Friday, August 21, 2020
Its About to get Harder to get Into College TKG
Itâs About to get Harder to get Into College BREAKING NEWS. Itâs hard to get into competitive schools. Every April and May, scores of **profound** think pieces come out that cite the yearâs acceptance rates. They proclaim itâs âimpossibleâ and âharder than everâ to get in as acceptance rates plummet. Parents and students across the world get panic attacks thinking about the odds. âHow is my kid going to get into Yale when the acceptance rate is 6.9%!?â While the raw numbers support these fears, weâve postulated that these acceptance rates are incredibly inflated.Fear not, we can help your student get in to college. Itâs not impossible. But weâre not here today to tell you how to get in, weâre here to tell you that as competitive as it is right now, itâs actually going to get worse.While itâs not new news that colleges want their acceptance rates to be as low as possible, itâs interesting that colleges are now taking steps to lower the rate even further. It used to be that word-of-mouth, reputatio n, and some marketing pamphlets would encourage more students to apply, but now the colleges are taking it on themselves to incentivize more applicants. This is for a few reasons.The most obvious is that exclusivity and a Studio 54 effect is never bad for marketing. But colleges want to decrease their acceptance rate to a) make them seem more exclusive, desirable, and prestigious and b) increase their ranking in US News and World.Colleges are doing this is a few ways. Getting rid of testing requirementsGetting rid of supplementsGetting rid of application feesFrom the viewpoint of the applicant, this all seems like great news: they can apply to more colleges with less effort. Think again. Getting rid of testing requirements because they believe that standardized tests donât speak to a studentâs future potential might be a valid move, but it just means that more weight is placed on other sections of the application. Many students worry that their test grades are too low to be cons idered for top schools, so they donât bother applying. Weâre seeing this trend of test-optional schools start with the small liberal arts schools, but larger universities are catching on. When schools get rid of a requirement as large as SATs and ACTs, their number of applicants increase.Likewise, getting rid of the supplement is a tactic used to decrease acceptance rates, too. The supplement is often the portion of the application that students groan or complain the most about, so getting rid of it lowers the barrier to entry. By the time students apply to college, theyâre usually overwhelmed with stress. They have to think and reflect on why they want to go to almost every college they apply to, so they look to pad their list with a few schools that have no supplements. They believe that the more schools they apply to, the likelier they are to get into any one school. While statistical probabilities do hold true in some form, itâs not necessarily true that applying to more schools increases your chances of getting into any individual school. So, when you see a school with no supplement, think twice. It might make you feel good to add one more school, but weâve learned it doesnât provide actual security youâre looking for. Instead, it gives students a false sense of hope. They feel like theyâve accomplished something by clicking the âsubmitâ button. If you truly love the University of Miami, you should apply. But donât apply because they got rid of their supplement.Itâs important to remember that colleges donât get rid of their supplement to make the applicantâs life easier, they get rid of them to lower their acceptance rate. A lower barrier to entry results in a flood of applications and an applicant pool filled with people who donât mind paying the $40-75 for an additional application. We saw the results of this action play out this most recent application season Middlebury, a top-tier liberal arts school, got rid of their s upplement and saw a 14.7 percent increase in applications. Middlebury didnât build more dorms or offer alternative programs, so they didnât have more space in their freshman year class, but students who otherwise wouldnât have applied to Middlebury chose to apply because there wasnât a supplement. It was easy. âWhy not?â Middleburyâs acceptance rate went down. We predict it will keep plummeting and other colleges will jump on this train.This is a vicious cycle, and recently itâs gotten worse. Colleges are trying to get even more people to apply. They want their numbers to get lower. It looks âbadâ if their stats go up in one year, so theyâre trying something new. If the lack of a supplement and optional test scores werenât enough to entice you, now many top schools are getting rid of domestic and international application fees. Wellesley, Colby, Oberlin, and Kenyon, for example, are now free for both domestic and international applicants. This is the most dec eptive tactic theyâve tried because at face value it appears incredibly altruistic. Itâs not. Donât forget that this is a billion-dollar, for-profit industry.When the students get to the point where theyâre anxiously adding more schools to feel a false sense of security, theyâll find that many top ranked schools not only have no supplement but are also free. Itâs a no-brainer for students to add a school like that to their âTo Applyâ list. And while you might be thinking âRelax, you know what? This is going to help so many low-income students,â you may very well be right. But there are blind spots to that argument. Of course low-income students will take advantage of this, and that is great. But what happens if and when a low-income student gets in but donât receive financial aid because these schools arenât need-blind? How will they pay tuition and travel to these schools and back home?We predict that more schools will make their applications free in the nex t few years with the reasoning that they are lowering the barriers to entry and evening the playing field. But donât be fooled. Itâs entirely for them and their numbers. They will do anything they can to lower their acceptance rate.Colleges love this trend. They need their acceptance rates to decrease slightly every year because it positions them as more and more competitive. Now more than ever, everyone wants to go to the âbestâ (most competitive) school they can get into. When we hear a school has an 11% acceptance rate, we automatically think itâs prestigious even if we donât know much about the school or the programs it has. Additionally, as college increases in price and the job market gets more competitive, it seems that the name recognition of a school is becoming more important to people as well. Small liberal arts schools that donât have the global recognition of larger schools are taking matters into their own hands. The best way to do this on a universal s cale is to climb the US News World Ranking, and one of the easiest numbers the college can directly affect in the methodology is their acceptance rate.This isnât meant to scare you, but rather to make the process more transparent. Thereâs a lot to unpack at every step of the application process. Although acceptance rates are decreasing, itâs still very possible to get into these schools. We would just advise you to be intentional with your choices. Donât add schools to make yourself feel more secure. There isnât necessarily safety in numbers. It doesnât work that way. Do you research and be purposeful in your application strategies. And always remember that the colleges need you as much, if not more, than you need them. Let us know if you want our help figuring out where you should apply. Unlike all of these colleges, our acceptance rates go up every year.
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