<p>WOW. The stuff that goes on. I thought WashU was bad.</p>
<p>Colleges</a> Market Easy, No-Fee Sell to Applicants - NYTimes.com</p>
<p>Barrons, just as Lee Stetson admitted that he would never be able to substantiate the admissions numbers he shared with the public and resist the scrutiny of an independent audit, many of the schools that have reported tremendous gains in applications could not present a stack of COMPLETE applications that remotely matches their press releases. </p>
<p>While there are soft guidelines about what applications should be counted, there is real mechanism to separate the schools that report numbers that match the common application tallies from the schools that count everything from an application with a mere name on it to a reply for information. </p>
<p>Gimmicks, smoke and mirrors, and no transparency. Let’s the games begin!</p>
<p>I don’t see it as negative. I love the fee waivers & fast track as it does make it easier for students to apply & to learn of colleges that were off their radar.</p>
<p>If it boosts the US News standing, so be it. We all know students shouldn’t rely on the standing & we all know that we <em>do</em> rely on it because we need some method to comparison shop.</p>
<p>Tulane boosted its ranking some years ago by this same method.</p>
<p>I wondered why all of a sudden people started looking at Tulane. The school actually cut many programs and is now “better” ??</p>
<p>I don’t think that “gaming” affects the USNWR rankisng much, if at all. Others here have run correlations, and I assueme some know exactly how USNWR weights its many criteria… so please jump in. </p>
<p>The flip side of that metric is the yield rate. If a school were to make every effort to boost # applications and therefore reduce the % accepted figure, the yield would simply drop accordingly and negate the supposed gain.</p>
<p>I do agree with the article’s point that these campaigns serve to increase the awareness of these schools through these mail campaigns. Eventually increased awareness helps elevate the prestige of a school… after all, a school you haven’t heard of by definition has no prestige. And if increased awareness causes a few high caliber students to apply and then attend, over time that does result in a higher USNWR rating (or just buy NMF students as USC does with its 50% tuition rebate to NMFers… that works too.)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Scenario 1</p>
<p>Receive 10,000 “true” applications.
Admit 4,000
Enroll 1,200 </p>
<p>Admit rate is 40%
Yield is 30%</p>
<p>Scenario 2</p>
<p>Receive 10,000 “true” applications but add 6,000 incomplete, frivolous, etc
Admit 4,000
Enroll 1,200 </p>
<p>Results</p>
<p>The admission rate drops from 40% to 25% = selectivity boost for USNEWS Index. There are NO penalties for such shenanigans … something that has not escaped a number of schools, especially the ones that reported “new” marketing campaigns or used the fancier term of “increased outreach programs” to capitalize on recent positive publicity.</p>
<p>The Yield remains 30% = yield unchanged (even if this meant a thing to us)</p>
<p>Now, if you want to be really “smart”</p>
<p>Scenario 3</p>
<p>Receive 10,000 “true” applications but add 6,000 incomplete, frivolous, etc
Admit 3,000
Enroll 1,000 from original pool.
Announce a waitlist of 2,000.
Admit 200 from waitlist</p>
<p>In April announce a massive drop in admit rate to 3/16, enjoy the kudos, and immediately grab 200 from the waitlist. By the time, the statistics come out, most everyone will overlook the waitlist admits. The real statistics (for purists) will be 3,200 over 16,000. Now, we have a 20% admit rate! </p>
<p>Voila, instant improvement.</p>
<p>xiggi… you are assuming that many of the unreal applicants did not displace true applicants in the accepted pool. Yield rate on the unreal supplanting applicants would be very low, resulting in a lower Yield.</p>
<p>I did not know that lower yield does not affect the selectivity model…</p>
<p>P.S. Your SAT prep method increased my daughter’s CR score from 50 on the PSAT (sophomore sitting) to 660 on the Oct. (junior) sitting of the SAT… good job, man… thanks. She gave up on the math portion Xiggi method… just personal style. One of Pete’s guys worked with her for five hours of math prep for the test last Saturday, and we’ll see how the improvement was in five weeks. It’s weird… the math she is currently taking in school bears no relation to the math on the SAT… which I think is mostly 9th grade stuff but tricky.</p>
<p>DLA, congrats on the improvements. Your D is in good hands with Pete!</p>
<p>Regarding the examples, please realize that the 6,000 additional applications are the types that should not be counted as they are incomplete or unresponsive for various reasons. </p>
<p>As an example, Stanford made changes in recent years and “corrected” the number of applications reported when they had to acknowledge that the Common Application did not count applications that missed elements such as the essays. </p>
<p>OTOH, that does not stop schools to consider an application that contains just a name as one of the apps to be counted.</p>
<p>I think that claims about increasing apps in order to boost USNWR rank is a little bit of a stretch. IMO these “fee-waived” applications are smart tactical moves on the part of the college and, if they result in students that would not otherwise have considered the school, then they are obviously successful. What’s wrong with trying to expand the applicant base and possibly improve the quality of those from whom you can choose? Isn’t that part of the job of the admissions department? </p>
