<p>I like your analysis, and really do agree with it on the whole. Colleges absolutely market themselves, even Harvard and the other elites (Brand maintenance). There is nothing wrong with any of that in the least, and I don’t think most schools would deny it. Most are past the “Ivory Tower” illusion when it comes to admissions strategy, I am sure. I think the issue is whether they engage in “underhanded” tactics or deception. I personally think most people that think this see things that just are not there, or misconstrue the real motivations. Certainly, sometimes a tactic that had a more straightforward, reasonable motivation can result in certain “side effects”.</p>
<p>For example, Tulane has a 5 step strategy designed to get some students that would normally pick higher ranked schools (Duke, Vandy, Wash U, even sometimes Ivies) to come to Tulane. They know this is a numbers game. If they go after 10,000 students with those kind of credentials, they might only get 100 or 200 for example. But that can be 10%+ of an incoming class, so that can be significant. While this strategy has created very high application numbers, it also creates a very low yield. Tulane just doesn’t care about that, they have a goal and in fact the last 3-4 classes reflect a great deal of success in this regard. Not only that, this years class was “too large” by about 130 and they are going to try and keep next year’s class at 1400, 230 less than this year’s. It is simply ridiculous to always impute superficial motives to what these schools do.</p>