An application crush, driven in part by demographics, has more students bound for wait lists as schools face a tricky admissions calculus.
By Susan Kinzie
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 26, 2008
After 35 years as dean of admissions at Georgetown University, Charles Deacon has it pretty much down to a science: He knows just how many students to accept to hit the freshman class numbers almost perfectly.
But this year, all bets are off.
Georgetown had a surge of nearly 30 percent in early applications this fall, followed by a record total of applicants -- and little idea of how many students, if admitted, would say yes.
It looks to be the year of the wait list. For many top colleges, the application process has been roiled by changes, among them a dramatic shift in financial aid, and a few influential schools have ended early admission programs. There is an unusual level of uncertainty, both for colleges and students -- as if the admissions process weren't stressful enough.
Adding to the mix is another year of historically high numbers for applications at many schools. The children of baby boomers are graduating in large numbers from high school, and their ranks will crest next year. More students than ever are going on to college -- about two-thirds of high school graduates go directly to a two- or four-year college, said David Hawkins, director of public policy and research for the National Association for College Admission Counseling.
What's more, students are applying to more schools, with an easier application process online, especially top students who know how competitive their preferred schools are.
This fall, Harvard and Princeton universities and the University of Virginia dropped their early admission programs, saying the process "disadvantages the disadvantaged" by giving an edge to more privileged students who don't need to wait for the spring to compare financial aid offers.
Many schools have dramatically higher rates of admission for students who apply by an early deadline -- and, at some schools, commit to attend if accepted. At Georgetown, Deacon assumes that much of this fall's surge in applications came from students who would have applied early to U-Va., Harvard or Princeton.
Harvard, Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College and other schools have announced generous financial aid programs and matched Princeton's guarantee that students who qualify will get grants instead of loans.
Those changes are rippling through the most selective schools, whose applicant pools overlap considerably. And the number of applicants continues to skyrocket.
Vanderbilt: up 30 percent. Cornell: up more than 7 percent. Johns Hopkins: up more than 7 percent, to nearly 16,000 -- about 6,000 more than six years ago.
Even schools that did away with early admissions have seen an increase: a 6 percent jump at Princeton, 4 percent at U-Va., almost 19 percent at Harvard, to a whopping 27,278. And, as at most schools, a few applications have yet to arrive. The figures include a 33 percent increase in the number of African American applicants to Harvard and a 20 percent increase in the number of Latinos.
"We're delighted," said Jack Blackburn, dean of admission at U-Va. "Everyone thought when we dropped early admission we would drop in total applications."
It's not just the most prestigious schools that are hearing from more students: McDaniel College's early applications were up 11 percent this year, Catholic University is expecting another dramatic increase and the University of Maryland is up 17 percent. Marymount and George Washington universities have numbers similar to last year's.
This is the most unpredictable year, said private college counselor Nina Marks, formerly assistant head and director of college guidance at the National Cathedral School. She's telling clients that wait lists are much more likely to be a factor.
It can be agonizing for families, she said. "I wish it weren't as drawn out a process," she said. "It extends the whole admission cycle. It can go to August. That's really hard."
As colleges try, in various ways, to manage the uncertainty, said Hawkins, the admissions expert, students and parents are trying to hedge their bets.
Not only are they applying to lots of schools, but more students are also sending in commitment letters and deposits to more than one school, he said, and more are playing financial aid offers against each other.
All of which makes the process a little crazier.
"We're having a big powwow next week with some predictors, prognosticators and statisticians," Blackburn, the U-Va. official, said. And he expects to use the wait list more this year.
At Hopkins, officials said much the same. "I know there are students in my applicant pool who last year would have been admitted early-decision to Princeton or to Harvard," said John Latting, dean of undergraduate admissions. Typically, about a third of the students the school admits enroll; this year, who knows?
At Georgetown last week, students sat hunched over a table in a basement mailroom sorting through a stack of application letters several feet high.
"When I first started here, we received maybe about 5,000 applications," said Deidre Small, the manager of data entry, who has worked at Georgetown for 30 years. Last year the school had about 16,000 applications. This year it has gotten about 18,700.
Early applications to Georgetown shot up from about 4,500 to roughly 6,000 this fall. "Part of that group applied early-action so they would be safe and have the stress removed," Deacon said. "A lot didn't get in, so they're even more stressed. Now they're waiting till April" to find out whether they have been accepted anywhere.
The dilemma is how to predict how many of those admitted will come. "We had the largest number ever from Thomas Jefferson," Deacon said, referring to the high school for science and technology in Fairfax County. "I'm sure a lot of them are Virginia-bound in their minds. Hopefully, we'll win them."
Georgetown has months to do that, writing and calling the best students, inviting them to campus. Sometimes even more persuasive, he said, are the groups students form on Facebook, making friends online and bonding with the school.
But there are also those fat new financial aid packages at some schools.
In recent years, just under half of the students accepted at Georgetown have enrolled. Deacon expects that number to go down this year. "But we can't afford to be wrong," he said. "We have pressure from the neighbors and the zoning commission, enrollment caps -- we can't have too many."
So the school needs to rely on the wait list to get the numbers right, more than ever before.
The university had been admitting about 20 percent of its applicants, but that number will probably be 16 or 17 percent this year, Deacon said.
Then again, who knows?
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