Why Has College Admissions Become So Competitive? : It Used to be Simple...But Not Anymore (page 2)

Applying to college was a simple process for the Baby Boom generation, born between 1946 and 1964. Those bound for a four-year college usually planned to go to a school in their home state or one close by; many considered a college three hundred miles from home to be far away. Few students felt the need to apply to more than two or three colleges, and many applied to just one. College choices were most often based on location, program offerings, cost, and difficulty of admission, with a parental alma mater sometimes thrown in for good measure. For the most part, the whole process was fairly low-key. If students did their homework carefully before deciding where to apply, the outcome was usually predictable. Of course there were surprises—some pleasant and some disappointing—but nothing that would raise the issue of college admissions to the level of a national obsession.

It Used to Be Simple . . . But Not Anymore

Fast forward to the first part of the twenty-first century. Media headlines tell a story very different for students applying to college now."Colleges send record number of rejections; competition for admission soaring,” “Student agony grows along with top colleges’ wait lists,”  “Toward college without a map; lack of counselors leaves students adrift,” "College admissions dance gets longer, more complicated,” “High anxiety of getting into college,” and “Families seek counseling for college stress.” 

Colleges themselves make announcements that are equally jarring. In spring 2003, Harvard announced that for the first time it had accepted just under 10 percent of the students who applied for freshman admission for the class of 2007, or about 2,000 out of 21,000 applicants. By the spring of 2008, the admissions rate had fallen to 7.1 percent out of an applicant pool of over 27,000 for the class of 2012. On the other coast, UCLA, a public university, reported that it had extended offers of admission to just under 23 percent of the 55,000 students who applied for freshman admission to the class of 2012, the lowest admission rate in its history. The same year, UCLA’s northern California neighbor, Stanford University, also reported an admission rate lower than ever before—9.5 percent, down from 12 percent five years earlier. These were just a few of the many colleges reporting record-breaking numbers of applications and record low rates of admission, continuing a trend that began a decade earlier. What has happened to change the college admissions picture so dramatically?

The Role of the Internet

The Internet also now plays a major role in how students approach college admissions. Although printed material and in-person presentations are still important ways for students to learn about different colleges, the Web is the top source of information for students who have grown up online. Students can visit campuses through sophisticated online tours and webcams and can get many of their questions answered by “frequently asked question” (FAQ) lists posted on the Web, or by tracking college-sponsored blogs. Colleges have invested heavily in technology to help showcase themselves.

Finally, the Internet has made it easier than ever to apply to college. Students no longer have to send for application forms, wait for them to arrive in the mail, and then fill them out by hand. Forms can be downloaded from almost all college sites or, better yet, completed and submitted directly online, saving some of the time and effort, and even postage, that a traditional paper application requires. Some schools—St. Olaf College and Lewis and Clark College are examples—even waive their application fee (most fees are in the $45–$75 range) for those who submit their forms over the Internet. Simplifying things even more, more than 350 colleges now accept the Common Application, a standardized form that can be filled out once (often along with a school-specific supplement) and submitted electronically or by mail to as many participating colleges as a student wishes. With admission harder to predict, students are now submitting more applications than ever. Sending eight to ten applications is now the norm at many private schools and high-performing public high schools—twelve to fifteen or more applications are not uncommon. The Common Application system, coupled with technology in general, has made it easier for students to apply to an ever-larger number of colleges.

"As word spreads about the competition for college admission, students respond by applying to even more colleges to increase their chances of acceptance. In so doing, they end up unwittingly contributing to the very problem they are trying to solve for themselves. "  High school counselor concerned about the trend of students applying to more and more schools

All these factors taken together—growth in the population of eighteen-year-olds, greater interest in college, sophisticated marketing efforts, and ease of access to information and the ability to apply made possible by the Internet—help explain why it is harder to get into college now than ever before.

But this is not the whole answer so where does the Real Crunch lie.Where the Real Crunch Lies.Most people are surprised to learn that with relatively few exceptions, four-year colleges in the United States still accept most of their applicants. In fact, each year many fully accredited four-year colleges have vacancies well into the summer for the freshman class that begins in the fall. Despite all the social and demographic changes, ample spots for prospective freshmen still remain in four-year colleges. How can this fact be reconciled with the newspaper headlines (not to mention firsthand reports from students and parents) reporting a crisis in college admissions?

The real crunch in admissions—the crunch that drives the newspaper headlines and the anxiety that afflicts many families at college application time—is limited to about one hundred colleges that attract applicants from all over the country and the world and that are the most selective in their admissions process. Bill Mayher, a private college counselor and author of The College Admissions Mystique, summarizes the problem succinctly: “It’s hard for kids to get into colleges because they only want to get into colleges that are hard to get into.”