<p>"Just as nervously, colleges facing a financial landscape they have never seen before are trying to figure out how many students to accept, and how many students will accept them.......they have little faith on those (old) models.</p>
<p>"Jennifer Delahunty, dean of admissions and financial aid at Kenyon College in Ohio. Im going to go to church every day in April.</p>
<p>"Campuses, meanwhile, are trying to determine and encourage applicants intentions. Kenyon will write to the parents of accepted students, to reassure them that financial aid will not dry up over the coming years."</p>
<p>"Barmak Nassirian, the associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, says the first real indication of who is coming, could be in May, when students put down their deposits.</p>
<p>But even that, Mr. Nassirian said, may be an overestimation.</p>
<p>Unless fewer HS seniors are planning on going to college I don't see how this constitutes a buyer's market. It sounds like a number of schools are panicking over the prospect of lower yields. While this helps some applicants, it can hurt others. Schools that have accepted more ED students make the odds longer for those applying RD. Schools with excellent fin aid will be in great demand. Schools with marginal fin aid probably have a right to be concerned.</p>
<p>Even schools with lots of fin aid (and the endowments of many of these institutions are hurting, probably more than they say) are hurting. Let's suppose they do as they say and stay entirely need-blind. They will bring in poorer kids. But, they will likely lose a percentage of kids in the upper middle class (the sweet spot for these schools) and perhaps the upper end of middle class whose parents may be suffering or may fear that next year could be a lot worse and direct their kid to a state school or school with merit aid. The elites' predictive models won't work. Their yields will suffer. If these groups are the strongest on conventional measures (e.g., GPAs and SATs) of academic success (don't know if this is true), this would hurt the numbers of even some of the elite schools.</p>
<p>standrews is correct in noting that schools with marginal financial aid will have to admit kids who are a lot weaker than they might have done in 2006's economy.</p>
<p>This admission season looks like a perfect storm for the college business. Another story linked in this forum mentions several private schools that are increasing their acceptance rates in anticipation of lower yields. It sounds like they're all doing this at the same time. I predict very low yields of students paying half or more of the freight. This will hollow out the revenue structure for many private schools and push them past the breaking point. Classes will begin in the Fall as usual, but some private schools may find their finances on a very short glide path to insolvency.</p>
<p>I think the actual ramifications will come in NEXT years admissions, after certain schools feel this year's burn. Public U's will continue to cut admission's acceptances due to rising yields and private schools will need to expand acceptances and waitlists to compensate for less yield.</p>
<p>parents are going to send in deposits for their safety school and the top school, then wait until august for a final decison. This will created chaos in August, and some of these private schools will start to bargain.</p>
<p>If the economy actually gets even worse and no sign of a recovery, this will be a disaster for a lot of private schools, even the top ones (with exception maybe to HYPSM).</p>
<p>Top public schools like UVa, Mich, UC Berkely all wil go up dramatically in ratings.</p>
<p>We're picking up a wild muddle of ED students who are backing out of the commitment due to lower then expected FA, and just nervousness about future finances.</p>
<p>That is why the Dean of Admissions at USC was recently quoted as saying that she would rather err on a higher acceptance rate and a higher yield even if it meant putting up the additional enrollees at her home, rather than one where fewer students enrolled. </p>
<p>Time for unprecedented drama at the top private schools.</p>
<p>I wondered if ED applications were up as a result of the talk about increasing numbers, decreasing acceptance rates and way back in December, even, the economy wasn't as bad as it is now. Very possibly some of the families that were confident about doing ED find themselves in a different position today (and we all know you shouldn't do ED if you need to compare aid offers.) </p>
<p>Maybe more schools will eliminate ED next year as a result. I do see a mess come August - and can imagine it might be worth it for some families (full pay) to double deposit - at the state u and the private of choice, waiting until the last minute to assess whether the costlier option is still possible. That will wreak havoc on the state system.</p>
<p>I thought you could apply ED if you were on fi-aid and back out once they said what their financial aid package was. It was always my impression that to apply ED and not withdraw your applications at other schools once accepted was tantamount to looking to be rejected from EVERY school to which you applied. However, I never understood how those other schools would even know you applied ED elsewhere. After all I don't think there is a secret blog of college ED acceptances only read by college admissions.</p>
<p>My understanding is that, to be able to back out of an ED acceptances due to finances, you would have to prove that you cannot afford it. There are certain standard that you have to meet. I don't know all the details but it is not something that an applicant should count on. I think that one of the arguments against RD is that it is binding and can be a problem for those families who might have their own standard for what they are willing to contribute to a college education.</p>
<p>You'd better believe that the parents of students of the HS class of '10 will be wanting to put this year's admission season stats under a microscope. I see some have posted here already.</p>
<p>The '10 crowd has the "luxury" of time to analyze, and then worry like hell about it well beyond the summer and into the fall when some applicants will ponder ED/EA applications.</p>
<p>The '10 crowd will have the luxury of looking at our '09 issues, but there will be new plate of things to deal with then! It's a whole new world, and my S in '09 will be guessing what's going to happen, but that still won't have a lot of direct correlation to '10 since '09 is a transitional year. Those '11 kids will actually have something to track, but hopefully the economy will be bouncing back by then. </p>
<p>All of our kids from '09 on are in unchartered waters!</p>
<p>Ok.. the only good thing to come out of the last three posts is that my youngest daughter is a '12!! Either we will have a better picture, things will have reset to some sense of normal and/or the economy will have rebounded. The last is the only thing that I wonder about. Oh.. that and if we'll still be in the same tax bracket as we are now (given that this in itself is somewhat of a moving target as well).</p>
<p>Many decisions to apply ED were made back in the good old days - 6 months ago - when the Dow was over 10,000. By the time the apps were due, the impact of the recession still had not sunk in in many households. Now the level of financial uncertainty has dramatically increased in terms of income, due to job loss, and assets, due to the continued decline of stocks. The difficulty is that we (students, parents, colleges, the nation) are still in the midst of a recession that has yet to find its low point. If it is indeed a student's market, students need to be very careful what the wish for. Being admitted to your dream school only to find that you cannot afford to complete your education at that school is a cruel fate indeed. There is no substitute for a school with great fin aid under these conditions.</p>