<p>Fwiw, this kind of stuff goes on every day in the world of business. It’s Marketing 101.</p>
<p>Hawkette, inasmuch as it DOES influence the USNews rankings, it is obvious that 10% of 15% (1.5%) will not accomplish much in jumping ranks. And why bother when there are so many quicker ways to increase the scores!</p>
<p>On the other hand, the announcements by a number of schools of numbers in December and in April DO reach a different audience. For instance, how much do you think Duke’s Dean of Admission would give to be able to announce a 20% admit rate and … be able to fill the CDS with similar numbers? Do you think he would be happy to abandon his ED + Waitlist trinkets to boost the press releases?</p>
<p>And then you can add a special category for the schools who rather cut both pinkies of an adcom than publish their Common Data Set forms.</p>
<p>I don’t think any college administrator is foolish enough to think they can bump up their US News rankings solely by boosting application figures. But the point is they’re working on manipulating every data point that counts for anything in the US News ranking, and that includes virtually every element of the ranking. Admit rate too high? Mass market fee-free, painless apps to tens of thousands of students, some of whom may not be minimally qualified, and/or admit a higher percentage of your class ED, and/or admit a higher percentage of your class off a waitlist. SAT scores too low? Go SAT-optional, and/or target merit aid to admitted students just above your expected 25th and 75th percentiles as they’re the ones who will most influence your SAT ranking, and/or give a cash incentive to enrolled students to retake the SAT and boost their reported scores (even though it serves no conceivable educational purpose to do so), and/or admit a larger percentage of your student body as transfers who don’t count in the reported SAT scores. Not enough financial resources? Boost tuition and recycle the money back to the kids in the form of increased FA; it’ll be a wash financially but it will look like you’re spending more. Then raise tuition some more and give the faculty a fat raise; same faculty, same educational quality, but because it costs more US News readers will be fooled into thinking it’s better. Class sizes too large? Set new enrollment caps so that all classes that currently enroll 20 to 50 students are now capped at 19; this will increase your percentage of classes with a size of 1-19 students (worth 30% of 20% or 6% of your total US News score), and even though more students will be shut out of classes they want and/or need, it will count as a quality gain in the eyes of US News and its gullible readers. Too many large classes? Make them even larger by consolidating multiple sections containing 50 to 200 students into a single mega-section containing 400, 1000, or more students, because US News cares only HOW MANY classes of 50+ students you have—not how big they are once they’re over 50. Or, instead of the traditional big lecture taught by a prof coupled with smaller discussion sections led by TAs, break up the big class into 8 or 10 19-person-or-less stand-alone sections mostly taught by TAs, whom you can now hire as nominally full-time “lecturers” and count as faculty in your student-faculty ratio while also increasing your percentage of small classes and reducing your percentage of large classes. Graduation rate too low? Lower your standards for graduation so a higher percentage graduate; that counts as a quality gain for US News.</p>
<p>Anyone who thinks manipulating the acceptance rate alone will improve your US News ranking is a fool. Anyone who thinks colleges and universities won’t manipulate their acceptance rates as part of a broader, multi-pronged strategy to improve their US News rankings is willfully blind. For the most part, college presidents and provosts are neither.</p>
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<p>Tulane cut programs in the wake of Katrina as part of the recovery. Their send-a-free-filled-out-app-to-every-senior-in-Lousiana program designed to boost their ranking preceded the hurricane by a few years. Whether they have continued gaming the USNews system post-Katrina I do not know.</p>
<p>With many spots in USNews separated by just a point every little bit helps.</p>
<p>What exactly did WUSTL do in the rankings? I’ve heard that they “cheated” or things along those lines, but what did they do?</p>
<p>coureur and barrons- I am afraid your postings regarding Tulane are made in ignorance.</p>
<p>Tulane made the decision to send out free apps to generate more interest in the school. The hope was that it would attract better students to the school, and in this regard it has succeeded beyond their hopes. Average SAT scores have risen over 130 points in the past decade. To say it was designed to boost their ranking and they are gaming the system is just absurd. People can put all sorts of nefarious motives to what admissions departments do, but I opt for the motive that they are trying to improve the school as much as possible. Do that, and the rankings (completely absurd as they are) will follow. Tulane actually fell in the rankings after Katrina, and only went up from 51 to 50 last year. That is despite being something like #30 based on average SAT scores. It is because of the PA; people still think New Orleans is a mess. Anyway, this thread is not about how USNWR does their rankings.</p>
