<p>Applications</a> Drop 20% at Williams as Economy Sours (Update1) - Bloomberg.com</p>
<p>The economy was surely partly to blame, but this article ignores the fact that, for the first time last year, Williams required a Williams-specific essay, which surely accounted for much of the decline -- lots of not-terribly-interested "what the heck" type applicants probably decided not to apply as a result ...</p>
<p>which is good for us who did =)</p>
<p>Maybe one good thing about the economic downturn is that it might filter out those "what the heck" [well put] applicants who just shotgun a lot of schools, rolling the dice. This filtration process (if, in fact, it exists) may allow the truly motivated applicants to get a bit better reading by admissions, thus giving their overall profiles a better showing.</p>
<p>It would benefit the student, but not the schools if every school had a specific essay. Then you would see admit rates rise and relieve some of the stress on the process.</p>
<p>Do you know how true this is for other major liberal arts colleges?</p>
<p>jbuehler: I know that Wesleyan said that this year they had the most applicants in the school's history. From what the office of admissions stated in my early write, there were more than 10,000+ students applying this year. So I guess Wesleyan was an exception this year.</p>
<p>Any thoughts on this affects the number of international applicants?</p>
<p>I heard Williams only accepts 5% of international students a year. fml</p>
<p>Letter from Director of Admissions regarding drop in applications</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/opinion/lweb06college.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Nesbitt&st=cse[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/opinion/lweb06college.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Nesbitt&st=cse</a></p>
<p>He makes the argument well that with the number of applicants down, selectivity actually went up, as the applicant pool is the “most talented and diverse”. </p>
<p>Larger numbers of rejected applicants does not make a college more selective. At some point, it does the opposite, as the possibility of selecting just those applicants who would benefit best from what a single school has to offer, and have them attend, actually goes down, not up.</p>