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Hockey Mon wrote:

OttoCal wrote:

Hockey Mon wrote:

Carolinadreamin' wrote:

Elrod wrote:

SchoolGirlHeart wrote:I wonder why the applicant numbers have exploded so.... There aren't THAT many more kids going to college, are there? I remember my parents being irked that I refused to apply to Ivy League schools. First, I didn't have a prayer of paying for one, if I did get in, and second, I didn't think it would be a good fit for me... I had Choice One and One Backup, that was it....

That didn't turn out so bad.

I didn't even have that Jen. I wasn't allowed to go away to school....parent's decision. I really wanted to go to Villanova but instead I had two choices: Rutgers or Seton Hall. I had been to the Rutgers campus and hated it so Seton Hall it was. I applied to the two schools and was done with it. I do have to say though none of my three kids applied to more than a handful. Two were recruited for a sport which actually made the process somewhat more complicated but did narrow the choices. The oldest one knew the moment she walked on the Clemson campus that she would go there but we still made sure she had a few back ups.

I would say that most kids in our school are applying to 8-12 and more than just a few over 25.

8-12?!? 25!?! Holy crap. Is that because:
1. Kids are indecisive.
2. Kids are worried they won't get in anywhere so they use the shotgun method (of applying to schools).
3. Kid's parents are making them apply to a million schools because they are insane.

I applied to 5 schools. I didn't apply to schools that I wasn't interested in going to or thought I had no shot at getting in to (including Brown) much to my mother's dismay. The essay on it turned me off.

I actually just saw on the news last night that at lleast 25% of students ae applying to 7+ schools. Colleges do appreciate the extra revenue that this brings in and with the Common Application it is much easier to apply to multiple schools. Ah, trends.

It's probably a vicious cycle too. Kids apply to more schools so it's harder to get in. Therefore, kids see that it's harder to get in and then apply to even more schools. I wonder if colleges are accepting more kids knowing that a larger percentage are not going to be attendending?

It really depends. More selective schools (Duke, Harvard, Brown, etc) will accept smaller amounts (percentage wise) when compared to their overall class size. In other words the usually already know what percentage of students will actually attend. The same goes for scholarships as well. LESS selective schools end up admitting quite a bit more percentage wise because they know fewer students will choose to attend their insitution.

Example (thes number are from US News National Universith Rankings)
Harvard will only accept 7% of the appications they receive. They know what percentage of those accepted students will attend.

Elon University(a NC Liberal arts University) accepts almost 50% of its applicants.

Saint Paul's College (in Virginia) accepts 98.7% of it's applicants.

Not all schools are created equal. Some are just more difficult to get into than others. Some admissions criteria is objective and some is Subjective. It's always best to do your research about each school before applying instead of going about it blindly.

I agree with what everyone has said about the common application and the waiving of app fees. It used to be (when I went to school) we could only afford for me to apply to 3-4 schools. Now kids can apply to most any school without having to pay an app fee.

Harvard admitted 6.2% of applicants this year. Their yield (percentage of those admitted who enroll) is probably the highest in the nation,. then things trickle down.

With students applying to more colleges, the colleges are uncertain as to how this will affect their yield. Rather than admit more students and risk overshooting their goal (Directors of Admission get in trouble if they undershoot their goal, but also if they overshoot it), colleges are creating larger and larger waitlists. This allows them to slowly creep up to goal as they admit off the waitlist. But this too becomes a vicious cycle. students are always urged to deposit somewhere by May 1st, even if they will wait out the waitlist, as long as they know they will sacrifice that deposit. Then, if the student gets in off of a waitlist, they withdraw from the other school creating an opening there that may need to be filled.

6-8 applications today really is a reasonable number for many students. Yes, some are lazy and doing their research later, but financial need is becoming an even greater factor, and families need to consider financial aid offers, and factor in other things such as distance, and travel to and from campus etc. We usually tell our students they should have one or two safety schools (admission wise and cost wise), a couple of likely admits, and a couple of reaches. Those applying to the nation's most selective colleges will typically be the students applying to a larger number of schools because those decisions are almost impossible to predict--for my students applying to those schools, I make sure they understand they could get into all of them, or none of them.

