What I don’t get is the “arrogance” of the students who are applying, as well as the parents. I guess the students don’t or won’t deal with possible rejections. Who sets them up for that? The fact that they don’t check costs first, before applying, is the lack of maturity as well as the lack of communication about parent finances. They get into some of their schools and are shocked that there is no aid for them.
To answer the question succinctly from one family’s perspective with a student that applied to more than 20 schools:
We were looking for one affordable school. For my son, a very uneven candidate, it was a purely financial decision. (And my father footed the application fees)
So, the tippy top, 100% meet need schools, are very attractive to lower income students. Of course, they are very, very difficult to get into. Still, even for uneven candidates like my son, he had to try for a few of those, though we were expecting mostly/all rejections. It was still worth a shot.
Oh, and my son was never invested in any school; he’s a realist. He just wanted to go to college and graduate with as little debt as possible. No stars in his eyes; he knows nothing about rankings, only about “how can I afford to go to college?”
My kid applied to 12 colleges…a mix of 3 levels (safety, match, reach) and also a hunt for merit aid…she doesn’t attend a competitive school but 10 - 12 was sort of an average number of college apps for the kids she knows.
Those who apply to many schools, too many school, pay in the problems and work that go into the endeavor. It can pay off but it can also backfire. I assure you that mistakes happens and when you have that many schools you are dealing with, the chances of things going wrong multiply. THe same with missing info, missing opportunities, etc./
A lot of parents here will not pay full sticker price for a school that does not have a certain lustre to it, determined by payee.
Also, yes, kids and parents start investing in schools when they work with them, for them in doing those apps, making the visits, and it’s pretty tough after going to all of those Ivies to face that your kid ain’t going to one, and that Big State U or Medium Rep College is the best that’s going to happen. Hopefully the prices adjust accordingly.
And yes, if big fin aid and big merit is the idea, applying to a lot of schools increase those odds.
My kid , this year applied to 7 schools. Got or was in line for great merit at 3, low sticker price with a little merit sweetner possible at 2 and didn’t get a bit from 2, the reaches, was lucky to get accepted even. He got into his ED school, so it was game over by Novermber Had he not, we would have had some serious work to do. DOn’t know how many more apps we’d have sent out.
I think there is more at play than merely improving the USNews rankings. As many know, the contribution of the admission rate is only 1.5 percent. Yield? Well, look it up in the methodology!
On the other, the perception of high selectivity plays a massive role. Take a look at Chicago. They cracked the Morse Code and by renaming parts of the contents of the survey jumped the rankings substantially. If moving up in the USNews is the objective, there are better ways than simply collecting more applications. Reworking the alumni donations yields a higher bonus than jumping 1 spot in the selectivity index. Being creative about how to report the top 10% of your entering class keeps on giving. Columbia are you listening?
And there are the direct benefits in enrollment and financial management provided by the ED and WL crutches. Despite the promise that financial aid in ED is equal to the RD round, applicants have no comparison for the first year and asked to accept or reject. Most do accept! In the WL round, candidates are given the opportunity to accept the offer but have no negotiation power. The consensus is that not expecting much or any aid will bolster your chances is high. And, it is easy for the school to verify this. Hello, Little Susie, we want to poll your interest in joining XXX but our finaid budget is limited. How does an admission without aid sound? We need to know by tomorrow. Bubye!
cpt: He had all those acceptances and awards by November? All EA?
It is not just the USNWR ranking that propel kids and parents, it is looking at Naviance and who else is getting in from your HS. Kids can see that only the kids with over a 4.0 (weighted) and 1400 SAT are getting into the top schools and that kids with a 3.0, 1300 are getting into some other school. They also have a pretty good idea of who are the “smart” kids and can be judgmental themselves. A number of kids got into very good school due to athletics this year and there were definitely some comments about hooks.
@xiggi, I agree a lot. That’s why I included “selectivity measures”. Tons of folks still (idiotically) judge/rank schools by (easily manipulated) selectivity stats. In fact, it seems even worse now than 25 years ago.
Instead of looking at school A (that has double the admit rate of school B but may get you where you want to go just as well as school B) and thinking that school A is an undervalued gem, they join the lemmings and automatically assume that school B is better when it very well may not be (for them or even in general).
Yes, he did. One ED school, 6 EA schools. Two state schools, three Catholic schools, two non denom private schools. Two highly selective schools (USNWR top 20), two were safeties to which he had an excellent chance–would have really been shocking if declined chances and the other 4 were match schools though he was in the upper quarter statwise at them. Was awarded merit at some with chances of more, but he withdrew his apps after ED accept. But you know, there was one school to which a lot of his peers applied and was on his list, but he just didn’t do it, that did not accept even the top qualified kids EA, UMich. Kids were accepted at ND, BC and GTU and not at UMich this year. You never know what happens at any given school. That was a real shocker to most of the high stat kids.
