Quantitative Admission Easing (QAE) 
Admission rate goes negative for a few years before normalizing it again to zero. Afterwards each quarter they are going to raise the admission rate by .25%. 
Seriously though, being a fan of education (as are all of us on this forum I guess), I’m so proud that the US has so many great institutions, ranked or not. If one desires an education, one can find it here, somehow.
And regarding applying for many schools, these kids, US and foreign, are clamoring to get an education, not attempting to buy guns or something, so what does it matter which country they’re from? Our world is globalizing, and If we educate them, they may stay and make in-roads in the states, or they may go back to their country and perhaps make some ‘cancer-curing’ breakthrough—either way, we all benefit from it as citizens of the world.
This news is hardly a secret. D17 came home for Spring Break today. Conversation from this evening:
Me: Hey, it’s a good thing we didn’t hold you back.
D17: Why?
Me: Because then you’d be applying to UChicago this year instead of last.
D17: Oh yeah. I heard the admission rate is insane.
Me: You did? Where?
D17: All my friends were talking about it.
Me: Where did they hear it?
D17: From their friends.
@websensation @caesarcreek Stanford has plans to expand by about 1700 undergrads by 2035, but not at a rate of 10% a year. It has applied for county permits to build 2600 “student beds” plus a lot of other construction. This was first announced about two years ago.
https://gup.stanford.edu/the-project/overview
In the Application Summary and Overview, it specifies an assumption of 1700 undergraduate beds based on modest enrollment growth, vs. 900 graduate beds. That would be 25% growth over 17 years in undergrad enrollment.
@preppedparent well that’s what happens when you come to a UChicago thread and demean it. I’ll leave it at that.
@CU123 I want you with me when we storm the Kremlin …
The Kremlin might be safer than the Chicago gangland…
UChicago has always been disregarded by the exponents of the ivy league model. That’s nothing new. What’s new is that the rising prestige of the place actively goads this old guard into hurling insults. We won’t take their sneers and condescension any longer! I say, fight, fight, for the honor of the Kingdom of the Grinds!
@marlowe1 I applaud your sentiment but you should know U of C always bear the brunt of East Coast snobbery .
I still remember Professor Ed Lazear of GSB (now at Stanford) lamented to us how works and reputation Becker and Lucas were badly maligned by east coast elite schools. But this chip on the shoulder is what makes U of C great. I admire the dedication and steel core of the scholars at U of C who have the fire to pursue their academic work with all the withering snickering from the establishment.
^^ It’s true. And Friedman before Becker and Lucas. But Chicago got their digs in. Stigler’s critique of the “Kinky Demand Curve” was a classic example. And when it came to recognizing who influenced the field most . . . . well, apparently Blinder picks a great wine.
It is difficult to pull out the “quality” of applicants from available data. However, I did an analysis of the data for one of the elite schools (MIT) and I can tell you that the MIT acceptance rate correlates 99.8% with a combination of the international student population in the US plus the children of the previous generation of international students (let’s call them tiger parents). And I only considered the children of international students that were undergrads back in the day. The correlation would probably be even higher if I added in international grad students. The falling acceptance rates are absolutely due to international students.
Someone asked why that is a bad thing. Well, two reasons. First, it is well known that mental health issues are also on the rise in high schools and colleges around the country. Students are sacrificing their youth and the best years of their lives to “play the game” needed to get into these schools. The ones that don’t play the game end up discouraged that their “way” was the wrong “way”. Both sides lose. Second, there is an impact on diversity. These international students and their children are from ethnic groups that are WAY over-represented now. You might say, so what? Or you might say, well the kids from other groups should work harder. That would be missing the point while actually making the point. Like it or not, these kids are also coming from different cultures with different priorities. The value of diversity is that you bring these different cultures together to leverage their strengths, compensate for their weaknesses and build a stronger team. What foreign countries need to do is rapidly expand their own universities so the kids can live a normal childhood and still attend a good school close to family and friends.
Folks, we need to fight for a culture shift that will turn down the heat on these kids. It isn’t healthy and it isn’t fair to them. One idea might be for the US government to significantly increase the cost of a student visa. Maybe they could return that money in the form of merit scholarships for students that are members of an under-represented ethnic group at the school they ultimately attend. This may not be a popular sentiment but I want to see our culture shift more toward the European lifestyle than an Asian lifestyle. You can disagree that this is desirable or necessary but anyone that denies that the European lifestyle is not more work-like balanced is delusional.
