<p>Post everyone!!!!</p>
<p>Never. The U.S. population can’t grow that large. Under the minute possibility that it does, Harvard will just expand.</p>
<p>Harvard and its direct rivals are close to the highest selectivity that can be sustained without fundamentally changing the school (shrink enrollment, go international) or the admissions procedures (multi-stage selection, reduced “holistic” evaluation, multiple admissions committees, lesser faculty involvement). </p>
<p>Consider:</p>
<p>-The US applicant pool is close to being exhausted. </p>
<p>-The marketing benefit of high selectivity is also exhausted. Pushing it too far would backfire in many ways, reducing reputation and applicant quality. </p>
<p>-One percent admission rate can’t happen in a vacuum, similar rates would have to develop at all the top schools. However, the domestic Ivy League applicant pool is, qualitatively, about as large as it can get without major national structural changes (collapse of the higher education system, emergence of third-world economics).</p>
<p>-The pool of donors, athletes, minorities, celebrities, and other “hooked” can’t be grown in scale with the number of applications. Unless the current admissions methods are abandoned, the IQ disparity between rigged and academic admits would grow into an unacceptable gulf between two mutually resentful tiers of students: the exceptionally qualified and the competent but unqualified (by 1-percent admission standards). </p>
<p>-The admissions office costs money to operate. It is already sizable, and growing it increases turnover (which is already high) and reduces the degree of connection between the admissions workers and the university. In a factory environment, most of the added hires wouldn’t be alumni (which is the case today), morale would be reduced, perks would decrease.</p>
<p>-Application fees can’t be raised to cover the costs. They would have to be reduced or eliminated in order to qualitatively increase the number of applications. </p>
<p>-The number of faculty admissions readers can’t be quadrupled without changing the admissions procedure or introducing inconsistency in the results.</p>
<p>-The current admissions rate already creates the perception of a crapshoot. If admissions becomes enormously chancier or more difficult, qualified applicants will abandon the process to the undesirables. </p>
<p>To summarize, the admissions rate can’t go too low, and if it does, the pressure will be on the universities to reintroduce sanity.</p>
<p>I think Columbia has the best chance to achieve the 1% goal first. They seem to selectively remove some of their schools from the data to get the lowest possible admit rate. </p>
<p>But seriously, I believe the admit rates for elite schools are down to the point where they will soon become a negative advertisement for schools. Prospective students are going to take the attitude that the probability of acceptance is so small there is no point in wasting time and effort in applying. Obviously we are not there yet, but we are very close to the point of diminishing returns for HYPS to brag about their admit rates.</p>
<p>I have a question that may have been addressed previously on CC. Are schools held to a universal standard in compiling their admit rates? For example, do they only count complete applications? Or do some schools include partially complete applications? I am thinking in terms of a student submitting the common application, but then deciding not to send in the supplementary portion because he changed his mind about the school.</p>
<p>Since the number of domestic HS graduates will drift down for a few years, then rise again in the mid-teens . . .</p>
<p>since international applications will grow incrementally yet inexorably . . . </p>
<p>since the highest numbers of domestic births are in the mid-00s . . .</p>
<p>since our consumerist mentality will cause us to continue to move toward brand names independent of value (is A&F gear really best quality?) . . .</p>
<p>and since these changes will occur over time and therefore not trigger a strong reaction . . .</p>
<p>acceptance rates into the HYPed schools will slowly drift down toward the low single digits over the next ten years, then drop to near 1% in the mid-20s</p>
<p>target date: 2024</p>
<p>demographically yours,</p>
<p>Kei</p>
<p>^ I was with you until you mentioned the bullcrap known as A&F. No one who knows what preppy really is would ever wear that crap. Of course, it’s not the best quality. RL, Lacoste, VV, BB, and J.Crew are the best quality.</p>
<p>All in all, I think I agree with siserune and whoever else said that it will NEVER go that low. My class and the Class of 2010 are at the top of the curve, population-wise, and the admissions rates will probably stay where they are or creep up again over the next decade. Eventually, they’ll sink again, but never to 1%</p>
