Tweet This
When students consider colleges they usually worry most about whether they meet the requirements for admission. With highly selective colleges, of course, that's only the opening bid; what's in your hand well above that lets you win the round.
Other factors, however, put even the strongest candidates at risk when it comes to college acceptances. One particularly maddening and unpredictable factor over which applicants have no control is the institution's admission rate from the previous year. That's the percentage of applicants admitted that gets breathlessly reported in the media, particularly as it approaches zero. (Walden College in "Doonesbury"rocketed to #1 in the rankings the year it rejected all its applicants.) Colleges and universities are pleased when their admit rates fall because they look more exclusive and they may inch up in rankings.
Parents often lament, "My daughter had the exact same profile as our neighbor's kid. He got into [add your favorite prominent college here] but she didn't. Why not?" It seems clear to them that equally strong applicants should get equal results, but it's not that simple.
To begin with, every institution has to set an annual goal for its freshman class size. Financial, logistical, athletic, special cases and academic concerns then impinge on admission deans' and directors' calculations. These numbers are constantly being evaluated and revised. The admission cycle, in a sense, never ends.
Admission offices are the lifeblood of their institutions, since without students they would cease to exist. The numbers need to come in precisely on target for the college to meet all its goals, particularly budgetary ones. Meeting the numbers is no joke, either. If the class target number isn't met, cutbacks or worse may be in order. On the other hand, an overcrowded class requires more teachers, more housing, and more financial aid, throwing the finely-tuned campus operating system out of whack. Admission deans can be fired for not meeting the numbers either way. Some colleges have even ended up housing students in temporary situations, making triples out of dorm rooms made for two or even paying students to take a year off before matriculating, none of which looks good.
Experienced admission deans are experts at predicting results; with new methods of data collection, they can be even more precise. But as finely tuned as the methodology is, it is not infallible. Colleges with long histories can usually predict fairly accurately the percentage of students accepted who will ultimately enroll. In some years, however, the institution may see a surge of popularity or a drop due to any number of reasons: a well-known figure enrolling, a spectacular athletic season, a scandal or widely-reported campus unrest. Any of these developments can affect student enrollment, even at the last minute when deans hope the class can be officially "put to bed."
As a result, it pays for families to look not just at the most recent admission figures, but also at results from the previous year or even further back. What happened then can affect what happens now. No matter what a student's application looks like, it may not be enough to overcome this aspect of the admission process.
George Fan at College Kickstart has documented some of the changes in admit rates that can affect students' chances of being accepted.
A perfect case in point is American University's 26% decrease in the percentage of applicants it admitted for the Class of 2020, from 35% to 26%. That's a significant change that can put an applicant who might have been accepted last year out of the running this year. Was there a reason for this drop? Fan attributes it to applications' being up 15% and admits down 15% due to higher expected yield (the number of students accepting their acceptance) from the year before. That's a double whammy for current applicants, since American has to correct for the "overage" of the last class. With increased application numbers and too many students showing up the year before, American had to trim its sails, leaving the Class of 2020 in the lurch.
Conversely, at the University of Michigan, the admit rate rose from 26% to 29%, an increase of 11%. Although applications also rose 7% (which might indicate a need to take fewer applicants), the University's admission rate actually rose because of "higher targeted enrollment growth." In other words, they made the incoming class larger. In this case, an applicant might have reason to be optimistic.
It's true that in college admission, as with stocks, "past performance does not equal future earnings," but it is possible to get a sense of this year's admission contest by looking at an institution's recent past. It may take a little digging, but it's information that can help as you try to gauge possible application results. Make it part of your college research.
