<p>Someone was asking earlier what if the applicants to the UK were rejected by all five choices - there’s two back-up cycles. If they get five rejections / have a big change of plans / circumstances, then in mid-February each year, UCAS Extra starts, where they can look at which courses still have places and add another choice, until they get an offer. Then in August when A-level results are out, there’s Clearing, where anyone without a place can apply for any remaining places in the system. But in a country where gaps years are not only normal but encouraged, it’s really not the end of the world if your first application year goes wrong. The aim of the system is to make it as straightforward and inexpensive for both applicants and universities as it can be.
I can’t imagine it working in the US though as the whole point is that we apply for a degree programme, and our personal statement or essay is about how suited we are to that course of study not the universities we’ve chosen.</p>
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<p>There’s no such thing as “clogging” the admissions system. Schools love getting more applications. They encourage it as much as they possibly can. What you call clogging is incredibly desirable to the vast majority of universities.</p>
<p>The current system with the Common App. is a disadvantage to any kid who sends an application to a school expecting a thorough, wholistic review. When a school gets a 20% increase in applications that means that everyone in the applicant pool gets less attention paid to their application.</p>
<p>The UK system wouldn’t work here for all the reasons mentioned in previous posts. Getting rid of the common app. would help students but it will never happen because it is funding the marketing and recruitment efforts of many schools.</p>
<p>Does anyone really believe that a school hires 20% more admissions officers just because their applications jump by 20%?</p>
<p>Restrict the number of applications to five? Why? What good would that do? I see no functional difference between not going to HYP because you didn’t stand out enough among 30K applicants and not going to HYP because you weren’t allowed to even apply due to artificial limits on the numbers of apps you can submit.</p>
<p>Harvard is accepts about 2000 applicants every year. Whether those 2K are drawn from a group of 30K who applied or from a group of 5K who applied + 25K wanted to apply but weren’t permitted to makes no difference. Either way there are 28K disappointed kids who wanted to go the Harvard but aren’t going to.</p>
<p>Of course they hire more readers for the app season.</p>
<p>^^ So restricting it to 5 would be bad for the economy.</p>
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<p>This is simply not true.</p>
<p>UK students can (and do) transfer courses, either transferring to a different course within their current university, or transferring out to another university.</p>
<p>A famous example of being able to transfer courses, is that of Prince William, who enrolled at St. Andrew’s to read art history but transferred to (and graduated with a degree in) geography.</p>
<p>It’s usually only possible to transfer during the first year, or at the start of the second year, but it can be and is done.</p>
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<p>Answered quite nicely here:</p>
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<p>From what I’ve heard…it is more to ensure that a greater percentage of kids have a chance of being admitted to more elite/Ivy schools and that the top 5-10% kids aren’t undercutting each other for the same elite/Ivy schools. </p>
<p>Thus, not everyone within the 1/6 of my graduating class accepted to Cornell applied to every other Ivy/elite school. Consequently…a great percentage of the class has a chance at the Ivy/elite schools than would otherwise have been the case.</p>
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<p>But this is still far more restrictive and inflexible than in the US, where students can also leave one university and start at another. However, a UK student switching programs will have to start again, in most cases… no “transferring of credits.” I know someone at St. Andrews who wanted to get out of PPE but would have to reapply to a different program…no guarantees. Not like an American student who could simply walk into his advisor’s office and say, “I’m switching majors. I hate discipline X.” The only exceptions might be students who wanted to switch from, say, CAS to Engineering, and would have to reapply to a different school within the same university. But the vast majority of American students are accepted to a university, not a major or program. This is not true in the UK.</p>
<p>Old thread, but I wanted to share some experience about this.</p>
<p>This issue is also a concern, probably a bigger one, for internationals. The very top colleges usually take a maximum of 2 students from my country, each. What happens is that one student ends up with multiple Ivies and some selective LACs, and all the rest are settling for state schools in the US, or the top universities in Canada(well, I wouldn’t really call this settling…but you get the point).</p>
<p>The two top students this year during this admissions cycle got into Pton, Yale, Vandy, UChicago, Duke, Stanford, Upenn, Colgate, Amherst. (full aid/ full or close to full tuition scholarship everywhere)</p>
<p>One of them chose Oxford, and the other chose Vandy(full scholarship).</p>
