<p>Its definitely not your imagination; it is harder for kids to get into college nowadays, because colleges deliberately game the admissions process for their own financial & reputational gain. Admissions offices are now run by marketing people who aggressively promote their schools to kids for whom they have zero intention of admitting. </p>
<p>The objective? To bolster the schools sexiness/exclusivity by deliberately engineering a low admit rate. A low admit rate elevates the schools ranking in the eyes of alumni & potential applicants. A low admit rate also impacts the schools ability to borrow money cheaply, as bond-rating agencies will weigh a schools potential to attract future students (i.e. future revenue). </p>
<p>Yep. My very bright S2 knew that glorious Harvard packet with the embossed, heavy linen paper was a sales job. Kid had a wilting GPA and he could see that Harvard was not going to be rolling out the welcome mat. </p>
<p>But do the math. Harvard sends him $5 worth of lovely stationery – if the kid/parent bites, that means a $50 application fee, for a net of $45. Rinse and repeat across thousands of applicants. And all those “never seriously considered” candidates also up the refusal rate, making Harvard seem ever more selective. </p>
<p>Conspiracy theories? On an older thread, someone blamed rising tuition costs on the cost of all those marketing materials.
Colleges aren’t tougher to get into because they are gaming. They are tougher to get into because the number of highly qualified applicants exploded. You’d have to see the tough and tight competition to get this. You’d also need to see the huge % of totally out-of-range kids who get dropped in the first round, the dreamers. Whose fault is that? Whose fault is it that some kids apply to 10 super-competitive colleges, thinking that a 10% chance means at least one of them will accept them- despite poor gpa, scores and an inability to pull a good app package together? Many of these are the same kids who can’t read a college’s web site to figure out key info- then come to a forum to ask. They insist they are “in range” because, after all, some lower-performing kids (athletes, legacies, faculty kids) got in. They spread myths about ECs not mattering and brag about how great their essays are- and get other high school kids to chance them.
It’s the college’s fault? Really?</p>
<p>Interesting article. I’m not sure I’m in favor of the change in strategy of UChicago. I felt before that, even if it fell short, it had a pretty sure sense of what it was trying to do. It also didn’t apologize for being quirky, and seemed to be a place that was more willing than other top schools to take a risk on a <em>diamond in the rough</em> type of student. Now it is broadening its appeal to attract students such as Ms. Lozinski who would have turned her nose up at it a few years ago because its admissions rate wasn’t low enough. Great.</p>
<p>@lookingforward, I don’t see it so much as a “conspiracy” as a self-reinforcing rat race:</p>
<p>-> colleges aggressively recruit
→ more kids apply to college
→ colleges’ admit rate goes down
→ Kids seeing lower admit rate feel they need to apply to more schools as a hedge…
→ more kids apply to college
→ colleges’ admit rate goes down
→ Kids seeing lower admit rate feel they need to apply to more schools as a hedge…
→ more kids apply to college
→ colleges’ admit rate goes down
→ Kids seeing lower admit rate feel they need to apply to more schools as a hedge…</p>
<p>The Common Ap makes it easier for kids to apply to multiple schools, exacerbating the situation</p>
<p>Hmmm…blame the colleges or blame highschool kids? Seems pretty obvious to me. </p>
<p>Of course the responsibility falls on colleges- big budgets, big business. I work and profit from this industry! Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea the lengths they go to to play the rankings game? The sad thing is so much of what they do has nothing at all to do with improving education. </p>
<p>Universities are the ones investing in massive marketing that creates this stupid mania and have the most to gain. They are the ones playing along with, instead of rallying against, USNWR and company, which only serves to add fuel to the obsession with branding, selectivity and the whole “college admissions industry” that has been built up around it. They are the ones boosting tuition to unrealistic levels for most families, only to discount it in unpredictable ways so that so many parents insist kids apply to far more schools to hopefully hit the fin aid jackpot. </p>
<p>Supposedly HYPs and company are looking to reach to and encourage diversity with their market blitz. The sad thing is many many kids in this ‘diversity pool’ simply do not have the knowledge and insight that people on CC take for granted. Not everyone has educated and resourceful parents, or great counsellors, or informal access to ‘word on the street’ about college admissions. Many kids and their families may be first generation, or in small towns, or they go to a crappy school with little serious guidance counselling. They may not even know anyone with a real university education beyond their teachers who may have attended the local college. The kid might be a big fish in a tiny pond within his or her family, school or town, and no one around him or her has a clue how they stack up against others across the entire country! Not everyone is as savvy and internet resourceful as you. And even if armed with knowledge, most people don’t have a clue about statistics…it’s why the lottery business is also very popular.</p>
<p>Alice Lloyd
Ozarks
Florida Memorial
Berea
CSU San Bernardino
CSU East Bay
CUNY Lehman
Liberty
Savannah State
CUNY Baruch
CUNY Hunter
Johnson C. Smith
Bacone
Mississippi Valley State</p>
<p>Yes, some of the USNWR acceptance rates are suspect (seems that the CSUs’ acceptance rates differ depending on whether you use USNWR, CB, or CSU itself – but even the CSUs that admit everyone with minimum CSU eligibility have acceptance rates significantly below 100%, which is odd since a student or guidance counselor can easily determine whether a student will be admitted to such a CSU by checking the CSU eligibility chart before applying).</p>
<p>@ucbalum, of course low admit rate isn’t the only criterion that increases a school’s sexy image. The school has to have a critical size. Let’s not pretend that potential applicants aren’t impressed by a school’s image of exclusivity. </p>
<p>The USNWR rat race has spawned a pathology.</p>
<p>I do place a fair share of blame on the kids themselves and their families. </p>
