This “broken system” is because of the vicious cycle the colleges have helped foster. Here’s how it goes…
Start → Review applications “holistically” - which on the surface sounds like a great idea because after all who wants a whole college filled with just high stat kids? But in reality this makes the process highly uncertain for those high-stat kids, and non-transparent for all applicants.
Result → Applicants apply to a much larger set of schools in the early round because they don’t know who will say yes, who will yield protect, who will “shape” them out, who was having a bad day when reading their essay, etc.
Result → Colleges start seeing applications from lots of students that they hadn’t seen before, and now have to worry about who’s actually interested and who’s using them as a backup in case they don’t get into their dream school.
Result → Defer an ever larger pool of applicants, looking to shake off the loosely-committed and those that get accepted elsewhere and withdraw (or in some cases, offer an ED2 to separate the truly committed from the rest)
Result → Applicants get frustrated, share their stories, and next year’s batch applies to even more schools to hedge their bets.
Rinse and repeat…