<p>Yale's president announced on Sat. June 7 that the university would be increasing the UG population by 15 percent to 6,000, and adding 2 residential colleges.</p>
<p>I'm not a big fan of Yale, but does this bode well for other schools (maybe!) doing this?</p>
<p>hopefully...</p>
<p>Princeton is already in the process of doing this, and has built/is building new residential colleges to accommodate the increase.</p>
<p>Ugh..I got so excited- but this doesn't affect admissions for this year, next year or even the year after!</p>
<p>I don't think they should increase their size.</p>
<p>jonathan, schools need to increase size as the population is steadily increasing and its unfair that someone today can't get into harvard with equal intelligance as someone decades ago.</p>
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I don't think they should increase their size.
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<p>Remember that it's very likely that along with these undergraduate population increases, universities will hire more faculty, which is really good news for those of us who are thinking about careers in academia.</p>
<p>I won't see it happen in my year though.... Residentials are going to be completed in 2013.</p>
<p>Finally! This is good news. It only makes sense for colleges to start expanding their enrollment to accommodate the increasing number of kids who are expecting to head off to college. You just can't leave things where they're at forever; things change. It would make no sense for them to ignore the fact that more people want in than ever before.</p>
<p>Rice had previously announce increasing its size by 30% over the next decade and will have two new residential colleges completed in fall of 2009. So I wonder is Rice's decision has any influence on Yale's..</p>
<p>I think to some degree news like that will influence the decision but more so that it perhaps got the ball rolling or led other universities to ponder it for the moment. I think the news to increases is more of a practical reality and in many ways, they may fear losing great students to other colleges. So of course the desire to expand has to play to their advantage or meet some need- much like how accepting legacies secures their large endowment.</p>
<p>I wonder what's going to happen when the cohort of college-bound h.s. seniors decreases in 2011.</p>
<p>somehow, I think Yale will manage ;)</p>
<p>Hi, Northstarmom, </p>
<p>I think you've seen my FAQ on college application demographics before. Perhaps it is new to some of the other participants here. </p>
<p>DEMOGRAPHICS </p>
<p>Population trends in the United States are not the only issue influencing the competitiveness of college admission here. The children already born show us what the expected number of high school students are in various years, but the number of high school students in the United States, which is expected to begin declining in a few years, isn't the whole story. </p>
<p>First of all, if more students who begin high school go on to college, there will be more applicants to college even with a declining number of high school students. And that is the trend in the United States and worldwide. </p>
<p>Second, colleges in the United States accept applications from all over the world, so it is quite possible that demographic trends in the United States will not be the main influence on how many students apply to college. The cohorts of high-school-age students are still increasing in size in some countries (NOT most of Europe). </p>
<p>Third, even if the number of applicants to colleges overall stays the same, or even declines, the number of applicants to the most competitive colleges may still increase. The trend around the world is a "flight to quality" of students trying to get into the best college they can in increasing numbers, and increasing their consensus about which colleges to put at the top of their application lists. I do not expect college admission to be any easier for my youngest child than for my oldest child, even though she is part of a smaller birth cohort in the United States. </p>
<p>And now I would add to this that at the very most selective colleges that have just announced new financial aid plans, next year's (and the following year's) crush of applicants will be larger than ever. When colleges that are already acknowledged to be great colleges start reducing their net cost down to what the majority of families in the United States can afford, those colleges will receive more applications from all parts of the United States, and very likely from all over the world. </p>
<p>The Austin American-Statesman newspaper in Texas published news about these trends in an article about a particular applicant in April 2008. </p>
<p>Perfect</a> college entrance exam scores don't help student who dreamt of the Ivy Leagues </p>
<p>The Economist magazine published a brief article about these trends in April 2008. </p>
<p>Many schools are not physically able to expand. Yale's venture will be the single largest construction project in the history of CT -- some estimates at $650M. It's a huge undertaking and the corporation sought feedback from alums, faculty and current students. Y's Borg-like growth of its endowment made it fiscally feasible as well. Whether other schools can do this is probably linked to area-specific hurdles and money.</p>
<p>You can read the text of the email announcement here:
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/yale-university/520133-more-room-yale-future.html%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/yale-university/520133-more-room-yale-future.html</a></p>
<p>What's a "residential college?" I've seen this term used on CC, but haven't heard of it elsewhere.</p>
<p>I remember having read an interesting article on expanding the sizes of America's elite universities.</p>
<p>Stanford too has talked about expanding undergrad to maybe 7,500 (8,000 at most), but it's pretty far off--10 years, maybe--that they'll be ready for it.</p>
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What's a "residential college?"
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<p>At Yale, it's a group of students who live together in the same building as upperclassmen and who consider themselves to belong to the same community throughout their years at Yale. A Yale admission officer I saw last fall said, "We haven't had to explain what a residential college is so much since everyone heard about Hogwarts in the Harry Potter novels."</p>
<p>Here's a link to Rice's website that explains its residential colleges: Rice</a> University | Undergraduates</p>
<p>"jonathan, schools need to increase size as the population is steadily increasing and its unfair that someone today can't get into harvard with equal intelligance as someone decades ago."</p>
<p>that is utterly ridiculous, generations should be getting smarter as time goes on. rejected maybe?</p>