College tour week finished! Lawrence’s admitted student day was…not introvert-friendly. After a brief intro session, they turned everyone loose in a VERY crowded room where different departments/organizations had tables set up. We lasted about 5 minutes and had to go get some air. S24 went to a student panel while I walked downtown to get coffee, skipping out on the parent panel, because I have done SO MANY COLLEGE VISITS over the past 6 years or so. Weirdly, there was absolutely nothing offered that was specific to the conservatory. It’s funny–we were at an admitted student day with his brother 2 years ago, and I felt like that one was much better run. Also, no class visits since it was on a Saturday, which was too bad. He had a lesson with the horn teacher, though, and she was lovely. He got to play the alphorn! (Lawrence having an alphorn was of great interest to him…until he got into Amherst and found out that they have FIVE alphorns. Plus mountains to play them in. Anyway, this was all exhausting! Tomorrow we drive another 300+ miles to meet up with the rest of the family for the eclipse. They’re in Nashville right now seeing the production of Sweeney Todd that S22 is playing in the pit for. We are bummed to be missing it! S22 is refusing our offer to come with us to the eclipse and planning to do a day trip with friends instead (I think they’re talking at least 3 hours each way when there’s NOT eclipse traffic). Which sounds…like hell. But I’ve done my best to dissuade him and urged him to make sure there’s a full tank of gas and plenty of snacks involved, and that’s the best I can do!
It could have to do with school holidays. I visited several schools with D25 a few weeks ago and every single kid at every school was either from CA or a NE Prep School, as those kids were in spring break but the NY/NJ public’s tend to track with Easter.
Ironically, Vassar was the one with a little extra diversity, with a kid from GA and another from NC.
I think you’re right about @shawk’s Vassar tour falling during school break. Most public school systems in the NYC metro area have a week off in mid-February (usually starting on Presidents Day). When we toured colleges during February break most other families were from our area and there were several families from CA whose schools were off, too. A friend from the Bay Area said they called it “ski week.”
As for NYC public schools spring break, they are timed to coincide with Passover and Easter. These holidays usually overlap, but this year they’re a month apart so schools were off for Good Friday and Easter Monday and will be closed again starting April 22nd-30th. They were also closed April 10th for Eid. It’s no surprise that the last day of school is June 26!
I love hearing about all the tours! D24 is traveling solo to Smithie Saturday next weekend and is really looking forward to meeting in person classmates with whom she has connected through social media.
My S24 had senior prom last night and it’s hard to believe we are entering the celebration/milestone phase of senior year. I want to soak up time with him but the kid is never home! Glad he is happy and busy.
Also getting very excited to the NCAA Women’s Final today. Go Gamecocks! 
I hear ya on wanting to soak up all the time with the kids. I think I have seen S24 for a grand total of 1hr in the last two weeks. Happy that he is busy doing what he loves best but boy, this takes getting used to…
I agree-this was likely one factor that contributed to S24 poor results with some schools. I have a D30 but she is likely LAC bound given her current interests and will have to fight against the skew…
The 90 year old ladies in my family had jobs as tour guides for the nationality rooms in the cathedral of learning when they were students at Pitt. It gave them more time in the building! You are all kindred souls!
D30, on the other hand, will have the advantage of a significantly smaller number of HS graduates.
And maybe by then things will be settled down and won’t feel/be so unpredictable anymore.
[quote=“TonyGrace, post:2552, topic:3657893”] every single kid at every school was either from CA or a NE Prep School, as those kids were in spring break.
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This was our experience when touring with DS his junior year spring break. It did color the experience at the places that made the info sessions more participatory. And while we were a BS family, it was a turn-off. In trying to cater to the audience, these schools ended up coming across – probably unfairly – as a bit exclusive and elitist.
So far between more domestic people applying to more of the more popular “national” schools plus growing international applications, the gradual decline in the US domestic college population since approximately 2010 has largely only affected more regional and local application rates.
Possibly the steeper decline that is coming, the so-called demographic cliff, will finally change this dynamic even at the most popular “national” schools. But I am not particularly hopeful, absent some radical change in the way we do college applications.
The Boston Globe had a story about this in today’s Globe. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/04/07/opinion/demographic-cliff-colleges-universities/. The upshot is that 2 year and less selective 4 year schools are going to be most negatively impacted by this trend.
In fact it has already been happening. Even some colleges I consider pretty desirable are not seeing the same application volumes they used to . . . but not the sorts of colleges we often discuss here.
Like Allegheny College, which is a very old, very well-regarded LAC (currently tied for #75 among national LACs by US News), had 5479 applications in the 2018-19 CDS. In the 2023-24 CDS, this was down to 5045. Interestingly, men went up from 2328 to 2608, women down from 3151 to 2436.
