News Article: Harvard Solicits App's to Boost Selectivity

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
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<p>from this Friday's Bloomberg News: Ivy</a> League Colleges Solicit Students Rejected for Stake of Selectivity - Bloomberg</p>

<p>from the article:</p>

<p>"....Jon Reider, director of college counseling at San Francisco University High School, advises students to view e-mails and mailings skeptically, especially from Harvard University, the most selective college in the country. Reider called its mailings “not honorable” and “misleading.” </p>

<p>“The overwhelming majority of students receiving these mailings will not be admitted in the end, and Harvard knows this well,” said Reider, a former admissions officer at Stanford University. "</p>

<p>and also from the article:</p>

<p>"....Yale University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology are scaling back their marketing, saying they don’t want to encourage kids who likely won’t be accepted. Yale, which admitted 7.4 percent of applicants this year, cut its mailings by a third since 2005 to 80,000, Jeffrey Brenzel, dean of undergraduate admissions, said in an interview. </p>

<p>“I feel obligated to be reasonable in recruiting so we’re not creating unrealistic expectations of applicants,” Brenzel said. “If a student has only the most remote chance in admission, I feel it’s inappropriate to try to persuade a student to send an application.”</p>

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<p>A lot of schools do this! University of Chicago was relentless in their mailings.</p>

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<p>What’s the genesis behind this ‘selectivity’ movement? Is this simply a by product of the USNWR rankings? Most of the highly ranked schools are heavily endowed so the application fees aren’t looked at as a viable revenue stream, are they? I really just don’t get it. Are there many mature, intelligent people who look at the rankings and think that #1 is actually better than #5 or #10 or even #20? The rankings seem so contrived, arbitrary and artificial as to be nearly meaningless. College admissions is becoming something of a Mt. Everest thing – kids going to Harvard because it’s marginally higher in the rankings than some other good school. I think USNWR would probably go broke if it weren’t for their college guides, but I see these rankings as a negative force in higher education.</p>

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<p>Yes, schools do that. Sometimes kids who don’t have a given school on their minds will start thinking about it when they get mailing from said school. It does work. I would do the same if I were in Admissions of even the most selective colleges. It’s important to get on the radar screen of as many students as possible.</p>

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<p>Harvard strongly believes – or at least it did in the recent past – that there were large numbers of attractive candidates for admission out there who were not applying, either because they were not aware of Harvard and the benefits of attending, or because they thought they would not be competitive applicants. And furthermore that those “lost” applicants were disproportionately from low- or moderate-income families, nonwhite, and from regions other than the Northeast. Now, of course, the fact is that no applicant to Harvard has a high chance of being admitted, but I think a decent case can be made that over time Harvard has changed the composition of its classes by attracting more qualified applicants from groups that traditionally did not send lots of applications in. And I’m not talking about URMs here, or not just about URMs. I’m talking about rural public high schools in the Midwest or the South.</p>

<p>The same thing is true for the University of Chicago, with the added kicker that one of the top reasons people give for turning it down when they are admitted seems to be that it lacks sufficient prestige in their home communities – “no one has heard of it”. Which of course is galling for an institution that in academic circles is considered one of the top universities in the world, not just the U.S. So in the case of Chicago, the mailings have the additional function of promoting the brand – getting the word out about the quality of the university. Even if that does not result in more applications, it results in a better reputation and more support for students who want to attend there. And I think you can see with Chicago that the (vastly successful) efforts to attract more applications have also resulted in stronger admitted classes.</p>

<p>The same could be said about Washington University in St. Louis, or many other heavy mailers.</p>

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<p>I really don’t see what the fuss is about. Honestly, are we really going to treat high school seniors as kindergarten children whose world will break if they don’t get into a school that only admits 6.2% of its applicants? And moreover, the fact that some people would break over it is just disheartening and shows what’s wrong with this application process. No one tells you that getting into the top schools is a sure shot, come on. I applied to Harvard expecting nothing and for the majority of the applicants this should be the case. I am very grateful for Harvard’s outreach program because if it weren’t for it I might not have applied. It has been proven that Harvard doesn’t have a rigid set of criteria everyone should fulfill in order to be admitted and I think this for one warrants them sending out applications to many applicants: a lot of those people who thought they didn’t have a shot in fact did and got in (it’s just that they can’t admit EVERY single student to whom they sent the application).</p>

