Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:[color=red]What's behind the surge in applications to some schools?
Three reasons:
1)
The Common App: Once you get a few apps in via the Common App, it doesn't take as much heavy lifting as it used to to add another school or three. And often, its possible to re-purpose the base of essays used for other schools. So it's not much to simply tack on more schools this way...
2)
The Vicious Cycle: Per #1 above, the Common App makes it easier to add more applications than it used to be. So applications go up while the schools' capacity for how many applications they accept remain the same... so admit rates decline... kids then see this spike in applications and declination in admit rates, get scared that their initial list of 5-8 schools isn't broad enough... so what do they do? They react by applying to more schools since the Common App makes it easy.... it's a vicious cycle.
3)
Test Optional: Adding to all of this, we are now several years into Test Optional and kids look at reaches and say "I'll just take a flyer on this and will go test optional"... so Test Optional encourages more applications too.
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