Limiting Ivy League Applications

What would you guys think if the Ivy League schools introduced a new policy in the future that limited applicants to only being able to apply to a certain number of Ivies, say 4/8? The policy would be something like what Oxford and Cambridge have in England, to prevent applicants from just applying to all of them without really seeing what they like about each school and if they really care about the college.

Obviously lots of students apply to all 8 schools year after year, and it really seems like they only care about the prestige. Do you think this policy would be effective, or would it be unnecessary? I was talking about this with someone and was curious to see what everyone’s thoughts would be if this policy was introduced eventually.

It is the student’s money to waste for excess applications and it helps the Ivy’s maintain their high selectivity rankings. I don’t see it changing until USNWR rankings remove popularity as a ranking criteria.

@TooOld4School I agree that I don’t see this policy being implemented any time soon. I was just curious what people would think of it IF it were to, for whatever reason, go into effect over the next few years.

@bssurly - in effect - REA and ED are pretty much this policy, but for the early season only. It is pretty hard as it is for seniors to determine which one to REA / ED to. It will be a much bigger hassle if the restriction became effective for the entire admission season. Glad it is not here now!

Would this policy benefit the student in any way? I don’t see one.

@Postmodern the benefit is- in theory- reduced number of apps both in total and in the high stats group, so less “competition”. Lower numbers of apps would- again in theory- allow admissions officers to spend more time on each app. (Or colleges could reduce their admissions staff, thus cutting costs.) It would also indicate that each applicant is more serious about attending that school, which helps yield rates.

This idea has been batted around before on this site and elsewhere. It can be a fun exercise for admissions nerds but in the end the arguments against it win out. The theoretical benefits may never materialize if waves of heretofore non-Ivy applicants decide their chances are somehow improved under a restricted system. The marketing push to make a particular school 1 of the 4 applied to would be huge. Plus an additional layer of oversight would be necessary to enforce it. In the end it looks like collusion and limiting choice which seems unAmerican.

British colleges, including Cambridge and Oxford, admit students mostly based on test scores. Hollistic admissions used by the top colleges in the U.S. create a lot of randomness, so applying to all eight ivies plus some of their peers does increase odds of getting into one.

It wouldn’t make a huge difference. It is very likely that if students applications were limited that acceptance rates would go further down as colleges would expect a greater percentage of accepted students to attend.

The Ivy League is technically a sports conference and. as such, should not limit applications to peer institutions be they other Ivys or other top tier colleges. The 8 Ivy league colleges are independent institutions that compete against one another for students, in sports, for professors, for research grants etc. many times with both Ivy League and non-Ivy League colleges.

^^^boy did I word that last sentence badly… The 8 Ivy league colleges are independent institutions that compete against one another (and with non-Ivy schools as well) for students, in sports, for professors, for research grants etc.

I think a better solution is to limit how many common apps a student can submit. No one needs to submit 20 apps, but there are plenty of people that blindly submit that many or more, as they treat the top 25 or so colleges like a lottery. It’s crazy and should be stopped. It’s extremely unfair to applicants who simply can’t afford to submit that many apps, in addition to the fact that students get accepted to colleges they have no intention of ever attending. When there are enough of those students, and there certainly are, it means that qualified kids might not get into a school they may really want to attend. And to those who argue that is what waitlists are for, well that is only true to a certain extent. Every year colleges experience summer melt, and as it gets later into the summer, the colleges will have a harder time getting kids to attend when they are called off the waitlist in July or August. (Disclaimer, my own child accepted a place off WL at a college in July. She didn’t submit 20 apps.)

Then there is the chicken and egg cycle of kids submitting more apps because everyone is submitting more apps and kids are hedging their bets. As they are submitting ever more applications, the AO’s can barely devote enough time to apps as it is. We have all seen people my age who have said they would never get into their alma mater now, and it isn’t because people are getting smarter. Now it’s all about standing out as much as possible and trying to pad resumes.

And to those who say “I should have as much choice as I want” I say BS. If you don’t have enough choice with 15 or 20 applications, then you have a problem. The problem is greed, not free market economy. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should, but there are too many people who could care less. The colleges are all desperate to add diversity to their campuses, inlcuding URM and low SES students, yet they continue to be app-wh0res, thus excluding indirectly the very students they seek. And Common App is making money hand over fist, so I can’t see any of it changing any time soon.

