<p>Applications</a> Drop 20% at Williams as Economy Sours (Update1) - Bloomberg.com </p>
<p>(Printable version link below) </p>
<p>The first post mentioned LACs losing out to Ivy plus research universities. State universities are competition for other LACs: </p>
<p>[College-bound</a> stay closer to home – themorningcall.com](<a href=“http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-a1_5state.6806601mar08,0,6381087.story]College-bound”>http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-a1_5state.6806601mar08,0,6381087.story)</p>
<p>I think it will be even worse next year. A lot of kids applied this year before the really bad economic news hit.</p>
<p>So do all these LACs stink now?</p>
<p>There application, aceeptance percentages, and yields are all going down.</p>
<p>As colleges, those LACs are probably as good as they ever were, but now they are perceived to be an unaffordable luxury service rather than good value for launching into a career.</p>
<p>It might help to keep a little perspective. If Swarthmore admits the same number as last year, their acceptance rate will skyrocket to 16.5%. All of the top LACs had been under 20% for just the first time ever in the last few years.</p>
<p>Most of these LACs have seen historically high application numbers over the last few year with compounding double-digit growth rates in application numbers. </p>
<p>One of the mistakes people make is hanging onto stats from just the last two or three USNEWS college issues instead of looking at the ebbs and flows of longer historic trends.</p>
<p>I need to read my posts before I post. Obviously, I didn’t go to one of these Lacs. :)</p>
<p>I’m just joking in post 4.</p>
<p>The people who still have some funds are dancing in the street. These schools were long the “secret” of a tony set and people who value this kind of education are breathing a sigh of relief that their kids can once again get in.</p>
<p>This recession will go down in history as having reversed a lot of social progress in this Country.</p>
<p>I am just extremely grateful that as a parent with an EFC of $0 that D was in the class of 2008, not '09 or '10, and got into a top LAC.</p>
<p>^^So much for our strategy of keeping our kid back in nursery school so he could compete better once he reached kindergarten. If we had not held him back 14 years ago he would have graduated last year when the economy was better! Curse this recession! It has ruined my master plan.</p>
<p>J/K. We didn’t do that. We let him compete with his age peers in nursery school. He learned to stand up for himself. No one took his pudding and he only shared his crayons if he felt like it. We were so proud.</p>
<p>dstark, I fully got your joke. Well played.</p>
<p>BTW things have really picked up here. Mark to market has everyone in a tizzy. We can help with that. For a nice fee.</p>
<p>I’ve thought about the whole strategy thing too laxtaxi. We overachieving parents with the best laid plans never envisioned this! Families really didn’t have sufficient time to understand the depth of this and retool this year. So next years’ strategies will be interesting to watch.</p>
<p>Grad schools are going to be very hard to get into.</p>
<p>If the top LACs like Williams and Swarthmore are feeling the crunch, the less well known ones must really be hurting. I think this may close the doors on some schools that were dangling by a shoestring financially. I know that many of the top universities, including the ivies have had high admissions numbers this year. </p>
<p>I have heard and read a number of conflicting reports, however. I hear that kids are applying to more schools to keep options open with cost and awards playing a big role in final choice. I also hear that the numbers of apps are down as the the number fin aid apps are up. This is a big group of kids this year, I understand. The colleges must be jumpy as their old statistical models may not hold up well this year.</p>
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<p>I expect the LAC yield rates will drop as well. So they’ll either have to accept more applicants or go to the wait list to a greater extent than they have in the past.</p>
<p>I think most LACs will make very few adjustments this year. Then
they’ll evaluate and make them for next year. We may see some
late season adjustments to attract some fence sitters but not too
many. It’s the lower level LACs that may have to take more drastic
action - they’ll lose more apps to the states. Their probably already
scouring the apps for low scoring full payers. A full payer with an
1100 or above SAT might be surprised at the level of LAC he or she
can be accepted at. Unfortunatley, we wont be able to tell until we
see the SAT scores.</p>
<p>speedo, I agree. I had seen this technique used (personal observation only) by some private schools that gap a lot. I know quite a few kids with plenty of Cs and a couple of Ds on their transcripts who were accepted to lower tier (by CC standards) private LACs bc they paid sticker price. I even know a couple of such students at large OOS public Us. Now I think that we will see more of this. I guess college choices will be more within the grasp of the wealthy than ever before. That is nothing new, but it will be more magnified, and many more of the lower and middle income B students will find college options much more limited. JMO.</p>
<p>My D applied to 5 privates at 2 RD apps have dropped considerably
at one other ED apps jumped hugely but RD’s have dropped slightly.
Another school got 5% more RD apps this year and the last we have
no info on. I don’t know what to make of all that. I suspect even for
schools who have slight rises in apps, when all is said and done, their
yield rates will have dropped. In addition to the economy, we seem to
have reached some sort of common app threshold.</p>
<p>I bet we are not alone in looking at the college selection process this year as “one year at a time.” That is, we have talked to DS about the idea that he can begin at his first choice school, but a transfer may be in his future if things take a turn for the worse. For right now, we are still ok (though some applications were turned in late in the process while we got comfortable with this idea after the October drop).</p>
<p>For the past seven years, the combined acceptances at the top 20 LACs have remained stable at around 26,000. However, the number of applications has increased from about 82,000 to 113,000. There were 10,000 more applications for the Class of 2012 than for the Class of 2011 … more than 1,000 at Williams only. </p>
<p>Do you think that it was easy to be admitted at a top LAC in 2006 or in 2007?</p>
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<p>Happy days are here again (nice depression era song) :)</p>