What should colleges do to manage the increase in apps?

MWolf
Mon, 26 Apr 2021 05:57:33 +0000

Because it is appropriate, and because I, at least, think that I’m funny, I will repeat something that I wrote back in June, 2019:

Since applications numbers continue to grow, while the number accepted stays about the same, the change in acceptance rates with application numbers can be described with the function Y = X/A, in which the response variable Y is the acceptance rate, the explanatory variable X is the number of applicants, and the constant A is the number of students who are accepted. Y = 0, i.e., acceptance rate is zero, is the asymptote of this function. Since X is a function of time, meaning that application numbers increase as time goes on, acceptance rates will reach 0 when time = infinity.

However, as the number of applicants increases, the amount of time and money required to review applications also increases. So, by the time the acceptance rates drop to 0.1%, the college will be required to allocate all of the colleges resources to reviewing more than 1,000,000 applications in three months. The entire faculty and student body will be recruited to slog through the terrabytes of data in those applications. Temporary workers will be hired by the hundreds and thousands to read through and figure whether applicant #472,784 is, indeed, Harvard, or Yale , or Stanford, etc, material. There will be further temp teams hired to make sure that the reviewers are trustworthy and not agents of other top schools, looking to mess up their rival’s applicant pool and yield. Top colleges will compete with retail giants for temp workers during the holiday season. Unemployment in New England will be nonexistent during college application seasons.

The minimum donation for a kid to be even considered will be $500,000,000. Only kids who are the last known member of their ethnic group in the world, or those who are the only person applying from their country will be considered URMs. Sometimes, the last known native speaker of an almost extinct language will be considered, but not if it is only a dialect. Only unhooked kids who have have only received perfect grades since elementary school will be considered, though there is a myth of a kid who was accepted, despite the fact that they missed a day in third grade because they were suffering from a previously unknown, highly infectious disease, but it has not been confirmed*.

In the weeks before applications deadlines, wireless servers across the Northeast will crash under the pressure of millions of applications being submitted to the Ivies. After acceptances notifications come out, entire wealthy neighborhoods will shut down in respect for the mourning of the candidates who were rejected by all Ivies. Safe houses will be established for high schools GCs to protect their lives from parents, and Ivies will hire armed guards for their admissions offices. The names of kids who are accepted to elite schools will be announced on TV, like they do for winners on big lottery tickets.

Kids who wear sweatshirts of elite colleges will be required to produce proof that they are actually attending that college, otherwise the sweatshirt will be torn off by an angry mob. However, any kid who shows a student ID from one of those colleges will be served free drinks at any bar and coffee shop. People will bring them their kids to bless and ask for autographs. Kids will scoff when their grandparents tell them of times when acceptance rates to HYPSM were 5%, and say sarcastically “next you will tell us that you knew somebody who went to Yale”. Shrines will be built at elite high schools, with the logos and mascots of top colleges, and kids will anonymously leave offerings to the Gods Of College Acceptance.

Then the day will come, when the entire USA realizes that it has been at least two years since anybody can remember seeing a student who was on their way to or from any of the top colleges. A congressional committee will be formed, and they will send a delegation to Princeton, where they will find that the entire campus has been dedicated to reviewing applications between October and March and producing and sending promotional material during the rest of the year. Since they will no longer have the room or resources to actually teach students, they will merely accept students, send out acceptance notices, and publish their acceptance statistics. Further investigations will discover that most of the students who are accepted and make a deposit will spend the next four years walking the country in Princeton sweatshirts, living off of the free food a drinks that people offer them. Other delegations will be sent to other top colleges find similar setups.

*Rumor also has it that the kid recovered fully, and is now attending UCLA, much to the chagrin of their parents, who do not consider public universities to be true universities