College Admissions: Have Things Gone Too Far?

        It comes as no surprise that colleges are experiencing record application numbers this year--with the most qualified, talented applicant pool they've had thus far. But have they gone too far? Colleges now compete on how many students they can turn away, not how many they accept. An article in The Chronicle of Higher Education looked at several schools like Brown and Stanford who bragged about accepting less than 10% of applicants. Rather than marketing other aspects of a college, admissions believe that "The more apps a college receives, and rejects, the more impressive it seems".  

         This focus has caused students to feel like they have to apply to more schools than is necessary. One student remarked "I should apply to a million schools...if I shoot lots of arrows, maybe I'll hit something". However, this push is not only harmful to potential applicants, but also to the colleges themselves. A larger applicant pool does not mean that the quality of incoming students will be better. By striving for larger applicant pools, colleges are unable to predict the number of students that will actually attend, leading to longer waiting lists and other problems. 

        The solution: copy University of Chicago. Rather than trying to attract every type of student, Chicago admissions focus on attracting a student that would be successful at their university. The Dean of College Admissions at Univ. of Chicago sums up their recruiting tactics in one idea: "If understood properly, no given college will appeal to everyone—that wouldn't be possible...It's important to signal something true and meaningful about yourself. The more signals, the more honest you're being, and doing that does limit the applications". Chicago still attracts top-quality students--but it doesn't try to compete with other schools in attracting 50,000 applicants.

       I think schools should try to be more like the admissions team at Chicago. There is too much emphasis on attracting the greatest number of applicants possible, rather than focusing on attracting students that would be happy and successful at a particular school. This will yield positive benefits for students as well, because it will force them to sit down and prioritize which schools they want to attend, rather than applying to as many schools as possible just to get in.