All Ivies up BIG - Change Strategy?

<p>Princeton has announced revised application numbers for the class of 2009.
A 19% increase.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2005/02/04/news/11901.shtml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2005/02/04/news/11901.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Jym,</p>

<p>No problem! Out of high school I applied to HYP, Duke, Brown, Columbia, Northwestern, and Michigan. I got into the last three and Brown told me I could enter as a mid-year. It was my first choice but I didnt want to not start school with the rest of my class, so I went to Columbia, largely for the prestige. I remember a girl during accepted students weekend choosing between Columbia and Dartmouth, and I remember wishing I had that option.</p>

<p>I went to Columbia, gave it a shot, was very active in student government and community service. I also got to know my professors really well. But after visiting friends at Princeton, Brown, Harvard, Bucknell, etc I felt like I was missing out on the traditional college experience, which I loved when I visited some of these schools.</p>

<p>My GPA was a 3.35 first semester, so I didnt think transferring was an option, but as friend told me it was realistic. In spite of what my guidance counselor said, I applied and got into Duke, Dartmouth, Brown, and Harvard (Didnt visit Dartmouth or Duke). After college visit part two, and lots of thinking, I went with my heart and chose Dartmouth. </p>

<p>Dartmouth transfers were from everywhere. About 25% I would say were from other highly ranked schools. </p>

<p>Part of the reason I am so passionate about people applying to a good range of schools is that I feel having choices is critical. Looking back I probably would have also applied to Dartmouth (of course), Penn, Cornell, and maybe Williams out of high school, places I didnt consider at that point. Its hard to know in high school what a place is like, I didnt apply to Dartmouth for example because I thought it was "in the middle of nowhere", only after learning more did I realize how much there is to do in that environment and how amazing such a community focused experience could be for me.</p>

<p>It's interesting that Princeton (and other elites) are expanding class size when student populations are declining in the next decade. ("Sometimes precipitously" according to the New York Times) </p>

<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/05/education/05college.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/05/education/05college.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>By the way Slipper, Michigan's application pool also expanded slightly this year...by 15%-20%. The final numbers are not out yet, but so far, it stands at 17%. So it is not just the private schools that are experiencing a surge in applications.</p>

<p>I am worried about Ivies expanding class sizes. I don't want my kids in 25 years to go to huge schools! :(</p>

<p>It is inevitable. Harvard, Columbia and Stanford all used to have fewer than 5,000 undergrads in 1990. Now, they all have close to 7,000 undergrads. But big can be done well. Some big schools like Penn, Cornell and Michigan pull it off nicely.</p>

<p>When I visited Cornell, I hated its size. Some of the buildings look like airplane hangers. 7,000 students is one thing, but it won't be nice when Princeton turns into UCLA. I guess the Ivies cannot expand their class sizes indefinitely, though.</p>

<p>Some schools are going to grow a lot over the years. Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Northwestern, Duke, Columbia to name a few. I would not be surprised if all of those schools were to one day have over 10,000 undergrads. Among the publics, the Cal and Texas school will also expend, which is scary because they are already huge.</p>

<p>:eek: Yikes!</p>

<p>Don't worry Tore, that will not affect the quality of education. Schools like Harvard, Stanford and Columbia have the funding to make education every bit as good, no matter how big they become. But at the end of the day, the US population is going to reach 500 million by 2050. Furthermore, more people around the World can afford sending their children to study abroad. In other words, application pools are going to continue to grow. Unless Harvard and other top schools want to have accaptance rates in the 5% range, they are going to have to increase the size of their classes.</p>

<p>Greenshirt, student populations may decline in the coming years, but the demand for top universities will remain strong. I do not foresee a decline in the demand for the Ivy League and other elite universities.</p>

<p>"Your friend's applying to Northwestern and Cornell makes sense since those colleges have a lot in common and attract similar students"</p>

<p>Not really....NW shares applications with U-Mich, Brown and G-tech. Cornell's applicants usually apply to Harvard, UPenn and Stanford. The Ivy bound students tend to apply to other Ivies, in general.</p>

<p>Not really Golubb, many students who apply to Cornell are interested in Engineering, and those tend to apply to schools like Cal, Carnegie Mellon, Michigan, MIT, Northwestern, Princeton and Stanford. The Ivy League is not that good in Engineering.</p>

<p>"Unless Harvard and other top schools want to have accaptance rates in the 5% range, they are going to have to increase the size of their classes."</p>

<p>Why wouldn't they want acceptance rates in the 5% range? If the top schools remain in high demand and also maintain their reputations, they would have every reason to maintain their sizes. To make things easier on themselves, they could increase their number of adcoms or streamline their admisisons procedures such as by not reviewing at all the applications of students not meeting certain criteria.</p>

<p>But it is already happening Northstarmom. Princeton, Columbia, Harvard and Stanford had Freshman classes of 1,000-1500 students in the 80s and early 90s. They are now approaching 1,500-2,000, and the caliber of their students is actually improving. So its not like they are sacrificing on quality. It is simply that the number of talented students going to college increases annually. I forsee those schools having anywhere between 2,000 and 3,000 Freshmen in the next decade or so.</p>

<p>You know, I really really like my reaches (Dartmouth, Cornell, Yale, Columbia, Penn, G-town). I call them reaches because NO one is guaranteed acceptance at those schools. But even though I was so enamored with them, I wondered why I should apply. In the end, my mother convinced me - not because she desperately wants to slap an Ivy sticker on the back of her car or anything - but because of math, or logic. She figures that since I was deferred from Penn ED, rather than rejected, I could very well be a marginal case; a fence-sitter. She said that if I applied to one school comparable to Penn, it'd be a 50/50 chance of acceptance - rather, I could go either way. If I apply to five such schools, I now have FIVE chances to go either way.</p>

<p>And yes I know it is NOT, by any means, a 50/50 thing. Just that in her mind, if someone is on the fringes of acceptance and of rejection, then applying to more schools increases the chance of acceptance to ONE of them. That said, I would not be surprised in the slighest if I do not get into any of these schools. So even though I applied to ten schools (in addition to those above: Tufts, NYU-Stern double legacy, William and Mary, and already accepted to Rutgers...lol...yeah i'm going to there i swear) I don't think that having so many reaches is bad. It's not like I'm unhealthily delusional and confident that I'm getting all big envelopes or anything. So I don't really see the harm in it.</p>