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<p>It works both ways - I have a D who did not get onto Harvard’s mailing list of promotional materials who applied and got in anyway.</p>

<p>BTW, I’m pretty sure that the overwhelming majority of people receiving a Publishers’ Clearinghouse mailing will not win the million-dollar sweepstakes either. :)</p>

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<p>One of the goals of affirmative action–and one to which people on all sides of the political spectrum can support–is to open up the opportunity to even think about schools/universities that their communities may not be aware. In the Dark Ages when I applied to university, I went to a parochial high school where the guidance office knew nothing about the Ivies–the “smart kids” were directed at best to Notre Dame. I met the Yale and Harvard admissions folks at an admissions fair in the near by city. Nobody promised me admission, but I knew after that evening that my horizons had broadened beyond what I knew or was told by those around me. My life would have been profoundly different had I not given Yale and Harvard a chance. </p>

<p>I am sure that there are kids in the Deep South, inner cities, the Great Plains who wouldn’t even consider that Harvard could be a possibility for them, whether they are an URM male or middle class white girl. </p>

<p>I haven’t read the brochures and I hope they are no full of blowing smoke up peoples’ skirts, but if they let kids know that it is tough to get admitted-- but no matter how small a percentage, one thing is certain is that 100% of those who don’t apply will not be admitted.</p>

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<p>Oh my God, this happened to me. If I had to go back in time, I never would have signed up for the Student Search Service. I was really nervous about college last year, and if I hadn’t started getting mail from UChicago, Northwestern, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Yale (to name just a few) I would never have thought I stood a chance. And yes, that is to a great extent but my own failing, but it also led me to believe I was a competitive applicant when I clearly was not. As if it’s not enough to feel misled by all of my peers, my guidance counselor, my teachers…colleges themselves were mocking me, too. Awesome.</p>

<p>Sorry for the bitterness. If a miracle occurs and I’m accepted off the waitlist, I guess it will be worth it, but right now this article is just making me want to punch someone. Namely my naive former self.</p>

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<p>gadad, etondad, you drove the point home way better than I could have hoped to. I agree wholeheartedly.</p>

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<p>i don’t really agree with sending students too many mailings, but the video seemed strange to me. what did the girl think duke knew about her? all they knew was her psat score and her high school. why in the world would they guarantee her admission if they didn’t know her grades or talents or read her essays?</p>

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<p>I think the point is that you assume you’re a student of a certain caliber if you receive a lot of mailings from highly selective schools. As I said, it wasn’t just the mailings that encouraged me, and I definitely wasn’t stupid enough to think I was guaranteed admission anywhere, but I really thought one of them would take me.</p>

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<p>Another important point for me is that there are perfectly good reasons for these mailings without thinking about USNWR or rankings. I’m not so naive as to believe that no college admissions office has ever tried to improve the college’s USNWR ranking. But I AM perhaps naive enough to believe that any member of the Harvard admissions office who said, “I’ve got an idea how we can jack up our USNWR numbers” would be fired. Harvard does lots of things to improve itself as a university, but I don’t believe it does anything to improve its ranking. That’s not how they think at Harvard.</p>

<p>By the way, Eva0607’s post arguably justifies the whole thing. If by casting its net wide Harvard can get 100 kids like that into its entering class, who might not have thought to apply otherwise, that’s how it will remain the world’s greatest university in the 21st Century.</p>

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<p>It’s a good point, I’ll admit, and it makes sense from the point of view of the colleges. But I also think it encourages the people-applying-to-20-schools phenomenon, which is not helpful for anyone.</p>

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<p>francisvdahlmann, I am sorry to hear what happened to you. I understand how this whole thing might have been a bitter experience for you and I sympathize. </p>

<p>That said, I think you bring a good point when you mention guidance counselors, teachers, parents, etc. They are an important link in this process (albeit for me they weren’t because I didn’t exactly have much help from them in my college search process). I think if we are going to put the blame on someone it’s a bit selfish to just blame the selective universities that send out applications to people with high scores. The reality is that high scores DO appeal to selective universities. The thing is that they also look at other things (special talents, interests, ethnicity, etc.) and they have a wide pool of applicants to choose from. They can not only choose a kid with a 2300 SAT but also a kid with a 2300 SAT AND an amazing photographer (just a random example). Thus it’s very important to keep this in mind. They are called reaches for a reason :confused: It’s not a sure shot for anyone no matter what kind of a caliber of student you are and the people involved in the process need to emphasize this.</p>