<p>So, these spots at top colleges for the kids from my country were gone, while they sat facepalming themselves. Of course, colleges should take the best students, and so these 2 deserved a spot almost everywhere. But the others <em>almost</em> as interesting or qualified applicants, most of who were waitlisted here, are pretty much effed, and go to schools that is perhaps 2 tiers or more below these.</p>
<p>PS Although colleges do not have any strict number for a particular number ppl of same nationalities, in the last 10 years, no 40 college has accepted more than 2from here.</p>
<p>So maybe, limiting the number of places one can apply might be a god thing for these top applicants…or not. What do I know?</p>
<p>Again, in response to theunforgiven’s post, I ask: Who is harmed? And how? </p>
<p>So, many top students from theunforgiven’s country do not get into “the very top” U.S. colleges? Oh, well. And many top U.S. candidates also. So? Do they turn to a life of crime? Descend into intractable depression? Lose all hope of making a contribution to the planet? And even if they do suffer personally from this disappointment, how would that rise to the level of a problem worthy of regulation? </p>
<p>In short, what is the problem that this completely infeasible, never-going-to-happen-no-way-not-here solution would address? I challenge anyone to provide an example of a real-life case where the failure to get into a “top school” was the CAUSE of someone’s failure in life or, even, where it was in and of itself responsible for preventing someone’s success. I’d further challenge anyone to show a societal harm (adcoms with too many applications to review does not meet this criterion, IMO).</p>
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<p>Uh, no. Think about it.</p>
<p>While the UK system is not a solution for us, I think the current process leaves much to be desired. When an admissions officer from a prestigious U. admits to applicants that he/she only reads the first paragraph of nearly all essays (those same essays applicants spent hours on) there is a problem. Of course reading the first paragraph is better than reading only the first sentence…</p>
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<p>Yeah, but not what you think. The problem is that most of the essays just aren’t very good. If the intro par is trite, hackneyed, and/or boring or has poor vocabulary, sentence structure, etc., the reader can assume that the rest will too. No need to read further.</p>
<p>The vast majority of 18-year-olds aren’t very good writers…that is why college was invented!</p>
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<p>Who admitted this? From what school? In any case, my response to this is, first, all the more reason to write a killer first paragraph. And, second, how about this as a solution: Kids can voluntarily decide, should they get fed up with adcoms that are not able to review their applications with the care they deserve, to apply to one of the many fine schools that are not overloaded with applications. Or they can take their chances at schools with low acceptance rates.</p>
<p>I’m wondering, who’s being hurt by our current admissions process? Is there someone who truly didn’t get into a school that was a good fit for them and it wasn’t their own fault? In the end, everyone seems happy about their school and forgets about the application process entirely.</p>
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<p>Around this time of year, there are always those who get completely shut out, or got into only unaffordable schools, because they incorrectly estimated whether their schools were actually safeties.</p>
<p>Even the “by the numbers” state universities are not completely transparent, as surging student demand or capacity reduction due to budget cuts can make a school much more selective than last year’s numbers indicate.</p>
<p>Sorry to quibble, ucbalumnus, but chaosakita wondered about people “who truly didn’t get into a school that was a good fit for them and it wasn’t their own fault.” In the case of people whose safeties really weren’t safeties or who had no affordable choices, who is at fault? Is there ever really a case where “the system” itself shuts people out of all workable options? There are still places taking applications, or there were fairly recently.</p>
<p>it kind of depends on what state you live in, really. Here in Illinois, your education won’t be cheap, and you might have difficulty getting into UIUC, but there are a lot of other directional U’s and UIC and also State. </p>
<p>But, the California system is a nightmare, and even at the community college level they are having trouble serving their students. AT some of the CSU’s, which would be their directional schools, only it’s different, they are limiting kids to 13 credit hours a semester.</p>
<p>In Virginia, it is also a nightmare.</p>
<p>So, yeah, it depends on the state, but some kids actually don’t have affordable options because their state systems are falling apart.</p>
<p>Understood, poetgrl. But, actually, the affordability issue (which ucbalumnus introduced and I followed up on) is a different one than the issue of too many applications, isn’t it? I certainly wouldn’t say the affordability issue is a nonissue. I’m sorry I even mentioned that, because it wouldn’t be addressed in any case by the solution of restricting the number of applications. Unless I’m missing something. Which is a possibility!</p>