<p>Chaoticcranium, you would think that the colleges would accept more people in proportion to the increase of more high school seniors, but I don't think that they intend to do that now. But, they may do that in the future.</p>
<p>That's the issue, right there. These schools have huge endowments but together, can't even seat the top 1% of SAT scorers. These schools hold many of society's most valuable intellectual resources. These kids ALSO constitute a valuable resource. It is society's obligation to see that all of our best and brightest get access to the best resources. That doesn't happen when post secondary education is left to react in a free market environment, subject to the laws of supply, demand, scarcity and greed.</p>
<p>It's not a matter of can't but won't...they are all private institutions (most of them) and can do whatever they want. And it just so happens that "whatever they want" means appearing highly selective so as to maintain their appeal to high schoolers. These schools are pleased with higher applicant pools and lower acceptances...they don't really care about the people they screw over.</p>
<p>C'mon guys, think, where will they hold classes, where will the students sleep and eat, where will the professors come from? And more importantly, when the number of seniors begins to decline, what will they do with the new facilities that were built? If you just stuff in more students, it will dilute the experience that is a part of what makes the school so attractive.</p>
<p>Honestly I think that classes sizes could be increased modestly, because I believe that even when the total number of natural born seniors begins to decline, that there will be plenty of immigrants and internationals to support those increased sizes. I also think that there is definitely a higher percentage of grads who look on a selective school as a realistic goal. What I mean is, when I graduated from high school almost 30 years ago, many fewer kids outside the NE even considered going out of state for school, much less a selective school - the country is a smaller place these days.
By the time the machinery of a bureaucracy as large as a univeristy can get around to substantially increasing class size, the glut will have decreased - how long is it taking Princetion to implement their class size increase?</p>
<p>This "increased number of seniors" argument is absolutely ridiculous. The reality is more kids are becoming competitive as more emphasis is being placed on a good education... duh. That is the reason for increased applicant pools... more students performing better on the SAT, more students achieving high GPAS, more students being compartmentalized and conceiving the notion that "I HAVE TO GO TO A GOOD COLLEGE TO ACHIEVE SUCCESS."</p>
<p>So you're telling me that the baby boom has had no effect on the increased competitiveness in college admissions?</p>
<p>yeah, i mean, "more kids" are getting higher GPAs and "more kids" are getting higher SAT because...there are more kids.</p>
<p>The kids will live in dorms build by their massive endowments. Instead of "Masters" handing out money for students to play with, they could actually seat a few more geniuses. These are private institutions--quasi busineses, if you will---and as such,they can do what they darn well wish. So could AT and T, Microsoft, etc., etc. Collectively, they hoard a national resource all smart kids should be able to access, for society's benefit. That's why these institutions operating in a "free market" is detrimental not only to the "rejected geniuses" among us but to all of society.</p>
<p>my own extremely selfish point of view is that they should increase the enrollment by 1 person me :)</p>
<p>in my dreams lol :) :)</p>
<p>I have a prediction: all CC RD applicants to Dartmouth will get in.</p>
<p>Seriously, I'm like related to Nostradamus or something. ;)</p>
<p>Come now, cruncha22. While I can understand while you might be frustrated by the college admissions process, I believe you take things a bit too far.</p>
<p>First off, you talk about the elite institutions collectively hoarding a national resource that all smart kids should be able to access. I believe that's a nonsequitur. If Dartmouth is 'hoarding' anything (if 'hoarding' is indeed the right word), it is their own resources, and since it is their own resources, they have the right to hoard it or do whatever else they want with it. There is nothing that says that Dartmouth is compelled to allow all smart kids, or in fact any kids at all, to access such resources at all. That is, after all, what ownership means. What is ownership of resources, after all, if it doesn't mean control of the resources? I don't have any obligation to allow anybody to use my own private collection of books that I bought with my own money, although my collection could be construed as an educational resource. </p>
<p>I believe you also make the fallacy of understanding how what the value of ownership and of what property rights and of the free-market in general is designed to do. Private ownership encourages the development of capital resources by allowing the benefits to accrue to you. When you are forced to share things you own, that decreases the incentive for you to accumulate and maintain those things in the first place. There's a popular saying that goes "Nobody ever washes a rental car", and a corollary is "Nobody ever bothers to properly maintain a rented house". The Soviet Union under Communism as an economic system failed for many reasons, one major reason being that since nobody owned anything, the incentive for personal initiative and proper care was lost. If Dartmouth never had control over its own educational resources, then Dartmouth would never have build up those resources the way it did in the first place.</p>
<p>You also forget that while Dartmouth is a free-market entity, so are all these 'rejected geniuses'. Specifically, if from this point forward, all geniuses decided that they won't go to Dartmouth, then eventually, Dartmouth would cease to be considered a top-flight school. Dartmouth is free to accept or reject whoever they want, but everybody else is also free to go to Dartmouth or not, or even whether to apply to Dartmouth or not. It's a two-way street. </p>
