So is there a vicious cycle going on here?
Colleges find that their yield is less predictable than before, risking an overenrollment situation if yield is higher than predicted, so they admit fewer but have bigger waitlists to “top off” the frosh class if the yield is too low, but that causes students to apply to more colleges so that they will get in someone, which causes yield to be less predictable, …
Your theory sounds completely plausible.
I’m not sure what the root of the issue is. Is it that we as a society put too much pressure on high school students to go to the best school they can or else risk not being able to get a job? It could also be that people have this idea that a perfect college exists and that if they apply to more schools they’ll find it.
I don’t really like this trend of more waitlisting though. As RD gets more and more competitive, I think ED is going to be one of the only ways of getting into a top college. There could be an upper-limit on how many colleges students could apply to, but there would be a lot of backlash most likely. A lot of my friends have only gotten into one of their top choices, some of them getting into only one school other than their safeties. Maybe if community college was seen as a viable option for more students who don’t know what they want to study and there was a limit on how many colleges people could apply to (say, no more than 8 colleges) there would be less unpredictability.
The common app has made it easier, and also the herd mentality. It used to be a rarity for students to apply to a lot of schools, now it’s become very common, and easy. Also the schools are pushing the apps. My son got many offers for free applications and all kinds of possible goodies. The advertising is intense.
It seems to me many students and parents place so much value on rankings and status rather than the fit of the student in the college. Leading back to more pressure for colleges to do better in rankings by drawing in more applications. Even now, as D considers her offers of admissions I am most impressed by the schools who actually make an effort to connect the students interests to the colleges strengths.
Is there really more waitlisting going on outside of the top 20- 30 schools? Is this just a vicious cycle for those schools?
I know schools usually publish how many students they accept ED and RD, but do they publish waitlist data?
Yes, entirely plausible. I’ve thought for many, many years now that kids apply to too many colleges. 5 or 6 years ago I could almost buy into the argument that people were searching for merit, but since then the merit has tightened up considerably so in my opinion that argument doesn’t hold the same water and colleges, I think, are more careful about admitting someone out of the gate that in all probability might not attend. The old adage you sow what you reap seems to hold true. Colleges have apps from kids that in all probability won’t attend, they are disinclined to hire and bear the expense of additional admissions people to process and evaluate, they can’t take the financial hit for missing the mark by having a bunch of kids that are accepted decline the offer, they are running tighter budgets so have less ability to “buy” students, so they defer and waitlist more trying to weed out the uninterested from the truly interested to hit their financial targets.
To stay on top of the rankings, a college has to have a low acceptance rate. So you have to get more students to apply…which leads to it being hard to determine yield since students have more applications out…which leads to bigger waitlists to protect the yield. Although the average # colleges applied to via Common App is only 4 per student.
Waitlists are the other half of the problem of having to show interest, too; to prove you would go there if you’re accepted, you really have to visit, which is expensive and time-consuming when your schools are many and far-flung. At least two of the schools that waitlisted my son probably did so because he didn’t “show interest,” to their satisfaction. At the same time, the reason he applied to some of them was because he theoretically had a better shot if he wasn’t from their backyard–which is why he didn’t visit. So you apply to more schools to make sure you have options, but your options are reduced because you’ve applied to too many schools to show the love. So far, my son has had more waitlists than either rejections or acceptances, and he only applied to 11 schools. (And to answer post 5, one of his waitlists was from a not-top-thirty school; I think it’s those schools that are more concerned about yield, and thus more likely to waitlist).
They’re in a “Yield Spiral.”
A number of my son’s friends applied to “only” 6 colleges. Most of them were highly selective, and IMO if that is the goal, to get into one of the highly selective ones, it pays to apply to more so that the statistical odds will be more on your side. The kids who applied to a dozen or more of the selective schools tend to have at least one or two accepts out of that elite group, whereas the ones who did not apply to that many schools aren not doing so well, even though they may have fewer denys and WLs than the ones who applied to so many. I think had they added more elites, the chances were higher they’d have gotten an accept(s).
I was looking at a post here where a very well qualified student was accepted, WLed and denied at like schools. I could not have guessed those results since the schools were all similar in terms of ratings and some of the denials and WL were less selective than some of the accepts. There is some element of luck in this process for a number of students, and so having more out there improves the chances of an accept. I feel terribly for some of these kids who I think would have been accepted to a school that was at the selectivity level they wanted, but they only applied to 4 such schools, and didn’t get into them. They did get into their “match” and safety, so they are not shut out, but I truly beileve had they applied to a lot more reaches, they might have gotten into one of them. My son’s classmate who applied to 20, yes 20 that he is admitting to, most all highly selective schools has hit a couple of jackpots.