<p>re #5, do the arithmetic to see how unlikely that is. A 50 percent increase in domestic population and in domestic applications per capita would be enormous, and only amount to a factor of 2.25 increase in selectivity; let’s say about 30000 new applications from the USA. You would need a factor of SEVEN to get from today’s admission rates to one percent. That’s over 100000 further applications from the international pool, for 100 seats. How many internationals do you think would brave 1-in-1000 odds and over 100-dollar application cost, for the chance to come to Harvard?</p>
<p>LOL: I’m just left scratching my head at the premise of this post. My thoughts: “Who cares?” While the difference between 6% and 1% are huge, they are of a scale that I cannot mentally engage the difference if any of my kids ever want to apply to one of the tippy-top schools.</p>
<p>(silent prayer: Oh pleez, not Harvard! LOL)</p>
<p>With the 6-7%, my reaction is already “Are you kidding me?”. At this point, if it shrinks, I’m beyond the “being shocked” stage. I reached that when the HYPS dropped below ten percent.</p>
<p>(My HYP alma mater had a 16% accept rate the year I applied. I was already accepted to a sweet fall back university so didn’t go into my Ivy apps with any anxiety. How sweet it was to be naive!)</p>
<p>To put it another way, the international admissions rate from some countries is probably already near one percent, or could go that low with some marketing. Unless the application process is streamlined for foreign applicants even more than for domestics (use the IIT entrance exam as a complete Harvard application), the application cost and complexity are a hurdle for the internationals. To attempt that hurdle, their chances can’t go much below one percent, and for that to be the case, Harvard would need to become an international school in one of two ways: either spite US applicants entirely by not distinguishing them from internationals, or have a two-tiered population with internationals trouncing the Americans in the competition for grades, post-graduate scholarships, and all else. Neither of these are likely outcomes.</p>
<p>hookedem168 said: “I was with you until you mentioned the bullcrap known as A&F . . . it’s not the best quality . . .”</p>
<p>Yep, I agree.</p>
<p>And that was my point: people wear that stuff even though it’s nto so goddo just because of the name . . . and that drives a lot of applicants to the HYPed schools: the name.</p>
<p>Kei</p>
<p>siserune said: “re #5, do the arithmetic to see how unlikely that is.”</p>
<p>Well, I did. If applications increase 10% per year, then by 2024, with the same class size and same yield, Harvard wiollaccept 2% of applicants.</p>
<p>Foreign applications to HYPed schools will go up significantly as level of education in the rest of the world rises, domestic high schools graduation classes will be bigger in the 2020s (not counting immigration) and I don’t see ANY sign that our infatuation with brand names will do anything but continue.</p>
<p>Only 5 years ago folks were surprised when acceptance rates dipped into the 20s, and look where we are now.</p>
<p>Kei</p>
<p>The kids who wear A&F in middle school and high school are the same idiots who grow up and wear Ed Hardy and Affliction, and we all know that they’re the people you should avoid like the plague ;)</p>
<p>I don’t believe it will ever happen but if it does, it would lead to an entire reexamination of the higher educational system. The media would swarm all over it and there would be an uproar of what college admissions has evolved into. Maybe a 5% admit rate is more realistic, when population growth allows for such a happenstance.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You can’t blindly extrapolate the recent growth into the future. In the past few years, several one-time jumps occurred, such as going to the Common Application, killing early admission, eliminating tuition for below-60K family income, and an outreach program sending 50000 solicitations annually searching for such low-income applicants. Net result: 50 percent jump in applications over 6 years. That’s 7 percent growth per annum, and there aren’t many more tricks available to juice it up further. Nor can the SAT and AP be diluted again to give medium-achievers the false impression that they are high achieving Ivy Leaguers. Putting the applications online happened long ago. Where do you think these massive, demographically unlikely increases in the US applicant population are going to come from? The obvious sources are all tapped out. </p>
