limit to this strategy as well.</p>