<p>Heres the danger: Maybe the odds wont scare off the seekers of the brand, but it might scare off some of the more interesting, intellectual kids or the kids with genuine kindness, because that usually gets lost in the admission process, said Jon Reider, a college guidance counselor at San Francisco University High School who worked as an admissions officer at Stanford for 15 years. In other words, the numbers might be gorgeous, and the Board of Trustees will be smiling, but somehow the soul of the place will have begun to drain away.</p>
<p>Do you think this will/is/should be a concern of the Admissions officers of Yale and its peer institutions?</p>
<p>I think it’s demonstrable already in the way Yale et al market themselves. They know that can do little to stop the huge no. of apps (although a handful have decreased mass marketing) </p>
<p>But there’s nothing in that 2012 article that wasn’t extant when I was a HS Senior looking at the vaunted “Ivy Leagues” from my midwestern urban HS.</p>
<p>People will always consider Yale and others and choose not to apply for a variety of reasons. Some of the reasons are valid, some are spurious, some in-between (e.g. perception of Ivy leaguers being snobs). Is it a concern? Global warming is a concern. This is an issue to be confronted with positive branding and marketing, IMHO.</p>
<p>Yes, but I wonder if the point of the article holds true. As the acceptance rates continue to plummet, will the ratio of applications of truly extraordinary teenagers to well coached applicants decline proportionately? Is there a tipping point? 4%,2% under 1%.</p>
<p>Remember Yogi Berra once said: “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”</p>
<p>@arwarw It would take an awful lot to get down to a 4% acceptance rate. Applications over the last five years have increased from 26,000 to 28,977. A 4% acceptance rate would imply an increase to 50,000 applications - not a likely prospect anytime soon. </p>
<p>However, just for arguments sake, assuming this does happen, most of the increase would have to come from foreign applicants since the top US applicant pool seems fairly constant. Finally, given that Yale (and most top schools) have soft quotas for international acceptances, the impact on qualified domestic applicants should be minimal even with the large drop in the overall acceptance rate.</p>
<p>A 1% acceptance rate would mean an increase from 28,977 to 200,000 assuming the yield holds steady. I am going to go out on a limb and say this is never going to happen in our lifetimes.</p>
<p>Harvard’s at 6% now. It won’t take much to get it 5%.</p>
<p>I hear what you’re saying on the international soft quota, but that’s not something you’ll read about in Harvard’s view book. That potential applicant in the midwest or the south likely only knows that about 95% of the applicants are being rejected, and if he or she goes to the trouble to apply, rejection is highly probable.</p>