But he did not apply to the most selective East Coast schools that his peers have all been most wanting. NO ivies, for example. Did not even take advantage of legacy at one of them. Had he been deferred or rejected ED, we’d have hit the tough list, but for us it was game over in November. it was a nice Thanksgiving and easy winter break. Didn’t have a lot of friends to hang around with because many were doing their college apps, many under a pall.
@marysidney Again, just speaking from my own experience with 3 Ds, while stat wise you set yourself up for a greater number of options, I think the overall product suffers. So, as I have previously mentioned, I purposely capped the number at 10 for all of my Ds. One did 10, the other two did 9. All got into 70% or so of their schools–including some ivies, very selective LACs, and UCs. Now, that is anecdotal, but to have it work three times, on different daughters, well, there is a little something to it…
The other portion that many are not addressing or reflecting, is that these schools are now hyper aware of the shot-gun application approach, and speaking to a couple directors of admission at elite schools, many tell me that they can tell when the institution is just one of many being applied to—my point being, the application suffers, and its duly noticed. But just my 2 cents, and I am cognizant that different situations require different approaches.
For UCs, the number of UCs you’re applying does not affect the “overall product” since they’re using the same essay. That also true with schools that doesn’t have any supplement (e.g. Case Western). My daughter last year applied to 15 schools, but 6 of those are UCs and 1 didn’t require any essay and 1 with no supplement (Case).
I think this is a chicken-egg situation. I look at it from the other direction: Students are applying to more schools due to low admission rate. The applicant pool for each school is therefore increased. The admission rate goes lower. These would lead to a cycle of increasing applicant pool and decreasing admission rate. It is hard to say whether the yield rate would go up or down in this situation. Probably other factors such as financial aid would have a larger impact on the yield rate as you can see from UIUC and UMich.
UMich is admitting less students from the regular cycle but admit more from the waitlist this year. The apparent admission rate would be lower this year for sure.
I don’t think many do care which Ivy as long as it is an Ivy. What do the schools all have in common that would draw the same student to Dartmouth and Columbia besides the basketball teams playing each other (and the ranking)? Will the student at Amherst be just as happy at Williams? I think so, so why apply to 7 other schools that are just the same? Both my kids did applied to schools with rolling admissions so they knew they were in last October. I was pushing them to apply to a few others but each was happy with her choice and accepted the fact that if anything went wrong, she’d have to take a gap year. We knew the base level of aid, that we wouldn’t get any need based aid, and compared a few schools. Neither had a reach school because each was happy with the school she picked. Neither feels unchallenged at her school because of numbers and rankings, since we didn’t know them or care about them. In fact, one daughter turned down a lot of the LACs people on this list love and is happy she did (who wants to have spent this winter in New England when she can be in Florida!).
I really think the schools should limit the total number of applications to 10. Do your research, find out about financial aid and merit aid, and then apply but to no more than 10 schools. I think it would make students think more about the applications than just sending another one in, what’s another $100 (with extra score fees and CSS fees)? I think it would make it less of a lottery and make people think about the match of the school.
@twoinanddone, there seems to be a lot of ignorance combined with unimaginative one-track minds in the world. I guess it’s because most people are conditioned (by evolution as well as society) to be lemmings. Being contrarian is tough, and most humans don’t like to be lonely and aren’t strong enough to form and stick to convictions that are outside of their peer group.
If a student is in a position of needing to seek merit scholarships to be able to afford college, s/he may need to apply to more schools, since assessing whether non-automatic merit scholarships are reach/match/safety is more difficult than assessing admission as reach/match/safety or using net price calculators for need-based aid estimates.
The shifting economic landscape has impacted both how families evaluate affordability and how schools calculate likely yield. When the economy tanked I think more kids jumped at solid merit packages and some schools had higher yield than expected. My D’s school was overenrolled for the HS graduating class of 2012. At a smaller residential college an unanticipated high yield impacts housing availability class size (need to hire adjuncts) and promised aid. Schools like predictable high yield for rankings but I agree with the OP that the unpredictability has lead to managing numbers through more waitlisting of qualified candidates. Miscalculating aid and admissions the other way can result in an enrolled class size that is too small to support the budget. I think it’s just harder to hit the sweet spot for most schools and the consequences of a big miss take years to recover from.
Yep. Pretty much every incentive is there for schools to use both ED and WL more.
For example, a school that can offer fin aid to some students but not all can have very good control over just how much tuition it brings in (as well has be able to get desirable high-stats kids) by meeting full-need (and being need-blind) during ED but meeting hardly any need during RD.
yes. It is in the common data set (CDS) that each school puts out.