<p>Tulane did not cut “many” programs, they cut a few engineering degrees. They quickly instituted a 3+2 program where a person can go to Tulane as a physics major, attend for 3 years, and then transfer to either Johns Hopkins or Vanderbilt and get an engineering degree in any of the eliminated programs in 2 years, and have the physics degree from Tulane as well.</p>
<p>So applications were around 11,000-15,000 in the first few years of the free app, took a small dip right after Katrina (naturally), and now have exploded to 34,000, then 40,000, then 44,000 (projected) for the last 3 years. Therefore the improved (lower) % admitted numbers are very recent and yet Tulane’s ranking has not improved more than 1 place. So the statement made by coureur is demonstratably false.</p>
<p>If it is not the free app itself that explains this increase in applications, what is it? It is common knowledge that one of the big reasons for this dramatic increase is the strong community service aspect assiciated with attending Tulane. It has attracted a different, more committed kind of student who, it so happens, also tend to be stronger students. Hence the last 2 entering classes have been the strongest in the school’s history. Tulane is one of the most generous with merit scholarships also. I suppose you would classify those as bribes. No good deed goes unpunished, I guess.</p>
<p>You really should try to have some idea what you are talking about before you post.</p>
<p>I just read the article. Talk about trying to create news! Like these schools are really going to hypnotize kids into going somewhere they don’t want. So what if they apply to more schools? More work for those GC’s, no wonder they are against it. The far more likely outcome is that a kid gets clued into a school they would have had no inkling of before, and finds out it is a really good match for them. Otherwise they reject it. What’s the harm? Just because people get sucked into the useless rankings game, don’t blame the schools.</p>
<p>I have a very clear idea. Tulane eliminated six engineering programs, 27 doctoral programs and cut the med school staff by a significant number. I would call that many cuts.</p>
<p>“Nowhere is that rift more apparent than in the School of Engineering, where six of the school’s eight programs are being abolished and the school itself will be absorbed into a new School of Science and Engineering. As professors in the eliminated departments pack up their offices for positions at other institutions or continue to look for jobs before their appointments end next year, their counterparts in the surviving departments are planning for the new school…Along with eliminating some doctoral programs, the university will combine others, going from 45 to 18 in all. That will allow those that remain — mostly in the sciences, where outside research funds are more plentiful — to thrive with additional financial support from the university, Mr. Langston says.” COHE</p>
<p>We are talking undergrad here, not doctoral and not med school. So unless you were specifically interested in engineering (other than Chemical, Biomedical or Environmental which still are there and strong), the cuts were pretty meaningless. In fact, the cuts essentially eliminated a potential major for maybe 100 students or less from each class year, because these engineering programs were not very popular. The entire restructuring focused available funds on improving the remaining departments. And you can ignore the 3+2 programs if you choose, but I would argue that it actually gives students a “back door” way into schools that they might not have gotten into otherwise. Certainly no downside I can see other than moving.</p>
<p>So I won’t argue semantics with you. If you choose to call 6 cuts in a narrow area “many”, as opposed to say 30 cuts across many departments, that’s fine. But at least be honest enough to admit that a lot of people, and maybe most, wouldn’t call that many and so you should have spelled out specifically what you were referring to when you said it. Most undergrads never even see the med school, and most are thrilled with the fact that Tulane is a very undergraduate focused university, so how are those cuts relevant? A big complaint of most undergraduates is when they get taught by TA’s instead of professors.</p>
<p>Nice try though.</p>
<p>BTW, what is COHE? It isn’t in the CC abbreviation thread.</p>
<p>The Chronicle of Higher Education, a popular tool in world of education. Most people call it the Chronicle.</p>
<p><a href=“http://chronicle.com/[/url]”>http://chronicle.com/</a></p>
<p>The increase in applications at Tulane is old news; the Saints in the Super Bowl … now that is something that will cause massive festivities in NOLA. Laissez les bons temps rouler! </p>
<p>But New Orleans is still the systemic mess it has been for decades. The difference is that there is hope that the new generations will be different from the pre-Katrina’s. The changes in education are a good start. Getting rid of the corruption, the ineptitude, the debauchery, the lewdness, the stench, and the systemic reliance on handouts and welfare will be as hard as rerouting the Miss.</p>