Interesting perspectives.
As long as people feel it’s a lottery, apps can grow, up to the number one can afford to apply to. Not really different than buying 20 lottery tickets, instead of five.
But unlike a real lottery, it’s not so random. They aren’t spinning a cage full of 35k balls and blindly picking 2k. You spend 3.5 years in hs, make choices, achieve certain levels (or not,) write an app and supps, fill in the blanks, provide written answers…and they read the whole package.
Unlike a lottery, it’s not the quantity of your apps that makes your chances better. It’s the quality, for each college you apply to.
I agree with above posters that there is and will continue to be a growing disincentive to apply to schools with a sub-10% or certainly sub-5% acceptance rate. My kids go to a prestigious private high school which traditionally had the top tier of kids all applying to some Ivies or the near-Ivies. There is an accelerating trend, however, NOT to apply to HYPS, etc., because the kids view it as a waste of time when they see very tip-top kids in the school get denied over and over. When you see the 4.0, 35 ACT, varsity athlete and student president get denied at every Ivy and go on full scholarship to the next tier, the kids with 3.8-3.9 and 32 ACT quit bothering. It is THAT “second” tier of kids who are driving these climbing admissions numbers anyway–kids who have good stats, but not the very best, and who fall prey to the relentless marketing of colleges along with obsessive rankings in the press.
All this gets coupled with the hippy-dippy (I am being harsh), holistic view of admissions counselors who spend lots of time preaching the gospel of the “perfect fit” to kids, so they begin looking at slightly less-selective schools–where they would likely end up anyway–as their first choices.
@LookingFoward - it’s less random than a lottery agree, but it’s more random than you imply. When an adcom says, these two applicants are pretty similar, but we need someone from a public school in Minnesota (true story at Yale), it’s pretty random for the applicant in California or New York. If you’re hooked, it’s not as random as it is for unhooked. And this is only for ivies, stanford, maybe a few other privates. MIT, Caltech, the publics are not as random.
Whether it’s a lottery or not is besides the point. As long as kids and their parents aren’t well informed or aren’t realistic about their admissions odds, they will continue to treat it like a lottery.
I see the number of kids applying who do what Boo described, above: they see “4.0, 35 ACT, varsity athlete and student president” as the epitome. They forget that’s just the bones, the start, and how much else is weighed. They think these are the laurels to rest on. They forget to match to the rest, tell each other breadth is padding, and that they need major awards or a big fundraiser. Or more hours at the cat shelter.
On CC, we sit around debating whether essays and short answers matter. And someone pipes up about lottery. After all, their kid or some other “4.0, 35 ACT, varsity athlete and student president” got denied. See the gap in thinking?
I don’t care if it gets to 1% or lower. I do wish kids would learn what makes a great app.
I don’t think you understood what I was arguing. My point is that when kids see stars denied, and read that acceptance rates are in single digits, they rationally are beginning to see that they don’t have a shot unless they have something very special about themselves. College admission offices are gaming the system against the kids by using marketing tools employed by the business world to convince legions of kids to apply even though they do not have a realistic shot of admission, thereby driving up their own college’s ranking by depressing the acceptance rate.
My shorthand example of “4.0, 35 ACT, varsity athlete, student body president” was not meant to be a LITERAL description of what I was characterizing. Don’t be pendantic. I was merely trying to indicate what I previously had stated, which is students looked upon by other kids as truly outstanding candidates being denied.
@BooBooBear I completely agree with your perspective.
I do get it. But whatever example, when the “star” in any one hs applies, he/she needs to show more than their high school resume. He’s got a presentation to provide, in the rest of the app and the supp, through the short answers and essay, the range of ECs and how they’re described. Maybe he didn’t come across as the college wishes.
And the thing is, apps to tippy tops are not decreasing.
Stop accepting international there is a huge portion, but the answer is many highly qualified students have been and will continue to be turned away.
“I agree with above posters that there is and will continue to be a growing disincentive to apply to schools with a sub-10% or certainly sub-5% acceptance rate.”
I am afraid it is not supported by the data. Over the past 12-13 years, the numbers of applications at HYPSM have increased by almost 100%. For example, the acceptance rate at Harvard went from about 11% to below 6%. In contrast, for a school ranking beyond 30, the increase in applications is rather moderate. For example, the acceptance rate at NYU 12-13 years ago was like 35%. Today it remains at a similar level. The acceptance rate at Brandeis University 12-13 years ago was about 43%. Today it is about 35%.
For whatever reasons, I think there is a strong incentive among international applications to concentrate their applications on very top schools, and this force is greater than whatever disincentive that domestic applicants may have.
NYU is at 27% this year, but it was in the 30s for a long time, sure. We’re not saying that the applications are starting to decrease, just that it should happen in a few years when people see the acceptance rate as 1 in 100 overall and 1 in 1000 if you don 't have a hook. At that point and with the baby boomer retiring and their kids past college age, there should be a decline in apps to the top schools. But we’re talking 2020 timeframe.
The other factor that will continue to drive acceptance rates down is the increasing accuracy of predictive, “big data”, analyses that enable colleges to better identify the students most likely to accept offers at that school. That helps colleges increase their yield and therefore reduce the number of students they need to accept.
Where can we find data about increase in international applications? I’d be curious to see real numbers about 1). increase in international vs. domestic apps and 2). acceptance rates of domestic vs international students.
This may be old news, but I am new around here. I expect others also would be interested. There seems to be some difference in interpretation in discussion above and numbers would help clarify.
Although college admissions is much less random than it appears to applicants, it looks random to applicants because many of the characteristics are non-observable and/or non-comparable across the entire applicant pool from the point of view of the applicants (or anyone else outside the college admissions offices). Because outsiders cannot easily compare essays, recommendations, and other subjectively graded admissions criteria, and usually do not know what each college is really looking for in or how much it weights each category, most outsiders tend to discuss admission chances in terms of stats and possibly the few other observable and comparable aspects (e.g. race/ethnicity, legacy) and throw the rest of the criteria into the category of “random” or “lottery”.
^well said. I think people vastly underestimate the importance of the essay and vastly overestimate the quality of their own. I’ve posted on here about how a family friend asked me to read their child’s essay for Brown (don’t ask, I won’t do it for an internet stranger). The essay was just awful. No grammar errors or anything confusing but just not compelling or interesting. I’m sure they write great essays in school but a personal statement/application question essay is an entirely different skill set/style. They didn’t believe me that the essay needed significant work and only fixed the one typo I found. Didn’t get into Brown - although honestly I can’t say with any certainty that the outcome would have been different if they had listened to me.
Then you have schools like Princeton which regard their admissions process as a trade secret.
“Where can we find data about increase in international applications? I’d be curious to see real numbers about 1). increase in international vs. domestic apps”
I believe no one discloses this kind of number. But we do have some information about the speed of increase in international applications vs. all applications (domestic + international). For example, from http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/12/15/yale-accepts-17-percent-of-early-applicants/
“In recent years, the diversity of Yale’s applicant pool has grown significantly. Quinlan said … over the past two years, while applications from international students have grown 12 percent.”
It is not clear whether the 12% increase in 2 years is based on early applications or total applications. But if I need to guess, let me assume that early AND regular round international applications have grown 12% over Class 2017 -2019. During the same time period, Yale saw total applications (both domestic and international) increase from 29,610 to 30,237, a moderate 2.1% increase. As one can see, 12% vs. 2.1% is quite something, and that increase in international applicants is a primary factor in describing increase in total applications.
If the 12% increase is only about early round, then the difference in growth speed is even bigger because early applicants (domestic + international) at Yale dropped slightly from 4750 to 4662 over Class 2018-2020.