Why Has College Admissions Become So Competitive?: Concerns About Rankings

Representative Questions from the National Survey of Student Engagement 2008

Critics have pointed out that while the U.S. News variables can contribute indirectly to educational quality (perhaps higher salaries lead to better faculty and smaller classes mean more personal attention), educators do not agree on how those variables can be used to measure the quality of a college. To make things worse, some of the factors in the U.S. News formula can be manipulated. As much as colleges disparage the ranking process, the U.S. News rankings are too high-profile and too influential among the general public for colleges to ignore them. Alumni, boards of trustees, and even bond-rating agencies on Wall Street pay close attention to the rankings and expect to see “improvement.” Under pressure, some colleges have actively worked to do better in ways that have little to do with educational quality and much to do with enhancing the school’s ranking.

One common but harmless approach is the production of elegant full-color booklets that typically highlight a college’s new programs and facilities, as well as its ambitious plans for the future. In addition to distributing them to support fundraising and recruitment, some college presidents send them to their colleagues at other campuses in the hope that the booklets will raise awareness of their college. That greater awareness may lead the reader to offer a more favorable rating when the U.S. News questionnaire arrives the following year. It’s impossible to know if this actually works, but the colleges think it does.

Another tactic involves the reporting of data. Colleges have always had some leeway in how they report their statistics, and they sometimes present themselves in the most favorable light for the ratings. In the past, for example, some colleges excluded the scores of recruited athletes in the SAT scores they reported for freshmen. Recruited athletes as a group usually have lower SAT scores than other freshmen and would lower the average score, and hence the college’s ranking, if they were included. U.S. News says they have stopped this practice, but it is hard to know for sure.

The Common Data Set

The reporting of data has recently become more systematic through the development of the Common Data Set. In this collaborative project among colleges and a number of publishers, the colleges agree to provide standardized statistical data each year, including detailed information about the composition of the freshman class along with admission and wait-list numbers. The participating publishers, including U.S. News, then make the data public in various forms, and some of the colleges choose to post the report itself. (You can usually find the report, if available, by checking the college’s “institutional research office” Web page or by entering “Common Data Set” as a search term on the campus Web site.) This attempt at standardization has made it easier for different groups to access the same information. It has not, however, eliminated the flexibility that colleges have to report some numbers in a fashion they deem advantageous. As long as the public assumes that rankings measure educational quality, some colleges will feel pressured to provide what they think the market wants.

Admission Rate and Yield

Although it plays only a small role in the U.S. News formula, a college’s admission rate or selectivity is the one figure that captures the public’s attention and the most headlines. A decline from the preceding year in the percentage of students who are accepted is often interpreted as reflecting increased interest in the college, and hence its inherent desirability. Aggressive outreach to students to encourage them to apply, despite knowing that only a fraction of those applying will be admitted, is the easiest way for a college to become more selective. While most colleges engage in outreach with more noble goals, the result is the same. Rachel Toor, a former Duke admissions officer, vividly describes her own experience: “I travel around the country whipping kids (and their parents) into a frenzy so that they will apply. I tell them how great a school Duke is academically and how much fun they will have socially. Then, come April, we reject most of them.”

Colleges can also lower their final admission rate by limiting offers to those students who are most likely to enroll. A college’s yield—the percentage of students offered admission who actually decide to enroll—can affect its admission rate. A college with a high yield can admit fewer students and still fill its classes. If it has a low yield, it has to admit more. Taken to an extreme, this means admitting as large a percentage of the incoming class by “early decision” as possible. Early decision is an admissions option available at many colleges in which students submit a completed application by November 1 or November 15, rather than the traditional January 1, in exchange for a decision by mid-December rather than in the spring. The catch is that early decision applications are binding on the student, meaning that the student is obligated to attend if admitted, subject to the availability of adequate financial aid. A student admitted by early decision is a sure thing for a college, since its staff know that the student will attend.

I overheard a conversation at a reception for the parents of newly admitted students at [Elite U]. A mom was chatting with a young admissions officer who was mingling with parents on the lawn of the president’s house. “I have a question I’d like to ask you,” she said. “Since [Elite U] takes less than 15 percent of those who apply, why does the university work so hard to encourage more applications?” The admissions officer was silent for a moment. “I’m afraid you’ll have to ask the dean of admissions that question,” she said.  - Parent of prospective freshman

Early decision allows colleges to increase their yield and thereby reduce their admission rate. Some colleges currently admit from a third to half of their incoming freshman class via early decision, leaving fewer seats available for the much larger number of students applying in the regular admissions round. For the class of 2012, for example, Wesleyan University admitted 38 percent of its freshman class via early decision, while the University of Pennsylvania admitted 47 percent via its early decision program. Some colleges are reducing these percentages, however.

A college can also increase its yield and lower its admission rate by rejecting, or more likely wait-listing, students considered “overqualified” because the college believes they won’t accept the offer of admission and will go elsewhere. The dean of admissions at one such college defended the practice at his institution. “We know our place in the food chain of higher education,” he said. “We’re not a community college. And we’re not Harvard.” This practice is not common, but it is not rare, either.