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limner
Member
| Joined: | Sun Jul 16th, 2006 |
| Location: | Tennessee USA |
| Posts: | 807 |
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Posted: Tue Apr 1st, 2008 02:47 pm |
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| http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/education/01admission.html
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outwest
Member
| Joined: | Sun Mar 4th, 2007 |
| Location: | CA |
| Posts: | 540 |
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Posted: Wed Apr 2nd, 2008 04:22 am |
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I have a feeling that many colleges saw a huge change in their acceptance rates this year. Grinnells waitlist letter said they had the highest number of applicants in the schools history at over 5800 for 680 spots. If a school in a cornfield is getting 5800 applications that says somethin.
It will have a trickle down effect with many schools stats going up because of it.
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limner
Member
| Joined: | Sun Jul 16th, 2006 |
| Location: | Tennessee USA |
| Posts: | 807 |
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Posted: Wed Apr 2nd, 2008 11:29 am |
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| OW, I think you're right on the trickle-down effect. I think, though, that it will be interesting (and informative) to see what the yields are this year. I know that this is/was the largest number of HS grads and, obviously, many if not most schools had a huge increase in apps. But it seems like the two numbers--HS grads and applications--don't correlate exactly. It seems like a larger number of grads also sent off a larger number of apps due to the increased competition.
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Descartes
Super Moderator
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Posted: Wed Apr 2nd, 2008 12:48 pm |
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Trickle-down indeed.
Some of the numbers involved were interesting:
-- Harvard admitted approximately 100 fewer students this year than last. That suggests they are expecting their yield to climb about 5% from previous years (putting it at about 85%) due to their now more generous FA policy.
-- Reviewing past years, I estimate about Harvard and Princeton have just admitted about 1400 more students (allowing for some cross-admits) in the RD cycle that probably would not have been there last year because of admission to these schools during the EA cycle. Probably most of these students sent out multiple applications to other top-tier schools: conservatively estimate at 5 per student and that means (given the high level of preference for H and P) about 7000 additional admission spots now "in play" at top-tier schools will be turned down in favor of Harvard and Princeton.
A similar problem at somewhat lower-tiered schools will probably play-out due to the UVA RD admissions.
I'm very interested in just what sort of impact this will have by May 1.
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DesperateDad
Member
| Joined: | Tue Mar 14th, 2006 |
| Location: | California USA |
| Posts: | 829 |
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Posted: Wed Apr 2nd, 2008 03:24 pm |
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Descarte:
You are exactly right. In prior years, ~1,000 kids would have been accepted to Princeton ED and Harvard EA and been 'one and done.' Now, those same 1,000 kids apply to both H & P, and Y & S (and a many others) for good measure. Moreover, Harvard's new financial aid policy had to give pause to many upper middle class kids that might have applied to ED to Brown or Columbia or Dartmouth or Duke, or, or (fill in another name)....but, a chance at the Harvard lottery-discount was too good to pass up. Thus, insead of an ED acceptance at one of those other schools, these students held back and applied RD to a dozen+.
Just my $0.02.
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CarolynLawrence
Administrator
| Joined: | Sun Mar 5th, 2006 |
| Location: | USA |
| Posts: | 3191 |
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Posted: Fri Apr 4th, 2008 11:20 pm |
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| I still think that a lottery system for the most selective schools might work. You'd have to have some numerical cut off in terms of test scores and grades, of course, then everyone qualifying who was interested in HYPS would pull a number and get to put a bid in for a list of schools in ranked order. Of course, that would pretty much do away with "holistic" admissions at these schools, but it might be a more transparent system.
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jocelynDAD
Member
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Posted: Sat Apr 5th, 2008 12:43 am |
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Problem with a lottery system is the possibility that all the 'lucky' students want to study Creative Writing and no one is interested in studing Physics. Or any variation on that theme!
The process does have to provide students for the varied departments and Professors that are in the college.
Then there are the athletic teams, orchestra, yada yada!!!!
Creating a class for any college is as much an Art as it is a Science.
It is hard for us parents to realize, but these kind of concerns and considerations do make up a significant part of the Adcoms days. 
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Wendy (wjb)
Member
| Joined: | Sun Mar 5th, 2006 |
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Posted: Sat Apr 5th, 2008 01:30 pm |
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"In prior years, ~1,000 kids would have been accepted to Princeton ED and Harvard EA and been 'one and done.' Now, those same 1,000 kids apply to both H & P, and Y & S (and a many others) for good measure."
You are obviously correct that kids who applied in prior years to Princeton's (or whoever's) binding ED program would be "one and done." Kids who apply SCEA, however, are another story. My son was a Yale EA admit this year, and Yale launched a Facebook page just for them, so there was lots of communication among the students. The vast majority left at least a few applications alive after the EA acceptance (very often to HPSM ), and many (too many) left alive a ton of applications "just because."
So unlike an ED acceptance, an SCEA acceptance really doesn't remove most kids from the entire applicant pool.
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