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<p>Thank you, Eva. I appreciate that. I don’t want it to seem like I’m throwing a pity party for myself - I’m really happy with the school at which I’ve enrolled, I am just a little sad because I gave school everything I had last year and was more informed than anyone I knew about the admissions process, and it seems I was still missing something crucial. It hurts to discover that one’s best isn’t quite good enough, especially when I think of the hours and hours that my dad and I spent revising and re-revising essays. But I guess what I should take away from that is that I should be grateful to have a dad that is willing to spent hours helping me edit the same piece of writing over and over, grateful that I got into a college that I love. </p>

<p>You are quite right in saying that it is not the responsibility of the universities. If I’d worked harder in 9th and 10th grade, if I’d had a better guidance counselor, if my teachers hadn’t loved me so much that they were blinded to my chances, then maybe things would have been different. But there’s a postive aspect to all of these pitfalls as well: I was able to figure out that I love to learn rather than just doing assignments for the grade. I was involved in activities I was passionate about rather than resume-padders. I was forced to do independent research and call people and learn how to evaluate my options. I had teachers who respected me as an intellectual and really wanted to see me succeed. I guess what I’m saying is, despite the fact that I was rejected from colleges I truly loved and could see myself succeeding at, I don’t regret my high school experience or doubt myself. So, food for thought, CC’ers.</p>

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<p>It certainly didn’t seem that way, don’t worry. It’s very human to feel that way, and trust me, I had to deal with a few waitlists and a rejection on my own and it was kind of hard to not take it as a rejection of me as a person. In that vein, please don’t feel like you are not good enough! Like I said, the process is crazy crazy crazy and influenced by a lot of factors (some of which you sadly cannot control). </p>

<p>Getting into the top schools is no guarantee for anything and we all know that. I can see that you are a mature person with a clear set of goals in mind after this crazy process and a parent (parents) that support you. That counts for a lot :)</p>

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<p>Aww, thank you! The same goes for you, you’re clearly very smart and if you’re as nice to everyone as you are to random strangers on College Confidential then I have no doubt that you’ll succeed in life :)</p>

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<p>I don’t really think I would have even bothered applying to Harvard or other top schools if I hadn’t received those mailings in my sophomore year…I thought even schools like Cal would be out of reach for me. I’m URM so I would think I’m in their target audience. Even though I ended up turning down Harvard’s offer of admission, I am really thankful to them and the other top schools for sending out these mailings and encouraging me to excel in high school.</p>

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<p>I’m a Caucasian low-income female from the deep south. </p>

<p>By the time I was a sophomore, I had a college list made out of schools that I dreamed of going to but felt I wouldn’t be admitted to. (NYU, Vandy, UNC-Chapel Hill, Tulane, etc.) Harvard and the ivies did not make that list. No one from my school (or possibly school district) had ever been admitted to Harvard. I’d only heard of two people from a town about 45 minutes away getting in. (And they were legacies and brothers.) Needless to say, I didn’t consider Harvard worth wasting time considering. “My kind of people” didn’t get into Harvard, and that was that. </p>

<p>But then Harvard send me the application in the mail. </p>

<p>And the wheels in my mind started turning, and I began researching, and my mom and I saved for a visit. Before I knew it, I was sitting in the admissions office, interviewing with an admissions officer. Before I knew it, I was walking Harvard Yard. </p>

<p>Before I knew it, I applied to Harvard. </p>

<p>And here’s the kicker, the part that still gives me chills: I was accepted.</p>

<p>So here’s the thing. If it hadn’t been for Harvard’s mailings, I would never have applied to Harvard. I would not be sporting the “Harvard Class of 2015” shirt I’m sporting now. I wouldn’t have the incredible opportunity to attend university for free and graduate with no debt. (Financial aid packages from all other schools were quite poor…)</p>

<p>And I consider that justification. Some may consider it “overmailing,” but it changed my life. I haven’t even been the first on this thread to post my story. I am sorry for students like francisvdahlmann who were mislead by mailings; nevertheless, I am so beyond thankful for the opportunity I never would have seen without the app in the mail. </p>

<p>So I say, “Mail on, Harvard!”</p>