Now It's Colleges' Turn to Say 'Pick Me!'

By Valerie Strauss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 21, 2008

The University of Maryland at College Park is making sure that nearly every single student admitted this fall -- more than 10,000 of them -- gets a personal telephone call from a current student extolling the virtues of becoming a Terrapin.

The student government president at Marymount University in Arlington County is sending a T-shirt to every admitted student.

At Binghamton University in New York, current international students are writing letters to every admitted international student -- in their native language -- to make sure they know where to get food that suits their diets or how to solve other problems they may encounter.

Tens of thousands of students in the greater Washington region admitted to colleges and universities this fall are being bombarded with invitations to big parties and small get-togethers to meet officials and alumni, all wanting to talk about the greatness of their schools. It is all part of frenetic April, when college-bound students must choose which school to attend and when school officials do everything they can think of to entice them to choose -- quickly.

"It boils down to this: We're more aggressively recruiting our admitted students," said Robert McCullough, dean of admissions at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pa., which has an active alumni group in this region. "In the old days, you recruited students to apply, you got their applications, accepted who you wanted by April 1 and got your class by May 1.

"But a number of trends have made such a model obsolete: namely, increased competition for top scholars and the proliferation of applications submitted -- both in terms of total volume and the number of applications submitted per student."

So prospective students are getting e-mail blasts from current students and alumni, and their parents are being invited onto Web sites for chats about college life. Schools are welcoming families to carefully scheduled events -- Freshman Day, Get Acquainted Day and more -- to show off their high points (never the low ones). Marching bands and school mascots greet visitors even as they register. Some, such as Kenyon College in Ohio, are paying for students to travel to campus to check them out.

For students, there is one big question: Where to go? For colleges, the answer is: Pick me, and do it now.

Jessica Thomas, 18, who attends Winston Churchill High School in Montgomery County, has spent the past few weeks attending parties given by alumni from Tulane University -- "I went to see if there would be New Orleans food" she quipped -- and Emory University.

At a gathering for students admitted to Emory, held at a ritzy building in Northwest Washington, school officials talked up the university, letting students know that famous faculty not only do research but also teach undergraduates (unlike at some big-name schools). Students were told that the Dalai Lama and author Salman Rushdie are faculty members who come to campus periodically.

"It wasn't a total waste of time like others I've been to," Thomas said as alumni hovered nearby, ready to answer her every question about the school.

"I just want her to know what a great college experience I had," said Emory graduate Rob Kimmer, a trademark copyright lawyer who studied journalism at the university.

This might be the one point in the entire admissions process when students are in the driver's seat.

"Welcome to my nightmare," half-joked Doug Christiansen, associate provost for enrollment and dean of admissions at Vanderbilt University.

"I'm in this phenomenal career where my job hinges on the whims of 17-year-olds," said Andrew Flagel, admissions director at George Mason University. "As any parent will tell you, that is a precarious place to live."

George Mason received 13,000 to 14,000 applications for a freshman class of 2,400 to 2,500 this fall. The school admits about half of those who apply. At Vanderbilt, there were 17,000 applicants for 1,550 spots. Twenty-three percent were admitted. After students make their decisions this month, Christiansen said, he expects a yield of about 40 percent.

Deciding how many students to accept -- taking into account the number of applications and slots available in the freshman class -- is a highly complicated process that falls somewhere between an art and a science, admissions officials say. Colleges tackle mind-numbing numbers of analyses trying to figure out who is more likely to accept based on a variety of characteristics, including region of origin, academic ability, sex and ethnic background. For example, a student with an SAT score just under perfect who is also a valedictorian is viewed differently than a student with a score several hundred points lower who is in the top 8 percent of his or her class, Christiansen said.

The answers produced by the analyses, plus looking at historical yields, help determine how many acceptance letters to ship out, Christiansen said.

"If we overenroll, we don't have enough capacity," he said. "If we underenroll, that becomes a financially underutilized capacity issue. . . . We can go to the waiting list. But in the end, you have to hit it dead on."

That, at least, is the aim.

"We are always wondering if we've picked the right students," said Cheryl Butler, admissions director at Binghamton University. "Will they show up? What about the yield? What will the economy do to the yield? What are the other colleges doing in regard to financial aid packages?

"This is a very interesting time."