“Why should other kids’ opportunities be limited to increase the chances for your own kid? There are probably students whose profile is somehow not quite equal to your kid. Should your child’s apps be limited in some way to increase the admission chances for those students?”
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Yes, that’s my point. My child’s apps should be limited. And they were.
On the flip side if fewer kids apply because they did their due diligence to colleges that are realistic “good fits” for them and showed significant interest by having to complete an in-depth application; applications would go down as yields would most definitely go up as only the most serious applicants would be applying.
I just see the complete waste of time of college resources and applicant money that a UCLA for example has to do to review 110,000 applicantions for 5,900 freshman. That’s 100K+ applicants that will never set foot on UCLA campus. This doesn’t even factor in 20,000 potential transfer students applications. Just seems like there could be a more targeted, efficient and refined process…
It sounds like concern is some kids are applying to many colleges that they do not intend to attend, which hurts your kid’s chances of admission.
Colleges need to admit a certain number of kids to fill the class. The number of admits does not need to be constant, but the class size needs to be. If an increasingly small portion of admits plan to actually attend, then the number of admits needs to increase to keep the class size constant.
However, at the colleges that are typically considered highly selective on this forum, the opposite trend has occurred. Admitted students are more likely to attend over time, leading to yields going up over time. Some specific numbers are below, comparing current yield to yield 10 years ago.
Stanford – 2008 Yield = 71%, 2018 Yield = 82%
Harvard – 2008 Yield = 78%, 2018 Yield = 82%
MIT – 2008 Yield = 66%, 2018 Yield = 76%
Yale – 2008 Yield = 69%, 2018 Yield = 70%
Princeton – 2008 Yield = 59%, 2018 Yield = 69%
Penn – 2008 Yield = 63%, 2018 Yield = 67%
Columbia – 2008 Yield = 59%, 2018 Yield = 62%
Brown – 2008 Yield = 55%, 2018 Yield = 61%
Cornell – 2008 Yield = 46%, 2018 Yield = 60%
One of the contributing factors to this trend and the relatively high yields listed above is an increasing reliance on early admissions programs that are often restrictive (ED1, ED2, REA, SCEA, etc.) and often giving a strong preference to such applicants. This is an easy way for your kid to show that he is truly interested in the school and not a high stat kid who applies to schools that he has no intention of attending. Not planning to attend is likely to come across in other non-stat portions of the application as well, which are usually important for admission to highly selective colleges.
In any case, while there may be a small portion of high stat students who apply to colleges that they have no intention of attending, a hard limit does not target only this one small group. Instead it impacts many other groups of students who have legitimate reasons for applying to larger number of colleges and would be negatively impacted by such a restriction.
Agree. And the same kids who may need to apply to more schools to see what financial offers come often can’t apply ED/restricted EA for the same reason.
For the most part, your child’s chances depend on his/her record and the app package they submit. Of course, you want to know how best to approach any target, especially holistics, so you can do your best. Not assume you just submit a transcript and answer questions. You want them to want you. for all the reasons that matter to them.
First, is the record you do collect, through those years, and your self presentation. Later, as they refine the class, instutional needs apply. That includes geo diversity.
Just submitting doesn’t assure you even get to the final rounds. It feels premature to suggest a yield issue, when the first hurdle is making your own best apps. And, knowing what that means.
It’s ironic that the folks who think kids need to apply to dozens of colleges because “yield protection” or whatever the heck you want to call means that admissions is unpredictable. Especially since the BEST way to avoid “Tufts Syndrome” (college rejecting or waitlisting a kid they think is unlikely to attend to protect their yield number) is to actually show interest-- genuine interest- in that college. Which of course is easy to do when your kid is applying to 6 well chosen options, harder but doable when your kid is applying to 10 well chosen options, and virtually impossible to do when your kid is applying to 25 colleges (assuming the kid is doing an effective job with the 25). Circular logic, no?
Even a kid with stats at the 95+ percentile at a particular college has a virtual lock on getting admitted if an Adcom can say to his or her colleagues “I met this kid, what a star” or “I’ve heard from Susie and set her up to talk with the head of the anthropology department and she’s really interested in our program in Bolivia” or “John is seriously excited about the opportunity to do interdisciplinary study on nutrition in the developing world through our Ag program”.
Yield protection may or may not be a “thing”, but applying to two dozen colleges AND being excited (and communicating your interest) to that many schools sounds like a fulltime job to me.
But again- I have no dog in this hunt. No need to limit apps- parents just need to understand the ramification of SO many apps and so many fees and so little time senior year!
When I applied to college back in the mid 70’s, I applied to 3 SUNY schools (one application at the time, up to three schools in ranked order. If accepted to first, not considered for other two) 3 CUNY schools (same deal, one application, up to 3 schools) and two applications to private (IVY). Accepted to both privates, and both first choice public, so depending on how one considers the public applications, I applied to somewhere between 4 and 8 schools
When my son applied 40 years later, he applied to one SUNY, one out-of-state flagship, and three privates (IVY), for a total of 5 applications. Accepted to all.
For better or worse, we are part of a culture with near infinite choices. Some will keep swiping left and right, others will know what they want and go for it.
If you apply wisely, you don’t need to apply to dozens of schools. If you don’t, should there be a rule to force you to trim your list? I don’t think so.
Things are so different now. I’ve always said I could never get accepted to the schools now as I did before. I applied to 3 schools: Stanford, UCB and UCD ONLY because I lived in the bay area at the time. I had NO idea those are top schools, no idea of ranking, no idea they were reach or high reach, no idea what I eventually got myself into lol. I was so clueless. I was all alone, no one there to guide me, I filled out the paper application forms and mailed them in. I got accepted to all 3, and I picked UCB because I lived in Berkeley. I didn’t have money to move, nor did i prefer one school over another. I was in America and I got to go to college, that was more than anything I could ever dreamed of. Stanford, Berkeley, Davis…all the same to me. Not until I met my hubby at Cal that he told me that Stanford and Cal were such a big deal. There is a proverb in my culture, something like if you are deaf you are not afraid of gunshots. That was me.
Now there are so much information out there, it is overwhelming. Life was so much simpler back then.
My kid’s school imposes a limit, but only so that the GC isn’t overwhelmed and the teacher’s aren’t overwhelmed with recommendations. I think if you apply over that limit…they charge you and/or offer more limited help. As it was, they had to implement a system for LOR’s because it was a s****tshow.
Is the limit the number of colleges, or the number of recommendations?
Someone can apply to dozens of schools that do not use recommendations and generate less work for the counselor than four colleges which each require a unique recommendation.