<p>ED allows schools to offer admission to people who have virtually promised to go, if accepted. That helps keep the schools yield up. People who have to compare the financial aid offers from multiple schools are left to scrap it out during RD.</p>
<p>ED has far more advantages for the colleges that it does for the applicants.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That’s great! Who is supposed to be making and enforcing all of these rules? States couldn’t do it. There are no organizations powerful enough or comprehensive enough to make it happen (maybe the NCAA could pull it off . . . at least for Division I schools), and if there were you can bet there would be an interesting antitrust case to litigate. So it would have to be the Feds. That’s, um, a pretty major expansion of federal controls over private or state-associated institutions . . . it’s something that is waaaaaaay out of favor in Congress for the time being. Even if John Boehner were not about to replace Nancy Pelosi, I somehow doubt the Dems would waste their political capital on refereeing college admissions disputes among the 20-30K families each year who would care about any of these proposed rules. (And anyway, THEIR kids get in under the current system. So you might have a hard time explaining what’s wrong with it to a Congressman.)</p>
<p>I wonder if there are even 20K kids who apply to more than 10 schools in the first place.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No they don’t. Or at least, I didn’t get an application with my letter - though I do realize they send out some applications. But if Harvard really cared that much about money and acceptance rates, it would do a lot more than what they’re doing now.</p>
<p>Shravas,</p>
<p>They do send out the app with the letter to some kids. My S received one late Summer. We tossed it into the milk crate and I recycled it last week at the town public works. Maybe I should have kept it and had it framed, instead? 
WRT admissions not possibly being a profit center, 30K apps * $75 = $2.25M each year. That will fund at least 15 or so full time US employees annually. If they use electronic submissions, they certainly can have the computer do most of the weeding. Just like Citibank does for credit cards. Just my 2 cents.</p>
<p>Did I hear on the average they spend 20 minutes per applicant? That translates to $225 hourly rate. Is that the rate for a top-ish laywer?</p>
<p>You may have heard it, but it isn’t true. Every applicant to Harvard is discussed in a regional committee. Most applications are read by multiple people. That may be how long it takes for the primary contact to give it the first read. They then have to write up a narrative arguing on behalf of admitting that student. It’s an adversarial process, like a courtroom – everyone argues on behalf of their students.</p>
<p>“That will fund at least 15 or so full time US employees annually.”</p>
<p>Yet the admissions and financial aid offices employ about 40 full-timers, IIRC. Then you have to keep the lights on, hire student tour guides, fund travel, design and mail the brochures, etc…and you will see very rapidly that the “profit center” idea is absurd.</p>
<p>How many applications are there? About 30,000? Let’s assume the most work is done between Jan 1 and March 31 or 64 business days. That is about 450 applications a day for 40 full time employees. 11 applications per person per day. If they work 11 hours a day each applicant gets an hour. 20 minutes doesn’t sound so off to me.</p>
<p>According to your calculations, the estimate you heard was off by about 200%. I consider 200% to be a pretty big error, but that’s subjective. YMMV.</p>
<p>Not in the matter of this nature where a lot of hand waiving goes into estimating. What we are discussing here is whether Admissions is a money maker. Someone said enormous money. 200% off, if true, means half enormous, that is still enormous compared to the claim that it is not making any money. </p>
<p>We don’t know how many hours they work and still maintain their best. When lawyers say $225/hr, I assume it is a highly focussed hour not that I would know. For half of that, we get a second tier lawyer, I believe. Still pretty high don’t you think?</p>
<p>^The lawyer’s hour is not a highly focused hour, I guarantee it. Hanna is correct, not only are applicants read by multiple readers, but there’s an enormous amount of work and expense in addition to the mere reading of applications.</p>
<p>Hate to admit it, folks, but $225/hour wouldn’t get you much of a lawyer in Boston. Maybe a poppin’-fresh one at a good firm, but probably not. A partner, of Harvard caliber, would be at least $700/hour, and up (way up) from there.</p>
<p>mathmom, are we now talking about overheads? I am sure lawyers will also tell you $225/hr has to pay what goes into it not just man hour, renting a prestigeous space, advertising, electical bill, insurance…all the other good stuff.</p>
<p>The point, if I may repeat, is with $75 per application are they making money when huge numer of application pours in? I will say Wouldn’t be surprised. If I say so and so is wealthy, worth $10 billions, some one rebutts, “No, you are 200% off. So and so is only $5 billion dollars worth?” You are the MATHmom.</p>
<p>"Someone said enormous money. 200% off, if true, means half enormous, that is still enormous compared to the claim that it is not making any money. "</p>
<p>200% off, in this case, means off by a factor of three: 20 minutes versus 60 minutes per application. I got both the 20 minutes and 60 minutes figures from you.</p>
<p>But if you thought we were talking about the total dollars rather than the minutes per application, how can $2.25 million dollars be “enormous money” when we’re talking about an organization with a budget of over $1 billion? It’s like saying that Microsoft makes enormous money from the employee cafeterias. In context, it’s pennies.</p>
