Reduce number of schools to 15. Advertise stats for admitted students, more (caveats of extra look for poor or URM), add a supplement, add demonstrated interest as a factor in admission, cut back on mailings to kids with no chances.
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That would make it harder for applicants to find actual safeties, which would increase the number of applications.
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deleted - responded to wrong post.
I agree with this 100%. Does anyone truly believe Jeff Selingo was disappointing with the increase in the number of applications to Georgia Tech this year?
Behind the scenes, I am sure his message to the team is, âkeep it up!â
Thatâs why applicants (guided by parents & counselors) need to consider a better mix of schools on their list. It seems (at least through the lens of CC) that some are hung up on elite-or-bust scenarios, instead of coming up with a comprehensive list of a variety of schools. Looking for merit? Find schools that publish their typical merit/stat levels and pick a couple of those to add in addition to one or two true reaches (and the matches & safeties). If merit happens to come from one of the reaches, then itâs a nice surprise.
Thereâs nothing wrong with rolling the dice and having a few of schools on the list where youâre unsure of merit possibilities but I donât see how that rationally translates into sending out 20-25 applications just to see what merit offers come back (and then complaining that the dollar amount doesnât make a dent on the list price).
Although I can understand the fear and uncertainty that came with this yearâs admission cycle, I donât see how it can be supported in future cycles. What started with 20+ applications this year will snowball into 30+ as future applicants panic about the numbers of their peers deferred/waitlisted/denied from matches & safeties (not to mention elites/ivies).
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Caltech has also not, to my knowledge, complained about having too many applications either. So Caltech isnât the target of my post or of any of this thread.
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I agree with you generally, but just wanted to point out an exception. 
More essays. I hate to say that but my child applied to a couple simply bc there was no supplemental essay. And the one he wishes he squeezed in had 4 supplements, so he didnât do it.
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I think that many other colleges could learn a lot from how Caltech deals with admissions
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Someone who can only afford college on merit scholarships realistically may have only reaches (competitive merit needed) and possibly safeties (if there is sufficient automatic-for-stats-the-applicant-has merit). Colleges are generally a lot less transparent about competitive merit chances than for competitive admission chances, and high schools tend not to have Naviance plots for merit scholarships, so it would be unwise to classify any competitive merit scholarship as anything but a reach.
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Most other elite colleges do not want to emulate Caltech admission for their entire admit class.
Caltech is one of the few âextra high rigorâ colleges where, unlike at almost every other US college (including most of the elite colleges), an âordinary excellentâ high school student is at significant risk of being unable to handle the difficulty of the course work. So Caltechâs holistic admissions needs to focus on finding academic strength above and beyond that which may be indicated by typical US high school credentials (including SAT/ACT scores which they no longer consider, probably because they are not useful to them), with other considerations taking on minimal, if any, importance.
Most other elite colleges do not have this concern in that an âordinary excellentâ high school student should be able to handle the course work and graduate. They may admit a Caltech-size cohort of academic superstars into their frosh classes (that are each several times as large as that of Caltechâs frosh class) to keep up the veneer of academic eliteness, but they have many other priorities (e.g. the "ALDC"s mentioned at Harvard) to fill the rest of their classes. Since they have plenty of âordinary excellentâ applicants, including those who could fulfill their other priorities, they can fulfill those other priorities without risking their graduation rates or incoming class stats regarding high school GPA and rank or SAT/ACT scores.
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Iâm late to this thread but Iâve read some of these suggestions and I agree that the first cut at highly selective schools should be based on stats. HOWEVER, I do think there should be a way for a student to explain some compelling circumstance.
A student who truly has a compelling circumstance for a less than perfect GPA should complete a perhaps 100 word supplement to explain what the circumstance was. I think adcoms will be able to recognize truly compelling circumstances and factor it in to their decisions. A studentâs GC should be able to corroborate these circumstances.
If applicants choose to leave this blank, well, they are doing themselves no favors. And if they fill it in with a less than compelling story about how, for example, they didnât realize until they were a sophomore that they wanted to go to Harvard, the AO will quickly reject.
My thought is that this will discourage the kids who think they are buying a lottery ticket. They might reconsider wasting the application fee when they realize they donât have anything compelling to explain away their less than stellar GPA.
Of course, plenty will still try their luck. I realize there will still be students who are at a disadvantage. This is true of the current state of affairs too. Feel free to poke my idea full of holes.
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Itâs difficult to imagine the circumstances that would cause the carnival barker of Hyde Park to yield to a sense of decorum with respect to mass mailings.
