What's behind the surge in applications to some schools?
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Anonymous
This is the same at the majority of flagship state schools. That's why you see even schools like UC Berkeley and UCLA have such low 25% SAT's (precovid). Flagships take students from all the high schools and some of these high schools are very low performing but get the same percentage of students admitted as the higher performing ones. Iowa has open admissions practically. Illinois admits a large percentage of students from Chicago who need remediation. Schools like Northeastern and other private schools don't have the same mandate. |
Anonymous
Oh let's see, maybe because on every single ranking of colleges it is ranked higher? |
Anonymous
No. https://www.niche.com/colleges/search/best-colleges/ |
Anonymous
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The majority of students are applying to 5+ colleges. Some even apply to 10 or 20. It just happens that everyone is trying for a top college.
There should be a limit on the number of colleges you get to apply to, something like 8. |
Anonymous
+2 |
Anonymous
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The majority of kids throw in half-baked applications. More applications don’t increase
your chances of acceptances, better applications do. |
Anonymous
DP. Considering you’re comparing an expensive private university and a state flagship that has a mandate for racial and economic diversity that accepts the top %ile of each HS class w/o regard to test scores, I’d say UT is clearly the “better” school. Not to mention the salary outcome is better for UT if you compare the cost of living in Texas vs. the Northeast. |
Anonymous
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The Common App should reduce the number of schools from 20 to 10. Students who want to apply to more than 10 should have to fill out the applications the old fashioned way, individually. That will cut down this nonsense.
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Anonymous
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Uncertainty in college admissions definitely increased with increases in an individual's app numbers. It's a vicious cycle. But, what drives the uncertainty to begin with? Holistic admission and, in recent years, lack of standardized metrics. GPA isn't one. When test optional policies were widely adopted during covid, uncertainty, which was already present, shot through the roof.
Here's hoping that the return to test-required at a small list of schools will begin to inject a small amount of certainty back into the process. Unfortunately, most are highly selective, where uncertainty is big regardless, but every little bit of uncertainty reduction helps. |
Anonymous
Chicago 25th? UNC 35th? Berkeley 42nd? UMD 81st?(!) USN has its flaws/issues, to be sure, but it's hard to take Niche seriously out of hand with some of these rankings. |
Anonymous
Yes magazine rankings are magazine rankings. They have flaws. Every year, we get real ranking determined collectively by the parents and students, about 10 million of them. |
Anonymous
| Common App and international students. Plus tiktok and instagram with their endless influencers selling that only an Ivy college is worth it. |
Anonymous
True + kids influenced by their parents applying to 30+ colleges |
Anonymous
| Also, if you are on reduced lunch, free lunch, etc. you get to apply for free so there is zero incentive not to apply to 20 colleges. That's almost 1 million applicants who are eligible for free applications. |
Anonymous
The number of arguably prestigious schools that are still test optional is shrinking. |