<p>Coase, I think you missed the intent of my comment. If Swarthmore can get 400 applications that generate the 400 students they want, doing anything to create (in theory) artificial selectivity only harms everyone else in the process unnecessarily. The rejected students, the parents paying for the application, the other schools who feel compelled to fight increased selectivity by dropping their application rigor. There is no winner in chasing a selectivity metric so long as you are attracting and delivering the students you want to campus.</p>
<p>I believe the applications that weren’t sent to Swarthmore this year were nearly all rejections. Kids who deep down knew they wouldn’t get in, just didn’t bother this year (given all of the other reasons expressed here).</p>
<p>At 17% acceptance, I think dropping the essay only hurts people…so long as the class of 2018 is every bit as strong as the class of 2017, etc. The fact that BC added essays to “trim the fat” and “lost” 26% of their applicants seems like a intelligent, fair decision. Taken to an extreme, would the Ivies be less desirable if they each required 10 essays? If the applications took 20 hours each to complete, I would argue the same 10,000 (or so) kids would still end up at those 8 schools…but you wouldn’t have a news story about a kid getting into all 8. They would have strategically identified the best fit (or fits) early. </p>