<p>Beginning with last years decision by Harvard and Princeton to eliminate any type of early admissions plan and the recently announced decision by Harvard (followed by a new school almost every day) to significantly expand its financial aid/grants to more middle and higher income families, it is clear that this is a volatile time in the world of college admissions. In addition, Stanford is now saying that it may expand its class and this is on the heels of similar moves by Princeton, Rice and others. Many, many, many colleges will be affected by these developments and the sands are shifting beneath the feet of colleges and their admissions departments. </p>
<p>Some quick thoughts and questions:</p>
<li><p>The number of Early Action applications may be up sharply at many top schools, but what yields are the adcomms factoring in for this years EA given the move by Harvard and Princeton?</p></li>
<li><p>The expansion of financial assistance is long over due at virtually all colleges, but the impact will be least to those that have already announced it as they have such huge financial resources. For those levels of private institutions that have Ivy-level tuition costs, but not Ivy-level endowments to help alleviate part of that, what will be the cost? Also, how will the non-HYP Ivies fare as they, too, have considerably lower per capita endowments? Finally, what does this mean for the colleges that offer merit aid and will that offer have the same level of appeal?</p></li>
<li><p>Re student body size, there is no denying the great expansion of high achieving high school students at a time of roughly stagnant numbers of freshman places at top colleges. But is building larger student bodies at a demographic high the right strategy and will this be broadly followed?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>My thoughts on two of your questions
2) Yes HYP are the so-called elites w/deep pockets. They will be able to sweep in their doors many more middle class kids who would otherwise take the merit scholarship to the U-Mich or some state schools’ Honors college. But the 2nd tier privates weren’t going to get these kids anyways. What I believe will happen is that more middle class kids will apply to HYP (depressing the admit rate even more) — and HYP will admit more of these newly found gems. The consequence is that more of the affluent applicant pool who in previous years found accepts will be pushed aside – into the 2nd tier ivies, LACs and top state schools. This will benefit them because, after all, these are wonderfully competent students. I think the drain will be most felt in the 2nd tier publics and honors-type programs of other top 100 schools. Those one or two superstars will be at HYP rather than in Madison, or New Orleans or San Diego.</p>
<p>3) expansion: Perhaps Stanford’s expansion can take place relatively quickly. I know Yale’s expansion plans are in the 10-15 year range before anything happens. If the money is there, expansion is fine. I can easily see these top schools opening up more slots for internationals at a higher rate than domestic applicants. Will it be broadly followed? Only to the degree that money can be rolled into it. The uber-endowments can make that kinda commitment (Yale expects to spend roughly $600M to open up about 800 more slots, 200 per class)</p>
<p>A lot of posters on cc seem to think the merit-awarding schools will be left with excess scholarships sitting around with no worthy stars to make use of them, now that Harvard (Yale and others soon to follow) are making tuition more affordable for families in the 120-180 AGI range. I’m not catching on to the reasoning, I’m afraid. On hundreds of occasions I have read statements to the effect that HYPSM could fill their classes several times over with the available pool of applicants; they simply choose from among equally qualified candidates. If that is actually the case, the tuition initiatives will simply be substituting 150K kids for 200-250K kids–correct? The latter highly qualified students will still want to go to college, and Vanderbilt, UChicago, Wash U, Rice, Emory, Carnegie Mellon, Duke, etc. will be there ready to take them in. I don’t see how those schools will be hurt; when they send out their annual appeal for donations, they may well take in more donations.</p>
<p>If I’m missing something obvious, fill me in.</p>
<p>As for the expansion of Stanford, etc. I don’t see how it can be done quickly without a big dip in the quality of the product. It takes a lot of time to hire faculty, build labs, etc. Simply hauling in boat-loads of adjunct profs or hiring the current adjuncts and post-docs to take on freshman teaching duties doesn’t really reproduce the current experience.</p>
<p>I do see a problem when the demographic high contracts again. Foreign students who can pay full freight probably can be found. Finding enough domestic students who can pay the full price and meet the same academic standards seems more problematic to me.</p>
