Is Colby Too Promotional???

Down to a couple weeks before the due date for responses. Son was accepted to Colby and two peers. Something just bugs me about Colby. It is the most remote of any of the NE LAC’s, the airport is a good 90 minutes away but it received 9,000 applications. The campus is OK but nothing better than the others.

Could it be having no writing requirement results in just excess applications? The school seems to advertise application growth but is it real? On the one hand it is clever but on the other, indecorous.

Any parents in the decision making mode concerned?

@Adam2020parent As a parent of a child admitted to Colby, I am interested in comparing Colby to its peer LAC’s. Lack of admissions essay was surprising given that every other peer LAC required such. I don’t accord much importance to the number of applications a college receives, but focus instead on the outputs (graduation rate, debt incurred, post graduation successes, etc.). Thus the Forbes college ranking offers the most relevant information for me. We also visited Colby to meet the people. We were quite happy with the direction President Green is taking the school - namely, exposing students to Waterville’s opportunities and challenges. While many families might not appreciate the value of this direction, we see it as a valuable opportunity for students to tackle complex real-world issues under the mentorship of professors. So, I look past the sales and marketing rhetoric to the underlying strengths and weaknesses of the LAC in question.

Interesting story.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-12/colleges-use-bag-of-tricks-to-juice-application-numbers

Maybe I am more sensitive to this than others but I do view such a small school so far out of the way attracting so many applications to be curious. For applicants to have literally doubled since the class of 2018, suggests something besides outcomes is at play. This school receives 50% more applications than Williams and 30% more than Bowdoin, the most of any NESCAC. I think in high school corridors kids just say “hey it’s free and you don’t even have to write anything.”

Seems obvious that any school that doesn’t charge an app fee (not sure about Colby) AND doesn’t have an essay requirement would get many more applications than if the opposite were true. I know my D applied to several schools that fit the bill just because…in her defense, they were all schools she would have attended had the COA worked.

Lots of schools use ‘marketing’ strategies to increase apps, so their numbers look ‘better’ Colby not alone in that regard. Bucknell, Chicago, Richmond to name a few use various tactics. But that does not take away from the quality education Colby provides.

Colby is a great school. No doubt about it. It is very challenging academically and will provide a solid foundation to any career direction. It is a very genuine place. I knew one family that couldn’t attend graduation, and the school called the family to help set up a remote viewing of commencement. If your child likes the school and it otherwise is a fit, the last thing I would be thinking about is the marketing.

At one point, I tracked it down. No application fee since between 2006 and 2007. Supplemental essay was dispensed with in 2011 (can be confirmed through Colby Echo if you search archives). Colby, unlike Wesleyan, Bowdoin, Bates, and others is not test optional. Like Middlebury and Hamilton, an applicant can submit 3 SAT2 scores in lieu of ACT/SAT, but scores must be submitted.

So, why the applications increase? When President Greene came in, he wanted a strong admissions program. My sense is that the increase is coming from different locales. Colby had that reputation of everyone coming from 15 minutes outside of Boston. Reportedly admissions is reaching out to the west and south. To my mind, this is a far cry from the old admissions bag of tricks to make it look like a school is more selective than it actually is.

The essay requirement was removed when I said in the first post.

"Monday, February 29, 2016
Cristiana Quinn, GoLocalProv College Admissions Expert

The stats would make most colleges and universities green with envy: Colby College applications up 90% since 2013, George Washington University up 28% for the Class of 2020 over the Class of 2019. Meanwhile, Harvard excitedly posts news about a 4.6% increase in applicants this year. Why are Colby and George Washington seeing these surges? What is the secret sauce? It’s very simple. Remove barriers to students applying to college, and applications increase dramatically.

Waterville, Maine, home to Colby College has not suddenly become a hipster mecca or landed on the list of “Best College Towns”. However, Colby did get rid of their supplemental essay requirement 2 years ago. Seniors fatigued with extra essays viewed this as an incentive to apply, and Colby reaped the benefits."

You have to wonder what the school’s yield will look like, or what happens when the sugar high wears off.

Could it be that the “Colby Commitment” is also helping to attract more applicants?

Increasing the size of the pool of applicants, regardless of how they do it, is not likely to result in a drop in standards for admission – if anything, it might allow them to raise the bar a little.

I guess I am not seeing what the negative is? Why should I be concerned about this particular statistic if my son accepts the offer of admission presented to him?

Yes, colleges game their application numbers by removing barriers like application fees and supplemental essays. Some schools also are better at drumming up interest through well targeted marketing strategies. A couple years back, Swarthmore had a decline in applications. The following year, they removed some of their supplement essays making the application easier and saw an uptick in applications. Kenyon dropped its supplemental essays and offered free applications and saw a huge increase in apps over the past few years.

There’s tons of gaming going on throughout the college industry. It’s a business and IMO a lot of it isn’t pretty. One college I respect in this regard is Georgetown. They have their own application and require 3 SAT2 tests as opposed to the 2 often required at by the highly selective schools. Yet, they still get plenty of applications, and more importantly, applicants who must obviously want to attend their school to jump through an extra hoop or two.

Wait, 90-minutes from a “larger” airport makes a college remote? (AUG doesn’t count?)

