Limiting Ivy League Applications

I think this is a terrible idea. Part of my problem with it is that it’s a poorly thought out, overly strict, knee-jerk reaction to what very well may not be much of a problem at all. And otherwise, it’s very unfair, to those who may have very legitimate reasons to apply to what others might consider too many schools.

There are plenty of posts about students who got denied, or waitlisted, at many schools, and some people are quick to blame it on students applying to so many schools. I’d like to see more rigorous, comprehensive analyses, before accepting that this is really what’s going on, or that there’s even a problem to begin with. Many of those posts may just come out of frustration. And it is by no means clear to me that such analyses would yield the same data or conclusions that these people think are “certain” or “obvious”.

The idea that because so many students are applying to so many colleges, it’s preventing other students from getting into good schools, is fallacious – a student can only go to one school, so it doesn’t really matter how many they apply to. The only way it’d be harder (numerically) to get into good schools is if more students actually go to those schools; that may actually be happening, but it would be caused primarily by factors such as there being more domestic high school students, more international students, or more domestic students trying to get into good schools. (Applying to more schools could be a factor, but alone not likely a primary factor.)

Perhaps more importantly, it would not be fair. Some people think it should be so easy to get one’s application list down to 6-8 schools, but that isn’t always the case. It depends a lot on the details of one’s college search. Looking at this from my own personal experience, my older son applied to about 7 schools, which was easy given his preferences and parameters; my younger son applied to about twice that many, because his search was more complicated.

I want to echo the comments of @TiggerDad – we found similar in our search. We really didn’t know what to expect, in terms of acceptances or financial aid, so we felt we had to cast a somewhat wide net in order to end up with some good, feasible options. In the end, there was a $15K difference between the lowest cost and highest cost schools. We applied to both need-based aid only schools and schools that give merit aid – and there really wasn’t much difference in the net costs between those (which of course had to do with our financial details). Some of that was unexpected, given the results we had gotten from the NPCs.

Sure, you can make some assumptions based on the results of the NPCs and on anticipated likelihood of acceptances – but those are by no means certain, so that would likely lead to eliminating some schools that would’ve ended up being good options. For instance, the cheapest school and the most expensive school were both schools that were supposedly good with merit aid – so we very well might have eliminated the one that ended up being the lowest cost.

Regarding the idea that it’s all easier if you have some “safety” schools – well, it can be pretty hard to find a school that meets all the criteria – i.e., guaranteed acceptance and affordability, and liked. My son didn’t really have any that met those criteria. Instead we had a few that I considered “low match”. But still he found them significantly less desirable than the other schools on his list (and I don’t blame him).

BTW, I also don’t buy the idea that colleges making so much money off application fees is much of a factor, as many schools, including many very good schools, don’t even charge an application fee:

https://www.niche.com/colleges/rankings/colleges-with-no-application-fee/

(If that link doesn’t come through cleanly, it’s at niche.)

And that list doesn’t even include schools that waive the application fees for low-income applicants. About half the schools my son applied to were free to apply to (and that was not a factor in them being included on his list).

This will simply never happen. There is incentive for schools to have as many applicants as possible ($$$ from fees and it lowers the acceptance rate). What’s the benefit to the school? It’s not yield, they can always just accept fewer and use the waitlist more if they want.