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The pursuit of prestige is no doubt a concern, but the more pervasive issue is affordability. That is the elephant in the room for high achieving students. The top private schools provide better financial aid and getting in to one of them can mean the difference in $100K of family debt and/or $500K in lifetime earnings. Couple that with the dearth of information regarding admission probabilities and itâs no wonder kids are compelled to apply to 15+ highly selective colleges.
Jgladney- people buy lottery tickets AND double down on massive powerball buys too. That doesnât make them rational actors. Nobody is âcompelledâ to apply to 15+ colleges just because they donât understand the process. This is not an elephant in the room- and a well crafted list of 10 colleges with a range of affordability and selectivity is likely to yield a better result than some of the 18+ tales of misery we are hearing.
Dearth of admission probabilities? No. Dearth of arithmetic. A college with a 6% acceptance rate is rejecting 94% of its applicants. And applying to 5 such colleges does NOT boost a kids probability to 30%.
This is fourth grade math.
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More like pre-calc level probability. Not that it matters, since you are correct in asserting that that applicants are not behaving as rational actors.
Iâm sorry, but there are literally hundreds of excellent public universities among which most high achieving students can find at least one which they can attend without incurring debt. Many public universities have excellent merit scholarships and fellowships that are available for high achieving students.
There are also many excellent private colleges with great merit scholarships for high achieving students.
The issue is that every high achieving student or their parents believe that they deserve to be able to attend the most popular colleges for a price which their family thinks is appropriate. No, kids are not âcompelled to apply to 15+ highly selective collegesâ to find an excellent and affordable college.
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A 6% acceptance rate isnât 6% across the board⊠The criteria for acceptance for high priced prep school students, URM, recruited athletes, and legacies arenât the same as those for the majority of applicants. If a student is in the top 1% based on test scores and gpa, what would suggest they do? Refrain from applying to top 20 schools because the odds are low? If a student is well above the 75th percentile for admitted applicants at a given school should they be embarrassed to assume they are competitive? The institutions in question hide data to their ends. How do you imagine parents should do the â4th grade mathâ when the variables are hidden?
Your lottery analogy is ironically and sadly spot on.
I think you are mistaken with respect to at least a few states. In our case, the premiere scholarship at the state flagship university was still 20% more expensive than the NPC at a dozen private universities that offered vastly better resources, opportunities and outcomes. Taking the advice of some on this thread would have left an exceptional student at a school that offered a considerably less rigorous environment with a larger debt than any of the other schools to which he was accepted outside of Michigan (OOS).
I agree with MWolf that selective colleges almost universally want to increase applications. An increase in itself is not a problem. If the number of applications becomes awkward to manage with their existing admission staff, then they can hire a larger staff. More applications leads to more application fees, which can support a larger application staff.
Colleges that have had especially large increases in applications this year often sound overjoyed in press releases, rather than disappointed. For example, Colgate had the largest increase this year that I have heard of â a 103% increase. In the press release, admissions staff make statements like the following. He certainly doesnât sound disappointed with the 103% increaes.
What can be more challenging is having a larger increase in applications than expected, which some colleges experienced this year. If there is not time to hire+train more staff, then existing staff may need to work more hours. Some colleges have gone so far as to delay admission releases to allow time for the inadequate staff to review, such as the Ivy League, which delayed RD admissions decisions by ~1 week later than they have in the past years. I expect next year Ivies will carefully review the chance of increased applications and will be better prepared, if the review suggests a similar magnitude of applications.
Iâm not sure I understand your point. Is it that a high stat prep school student is somehow disadvantaged by thinking that their chances are 6% when they are actually MUCH higher? Is it that legacies misunderstand the value of being a legacy? Or that a recruited athlete doesnât understand what it means to be recruitable/
Who am I supposed to feel sorry for in your example? And what data is being hidden?
In my book, brutally competitive is brutally competitive, and if a prep school kidâs particular odds are 12% and not 6%, fortunately, that kid benefits from savvy counseling from the prep school AND will have a balanced lists of matches and safeties. And those are the kids LEAST likely to apply to all top 20 schools, praying for a miracle. Those are the counselors who are out there aggressively promoting Muhlenberg and Trinity and Conn College and Franklin and Marshall for the kids who want to but wonât be getting into (fill in the blank more competitive school).
What data do you want-- the fact that thousands of kids with near perfect scores and grades get denied every year from the mega competitive schools? That data is EVERYWHERE.
Not understanding your POV at all.