<p>I attended a college information night at my son's high school this week. An admission's officer from Reed College was speaking. He was asked about the large pool of applicants last year's seniors were competing against and if admissions officers had any info on the upcoming classes numbers. He said that the pool of applicants will remain large for a couple of years and then ease off just a little. The piece of information that I found to be really valuable was when he explained that due to the economy and predictions of less endowment contributions, Reed will be admitting 30 more freshmen this year. That is about 10% more than last year! I wondered if other colleges are doing this to generate more income. This would mean that admissions will not be quite as competitive as last year. Ten percent higher admittance rate = ten percent higher chance of getting into your dream school. Has anyone else heard other colleges say they will be admitting a larger number of freshmen??</p>
<p>Don't count on it exactly. I am sure that will happen (larger acceptance for econ measures), but typically in bad times more people decide to got to college because of the job market pushing up the overall numbers. Of course how it plays out depends. As another thread suggests, public schools may be hit by many more who cannot afford private schools.</p>
<p>LOL: Like most answers: it depends on the college. Obviously Reed has the space. Some colleges are at full capacity (think HYP) with maybe a tiny bit of wiggle room but they probably reserve this for margin of error based on projected matriculations.</p>
<p>For some schools, (again, HYP), admitting more students means more revenue outlay since, in their figures, educating a student is roughly twice the cost of actual tuition and the balance is taken from endowment budgeting. Obviously, not every school faces this.</p>
<p>The increase in admissions is due to the children of the baby boom generation applying to college in the next couple of years. At least, that's what I heard from my school's rumors. Apparently, HS graduating class of 2009 is the largest class to graduate yet, and if colleges don't allow more room, then admittance for most colleges will get more selective, not less. I haven't heard of the economy being a factor until now.</p>
<p>This would definitely depend on the college. Most of the top colleges in the country don't depend on students tuition as the main source of revenue, so I don't think the economy will have much affect on them.</p>
<p>They might accept more students, knowing that some will have to drop out due to parental loss of income, etc.</p>