@Lindagaf How do you feel about QuestBridge applicants?

What do you mean? In terms of how many apps they should fill out? No one needs to fill out 20 apps, and I doubt most Questbridge students would have the money to do so, assuming they can’t get unlimited fee waivers. Every student should take the responsibility to ensure they are applying to an appropriate range of colleges.

If you mean how do,I feel,about Questbridge kids personally, yes, they are awesome. Good on them for all they accomplish.

Has it ever been considered to implement a match like they have for medical residency programs? The applicants rank the institutions they are interested in and the institutions rank the students who have expressed interest in them. Then a computer algorithm optimizes the match up so everyone benefits; the colleges get the top students who want them be the students get the top school they qualify for. I don’t see a downside to this. It worked great for residency programs.

Each Ivy college is a private, independent institution and they compete for students not only through the admission process but through financial aid. The above system would mean that students would not have an opportunity to compare financial offers from several Ivy schools (and as a result the offers may become less generous).

The bottom line is that that nothing will change the total number of spots in these schools that are open. There will continue to be many more worth candidates than there are places available. If admissions was done in the manner noted above, it would be expected that yields would increase dramatically (since there would be no competition from other Ivy schools) and far fewer acceptances would be given out.

I don’t thini that would be helpful or beneficial to anyone IMO. people can actually like all of the ivies even if they are wildly different; people can have varied interests and these schools bring a lot to the table for people to like. It’s their money and students can apply to as many colleges as they want, it doesn’t affect anyone else.

I don’t think we should take away the freedom to apply to a lot of places, especially because of the financial considerations involved in choosing a school. I floated the idea on another thread for students to essentially pref their choices by tier. For example, students declare three “1” schools, three “2” schools, three “3” schools, etc. So if a student applied to six schools, they would have three 1’s and three 2’s. If they applied to ten, they would have three 1’s, three 2’s, three 3’s, and one 4. And so on.

That way students are free to apply to as many as they would like but there would be a “cost” associated in that they would have to tell some schools that they were pretty far down the student’s list. This also would allow schools to know where they stand with a student. If they had a toss-up choice on two applicants, and one had the school as a 1 and the other had it as a 5, they could go with the 1, knowing that student was more enthusiastic about coming. If a student applied to 8 Ivies, they would either have to pref some low, or have all of their other options pref’ed low. But students/families would still have the freedom to apply to as many as they wished.

I don’t think the “ranking” method matches the american culture. A lot of students change their mind from September to December let alone May. Some wait for admitted days to make a choice and I am not even going to touch the financial part of it which can complicate the story tremendously. I attended high school in another country that had ranking but things were very different as the students had already picked majors and money was not an issue as it was free. Not comparable at all.

It is not comparable and unfortunately the schools don’t think this is a problem. High applications and low acceptance rates are a win-win for the school. To many prestige is a factor in choosing a school although most of us would say it doesn’t equate to a good fit.

One kid’s reach is another kid’s target is another kid’s safety. Why should the very high stats kid be penalized by telling a school that it is in fact a “safety” (tier 3)? We want kids to get into their safety schools, right? That’s the whole point.

I’m against this idea, for a number of reasons. First, for a significant number of students, the reason they want to apply to Ivies and peer schools is because they want to go to college with the most able peers possible. If that’s your main goal, the differences between (say) Brown and Columbia may be less important. (Both of my kids applied to both Brown and Columbia, finding a lot to like about both. Indeed, each of them applied to 6 of the 8 Ivies, as well as some peer LACs and others.)

Second, because all of these schools practice holistic admissions, any student’s likelihood of admission is unpredictable (not random, but unpredictable). As a result, if a student likes a number of these schools, it makes sense to apply to more of them because of the unpredictability of the results. It sounds reasonable to say, only apply to 4; but what if you choose the wrong 4?

Third, how many students actually apply to large numbers of colleges? Is this really a problem? And for whom is it a problem?

Finally, if you apply to too many colleges, the quality of your applications may suffer. Isn’t that a self-correction to this supposed problem?