College applications are up once AGAIN this year.
It shouldn’t be surprising. Lower admit rates and higher yield percentages are how colleges are evaluated. I’ve said it before and I will keep repeating it: colleges are businesses. Their goals are based on getting a large pool of qualified students to apply (enrollment management), insuring the ones they offer admission to will say yes (yield rate), and building a diverse class of academically strong and talented students (institutional priorities).
This is a complicated, dare I say, “secretive” process. Journalists such as Frank Bruni, Jeffrey Selingo and Ron Lieber, to name a few, have spent most of their career pulling back the curtain on the college admissions process to educate parents and students about what goes on behind the scenes. An, as Mr. Selingo shares in his recent post and in his NYT article, it is only getting worse.
Why? Because the more admission rates decrease, the higher colleges move up in the rankings and the greater the “perceived” prestige. Higher prestige means more applications which means lower admit rates. Lower admit rates encourage students to apply to more colleges, hoping it will increase their chances for admissions. This only serves to support the college’s goals at the expense of the student, perpetuating the cycle and resulting in large waitlists like we’re seeing this admissions cycle.
It’s worth taking a minute to explore why applying to more highly-selective colleges makes things better for the college and worse for the student and it’s partly due to a thing called “institutional priorities”.
In the past, students created a balanced list based on reach, target and likely colleges. The reach colleges were a stretch but possible. But with admit rates below 20-25% it becomes virtually impossible to guesstimate a student’s chances for admission. A new term was created to describe these colleges: “ultra-selective” or “lottery” colleges, based on the premise that the chance of admittance is similar to the chances of winning the lottery.
But here’s the difference. Unlike the lottery, the more colleges you apply to doesn’t up your chances of getting in. College have goals, or “institutional priorities” they need to achieve in terms of building their class and those goals change every year. By applying to more selective colleges, it creates a trickle-down effect resulting in more applications, lower admit rates and increase rankings for more colleges. This isn’t great for students or colleges, as Rick Clark explains.
There is a silver lining.The colleges we’re talking about represent a small percentage of the colleges in the country. There are TONS of colleges out there. It is absolutely possible to build a balanced list based on your academic profile. There are so many that have more generous admit rates or don’t take over 62% of their students in the Early Decision round (I’m talking to you, Middlebury). It’s worth it to take the time to really explore what’s out there.
By the way, this applies to the UC’s as well. I fully understand and support that California families want to send their students to state colleges and universities but that doesn’t mean it HAS to be a UC. There are 23 California State Colleges (NOT just Cal Poly SLO and SDSU) that cost less money than a UC and depending on your major, are even better choices. Few of the UC’s have majors in business. And you won’t find majors in fashion design, applied fire science and management, kinesiology or journalism at a UC.
Colleges have no incentive to change when their system for success is based on making it harder for students to gain admission, so it’s up to us. As this article says: “If you take the time to do your research and keep yourself open to a wide range of colleges and universities, you’re bound to find many college options that will be right for you academically, socially, and financially.”