<p>Anyway, I didn’t challenge your math before, but the application fees have to support the admissions office all year round, not just for 64 business days. They have hundreds of visitors a day, every day, year round. They give tours, information sessions, and interviews to tens of thousands of people. They recalculate annual financial aid awards for all 4000+ enrolled students on financial aid, responding to every little change in family income. So the $225/hour figure has no relationship to reality, unless you think that those 40 full-time staff members should be donating their time 9 months out of the year.</p>
<p>60 minutes assuming they work 11 hours a day. Do they? If they spend 6 hours reviewing the applications, that’s clser to 30 minutes. </p>
<p>Wouldn’t they have to maintain the office whether they accept 5 % or 90%? Roughly speaking? Wouldn’t that mean any extra applicant is beneficial financially speaking except the extra time it takes to review the individual application?</p>
<p>WOW JHS $700/hr? Had no idea. Is that why there are so many lwasuits?</p>
<p>“Wouldn’t that mean any extra applicant is beneficial financially speaking”</p>
<p>Oh, sure, extra applicants are financially beneficial, because the admissions officers aren’t actually paid by the hour. Throwing a quarter in a fountain on campus is financially beneficial, too. But that’s not the claim I was responding to – we were talking about the admissions office being a “profit center” and “enormous money.” Which it isn’t. </p>
<p>We’re talking about amounts of money that can’t possibly sway the policies of an institution as large and rich as Harvard. Whatever its motivation for seeking ~1000 additional applicants each year, it can’t be to get $75 out of them. At the margins, that’s an extra 10 grand or so. That makes as much sense as Microsoft hiring more engineers so that they’ll spend money at the employee cafeteria. That’s not how the institution is set up to make money. And the leadership at Microsoft, and Harvard, literally doesn’t think in those dollar amounts.</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard sending out marketing pamphlets</li>
</ol>
<p>I have a lawyer friend, who once said “you can never get smug about a full waiting room, someday it might be empty” </p>
<ol>
<li> Sending out pamphlets to the “qualified”.<br></li>
</ol>
<p>All they get from College board is the standardized test scores. They dont know and at that point cant know, if your GPA, ECs etc are unusually good, or unusually bad, relative. It makes sense for them to send out to pamphlets (which are cheap, I guess) to folks who MIGHT possibly qualify.</p>
<ol>
<li> Limiting number of apps. That would be very unfair to the “complex” kids. My DD sent out 9 apps (and would have sent 10, but her safety had a late app deadline, and she got acceptances earlier). Its simply too much of a crap shoot. And its not just the tippy top schools. Of her 6 match schools, she got into 3, and was WL at two. One that she as WLed at, and one that rejected her, were ones we thought were more likely than some of her other matches based on numbers alone.<br></li>
</ol>
<p>Limiting the number of apps would be especially unfair to unbalanced kids like my DD, who had very high SAT’s, a low GPA (but at a tippy top public HS), okay EC’s and a great essay. Its even more of a crapshoot for them.</p>
<p>Our HS DID make us pay for transcripts past the first few, and of course we paid app fees.</p>
<p>BBD, We aren’t talking about brochures. We are talking about marketing that goes further with a three-page letter addressed to the individual HS kid from Harvard that states “You have what it takes…” Enclosed with the letter are application forms. Kids who are not in the know raise their hope. The question is Shall we call those kids and parents naive and just dismiss them or Shall we call Harvard not up to the high ethical standard we hope our higher institutions practice? In calling them not ethical, we are assuming that Harvard is trying to lower their admission rate and possibly also make some money while doing it.</p>
<p>“We are talking about marketing that goes further with a three-page letter addressed to the individual HS kid from Harvard that states “You have what it takes…” Enclosed with the letter are application forms.”</p>
<p>I am pretty sure my kid, who had pretty decent SAT’s and went to TJ, did not get that. If some kids with zero chance got that, I’d like to know their numbers.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Honestly, I don’t see any real difference between a glossy brochure and a letter that says, “Dear Billy, We think you have what it takes here at Harvard.” I don’t see why one is any more ethically suspicious or suspect than the other. I think they are both fine. </p>
<p>And I don’t think you’re listening to Hanna and JHS when they tell you that the fee for a lawyer is far more than the $225 / hour you’re talking about, AND that the type of money to be made in the admissions office is truly spare change from Harvard et al’s point of view. Long run for a short slide, as they say. </p>
<p>Anyway, why shouldn’t a private institution mail out whatever it wants to as many people as it wants to mail it out to, on whatever criteria they decide? If Harvard wants to mail personalized, calligraphied invitations to everyone who breaks a 1200 on the SAT, why should they be stopped? And I realize Harvard itself is not an ED institution, but what’s wrong with an institution having ED – and for that matter, what if they admitted 95% of the class that way? If you don’t care for that kind of policy, or think it favors wealthy kids (which it undoubtedly does) - then don’t apply there, no one is forcing you to.</p>