Why are so many internationals applying to come here? Why aren’t more Americans applying to go there?
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@JBStillFlying High five from me: spoken like a true GSB grad. Let the market decides . :))
@85bears46 - true, but it speaks to a deeper issue. Universities in the US are known to be among the best in the world. International grad students have always flocked here, and now international undergrads. What is it about US universities that is so attractive? Is it sheer number of excellent choices? And how did the US university system get to be the world leader in terms of pertinent research and innovations? That seems to be a pertinent question not just for those in other countries who believe that their best opportunities lie with the US, but also for us here in the US who might wish for a multi-year experience abroad, but for a perception of relatively few top opportunities.
What the heck does this mean? Just that the decline in acceptance rate (or the increase in number of applications) correlates with the increase in international students and legacies of international students? Or something more interesting than that?
@JBStillFlying : I think there are some possibilities you are not considering, although on the whole I agree with you.
First, I think UK and Canadian universities are also popular with international students (including many “internationals” who come from here, and are international as far as the UK or Canada is concerned). And – I’m not sure to what extent – Australian universities as well. So maybe part of the draw is English – the dominance of English in world commerce. Kids in China and Italy are roughly equally likely to have learned English, but a lot less likely to have learned Italian and Chinese, respectively. I do think, by the way, that there is some movement, not necessarily in the US, for international students to get higher education in China, in large part in order to learn Chinese better and to make Chinese contacts. Closely related to that is American (or Chinese) economic power – people are always going to want to try to position themselves close to a source of economic power.
Second, the Anglo-American system was effectively designed to be accommodating to international students, to be flexible about prior education and with lots of remediation possible. Very few other university systems are that way, except for recent advances in Europe (where, by the way, I think there is also a lot of international interest in universities).
Third, especially at the top of the pyramid, our institutions are incredible wealthy, quantum measures beyond any universities outside Anglo-American culture.
In other words, people around the world may be less engaged in getting access to the American educational culture than in getting access to the American market.
Fourth (maybe) I think a lot of Americans are applying to “go there” – to the UK, to Canada, in some cases to Europe. Excellent education at a lower cost.
The nerve of people from other countries admiring our universities and wanting to come here and learn! How dare they! I’ve never been so incensed in my life!
It is a weird dynamic. People more than ever are complaining about the cost of higher education, yet applications at the most costly universities continue to go up. Including demand from global consumers. Is there a tipping point on the supply and demand curve? Why would/should UC change a thing? If they cost $80k a year, increase applicants, lower the acceptance rate, rise farther in the ranking, then can they do it at $90k a year?
You’d think some Booth guru would have this all worked out to the optimum price to generate all the other metrics desired.
@JHS - was thinking of some of those but wasn’t aware that some uni’s in Europe are changing to accomodate a broader audience. That’s great news indeed. Another factor not yet mentioned might be a bit of provincialism on the part of Americans, or just the geographic size and diversity of this country encouraging you to stay local and still get an enriching experience.
@uofcparent there’s no doubt that US universities are admired by many overseas and those students offer a rich diversity to the study body. Many schools don’t mention this but they severely limit the number admitted in a number of cases; for instance, top national uni’s (New York being an exception) tend to enroll about 10% - 12% of their student body as international students. Programs where Asian students tend to excel - science and engineering come to mind - probably turn away scores of qualified internationals. If they admitted them all, you’d see some programs with a plurality or even majority from just a few overseas countries. This is one reason why it’s great to have similar opportunities all over the world for everyone. I think most of us would prefer the diversity to be representative of actual preference rather than enforced via differing admission standards by our university administrators.
The acceptance rate for international applicants to top 10 schools is already 1/3 to 1/4 those of domestic applicants. I I don’t think reducing the international applicant pool will do anything but increase the acceptance rate to parity with domestic applicants.
What your analysis does not do and where it gets its erroneous conclusion is that it does not recognize the fact that number of international admits is pretty much fixed, so even though they drive down the overall acceptance rate and the acceptance rate for internationals, they do not have an effect on the acceptance rate of domestic applicants. It is a totally separate pool. (This also works somewhat on a country by country basis… where there is an informal quota for China, India, etc)
This is Caltech student ethnic composition right now:
Undergraduate
Total 961
Gender
Men 532 55%
Women 429 45%
Race
White 267 28%
Asian 416 43%
Underrepresented Minority * 149 16%
International 82 8%
Two or More Races ** 47 5%
I am not sure most Americans can accept that. I know I can. Meritocracy rules.