<p>Harvard can increase financial aid to 100 percent, or 150 percent, of cost, but it can’t manufacture an unlimited supply of domestic applicants who would be qualified under a 1-percent admission standard. Past a certain point (which we may have reached already), they are only raising US application numbers based on a false advertisement that any applicant meeting basic requirements can be seriously considered for admission. In reality, only about five or ten thousand applications have any hope of acceptance and the rest are a preventable result of Harvard keeping the admissions criteria secret. With tools like scattergrams, online admissions-chances calculators, and ever greater data disclosure, applicants are getting more knowledgeable and these gross mismatches cannot continue to such an extent that domestic applications reach toward 100000 per year. Harvard needs at least 160000 applications total to reach an admissions rate of 1 percent. No way that happens: the current size of the Ivy League applicant pool is around 60 thousand, most of whom know they have no chance at Harvard and don’t bother to apply.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Which doesn’t change things unless HYPed schools decide to stop being American universities. Currently international enrollment is capped at 7 to 10 percent. The most selective national universities in the world don’t have one percent admissions rates, or anything far below one percent at any rate. I find it completely implausible that a flood of internationals will apply to Harvard at 1000-to-1 odds. If education levels rise internationally, that includes universities, and US schools would become less attractive in comparison to local options. As I mentioned above, for the odds to be significantly better than 1000-to-1 for internationals in a hypothetical 1 percent admissions scenario in the US, Harvard would have to simply become an international school — turning a national resource into an affirmative action program for foreigners, funded by US tax exemptions and research grants. </p>
<p>Of course, Harvard International could be workable if it became for-profit and raised an endowment twice as large as its previous highest level. That is about as likely as 100000 domestic applicants lining up to attempt Harvard admission at 1 percent odds.</p>
<p>Siserune -</p>
<p>I get your point about extrapolations, and understand about those confounders.</p>
<p>Not sure at all that those items you mention will have enough stopping power to prevent the incremental growth in applications over time that I predict . . . you have more faith in people voluntarily refraining from applying than I do.</p>
<p>Other points:
- capping international admits does not mean that mean that applications are capped; more will apply; any sign that’s not true?
- 10% increase per year in apps does seem too high . . So no chance it will go down to 1%
- 5% increase per year gets an admit rate of something less than 4% by 2024
- admit rate = admitted/apply</p>
<p>I still see no point at which applications to the HYPed schools do anything but increase over time, which means that the admit rate will continue to drift down to the mid single digits over time . . . do you think there is anything that would cause it to go back up?</p>
<p>Kei</p>
<p>P.S. It’s kind of like calculus . . . approach 1% and never get there!!!</p>
<p>The selectivity can also decrease over time due to better matching between applicants and schools (Caltech and MIT are harder to get into than Harvard, but have a higher admission rate), and increases in enrollment to match national population growth. Harvard planned a major expansion to the other side of the Charles River, though that’s now on hold due to the drop in endowment. Rival universities can grow (Olin, Duke, Stanford, UC post-209, honors programs), taking some of Harvard’s natural clientele. </p>
<p>It’s hard to say what the long term trend will be. The economics and admission processes for college could vary greatly on a national scale, as they have before. More selectivity at the top over the next few years sounds right. After that, who knows.</p>
<p>skateboarder, I do wear t-shirts and jeans…when I’m sitting around the house. When I’m going out with friends, I like to look good. It’s not a matter of being a prick or not; it’s a matter of knowing which clothes are not only comfortable, but make you look like you’ve “got it together.” For instance, I hope you didn’t wear a t-shirt and jeans to your college interviews. Creating that immediate impression of “I know what I’m doing, and I’m going places” is essential in every facet of today’s world. Obviously, you don’t have to wear a suit and tie everywhere to create this effect lol; you just have look you know how to dress :)</p>
<p>but this is all beside the point of this thread.</p>
<p>Haha hookem that wasn’t directed toward you or anybody in particular</p>
<p>Lol I got an infraction from cc. So hardcore</p>
<p>Never. I don’t know where they are going to get all the applicants unless they want to cut size. I think though, that the acceptance rate will approach 5% within five to ten years.</p>