<p>I agree with midmo–many people clamor to get into the Ivies, but enough so that even with bigger classes and greater aid, there will be plenty of students who hear “no.” And as always, there are millions of students–some of them very well-qualified–who have no interest in those schools.</p>
<p>Demographic trends have little effect on the schools at the top. They will always get their students, and they will always be able to get the best students in the country or region or state. It’s less-selective schools who feel the pinch when the supply of college-going youth shrinks.</p>
<p>Just checking around the various college forums for the CC Top Universities and it is clear that the move by Harvard and Princeton to do away with their early programs is having a large and still somewhat hard-to-figure impact. Applications at many EA schools are way up and the same is true to a lesser degree for several colleges with Early Decision. It looks like the Admit Rates at most schools for their Early programs are nearly all below their levels of a year ago and the anecdotal evidence seems to be that the students are even stronger statistically. </p>
<p>The trick in the EA programs, of course, is going to be their ability to retain their admittees should they also be admitted to Harvard and/or Princeton. As H and P have historical yields of 70-80%, this draw could be quite destabilizing to the yields of those schools that have already handed out the EA decisions. Should these EA colleges suffer significantly in the ultimate matriculation decisions of the EA admittees, I wonder if any will move to adopt ED policies. </p>
<p>It looks like the Adcomms are earning their money this year….</p>
<p>Keshira,
I don’t understand your reference above. Could you expand on your comments?</p>
<p>There are two big impacts I see for students applying to such schools:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>More deferrals. Obviously the admissions offices at all school understand the type of influence Havard’s and Princeton’s decisions have had. They will likely use deferrals to see who’s for real and who’s not.</p></li>
<li><p>More off the waitlist. Princeton identified this impact back when the decision was made to eliminate early admissions. However, I think it will mean more being pulled off the waitlist at many schools.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>With the move by Harvard and Princeton to end their early programs, many schools that would normally see large cross applications were even more deluged with early applications (ED or EA) this year than ever before. The strategic response seems to be different depending on the institution. As noted above, MIT was aggressive in boosting its numbers of EA admittees. More commonly, most colleges seem to have kept their admitances (whether ED or EA) at around historical levels, but in the great majority of cases, this has led to a decline in the ED/EA acceptance rates vs history. </p>
<p>With regard to the RD round, the key will be how colleges expect their yields to unfold. To the extent that they are most confident in their EA acceptances, this will influence how sharply they must draw the lines for RD (obviously ED schools won’t have this level of uncertainty). Combine the record size of the high school graduating class and the greater number of applications that they will make (undoubtedly more than ever before), this will likely be the least predictable admissions season that we have ever seen. </p>
<p>Who wins as a result of Harvard and Princeton’s actions:
Hopefully, low income students will benefit and the numbers that will ultimately be produced will show that this effort was worth the effort (not to mention the trauma that it has caused the system)
Those colleges with ED who saw an increase in the number and quality of their applicants
Those colleges with EA who will ultimately keep the EA admittees and not lose too many to Harvard and Princeton
Those who end up on college waiting lists as this tool is expected to be used more more extensively by more colleges than ever before</p>
<p>Who loses as a result of this?
I’m probably in a minority on this, but I think the admissions system and high schools students broadly are the losers because the process has become even more competitive, less transparent, more expensive, and more anxiety-creating than ever before.</p>
<p>I agree with (ducktape) that EA decisions are going up in numbers. Besides MIT, Stanford accepted about 740 students EA up from about 415 last year. Since Stanford already said that the class of 2012 should still be about 1600, they will still likely accept the same amount of students as last year (~2450). This means that instead of accepting 2000+ for regular admission, they will only accept about 1700 this year. The trend is obvious that deferrals are higher and acceptances are lower since so many people want to go to HYPM, Stanford has thus weeded out those who may be calling a bluff with EA.</p>