I would have to say that Dartmouth is farther from an “larger” airport than Colby (I don’t think LEB would meet your standard, assuming that PWM does since it is served by multiple airlines), although maybe you are not including the Big Green since it is by some measures a “research university” rather than a LAC?

@gointhruaphase…I’m from the South. I found out about Colby because of a baseball recruitment offer from another Nescac school. I didn’t apply my ED1 to that school, so they lost interest. After a lot of research, I decided to apply to a few big top schools, a couple of safety schools, and ALL the Nescac schools. Too funny. Most of my friends asked “Whats a Bowdin?” , or "Wesleyan? Oh yeah there’s a bunch of those schools."I got denied from my ED1. I was either accepted or waitlisted everywhere else. All the Nescac schools accepted me. They all offered the best financial packages also. Being from TN was a huge hook. I received three other offers for baseball. Colby was the best combo for me. New baseball fields, New hires like Tim Wheaton, Incredible science department and research opportunities, Remarkable professors, etc…(unlimited meal swipes). Not writing an essay, or paying for an app had nothing to do with it. I tell you what also might be increasing its apps though… My big mouth. Because I have been preaching it’s praises since i found it. Two of my friends who are juniors are planning to apply next fall, One is using his ED1!

The campus is “OK but nothing better than the others”? You need to take another look. We looked at Bowdoin, Williams, and Amherst, and we know Middlebury quite well due to our proximity and our daughter’s having gone to several camps there. Colby’s campus is the most beautiful (and walkable, though Bowdoin is a close second). The increase in apps is due, in no small part, to significantly increased outreach — sending reps to the South, Midwest, and West. President Green is a dynamo, as witnessed by his commitment to remaking Waterville through partnerships with town government and substantial investment (5 buildings and counting), plans for in-town student & faculty apartments on the concourse, and expected community service by Colby students. Just this month, Green hired the school’s first commercial real estate director. This is not window dressing. Finally, Colby has maintained standards by retaining its SAT requirement and extensive core-distribution requirements (credit goes to Middlebury as well for refusing to lessen its standards).

Both Middlebury and Colby are test flexible, allowing SAT2 scores in place of SAT or ACT scores, so more flexible than some schools but more restrictive in testing than test optional schools.

Colby does have a beautiful campus but beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder. I’d put it middle of the pack for LAC campuses, personally, having visited a couple dozen.

I do thin Colby is benefitting from a focused strategy from its leadership. That’s a positive and, frankly, I’m surprised that more schools don’t take a more business like approach to its admissions outreach.

My son is in class of 2018. Excellent school, very small class sizes, excellent opportunities for students to research, professors take a keen interest in students. Financial aid is excellent. Beautiful campus, students at the school seem happy and there is just a good feel on campus. Classes are challenging and very few students transfer out. Honestly, my husband and I have been thrilled with our son’s experience so far.

@lawyer-teacher With all due respect, you are delusional if you think the growth in applications is due to recruiting and real estate deals. Kids talk about the school as an no brainer application.

Last year, Colby yield dropped to 28%, a much sharper drop than the acceptance rate. This yield is among the lowest in NESCAC. It shows the growth was fabricated.

Shopping for applicants by making it easier to apply is a very poor way to run a school. Once applications fall and they will, Colby could be stuck for a very long time with a very low yield rate.

The resort to ad hominem belies your assertion of “due respect.” Your reference to “kids” implies personal knowledge of a statistically significant pool – rather than what is most likely an inductive leap on your part. Your confusion about when to use the correct indefinite article is, perhaps, merely a function of hasty keyboarding. And yet, your tone reveals a dogmatism and hubris that might benefit from an SLAC education that any one of these schools can provide. The posturing is silly, as all of these schools offer wonderful opportunities.

The supplemental “essay” was a paragraph long description of what specifically about Colby you found aligned with your interests. It was in no ways a deal-breaker for admissions decisions. It was removed long before the boost in numbers. I rarely post on CC, but as a Colby student, I feel the need to respond to this forum because there may be prospective students reading this, and I do not want them to only see a degrading viewpoint. Colby provides wonderful opportunities for civic engagement, a great quality of life, and challenging academic endeavors. The growth in applications was not “fabricated”. It was the persistent work of new admission directors, the president, and the staff working to diversify Colby’s student body. Colby has historically had a very strong reputation, but it is now being broadcasted to a larger population of students, which only benefits students that choose to come here. By making the application free years ago, Colby wanted students to apply regardless of socioeconomic status. I cannot understand why making Colby more accessible to students all over the country is so detrimental to your views of the school, and suddenly makes it “indecorous”.

This link: http://www.colby.edu/magazine/applications-for-class-of-2015-set-record/ indicates that Colby dropped the supplemental essay in the 2010-2011 application season (when the class of 2015 was applying), so 5 years ago, not two…

Colby application numbers (gleaned from press releases):
2009-2010 (class of 2014): 4203
2010-2011 (class of 2015): 5170 * this was the year the essay was dropped (see link above)
2011-2012 (class of 2016): 5234
2012-2013 (class of 2017): 5401
2013-2014 (class of 2018): 5148
2014-2015 (class of 2019): 7591
2015-2016 (class of 2020): 9833

The big surge in the application numbers in the last two years does not seem to be related to the essay being dropped (that surge appears to have happened in 2011 through 2013…)

So maybe it really does have something to do with enhanced recruiting efforts across the country and around the world?

When was the application fee dropped?