<p>I'm currently a high school junior considering ED to Wharton, and Penn (like some other schools) has sent me a ton of recruiting materials. Do schools like to advertise just so they can increase number of applications to reject and lower their acceptance rate to make themselves look better? </p>
<p>Yes, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t apply, especially if you were clearly already interested. Just be sure to understand that the marketing scheme/materials says nothing about their actual interest in you or your chances of admission. The practice is pretty common (especially among those who have dramatically grown in selectivity). </p>
<p>Yeah, they want to have a large pool from which to accept the best. </p>
<p>I feel like they don’t need a large (or at least not exceptionally large) pool though. The large pool is to get the acceptance rate low. When Chicago had a smaller app. pool, it’s student body was still way better than many schools ranked similarly. Now they just get to claim that “no one gets in!” which can help some if your stats are identical to those ranked near you. I wonder if its more perception than anything. For example, if I got more apps. than previous year, it’s more justified when I choose students with higher stats than the previous even if the app. pool was not particularly better than last time (as in, there are really just a lot more people applying who would not have gotten in anyway, whether that year or 3 years ago). </p>
<p>I’ve heard that for jobs, networking with employers gives you a boost. Can the same thing be said for college admissions? Also, in looking at posts from the past 5-10 years on college confidential, it seems that Penn’s prestige has risen sharply. Does this advertising have to do with that? </p>
<p>Yeah, but Penn has actually gotten better educationally (WashU has too), however, it doesn’t work for all places. Like Vanderbilt has become more “prestigious” but moreso in terms of selectivity and not really anything else (it has a nice campus, but so does like, every other top 20, and some top grad and prof. programs, but again, so does everywhere else, and it’s not like more of them have become way better in the last 5 years). It apparently employs similar tactics. Chicago was already prestigious and did not need to do it (their scheme was working in terms of getting students that can handle their environment). The tactic has diminished returns after a while. Also, I think Penn is now in a position where they don’t need to do it as intensely. Also, it appears the selectivity at some places is surpassing the actual caliber of the education. That isn’t good in my opinion. </p>
<p>And again, I suspect that it’s just a perception thing. I suspect that the excess of applications is not adding more “quality” applicants. They would claim that it is because the pool that they selected is better than the last, but it also relies on us being naive enough to believe them. If we see more apps, and then higher stats. following, we’re not surprised. They could just be doing some more cherrypicking at the top of the applicant pool, which is the only part that they would entertain (and the top of the pool may look almost the same every year. It’s just in the past, they were perhaps scared to admit some of them, whereas now they are more confident because of the admissions landscape. This means that they can at least shift their 25% upward because many of even the new, higher stat. 25% will still be denied elsewhere). The only difference is, when they do that, they don’t have to worry about yield as much, because other schools are impossible to get into as well. You can get away with more cherrypicking of stats and then blame it on the size of your app. pool (even though most of it would not have been seriously entertained for selection anyway). </p>