Pshaw. It is far easier today to apply to college than it’s ever been.
When I applied to college in the 80’s:
Our primary resources were a couple of college guides which each had a page or two of information on each school. My husband, an international student, had to use a 10 year old Petersen’s because that’s all his school library had. There was no way to hop onto Amazon and order a new one. Now students have page after page of information readily available on the internet.
If we wanted information on a particular school we had to look up the address, write a letter or make a phone call and wait for the week or two it took for a brochure or catalogue to show up in our mailboxes. Now students get on the internet to get all the information they need.
There was no Common App. Every school had their own application and each was different. Most had supplementary essays. Now most schools are on the CA and few have more than one extra essay. Even those that aren’t on the CA tend to use the same questions. You can apply to the entire UC system by filling out one application then checking boxes for which schools you want it to go to.
We had to do everything by hand or typewriter. Remember using white-out to clean up the typos on your app and how long it took to line everything up perfectly on the page? Now you write, rewrite and edit everything in one place then cut and paste it onto the CA.
Every school had an application fee, most close to the same fee being charged by schools today. Getting a fee waiver involved having your counselor phone the admissions office or writing a letter yourself. It was much less common and many schools didn’t give them. Now not only is the fact that schools give fee waivers widely available information but the process is much easier, and some schools have dropped the application fee altogether.
There was no College Confidential. What anecdotal or inside information you could get was based solely on who you knew. Now anyone can get on the internet and type in “Secret societies Yale” or “Safety statistics U Michigan” and get a dozen hits.
Teachers and counselors had to type up each letter separately to customize the name of the college or you would end up with a generic xeroxed letter. Asking a teacher to write recs. was a bigger deal and the more colleges you applied to the harder it was. Each letter had to go out in a sealed envelope signed along the back. Adding an extra school at the last minute was much more difficult if for this reason alone. Now a new school can be added by checking off an extra box and letters can be customized with a quick “search and replace.”
There were few, if any, outreach programs to minority and first generation students. Now they’re common and widely advertised.
There was no Common Data Set or Naviance. Now students have better, more accurate information about their chances at schools than ever before.
The fact that students have gotten hypercompetitive about applications and are in some cases applying to an insane number of schools is not the fault of the colleges. I would in fact argue that the current ease of application would make some small barriers to entry advisable. Many college have found that when they dropped the supplementary essay their application numbers increased but their yield dropped proportionally. There’s no reason for students to be applying to dozens of schools, particularly in cases where the student doesn’t need substantial FA.
Many kids, schools and families seem to want to be able to brag about how many schools the student got into. The girl who was accepted to 149 schools is a case in point. Just insane. It’s easier than ever to carefully craft a thoughtful list with a mix of reaches, matches and likelies with information easily found on the internet.
I do sympathize with the fact that everyone gets angsty about college these day and that acceptance rates have fallen, making what used to be match schools reaches and likelies matches. That doesn’t mean the process in general hasn’t gotten easier.