@corbett but that is, in many cases, exactly what happens. “Elite” schools, by themselves or due to USNews-esque “brand elevation” have seen increased #'s of applications every year. UCLA topped 100k last year. Up by large % over 10 years ago. But the number seats at the “party” have not increased by nearly the same %.
@CaliDad2020 it is due to both. top schools get more apps because of USNews and other major rankings, but also they are very actively recruiting as many students as they can. Some top schools have even developed a reputation for having really excessive and aggressive outreach efforts. The more applications, the lower the acceptance rate, the higher the position in the rankings. And this will not change cause there will always be tens of thousands of applicants willing to pay that $60-$80 common app fee and put in the time and effort to fill out these appications, for a small chance that they will get in.
@penn95 yeah, my D last year simply had to email a school and she got non-stop materials from them - although to be fair it had to cost them close to 80 smackers to print and post all the crap she got - and they had no idea if she was even close to stats. The marketing has increased, the international pool has increased, the common app makes it easier. School clearly encourage applications to bump up yield, fwiw. Silly game, but as long as USNews rewards it, it will be played (of course, it would be a lot easier on admissions if they discouraged the applicants that never make it past “look at the SAT/ACT, any hook? bubye!”
@CaliDad2020 yup that pretty much sums it up. You got colleges striving to enter and/or maintain their top 10, top 20, top 30 USNews ranking. I still remember reading the angry article at The Dartmouth and the angry comments from students and alumni when Dartmouth first dropped outside the top 10. Given the rules of the game, it definitely pays to be in the top 10, top 20 etc. It is insane how many people wanna go to a school just because it is a top 10 school etc. But one cannot help but see that USNews has created some perverse incentives for colleges.
There are some other decent college rankings out there that get some attention (WSJ/THE, College Factual, Forbes,Niche) but none of them comes close to the influence that USNews has. Since this was their first year, I wonder how the WSJ/THE rankings will fare in the future given they come from two very reputable and brand-name sources.
It’s clear that elite colleges try to get as many applications as possible, so that they can reject as many of those applications as possible. The point is only that the party analogy is a poor one, because nobody would organize an actual party in this way.
If you were holding a Super Bowl party, would you notify as many people as possible, and then disinvite as many responders as possible? Probably not. So this is not a helpful analogy for what elite colleges do, except to the extent that it highlights the absurdity of their behavior.
The surprising thing to me is that there has been so little pushback from the schools. Administrators will readily admit, in private, that the perverse incentives are there. But they find it easiest to just play along.
To my knowledge, only one elite school has ever publicly told USN&WR where they can put their rankings. And USN&WR is doing the best they can to punish Reed College for it – they once had Reed in the top 10 of their Liberal Arts College ranking, but currently have it way down at #87.
Reed still seems to attracting high-performing, outside-the-box students though. It’s possible that their low USN&WR ranking may act as a “filter”, that keeps out the more conventional, inside-the-box types.
@Corbett “The surprising thing to me is that there has been so little pushback from the schools. Administrators will readily admit, in private, that the perverse incentives are there. But they find it easiest to just play along.”
This is very hard to do unless all the top schools collude together to fight back. But even if they did, there is such a strong incentive to break from the agreements, that I doubt it would last long.