Allen Grove at About.com recently posted about the volume of applications students are sending in To How Many Colleges Should I Apply?, and it got me thinking about how I'm contributing to the admissions fad "more is better" in terms of application numbers.
To quote Grove, "NACAC, the National Association for College Admission Counseling, recently published their report on the "State of College Admission 2010." The study showed that in 2009, 75% of students submitted three or more applications; 23% submitted seven or more applications. Those numbers have been creeping up over the past couple of decades as the number of college-bound students has increased and online applications have made applying easier."
I am one of those 23% of applicants referenced as applying to more than seven colleges, so I feel some obligation to explain that to the adults and peers who constantly ask me "why so many?" The basic reason for me is that the colleges I'm interested in all happen to be highly selective. No matter how qualified you are, if one in four applicants are admitted at your "target schools," there's room for doubt of admission, and so my list has grown slightly out of precaution.
A fantastic article titled Application Inflation: When is Enough Enough? was just released today by Eric Hoover, a writer for The Chronicle, the leading publication on higher education, in conjunction with the New York Times. Beginning with the question of why the number of applications institutions receive seems to be edging higher each year, Hoover looks into a few powerful examples of college marketing campaigns and their effects on drastically increased application numbers.
The first example on the table is the University of Chicago, which experienced an unbelievable 43% increase in applications last year. This change is attributed to multiple factors, namely the introduction of Jim Nondorf (formerly at Yale and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) as Dean of Admissions for the College, the school's adoption of the Common Application over their formerly "uncommon" application, and the extensive use of a marketing firm to attract more students to campus.
Students and alumni from Chicago have complained that the marketing campaign has transformed Chicago from an interesting place that drew in niche students into a more generic imitation of what a college should be, all in the name of drawing in more applicants. While Chicago used to pride in its eccentricity and deviation from the admissions norm, it now seems to be chasing averages.
So why are colleges embarking on multi-million dollar spending sprees to lure in more applicants, many paying the college board 32 cents per name, only to reject an overwhelming majority of those who apply? Many colleges claim that an increasing volume is a must in today's competitive market as an indication of institutional growth, and that increasing selectivity boosts everything from the college's credit score to alumni giving to their U.S. News Ranking, if only insignificantly.
The benefits of bringing in more applications are dubious at best. There are many downsides to increasing application volumes as well, taken most seriously Georgetown, a school which has chosen to keep off the Common Application to keep its applicants down to those most dedicated to attending the school. It additionally wishes to provide an interview to each applicant, which it wouldn't be able to do if the college switched to the Common Application and application volume shot up double digits each year.
As Hoover's article illustrates, the debate for quantity over quantity isn't limited to paper; it affects the students who are ultimately hurt by these admissions tactics. He recounts the story of a minority applicant who was urged to apply by Harvard:
A Harvard representative contacted Sally Nuamah her junior year of high school in Chicago. Ms. Nuamah had good grades but an ACT score she describes as low. Her parents, who came from Ghana, had little money. As she welcomed the admissions rep into her living room one day, she was nervous. “I was like, ‘Oh, goodness, I don’t want to disappoint anyone,’ ” she says.Ultimately, it is a sad reality that a majority of these added applications each year are from under-qualified applicants who have no chance of being admitted, only of feeding the admissions frenzy of annually increasing volumes of applications and associated costs. However, as a current applicant myself, I see no alternative but to feed the fire until I receive some acceptance letters a few months down the road.
Ensuing conversations brought mixed emotions. “I felt that I was pushed and given motivation,” she says, “but on the other hand, I wondered if what they were telling me was feasible.” She knew her scores were below the average for Harvard students. Nonetheless, she applied. Months later, a rejection letter came.
Though applications for each school is increasing, the number of students applying to these schools can't have increased that much over the past decade. So if you do apply to many schools, your overall odds don't change much. If you apply to 4 schools with a 50% acceptance rate (to keep it simple) your chance of getting into at least one is 14/15. So (i hope my math is right) if you apply to four schools with a 25% acceptance rate, i believe you would have a 7/15 chance of getting into at least one which is pretty good.
ReplyDeleteThat's a really a great way to look at it, Mark. You're right, the number of applicants hasn't increased much, however applicants are applying to more colleges, specifically more highly selective colleges. Thus Harvard has doubled its application volume in ten years, and other schools like UChicago see 50% increases in a single year.
ReplyDeleteI would like to see you figure out a way to calculate your chances of getting into say at least one school based on the selectivity of all of those on your list! Mychances.com sets up their predictions that way also - that you would have to apply X times to be accepted based on your credentials.