<p>jssjosh. Your right the system has sent more and more students off to colleges they would not have choosen. The system is not student centered. I’m not sure it could ever be so.</p>
<p>The system is indeed college centered and must be; colleges’ number one responsibility is to themselves, to maintain their viability and longevity, their high-quality product. They must keep themselves attractive to the students they want and need.</p>
<p>Think also about how few colleges get the high school valedictorians. Colleges compete with each other for applicants, just as applicants compete with each other for colleges!</p>
<p>JHS</p>
<p>perhaps I am blinded by my Westchester County NY location - </p>
<p>Our district went from a graduating class of 350 in the mid 1970’s down to 200 in the late 1990’s back to 350 this year and last. we have had 12 straight years of declining kindergarten enrollment and are back in the low 200’s in our elementary grades.</p>
<p>neighboring districts seem to be in the same boat</p>
<p>college admissions officials have been describing this demographic as nationwide - at least when they visit our district - for the past 5 years - as has the HS guidance dept </p>
<p>maybe they are wrong, but…</p>
<p>…at least around here, this doesn’t seem like a small trough. 
</p>
<p>(After two massive bond issues in the past 15 years, the effect on per pupil expenditure is staggering.)</p>
<p>OT: </p>
<ol>
<li><p>There’s no question that school-age population is declining in the Northeast, and has been for quite a while. That’s also the case in the upper Midwest, but not in the South, Southwest, California, Pacific Northwest, Mountain States. etc. And even in the Northeast, the rate of population decline overall reflects a much larger decline in the number of white kids net of a huge increase in Hispanic kids . . . but I’ll bet that Hispanic increase has been slow to manifest itself in most Westchester towns.</p></li>
<li><p>But also . . . the number of kids in high school is only part of the picture. Of the (somewhat reduced) number of kids in high school, more are finishing high school, and more of them are going to college than ever before. Again, you wouldn’t likely notice that in Westchester, because you can’t increase graduation/college rates by much over 99.9%. But in those fast-growing Hispanic populations, educational expectations are also growing fast, and so are high-school graduation and college enrollment rates.</p></li>
<li><p>Then there is another factor with the potential to swamp everything else. There are a couple billion people in Asia who value education highly, who have rising incomes (and appreciating currencies), and who believe that their best students should be educated in the United States. A couple billion people can easily generate a few thousands of good-faith candidates for selective American universities. So even if the number of Americans applying to college were going down, the number of PEOPLE applying to college is staying constant and probably growing. And all of this is before you start thinking about how many applications each of those kids is filing.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Bottom line: The baby bust is real, but it’s not affecting college applications much!</p>
<p>JHS</p>
<p>well, you jumped on me once before on the subject - and since you are usually spot on -</p>
<p>I thought I better tread carefully :)</p>
<p>GC’s here are still telling parents that applications to elite schools will be heading down for the next 10-15 years</p>
<p>… and frankly as far as your #'s 1 and 2 above go, they are probably right. All those new US bred college prospects aren’t likely to be sending out 15-20 elite school apps.</p>
<p>… but re: for #3. Indeed. Many more than a few thousands I would figure - all to the same schools the top kids from my town (and all the others like it) are targeting.</p>
<p>Very interesting.</p>
<p>The problem with your first point is that all of these trends have been in place for a long time. Although the peak US 18-year-old population was 2008 or 2009, it hadn’t been going up much year-to-year for several years, and it isn’t going down much year-to-year now. The projections were for a 3-4% decline over 5-6 years, and then the numbers would start rising again. But the Scarsdale numbers (or equivalent) have been trending flat or down for a while. Maybe not in your district, but overall. And elite college applications have been going up by double digits year after year – way beyond anything population trends would support.</p>
<p>I think there are several reasons for that. After years of outreach, the Ivies etc. have captured the imaginations of vast swaths of American that used not to think about them at all, and the people who used to make up the bulk of Ivy enrollments are spreading to the Ivy-equivalents – research universities whose undergraduate colleges used to be less attractive, but are plenty attractive now. Also, the elite schools are capable of competing on price with flagship publics, with need-based aid for six-figure households and full rides for kids way above the poverty line. If Harvard or Stanford are cheaper than Cal or Penn State – and they are, for a big chunk of the population – they are going to draw a lot of applications.</p>
<p>Those newly-bred US college prospects ARE sending out elite school apps. The kids who went to Harvard from my children’s high school classes were ALL immigrants; none of them were born here.</p>
<p>And of course when 15 applications becomes the norm for ambitious students, the colleges they apply to are going to get a lot more applications than they did when 5 applications was the norm. Maybe that will ease a bit, but it’s hard to see it going away. Right now, it’s a classic Prisoner’s Dilemma – everyone would be better off if they all limited the number of applications they submit, but anyone who does that unilaterally puts himself at a real disadvantage.</p>
<p>I will be really, really surprised if your GCs are right. I am sure some colleges will see a decline in applications. Second- and third-tier LACs, expensive privates without a lot of prestige – they are going to be in trouble. Some third-tier publics in the Northeast and Midwest are going to be shuttered. And I certainly don’t think Harvard’s applications are going to go up 5-10% year after year. But go down meaningfully? I doubt it.</p>