I stand by my recommendation of Selingo’s “Who Gets in and Why,” but this opinion piece is a real head-scratcher.
How is chopping the app into multiple pieces and submitting them all at different times supposed to make things better??
Does he seriously believe that eliminating ED will meaningfully raise acceptance rates and take any pressure off RD??
And does he not see the contradiction in saying that direct admissions is good because students can have an acceptance in the bag early in the senior year??
I think test-optional is a good thing, but it seems like its supporters are working overtime to get people to look at anything other than the elephant in the room.
But would the local commuter universities be on The Common Application? Seems like their admission needs are different enough (i.e. they may just need basic information and high school record for frosh applicants) that using The Common Application would not make sense for them (e.g. the CSUs in California do not use The Common Application).
You are making many assumptions about where these mandated apps are going and what platform they are on. My understanding from counselors who are raising this as an issue is that a common app account is often the platform used, and this practice explains part of the large increase of individual common app accounts/apps over the last few years. Especially given we know the number of students attending college hasn’t increased over the last few years.
The only reason I see to apply to so many colleges is to chase merit money. One idea is to have all colleges do a guaranteed financial aid/merit pre-read, before applying. Whitman College and a few others already do this. Then no need to apply to so many colleges. I suppose kids would then do 20+ financial pre-reads, but seems better than actually applying to 20+ colleges.
Practically speaking how would that work? Wouldn’t AOs have to do a complete read to decide how much merit/discount to give a student (assuming we are talking a school without merit grids)? And then read all the other apps to decide where this applicant falls in terms of desirability? And then FA dept does the full eval of need? Seems like you are just asking that they read/evaluate apps quicker/earlier?
It could be possible for some applicants for need-based aid. Applicants fill in FAFSA (and other forms like CSS Profile if specified by the college) and send them to the college, which feeds the data into its computer to calculated need-based aid. Presumably, simpler situations are just given need-based aid numbers from the computer program, while the computer program flags more complex situations for human reading. The simpler situations’ calculations can then be given directly to the applicants quickly before they apply. But those with more complex financial situations would mostly get back “sorry, your financial situation is too complex to be given a pre-read”.
Of course, since merit that is not automatic for stats or NM or CBNRP status is determined by admissions, such merit cannot be pre-read.
I would like to see a Top 15/prestigious university adopt this model. As an applicant, you can only apply to one category. You choose your own category.
Category 1 (50% of the offers of admission) - Pure Academic Meritocracy. Standardized tests are required. Standardized test scores & High School GPA/Rigor are the majority of the deciding factors with some academic awards/honors considered. ECs, personal stories and other factors are not considered.
Category 2 (20% of the offers of admission) - Traditional holistic review.
Category 3 (20% of the offers of admission) - Just for URMs
Category 4 (10% of the offers of admission) - Legacies or athletes or anyone else the university wants to offer for any reason they have.
The fact remains that private colleges can do what they want. Students and parents don’t have any say over how they change their admissions process. The sooner students accept that, the sooner they can make lists that give them options. There’s almost no reason for colleges to make any changes. If anyone can think of any, I’m all ears.
The college with the greatest emphasis on this for admission (Caltech) is SAT/ACT-blind, since the SAT/ACT are not very useful at distinguishing between applicants who may be admissible there and can handle the work there.
A quick search of a half dozen top 30 schools show over 50% of students receiving aid. If MOST students don’t need aid, are they actively searching for students that need aid and accepting them at a much higher rate? Or giving aid to students that aren’t looking for it?
Reddit forums are littered with “I need aid, so I applied everywhere”. That’s usually the “defense” offered when the annual “accepted at 100 schools! $1M in scholarships!” article is posted - “the student needs aid, so they need to apply everywhere for the best chance”.
FWIW, I looked forward to insightful learnings from Selingo’s book and was disappointed.
OK I clearly did not think this through! Pre-reads would be problematic if colleges like Harvard all did it I suppose, only works for the less competitive colleges that don’t get so many apps. But if there just was a way to get merit info before applying then kids wouldn’t have to apply to so many colleges. I suppose this is not so simple or it would have been done by now.
Some less selective colleges have automatic merit for stats or NM or CBNRP status, but many of the students aiming for “top __” colleges consider such colleges “beneath” them and unsuitable even as safeties.
The article said total applicants was accelerating much faster than total applicants. What would drive that other than applicants applying to more schools on average?
I read Selingo article with interest. As pointed out, the frenzy applies to T50, top SLACs and “public” ivies.
Someone on Reddit pointed out that kids are fishing for offers (given holistic evaluation) and fishing for aid (no Central process). As long as these things are true, taking away ED is not going to fix anything. Kids are still going to shotgun to fish for aid and offers.
Some kind of FA clearing house(w/o merit muddying the waters) would be great - FA and admissions already work independently of each other. So it is so hard to use a program to tell a family their FA should the kids be accepted,
I’ve been reading the Reddit/a2c with interest. Seems dominated by international and domestic shotgunning students who apply without regard to any FA calculator. This is a logical approach because of the unpredictability of the process. One international seeking full aid did not get in anywhere last year with enough aid, rewrote essays, applied to 60+ with fee waivers and is into 2 top SLACs with full aid. As long as kids hold out a scintilla of hope and have these examples, the shotgunning will continue. Selingo ignores this.