Some element of luck?
I would say unless your stats are amazingly stellar and your ECs likewise, luck is a major factor. Luck as in something in your app strikes the fancy of someone on the adcom.
The only problem I would have with a waitlist is if there was a non-refundable deposit associated with keeping one’s spot on it.
My kid got an admit, a WL and a deny at three schools that are all ranked about the same (tied or within 1 rank and all below the top 30). A friend’s kid got into one of the same schools mine was denied at and not into one mine got into. He got merit at a lower ranked school. It seems like luck, major and maybe the comparison to other applicants from our high school made the difference.
Wait lists have always been used for yield management, especially for kids that have higher stats, and so seem unlikely to attend. But some of those could have been wooed with merit money.
Merit money at the higher ranked schools has been contracting in favor of need-based aid and because the schools are getting more full-pay applicants. It also seems like the price of many privates (NYU posted COA for Tisch next year at just over $70K!!) is pushing even parents with good savings to opt for a cheaper option like an OOS public or a lower ranked school offering merit. These are not parents who are eligible for financial aid but for whom over $60K per year per kid is burdensome. That may well be affecting yield at those full pay schools.
I think the parents here “get it”, for the most part. But a lot do not. I’ve been hearing inquiries from some highly educated parents whose quest has been getting kids into the best school, the most selective school, etc, and now they are suddenly asking about money. And shocked that their top student isn’t going to get a dime fro HPYSMC or any of the ivies and even the little ivies. Not a sou, not a cent. No merit and they don’t meet need standards.
But yes, luck is very much in the picture, so the more rolls of those dice, the better the chances, with some caveats.
There are more than a few posters on CC who (or whose kids) have applied to more than 15 schools. This shows, to me, that they don’t care where they go except that they want the highest ranked or that any school will do. My kids did their best to bring the averages down - they each applied to one school and that’s where they each attend.
Almost 30 years ago I received a letter from my law school that they had 100 acceptances over the class size maximum as they had done their typical yield calculations, but a turn in the economy and the increase in private school tuition had made this public school suddenly very attractive. They increased the class size for that year by those 100 students (making for a very overcrowded facility), but the letter said in the future that wouldn’t happen and they would only send out acceptances for the number of places in the class and the rest would be waitlisted and admitted one at a time as spaces cleared.
Twoinanddone, I don’t see how, especially in light of this thread, you can say that applying to lots of schools shows that applicants don’t care where they go except for ranking or any school will do. There are many reasons why applying to only one school could be a spectacularly bad idea–financial, to start with. Like mom2and’s child, my son’s results have been pretty unpredictable, with waitlists and denials from similar schools, waitlists from schools ranked far lower than acceptances, and completely unexpected substantial merit aid from one school! Yes, applying ED and getting in, as two of my kids did, is fabulous–if you can afford it, if you know by November of your senior year absolutely where you want to go–and, of course, if you then get in. Often what happens is that you don’t get in ED or are deferred (which is what happened to my third), and suddenly you have to find more schools to which to apply, and often while you’re panicking after that first rejection. Certainly, one could argue that to apply to twenty schools is exhausting and hard to do well, but to me it shows increasing fear of unpredictable results rather than lack of care in choosing.
Too many people are slaves to USN and selectivity rankings (I admit that I was the same in HS), but adults should know better but some don’t and many kids don’t listen anyway. When that happens, it’s little wonder that schools will try to improve their USN rankings and selectivity measures (acceptance rate and yield while using ED more and WL more; all related to acceptance rate). I read a poster on CC who thought that only schools with a below 20% acceptance rate were good enough for him. Then he was shocked when he didn’t get in to almost any of the 15 or so schools that he applied to.
If this cycle continues, then the application timeline needs to change. Wait listed students are encouraged to bolster their applications with more information. To me, it’s like tournament play. You’ve made it this far, now you have an additional game to play to see if you get a consolation prize. But the consolation prize is huge!
Perhaps waiting until April is too late in their senior year to make them jump through more hoops. Yes, lots of kids do EA and ED, but maybe it should all happen in the Fall with notification in January or February.
I believe that if schools did a better job of explaining how they were distinct from each other their yield problem would disappear. For example the Military colleges and other specialized programs have very high yield.