<p>To break down this issue, we’d have to take into account multiple factors. Including how easy it is to fall prey to marketing tactics in our daily lives, how easily we accept myths and how few people do any critial thinking. We like to be able to point fingers away from ourselves. We like to blame the colleges or any other big machines rather than stepping up to our responsibilities. And, we like articles from NYT, WSJ and others that purport to digest a complex issue for us. As if.</p>
<p>The University of Chicago is out of control at our house. D is not applying and has never showed interest but they have sent her a t shirt and so many mailings. Crazy.</p>
<p>@lookingforward, I would agree with you if colleges are for-profit institutions. I am all for people vetting before they buy commercial products. Colleges are differnet. They hang “non-profit” sign commending respect and trust. In fact, they are so respected and trusted, we don’t ask them pay taxes on their what should be an astronomical profit. They then turn around act as any commercial company would do to make profits. Either they have to give up non-profit or act responsibly.</p>
<p>If someone is stupid enough to treat direct marketing efforts as personal invitations, they deserve what they get. When the NYTimes sends me materials asking me to subscribe, I understand that they don’t want ME, specifically – just another subscriber. Why it’s any different with colleges is beyond me.</p>
<p>It’s like the Wobegon effect too: everyone is “above average”. It’s so tempting for students to think that, even with absurdly low acceptance rates, they’ll be the one accepted. </p>
<p>I also place the blame on the prents too. The parents have been promoting their delightful tyke all his/her life. Of course she/he will get into the school! Parents are so much more involved in the process now than they once were and kids are fulfilling their parents’ dream as well. Not every parent went to an ivy league back in the day, so now, when their child is applying, the decision go for that to happen is that much stronger.</p>
<p>The question is not whether some parents and students will go to great lengths to ignore reasonable probability in pursuit of unattainable dreams; that is, always has been, and always will be true.</p>
<p>The question is whether colleges and universities are actively encouraging such behavior. If so, why? Colleges admission officers often say defend these marketing initiatives as an effort to reach diverse students who otherwise wouldn’t apply/attend. It may be fair to ask, then, what steps those institutions take to target their list towards diversity candidiates.</p>
<p>If we could acheive a state of total candor, would the Harvard admissions office prefer that the campaign attract 2 admitted applicants and 998 rejected applicants, or 15 admitted applicants and 85 rejected applicants (I mean, really, what the hell kind of place are we running here, Cornell?)?</p>
<p>That is very harsh, pizzagirl. YOU, who are in the marketing biz, DO know what goes on behind such mailings, and can exercise a high degree of skepticism.
HOWEVER- if everyone were so suitably and easily skeptical of marketing mailings, then they would not accomplish what they are trying to accomplish!</p>
<p>There are many who are inexperienced with the whole college app scene. OF COURSE these methods are going to HOOK in a bunch of these applicants! That is their intention!!
One does not need to see it as a conspiracy, just as something that started out as a public good, then became a useful social AND academic marker in our society, then became a huge business. </p>
<p>Having education run it self as a business has good and bad sides, and this is the bad side.
The real victims are the kids who are burning themselves out, losing sight of their need to grow and experiment, and who begin to see life as a one-dimensional race to prestige and achievement as determined by labels. Also the ones who misunderstand how to reach their goals, and even set the wrong ones.</p>
<p>This kind of “looking for patterns” and “looking for meaning” and “looking for short-cuts” thinking is hard-wired human nature. But the college application system is now at cross-purposes to the real goals of education, IMO.</p>
<p>The marketing blitzes, the rankings, the accessibility of the Common App: all are feeding this beast. It has become a huge industry that needs to feed itself.</p>
<p>Igloo, since when does non-profit status confer some supposed digity? Habitat used to send my MIL “renewal” notices more than once/year. (And, we got xmas cards from Jimmy and Rosalynn.) The public tv stations bombard us with fund drives that interrupt programming. Social service agencies put the pic of the sad, but awfully cute, little girl on the side of the bus. (I am not against any of these groups.) We are surrounded by attention-grabbing efforts.</p>
<p>USNWR’s ranking exist because people buy the concept. Most people who, eg, consider Williams better than BU have never looked into it for themselves, checked offerings or strengths in their dept or other opportunities.</p>
<p>And, I think PG and PM are saying the same thing- there’s a sucker born every minute.</p>
<p>College admission offices do NOT send out marketing materials to gain the application fees sent in by applicants. All college admission offices are “cost centers,” and all lose money on their operations, on a net basis. (NACAC does survey research on this from time to time, and so do other organizations.) Rather, colleges send out marketing materials for the main reason identified in the thread-opening post: a college can gain reputation by appearing to reject more applicants, thus showing itself to be “more selective.” </p>
<p>Harvard sends out about 50,000 invitations to apply each year </p>
<p>and admits only about 2,000 (of whom about 1,600 enroll). Most of the most selective colleges cast a wide net in promoting their brand to high school students. I don’t worry about it. That doesn’t make money for the colleges, considered simply as part of the admission office budget, but that also doesn’t cost hugely for the colleges, compared to the overall college budget. How the colleges make money from applicants is still the old-fashioned way: once applicants enroll, they pay hefty tuition, or parents or the federal government pay tuition on their behalf, and a college that is especially famous gets external grants for its programs, including eventually gifts from grateful alumni. The big money rolls in months and years and even decades after the application is submitted. </p>