Are applicants feeling newly empowered?
(Image via Molly Bewigged at Flickr.com/creativecommons)
For a college admissions officer, demography is destiny. All but a handful of colleges and universities are deeply affected by the size of the applicant pool available to matriculate each fall. And, with a look at the birth records, we know today how many high school seniors will graduate over each of the next 18 years, and we know that that figure is going down beginning next year.
Electronic applications, however, play havoc with demography. Knowing how many potential applicants are out there does not tell the admissions officers how many schools each of those students will apply to. Now that the common application is available online, a student types in her name and ID number, pushes a few buttons, and, in an instant, applies to countless schools, hedging her bets with applications to schools beyond her reach, schools most likely to send her a “yes,” and schools that are seen as a sure thing — the safety nets.
When I was in high school, back in the Eisenhower administration, the guidance counselor at James Madison High School had a policy that kept her work load in check: each senior was “allowed” to apply to three colleges plus one campus of the City University of New York. The adviser (gate keeper) would only process three transcripts and three sets of letters of recommendation. Much has changed since the 50s.
Admissions officers play the math game to figure out what number of applicants should be accepted in order to yield the desirable class in size and makeup. Some of their calculations reflect the previous years’ results. But clearly, the rise in the number of schools students are applying to creates havoc for the admissions officers’ equations too.
Perhaps schools should add a question on the application form that asks for a response, “On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being most likely, and 5 being most unlikely, please let us know how likely are you to attend this university if you are accepted: highly likely — moderately likely — neutral — moderately unlikely — highly unlikely?”
After more than a decade of reading each spring about the record number of college applicants and the difficulty of getting into the college of one’s choice, the tide has apparently turned. Reports this year are that colleges are reaching deeper into their wait lists in order to fill their fall classes.
According to The Wall Street Journal, some of the factors that have made the college-admissions process, in the paper’s words, “unpredictable” include: the elimination of early-admissions programs at highly selective schools; the large number of multiple applications filed by many applicants; the changes in financial aid being offered by well-endowed institutions; and the number of students electing to have a gap year between high school and college — a decision made only after the acceptance letter has arrived.
With an increase in the number of contingent factors, colleges are being more cautious and accepting fewer students and putting more on the wait list. That way they can carefully craft the ultimate shape and size of the entering class by taking students off the wait list according to the number of beds available in the dorms or how the male/female ratio shapes up, as well as looking at the diversity of geography, ethnicity, or expected major or academic concentration. But hedging comes with its own forms of risk — someone on the wait list of school A might have already accepted school B’s offer. Harvard and Princeton each admitted twice the number of students from their wait lists as they did last year. That doesn’t trouble me at all. Anyone admitted to either of those schools will be a “catch” for any other place in the country and the student will not be disadvantaged at all if she or he ultimately enrolls at Stanford, University of Chicago, Columbia, St. Johns in Annapolis, or The George Washington University.
Perhaps all this translates into the students being a little more empowered.
