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First came the good news for St. Olaf College: early-decision applications were way up this year.</p>
<p>Now comes the bad news: the number of regular applications is way down, about 30 percent fewer than at this time last year.</p>
<p>To be quite honest, I dont know how well end up, said Derek Gueldenzoph, dean of admissions at the college, in Northfield, Minn. By this time last year, we had three-quarters of all our applications. The deadlines Jan. 15. If what weve got now is three-quarters of what were going to get, were in big trouble. But if this turns out to be only half, well be fine.</p>
<p>Not all private colleges are reporting fewer applications this year. Even in the Midwest and Pennsylvania, where most colleges seem to have dwindling numbers, some are getting more applications than ever. Still, in a survey of 371 private institutions released last week by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, two-thirds said they were greatly concerned about preventing a decline in enrollment....</p>
<p>Admissions officers nationwide point to several possible reasons for the drop in applications. Some students have pared their college lists this year. Many more are looking at less-expensive state universities. Many institutions accepted more students under binding early-decision programs, and each such acceptance drains off an average of 8 to 10 regular-decision applications. And some experts suspect that students are delaying their college plans.
<p>This is not surprising because private, independent (K-12) schools have been struggling for years with declining enrollment because of the bad economy.</p>
<p>For the top tier USNWR private colleges and the top LAC's, they are going to see their yield go down as much as 30-40% but they won't drop their average tuition and r and b costs, but instead drop their academic standards so they can get the utlra-rich kids/parents then to pay full ticket and bail them out of thier mismanagement of their cost structure.</p>
<p>I am seeing a trend in our area where kids are applying to top schools, just to see if they can get in, but the parents, at the Xmas parties, are telling other parents they won't pay for it, but telling the kid to go to a top state school like U of Mich. </p>
<p>None of these top schools will be able to brag that their academic standrads went up, they will go down, and of course the rich will benefit.</p>
<p>^MilPerson80, I disagree with your assessment. First, the number of rich kids and number of spots in state schools, whether elite or not, are finite. I might say that the numbers of students who are "wealthy" are considerably lower this year than any other year. State schools will enroll the same number of students as they did last year, if not even lower because state funding will be lower due to diminished revenues from taxes. These state schools won't be able to absorb the number of students who turn down "elite schools" if these schools' yields decline 30-40%. (Where did you get that number anyway?) Where will you house them and who will teach them? There won’t be enough of “wealthy” students to bail out anyone. They will be looking for financial aids too.</p>
<p>Second, "elite universities,” despite being hit by loss of endowment, are still tremendously wealthy. Harvard still has 27-28 billion in its bank account; don’t look for Harvard at your local soup kitchen any time soon. Furthermore, many these schools are committed to keep financial aids high for low-income students. My university, BC, is planning to cut 2% of its budget, about 15 million dollars, and put that into financial aids. The article even said, "The truth is that a lot of private colleges have more financial aid available this year, but there’s lots of misinformation out there." There will be fiscal restraints and cost cutting, buildings won’t be built, and delays in hiring new faculty, but your doom day scenario is too unrealistic. These institutions survived the Great Depression and World War II, a double knock-out of low-revenues and no students. </p>
<p>The colleges and universities that will be hurting the most, unfortunately, are small regional schools with little national brand who rely on tuition for most of their budgets. The elites, like cockroach, will live on.</p>
<p>We had saved in 529s and 401Ks giving up a lot - and when the values went down (I know we are not the only ones), we made it quite clear to our child that there will be no applications to schools with only need based scholarships. For him as well as us it was very difficult to drop all those schools out. As we are not very far from retirement, we cannot spend 50K a year despite the EFC showing that. To me the need based scholarship policy appears to be saying that those who can afford should pay for those who cannot.</p>
<p>MiPerson80, I don't agree that the top tier colleges will see either fewer applications or significantly smaller yields. And even if they did, their applicants are so good that even if they have to accept two or three percentage points more, that wouldn't mean a drop in admissions standards.</p>
<p>But small privates that are not household names are going to be smacked. And those are just the schools that can't afford to do any more tuition discounting than they are doing now.</p>
<p>if flag ship state schools like UVA, U of Mi and Cal-Berkley are lower cost than what a kid can get from any of the top 20 private schools, most kids are going to be forced by their parents to go to the state school. My data on this? recent xmas parties with parents who have had their kids get EA into elite schools and have told the kids they aren't paying $200K. A lot of the parents we know are upper middle class (usually because both parents are working) and don't qualify for aid but have all taken tremendous hits on their house values, 401K's, salary freeezes and pension eliminations. With the exception of HYP, MIT, and Stanford, all of the other top twenty private schools are going to see thier yields go down tremendously......also if the economy is worse around May 1, this could even be worse....but this is payback time to these colleges for not reining in their cost structures for all of the gold plating they did to get their rankings up</p>
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if flag ship state schools like UVA, U of Mi and Cal-Berkley are lower cost than what a kid can get from any of the top 20 private schools, most kids are going to be forced by their parents to go to the state school.