This outgoing class of 2011 entered in 2007, the year before the economy took a hit. the amount of students on fin aid in the class of 2011 on average is 46%, every class that entered after that the average was above 65%.

What this means is when the incoming class is enrolled in September colleges will have four classes enrolled and all will be in the 65% or greater in terms of fin aid needs for the first time. The economy may be getting better but the affects are hitting colleges now and will continue to do so.

To help bring in more money colleges are being very selective in who they admit. Students with greater financial resources are looked at very closely and colleges are taking less chances on students who may need more financial help.

BottleofRum wrote:This outgoing class of 2011 entered in 2007, the year before the economy took a hit. the amount of students on fin aid in the class of 2011 on average is 46%, every class that entered after that the average was above 65%.

What this means is when the incoming class is enrolled in September colleges will have four classes enrolled and all will be in the 65% or greater in terms of fin aid needs for the first time. The economy may be getting better but the affects are hitting colleges now and will continue to do so.

To help bring in more money colleges are being very selective in who they admit. Students with greater financial resources are looked at very closely and colleges are taking less chances on students who may need more financial help.

Depends on the school--many schools remain need blind, or at least need blind until they get to the waitlist. At many schools, the admission office reviews files without any sense of whether the student is seeking financial aid.

This is part of an email we got from Boston College this past week:

"This year Boston College received nearly 33,000 applications for 2,250 openings in the Class of 2015, which represents a 10% increase from last year. We have offered admission to 9000 candidates, or 28% of the applicant pool. The mean SAT for admitted students is 2099/1396. The mean composite ACT score is 32."

I'm sure because of a $50,000+ tuition rate their magic number is 25% of accepted students will actually attend BC.

ejr wrote:

BottleofRum wrote:This outgoing class of 2011 entered in 2007, the year before the economy took a hit. the amount of students on fin aid in the class of 2011 on average is 46%, every class that entered after that the average was above 65%.

What this means is when the incoming class is enrolled in September colleges will have four classes enrolled and all will be in the 65% or greater in terms of fin aid needs for the first time. The economy may be getting better but the affects are hitting colleges now and will continue to do so.

To help bring in more money colleges are being very selective in who they admit. Students with greater financial resources are looked at very closely and colleges are taking less chances on students who may need more financial help.

Depends on the school--many schools remain need blind, or at least need blind until they get to the waitlist. At many schools, the admission office reviews files without any sense of whether the student is seeking financial aid.

There are not many schools that are need blind anymore. There are some but the number has dropped drastically as the endownments declined.

BottleofRum wrote:

ejr wrote:

BottleofRum wrote:This outgoing class of 2011 entered in 2007, the year before the economy took a hit. the amount of students on fin aid in the class of 2011 on average is 46%, every class that entered after that the average was above 65%.

What this means is when the incoming class is enrolled in September colleges will have four classes enrolled and all will be in the 65% or greater in terms of fin aid needs for the first time. The economy may be getting better but the affects are hitting colleges now and will continue to do so.

To help bring in more money colleges are being very selective in who they admit. Students with greater financial resources are looked at very closely and colleges are taking less chances on students who may need more financial help.

Depends on the school--many schools remain need blind, or at least need blind until they get to the waitlist. At many schools, the admission office reviews files without any sense of whether the student is seeking financial aid.

There are not many schools that are need blind anymore. There are some but the number has dropped drastically as the endownments declined.

Depends on how you look at this--a fairly significant number of schools are need blind, at least until they get to the waitlist. But the other kink in this is when awarding financial aid. many schools that are need blind will then not meet full financial need-they will "gap", meaning leaving a gap of unmet need. The philosophy here is that admission is an important thing, and one never knows if a student might find a way to come up with additional monies.

There probably are fewer than 25 schools in the country that are completely need blind, and that meet full financial need for all admitted students.