<p>it appears that there was an amazing increase in applications to top colleges from class of 2012 to class of 2013.</p>
<p>Where did these students come from? The number of births from 1990 to 1991 actually went DOWN a little bit. Was the class of 2009 better educated? Did elite colleges do a much better job of marketing themselves? Did overseas students suddenly discover the US in record numbers? Did the average number of applications per student go up? Did colleges fake the data in order to make their numbers look better?</p>
<p>This year’s high school senior class is supposed to be the largest in history. With a depressed economy, some parents are seeing top colleges as an important investment in their kids’ future job prospects. The top colleges also have far better financial aid than do most other colleges.</p>
<p>I’ve also heard that it’s the largest class in history. </p>
<p>I think that the number of apps per student increased dramatically. My sense is that there were alot of panic-applications this year, based on the horror stories that came out of the class of '08. I know many kids who applied to LOTS of colleges, many more than they’d originally planned. They assumed they’d be turned down by most. Add to that the economy, and large numbers of students desperately hunting for financial aid. It may be a case of throwing alot of applications against the wall, and hoping that something would stick.</p>
<p>I bet there will be even more panic next year, even though the class of '10 will be slightly smaller. The horror stories that are happening right now are doozies. I just returned from our high school spring open house, and some of the stories are just heartbreaking. D is in IB – supposedly a ticket to a good college. Some of her IB classmates didn’t even get into their safeties, and will be going to community college in the fall.</p>
I’ve been thinking that could be a possibility. But if it’s true then that could play havoc with the yield stats, meaning that the average yield has to go down. That means that a lot of wait list kids will be getting some good news this summer.</p>
<p>The Ivies accepted 24,024 students. Some of those students applied to and were accepted by two or more Ivy League schools. If my memory is right the entire freshman class at all eight Ivies is less than 15,000. So they very well could have room for some waitlisted students.</p>
<p>I think it’s more applications per applicant, made easier by wider use of the common app, and electronic filing in general; also, the more generous aid policies of certain top-ranked colleges (though it would be interesting to see how much more aid is actually given out this year). But it isn’t higher across the board: why was Stanford way up, but Williams way down, Yale and Amherst pretty flat?</p>
<p>I agree that schools will be going far deeper into their waitlists this year. Will they also reverse their usual policy of giving little or no aid to waitlisted students who are admitted? Given the economy, I think they’re going to have to if they want to put butts into their seats.</p>
<p>TonyK, there are other schools that kids will turn down some ivies for, Stanford, Caltech, Duke, MIT and some very good state schools will offer better finances, for the people, especially from the coasts where a family income of 250K doesnt go that far. Time wil tell. </p>
<p>Endicott, the global ecnomy has also soured in the last year.</p>
<p>My DD applied to one match rolling admissions college (her top pick) back in August of last year (within 24 hours of the application becoming available). She was deferred within three weeks. She was also shocked. So she sent in 17 more applications, only to find that her original college ultimately accepted her and offerred a nice merit scholarship.</p>
<p>It has been a long, crazy ride this year. I don’t expect things to really clarify until the first week of September…</p>
<p>kayf: I agree that many accepted students will go to non-Ivy schools for various reasons. If there are roughly 15,000 seats in the 2013 Ivy League Class, how many have already been filled by ED’s? I would also subtract the number of students who got RD acceptances from three or more Ivies since that is probably where they are going. </p>
<p>The remaining seats will be filled by the other accepted students plus some from the waiting list.</p>