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<p>We'll see how that all shakes out. You are overlooking the fact that flagship universities with massive budget cuts all the sudden don't look so attractive, especially at out-of-state pricing.</p>
<p>You have to careful to think the flagship state schools are cheaper than the elite private schools. Sometimes the elite private colleges can afford to give you a better aid package. Overall, it was cheaper for me to attend Northwestern than Univ of Michigan simply because Northwestern gave me more financial aid. I would have never qualified for federal subsidized loans and work-study had I matriculated to Michigan. Another perk I discovered was that auto insurance agencies will cut your rates if your child attends school more than 100 miles away home. My family definitely saved money on their insurance because I went to school out-of-state.</p>
<p>I'm with Cardinal Fang. Top tier schools, even small elite LAC's that may not be "household names" turn down so many more perfectly qualified applicants than they accept that they are not going to be hurting that much. My son was just admitted ED to Haverford, hardly a household name, although a very elite school (half the people we tell about it think we are saying Harvard, as they have never heard of Haverford). Yet take a look at the quality of many of the students posting on this site who were denied or waitlisted RD last year in the thread linked below. There are "A" students with 2200 SAT's not getting into schools like this. There are plenty of top students to go around who are willing to pay to go to the elite schools.</p>
<p>The entire article is very interesting. It talks about how ED is up at the privates (namely those who can afford to go without financial aid) but that their RD applications are way down (probably about 15%). It specifically mentions that the IVYs are running about the same as last year and that state schools are running significantly higher than prior years. The small LAC's claim that the publicity of endowment problems has most likely impacted the student application pool but that most of the endowments are really fine relative to merit aid for this year's student pool. And small LAC's are concerned with the decrease in the size of their RD pool.</p>
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I doubt this article applies to many of the elite private colleges that people here on CC are interested in.
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<p>Maybe not this year, but the luxury joints will be impacted, too. The effect may be a little more difficult to spot. You'll have to look at percentage of students qualifying for need-based aid and so forth. I don't think even the most hoity-toit schools are expecting to get through this economic downturn with no admissions/financial aid implications.</p>
<p>I expect diversity numbers to take a hit at all but the very top tier schools as colleges start backing away from expensive recruiting and financial aid in favor of accepting a little higher percentage of full-fare customers to bolster revenues.</p>
<p>I don't think it's entirely useful to look at last year's stats. OK, last year there were plenty of top students who applied to Haverford and were denied. But what about this year? I predict a lower yield.</p>
<p>Haverford, being a top tier school, will be fine. If they end up taking 32 or 33 percent of applicants instead of 26, they can still put together a fine freshman class. But a school like, say, Lafayette might be in considerable trouble. Is it going to be worth it for some laid-off Wall Street investment banker to pay $200K to send his daughter to Lafayette?</p>
<p>On edit: Plenty of people at CC are not applying to HYP.</p>
<p>The publicity about endowment losses is one reason why fewer students might be applying to small LACs. But another reason is simpler: newly austere parents just won't be willing to pay $200K for an education at a small LAC other than the elites.</p>
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None of these top schools will be able to brag that their academic standrads went up, they will go down, and of course the rich will benefit.
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<p>I do agree that tuition is unlikely to change until selectivity changes. But what do you mean the academic standards would go down? Maybe I misread your argument, but are you equating academic standard with mean SAT scores and other such selection criteria?</p>
<p>The vast majority of rejectees at top schools are just as bright and motivated as those that get in; even if it becomes somewhat easier to get in, it's not going to change the student body quality in any meaningful way (and certainly not the coursework, curriculum, professors, texts and such). I've been in the system for over 20 years and while each year it seems the schools have gotten more selective, it's not changed the ability of students we teach nor the academic standard of the education provided.</p>
<p>Cardinal Fang, I think the point the small LAC's were trying to make in the article was that they had money for merit aid but that their application pool was shrinking because applicants didn't realize that the money was still there. And with the overwhelming increase in applicants to public universities I think this could be a rude awakening for people who put all their eggs in one basket.</p>