<p>And finally, I think you actually ran upon the secret to understanding what is really going on, if perhaps implicitly. You talk about the free-market as subject to scarcity. Bingo. That's exactly what the free-market is designed to apportion. The fact is, no matter how many geniuses there are, there is always an incentive to differentiate between the "genius geniuses" and the "lesser geniuses". This incentive is inherent to the competitive nature of mankind, and can never be stopped. Every human being carries an inherent sense of having to prove that he/she is better than others. It is in fact this perpetual striving to be better and better that spurs people to achieve great things. No matter how many geniuses you have, whether there be 10 or 10 million, those geniuses will inevitably begin to differentiate amongst themselves to see who amongst that group is better than the others. </p>
<p>Let me give you an example. Take MIT. We all agree that MIT is an elite school, full of techno-geniuses. Yet do the classes give everybody all A's? No. But why not - they're all techno-geniuses, right? In fact, almost all MIT classes are graded on a curve, which means that, by definition, some people in the class will get a better grade than others. Hence, this serves to differentiate between the super-geniuses and just the 'normal' geniuses. Nor is this unique to MIT. Many other universities, both public and private, and not just in the US but throughout the world, use curved grading systems. </p>
<p>Or let me give you another analogy. You and I know far more about medicine than a typical doctor of a 100 years ago. So does that mean that we deserve to get our MD degree's? Of course not. But why not? Because what it means to be a doctor is far far more exacting and demanding than what it means to be a doctor 100 years ago. You have to know far more about medicine today to be a qualified doctor than doctors in the past. </p>
<p>By the same token, the definition of being a genius has changed as well. Just because you score in the top 1% of your SAT score today, by itself, does not mean that you are automatically entitled to a spot in a top university, or any university at all, for that matter, even though it might have entitled you to a spot in the past, just like me knowing more about medicine than doctors of 100 years ago does not automatically entitle me to a medical-school seat. The bar has been raised, and you can't just score in the top 1% of your SAT to get into a top school. You have to have other qualifications as well. Just like me getting into medical school today is a far more exacting process than it was 100 years ago. And that's exactly the way it should be. As times change, the standards ought to change. </p>
<p>I think the probable fallacy is that you think that these elite schools are somehow not only 'hoarding' educational resources (which they have every right to do), but that they are somehow taking away these resources elsewhere - the zero sum game. If this happens, it is rare, and is counteracted by the resources that they 'lose' to society. These educational resources were built by themselves. These institutions didn't "take away" research labs and libraries that had existed beforehand. These research labs and libraries didn't exist at all before they built them. They didn't steal them from anybody - they built it themselves. Nor can you seriously accuse them of stealing away stud professors from society. For the most part, these elite institutions were the ones who minted those professors in the first place (either as undergrad students, grad-students, or post-docs). Without these elite institutions, a lot of these star profs wouldn't even exist. It's like if you live in a shack, and your neighbor moves into the shack next-door, and then dutifully builds that shack until it is a mansion, and then you blame your neighbor for somehow "stealing" your mansion, when that mansion was never yours in the first place.</p>
<p>Well said.</p>
<p>hear hear :)</p>
<p>Sakky,The fundamental disagreement between us is that I believe knowledge is a national resource that should not be treated like a commodity in a free market setting. We aren't going to agree on that. I believe it is in society's best interest to see that it is shared, not hoarded like any other material possesion acquired via competition. I believe these schools are as out of hand as unregulated businesses were in the early twentieth century.<br>
You make a great case for capitalism, and I agree with what you say, except when it comes to this arena. I am a pretty harsh laissez-fairest myself in every other realm and rarely an advocate of regulation/government intervention.
And yes, the applicants collectively constitute a national resource themselves, and should thus be nurtured, developed and given access to the best we have to offer.</p>
<p>Besides, ultimately colleges are concerned with their OWN ranking. The more selective they are, the higher their ranking is. Spending their money on new buildings/dorms/resources decreases their endowment, which will decrease their ranking. Yes, the rankings are worthless and empty, considering some of the criteria (number of donating alumni? that means that if ten people at one school donated a dollar each, that school is ranked higher than a school where ONE person donated TEN dollars...or, indeed, where ONE person donated a MILLION dollars), but colleges know that some kids do consider a college's ranking a very important factor. I think that BOTH an increased number of students in general, and an increased amount of students who believe that a college education - specifically, a college education from a prestigious college - will help them to succeed, are making this THE most competitive admissions round yet. There's nothing we can do about it...</p>
<p>yes there is ... a call to arms.. lets march on all the top 50 admissions offices in the country and hold round the clock vigils.. then of course, we could just bribe a person in the admin office to send accepted letters to everyone who applied... now that would be funny</p>
<p>the above post was a joke... sometimes people dont get when I'm being sarcastic</p>
<p>jesus christ if people think that's serious, they shouldn't be on this forum lol.</p>
<p>or we can write notes threatening the adcoms with death, add a few random chinese and cyrillic characters, tape them to rocks and throw them through the windows of admissions offices. "ACCEPT ME OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES. THIS IS YOUR WARNING." lol.</p>