COLLEGE ADMISSIONS PROCESS IS BROKEN

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The College Admissions Process is Broken

College admissions have become so competitive that students who don’t apply early may feel like the regular admissions process is equivalent to a charter school lottery system
Early Decision is a binding contract which requires families to assume one-sided risk in two areas: admissions and finance
Solution: Modify Early Admissions to a process like a Sorority Rush and allow students to apply Early Admissions to 3-5 colleges.

“Across the country, the Common Application has made it so much easier to apply to multiple colleges, and students across the globe are taking advantage of that tool.‟

The world of college admissions is broken

The world of college admissions is broken! Across the country, the Common Application has made it so much easier to apply to multiple colleges, and students across the globe are taking advantage of that tool. This has resulted in elite colleges receiving record numbers of applicants every year. That is great for colleges and universities as more applicants can generally mean higher academic rankings.. However, they are not expanding the numbers of incoming first-year students they enroll which means that as more students apply the acceptance rates become even more competitive. Rice University, as an example, had an acceptance rate of roughly 25% in 2008. In 2019, just 10 years later, Rice’s acceptance rate has dropped to 8.7%.

The challenge with such low overall acceptance rates is families start looking at strategies to give their students an advantage. The first strategy is to apply Early Action or Early Decision, which essentially means families must apply by November 1st. Colleges are increasingly accepting higher percentages of their incoming first-year classes early. If you are not aware of those terms, “Early Action” has typically meant “find out early” while Early Decision is a binding agreement whereby families say if the student is accepted then we commit to enrolling at that college irrespective of the financial package. That is daunting as many of these college’s costs are now approaching $70K per year. Yet, many colleges are accepting large percentages of their incoming first-year classes in Early Action or Early Decision. Consider elite colleges, like Rice University and Ivy League schools, are accepting 40% or more of their first-year classes from Early Decision. The University of Pennsylvania, as an example, accepted 50% of its 2018 incoming class in Early Decision.

Early Action, Early Decision, and Financial Constraints

Fewer people applying Early Action also results in higher acceptance rates. The risk is also higher for families as they are blindly accepting the risk of financial constraints. Early Decision is binding which essentially means a student is going to that school whether they can afford it or not. There is no leverage for families; Early Decision means a family’s ability to negotiate with an institution is severely handicapped because they are already signed a contract. It is like trying to negotiate with a car dealership after you have already bought the car...good luck!

The challenge with Early Decision is the current model only allows a student to apply to one college. So, if a student wants the benefit of a little higher acceptance rate, they need to pick the one college they feel they have the best chance of gaining admission. In my family, I have told my own kids that college does not define who they are, and I firmly believe that. Therefore, what happens if 3-4 schools really have a student’s heart? What if a student would be elated to attend any of the four choices on their final list? Now they have to choose the college, not that captures their heart, but the one they believe they have the best odds of getting accepted? Worse, the decision to not apply to a competitive college is based on a one-sided perspective since the student is blind to how a college or university may have viewed their application. As a country, we want our kids to be bold and dream big. The current Early Decision process encourages kids, especially low-income students, to settle for safer options and limit their potential.

Early Decision: Outdated Process

Early Decision is a practice that was started in the 1950s as a strategy by a group of five northeast liberal arts colleges trying to compete with Ivy League institutions. The popularity of Early Action and Early Decision expanded to more colleges because their freshman yield was positively impacted by the strategy. The Common Application was introduced in 1975 in paper form, and then went online in 1998. The Common App has made it drastically easier to apply to more colleges, and has also exposed the Early Decision process to be an archaic practice. Colleges and universities are financially benefiting from these practices, yet let us not lose sight that these academic institutions are nonprofit organizations with a responsibility to advance the public interest, not for financial gain.

Low-Income Student Barriers

Additionally, Early Decision is also a barrier for low-income students. Families who want their children to attend Harvard University look at the price tag and are scared of applying early. Why? Because the thought of your child being rejected from their dream college is bad enough, but imagine an even worse scenario: Your child gets into the college of their dreams and then you have to be the parent who tells your child they can’t go because the family cannot afford the tuition.

The elite colleges claim they to be heavily focused heavily on diversity, but when they accept up to 50% of their first-year students in the Early Action or Early Decision process, and the demographics of that applicant pool are analyzed, we should question how serious they are about achieving real economic diversity in their student composition.

Modify Early Admissions to the Sorority Rush Process

To encourage students to take more risks in the college admissions process, Tier I colleges should adopt a process similar to how many sororities accept new members. In colleges across the country, “Rush” is the recruitment and acceptance process for sororities. These organizations host parties and events and invite potential members to visit their Sorority Houses and consider becoming part of their organization. Candidates visit multiple sororities to evaluate each organization, and at the same time, the sororities are also screening each student to determine who should be invited to join their new class. At the end of the process, each student is asked to submit a rate each sorority from their most favorite to least favorite. The sororities follow a similar process with potential members, and then a university goes through a review process in which sororities are matched with students who ranked them the highest and vice versa. Sometimes a student may not get accepted to their first or second choice but instead their third option. It is a blind process so the students don’t know where they were ranked; instead, they only get the thrill of being delivered a bid by a sorority that wants to welcome them a new sister.

Tier I Colleges, take heed of female leadership and allow more students to fully pursue their academic dreams!

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