<p>The Wesleyan Argus reported this week that undergraduate applications are down 5.5% compared to 2010. However, ED1 and Questbridge Match applications rose 5% and ED2 rose 3%. Regular Decision applications are down 6% from last year overall. Wesleyan admissions guesses that the continuing economic problems and the difficulties in boosting applications from the so-called "flyover states" (ouch) are likely root causes for this dip. Nonetheless, you math whizzes out there can compute the probable raw numbers for this year and tell me if my estimate of about 10,000 applications for about 730 first-year student places is accurate. We will probably see an overall admit rate of about 22% if yield ratios stay the same as last year. Here's the Argus link:</p>
<p>I am speculating that in addition to the factors cited above, some number of prospective applicants looked at Wesleyan's rising selectivity as well and decided to go with less-competitive LACs on Early Decision, though we'll never be able to know for sure. </p>
<p>There was no indication about this year's admit rate for ED1.</p>
<p>Unless it’s a trend I wouldn’t sweat 5% one way or another. As the data (from last year) suggests, applications aren’t Wesleyan’s problem; it receives more applications than any other NESCAC college except Tufts. But, it does have a problem with closing the deal:</p>
<p>Interestingly, it’s the two nominal universities (Wesleyan and Tufts) that have the lowest yield rates, suggesting that they may be competing in a different “weight-class” with lots of cross-admits with strong universities like HYP and Brown.</p>
<p>Wonderful analysis and fascinating data–I do think regarding Wesleyan in a different “weight-class” makes a lot of sense. I think it might be interesting to look at the two (really three) stages of admissions–ED1/ED2 and Regular Admission–as drawing on two distinct kinds of applicants: ED attracting the pure LAC type applicant who has concluded that Wes is the best LAC for him/her; and the Regular Decision applicant who may be attracted to and/or is willing to attend a much wider range of type of schools, a mix of LACs and universities like HYP and in Wes’s case in particular, Brown. To follow this line of thinking out one more level, the challenge to Wesleyan’s Admissions Department is to attract a good enough supply of both of these types. They have clearly done that this year, and they will have over 9000 more applications to sort through that were either deferred to the spring or are Regular Decision applicants. </p>
<p>One of the interesting points the Argus article made was that Wesleyan now has 13 deans in admissions.If they are all responsible for reading applications, that would be a caseload of about 65-70 applications for ED for each of these deans to read and a whopping 700 apps per dean during regular admission. Since at Wesleyan each application is read by two different members of the admissions staff, one can see the huge advantage afforded ED applicants simply from the standpoint of having one’s materials read carefully.</p>
<p>@johnwesley: Thanks so much for your analysis. I totally agree with your assumption that Wesleyan and Tufts lose admits to HYP each year. Mainly because Wesleyan is considered a “little ivy” and an adcom told me that many people who pass over Amherst and Williams attend Wesleyan because of its research options and graduate studies making it a “full” university like HYP. I assume that same would be true for Tufts.</p>
<p>I agree with both johnwesley and CollegeGuru, but one has to remember - Wesleyan is much closer to the LAC end of the LAC-University spectrum than Tufts. In fact, the only LAC-like thing Tufts has going for it is that it plays in a sports conference with ten other liberal arts colleges. Tufts has 5,000 undergrads and 5,000 grads, along with graduate schools of medicine, dentistry, international relations, and engineering. Wesleyan is an LAC (2,700 undergrads) plus 200 grads in the sciences and ethnomusicology. That being said, Wesleyan is fairly unique in that it provides an LAC atmosphere and still provides some of the unique aspects of a full university. Probably why 10,000 people apply every year…</p>
<p>No figures for ED1 admit rate for the Class of 2015 have been released yet. Last year, the ED overall admit rate was 43%, in contrast to an overall admit rate of about 20%.</p>
<p>yeah, there’s always been an ambiguity between the two terms, especially, among New England colleges. My sense is that the term “college”, especially in the earliest days of the American colonies, primarily denoted a unitary place consisting of a single faculty devoted primarily to religious and moral preparation. </p>
<p>Beginning with the post-Civil War era until the first half of the twentieth century, a college’s place along the college/university spectrum was more likely determined by how warmly their curricula embraced modern languages, science and mathematics, the more “electives” they permitted its students to take (beyond the usual prescribed courses in Moral Philosophy, Greek, Latin and <em>maybe</em> Euclidian Mathmatics) than whether it actually called itself a university. </p>
<p>For example, the official name for Harvard University is still, “The President and Fellows of Harvard College”; the word “university” is nowhere in its incorporation papers. Dartmouth still refers to itself as a liberal arts college even though the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching places it firmly in the university category. </p>
<p>The persistence of the term reflects how Americans tend to view the idealized post-secondary experience. In the UK, people “go to university” a place to receive specialized training for a profession. In America, people “go to college”, a place to grow as individuals, in effect, harkening back to college’s early ecclesiastic roots.</p>
<p>OTOH, the downside to having the word “college” in an institution’s name is that for much of the non-English speaking world, the word is loosely translated as “high school”. Imagine the chagrin of an Asian or Asian-American parent trying to explain to relatives back home that their child wants to attend some place called, Dartmouth “high school”!</p>
<p>Worse yet…my 12 year-old is in college (middle school) and looks forward to the day she gets to go to lycee (high school) with the big kids. In some places it’s not just a lateral move. It’s a demotion.</p>
<p>I relate “college” to a somewhat insular, small academic environment while “university,” to me, harkens a more global purpose and direction and all the resources that go hand-in-hand with such an experience. (Please don’t argue this point with me as it’s just this loose conception that I personally do not subscribe to firmly enough to argue the point.)</p>
<p>Was there not a trend in the late '70s - late '80s (or beyond?) in which colleges rebranded themselves as universities? I have this vague sense that quite a few places did that, particularly in state systems.</p>
<p>Morganhil can chime in here, but, I’m pretty sure it became the rage to remove the phrase, “teachers college” from a lot of the state systems. Thus, San Francisco State Teachers College became San Francisco State University in 1972.</p>