Over the same period, though, Mt Holyoke, say, went from 3699 applications to 5030.
So, we’ll see what happens for D30, but I am betting on continued divergence in trends.
In a down economy, the best students from the best schools still get jobs. It affects average/below average students much more.
Smaller student population, the best schools will still get tons of applications. Less well known schools will get fewer applications.
I agree - although, I think that the number of applicants at the top schools will stabilize instead of continuing to go up every year. If not, we’re going to be looking at acceptance rates of 1 or 2% - I jokingly await the day when some school has a negative acceptance rate . . .
A lot of this, on a school by school basis, will depend on whether they are well known outside their region. In parts of the country where the decline is greatest, the regional schools – regardless of excellence – are likely to struggle.
If you look at some of the schools that have done well, it’s not only because they are good schools but because they have managed to expand their brand beyond their own backyard.
One of the things that concerns me is most kids are still not applying to anything like the full 20 allowed by Common App. A few outlier kids apply to that many, or more with outside apps. But most still do not.
If applications per applicant keeps moving upward, though, it could easily still outweigh even the “demographic cliff”. Like, the “cliff” implies there could be as much as a 15% reduction of the domestic college population spread out over like 5-10 years for demographic reasons. Even holding aside how international applications could offset that, representative kids going from, say, 10 to 12 applications over that 5-10 year period would also more than offset that effect.
So how low can we go with acceptance rates at the most selective colleges? I have a bad feeling we have yet to test the true lower bound.
The other trend I think will happen is that families with incomes between $300k-$500k will continue to get squeezed in the admissions process at elite schools.
- Not qualify for aid but cant afford to pay rising college costs.
- Wont get admissions nudge to diversify student class.
- Cant make sizable donations or have the ability to manufacture ECs
D24 has a friend whose sister got into Harvard Law but had to go to the state flagship law school instead due to costs and inability to get any aid.
Yes, exactly.
In fact the relative popularity of colleges is a function of a lot of things besides just educational quality and academic reputation. For example, location is demonstrably a huge factor in application volumes, with lots of kids wanting to go to certain locations for college even if they went to HS somewhere else. Application volumes have exploded in the Boston market, California, and so on, not so much Meadville, PA.
I also think there is a sort of selectivity feedback cycle where as apparent selectivity increases, then so does the perception of the competitive value of admission to that college, and it attracts more applicants from kids who care about that sort of thing, which increases its apparent selectivity even more, and so on.
All this is again intersecting with international application dynamics in interesting ways. Colleges in traditional global cities/immigration gateways would seem to have a natural advantage when it comes to recruiting international applicants, but some colleges in other ares experiencing domestic application issues have aggressively pursued internationals too. And I think future success among internationals could be subject to sticky/network effects. But we shall see.
So all this is very complicated, and I really hesitate to make any predictions about what my D30 will face in a lot of detail. Still, she was talking at one point about wanting to go to California, and I was thinking that may get even more brutal. But probably if she is like her brother and willing to consider less popular locations, it will not be so bad.
And then maybe she will have a significant other with family near some plausible college offer, and it will all not matter anyway . . . .
So of course there is still a smoothly rising percentage of students at elite schools as you go up in family income. It is true that if you compare upper-middle-income applicants with very high test scores to lower-income applicants with very high test scores, the latter might do better in terms of admissions rate at any given highly selective college. But there are so many of the former in comparison to the latter. And the former are likely to end up at either another equally selective college, or maybe in some cases a slightly less selective college, but still very selective.
Meanwhile, even full cost of attendance in recent years has actually tended to decline in inflation-adjusted terms, even more if you look at it in terms of upper-middle household incomes (which have increased in real terms). Meaning full pay is actually usually taking up a lower percentage of upper-middle gross incomes than it was in the recent past.
So, we’ll see, but the basic issue here is that upper-middle-income kids with high test scores have not stopped applying to the most selective colleges, if anything they are applying to even more than before. And most are ending up in some very selective college in the end, but maybe not the exact tier of selectivity they were hoping for.
I agree with this but the reality is the most selective schools dont really care that much about a high SAT for an upper middle income suburban kid.
D24 told me the kid at our school (top 5 rank in class) who got 1600 on his SAT - his best acceptance was UNC. UNC is a great school but 1600 punches way above the average UNC student’s SAT.
Standardized tests are a very, very minor data point (immaterial IMO) for upper income kids but probably much greater weighting for kids not in this demographic.
Im not sure if it’s even worth it for an upper middle class kid to even take the test.