College Admission Getting More Competitive

This week Steve considered the role of a college education and cited Phyllis Schlafly's opinion that "College is no Prerequisite for Many New Careers."

Maybe that's a good thing, considering that gaining admission to your college or university of choice is getting harder...way harder. Newsweek reports:

For students like Maxine who are applying to college for next fall, that dream is turning out to be frustratingly unobtainable. It turns out the odds of getting into a selective college have never been worse. Why? It's simple demographics. A little less than two decades ago the biggest population bulge in the history of America, the baby boomers, were busy having kids. Now those kids are in junior high school and high school and creating a demographic boomlet all their own.

This spring the largest number of high-school graduates in the history of the country --some 3.32 million -- will don a cap and gown, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Next year, at the peak of the peak, the number of high-school graduates is expected to top 3.33 million. "For many middle- and upper-middle-class kids, the transition from high school to college was never without some obvious stress," says Barmak Nassirian, spokesman for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. "But now it has become a multiyear nightmare."

The article notes the example of Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., which received 4,000 applications for 455 seats. And Ball State in Muncie, Ind., saw its applications rise 22 percent last year, receiving 13,000 applications for 3,100 spaces. The trend is good and bad for colleges.

College admissions officers are split. On the one hand, they say they don't like being forced to reject so many worthy kids. On the other hand, they're enjoying -- and profiting from -- the attention. As the number of applicants rises, admission becomes increasingly selective. Most parents and students equate selectivity with a quality education, which in turn encourages even more applications and allows colleges to become even more selective.

The downside is the inevitable fallout when the boom ends. I imagine when the children of Generations X and Y reach college age there will be room to spare, and colleges will be clambering for students. The future combination of less young people and the diminished role of college education in workplace success could be lethal to the same universities that are turning away qualified students today.

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This week Steve considered the role of a college education and cited Phyllis Schlafly's opinion that "College is no Prerequisite for Many New Careers."

Maybe that's a good thing, considering that gaining admission to your college or university of choice is getting harder...way harder. Newsweek reports:

For students like Maxine who are applying to college for next fall, that dream is turning out to be frustratingly unobtainable. It turns out the odds of getting into a selective college have never been worse. Why? It's simple demographics. A little less than two decades ago the biggest population bulge in the history of America, the baby boomers, were busy having kids. Now those kids are in junior high school and high school and creating a demographic boomlet all their own.

This spring the largest number of high-school graduates in the history of the country --some 3.32 million -- will don a cap and gown, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Next year, at the peak of the peak, the number of high-school graduates is expected to top 3.33 million. "For many middle- and upper-middle-class kids, the transition from high school to college was never without some obvious stress," says Barmak Nassirian, spokesman for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. "But now it has become a multiyear nightmare."

College admissions officers are split. On the one hand, they say they don't like being forced to reject so many worthy kids. On the other hand, they're enjoying -- and profiting from -- the attention. As the number of applicants rises, admission becomes increasingly selective. Most parents and students equate selectivity with a quality education, which in turn encourages even more applications and allows colleges to become even more selective.

Comments

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1. Justice said the following at 1:21 PM on Jan 4:

funny article, my school takes on people with a gpa under a 2.0 but my entrepreneur program is still ranked #4 in the nation, behind programs that have been around 50-60 years longer

2. Patricia said the following at 1:45 PM on Jan 4:

This blog is a bit misleading because if you look at non-elite colleges, the vast majority of four year colleges accept more than 75% of applicants. Most colleges today are not competitive-and many barely fill the campus because an unprecedented number of higher education institutions exist in the US today. The hyper competitiveness only exists in the top tier of colleges and students and is the result of marketing more than anything else. To be honest, I find this issue overblow and a qualified student should be able to gain admission to a fine college or university.

3. Suzanne said the following at 2:04 PM on Jan 4:

Patricia,

Thanks for that clarification. You're right. This article is pertaining to more selective colleges. There are many that will still be open to prospective students.

4. Jacob Douvier said the following at 4:52 PM on Jan 4:

The college I graduated from has become increasingly selective as the number of applicants increases each year. By my senior year, admissions inadvertently created a housing crisis when every student they accepted decided to enroll (traditionally, a percentage of the students we accept would go elsewhere). The administration had to scramble to find room for 400 freshmen (the biggest freshman class yet).

5. Chris said the following at 9:39 PM on Jan 4:

Patricia is right about selective colleges and marketing. They've been doing this for years. Shortly before I graduated from my alma mater, they made a concentrated push to get more and more applicants so they could look more selective. They did this so they could "compete" with Harvard, MIT, and other schools by looking more selective.

It wasn't just raising the bar in terms of required academic capability. It was intentionally getting more and more people to apply for the explicit purpose of selecting a smaller and smaller percentage of them.

Selective college admissions office live and die by things like number of applicants, acceptance rates, and yield (the percentage of accepted students who matriculate). Yield is a big one, and the whole reason for the marketing push is to increase this number. After all, it shows that your school is more "desired" than the others.

6. Autumn said the following at 8:54 AM on Jan 5:

I'm going to be one of the 3.32 million graduating this spring, so this article was interesting to me. I've been accepted to my two "back-up" colleges already, but my top choice is a very competitive school, only about 10% of those who apply are accepted. I won't hear from them until February, beacause financial aid paperwork is required before they accept you. I've been really worried about getting accepted, and thinking about all of the other qualified students who have also applied just makes it worse. I'm just going to be glad when it's all over!

7. Jacob Douvier said the following at 11:20 AM on Jan 5:

Another interesting factor that has accompanied this increase in selectivity is the the dumbing down of the standardized tests. My college's freshmen classes repeatedly beat the past freshman class's average SAT and ACT scores by a point or two. Now, some of this is that I think the college really was attracting more highly qualified students, but some of the kids, waltzing in with their ACT scores of 29 and 30 really didn't seem all that smarter or intelligent that the class from two years prior whose average score was 26-27.

8. teesha said the following at 1:51 AM on Jan 8:

Gee, in Canada, student enrollment in the southern Ontario universities seems to have been sky-rocketing. Though, I don't think admission at my particular university (Go Marauders!) has been become any more difficult (unless you're in Health Science or Engineering, which are always just plain difficult to get into). We've actually just resolved to expanding the university (building more residences and academic buildings in order to accommodate the larger influx of students. It's pretty much that way with the other universities in Southern Ontario. As long as you've got the grades we ask for, we'll let you in! We'll make space for you!

9. tocara said the following at 1:56 AM on Jan 8:

This is why you study abroad! Regardless of whether or not colleges have become more selective, why not get a taste of education in a completely different setting that is unlike what you are used to? I'm going to Jerusalem to study at the Hebrew U this winter.