When a client asked me the other day about the importance of student to faculty ratios, I got to thinking about other supposed indicators of educational quality.

The other oft-cited statistic when visiting an admissions office is “average class size.” As with student-to-faculty ratios, the size of the classes at a college is assumed to reflect the quality and the intimacy of the educational experience. Small classes–so the assumption goes–are interactive and provide ample opportunity for interaction between students and faculty. The pedagogy of these classes is more a facilitated discussion than a lecture.

This assumption is generally true: small classes are more interactive. Yet I could cite numerous examples of professors I have known who stand and deliver lectures from prepared notes to a class of seven students. Just because a class is small doesn’t mean it’s any good.

The use of the “average class size” can be very misleading, however, and masks some more important facts about the quality of education delivered by a college or university.
Consider how the following scenarios have an impact on how “average class size” is calculated.

• Some of the smallest classes are taught by the least effective, least popular professors. In a world of university tenure, bad professors cannot be chased out. So they end up teaching ever smaller numbers of students, while the more effective, popular instructors see their class sizes swell.• Some of the smallest classes are in obscure subjects. Some of these are new courses professors are trying out for the first time.
• They can be experimental. And few students are willing to take risks of this sort (credits are too expensive, too dear to take such risks).
  Class sizes in some departments are much smaller than in other departments. Courses for popular majors such as history, economics, and biology may be large, while equally good courses in anthropology and art history may be tiny. Here quality of the individual course is not the issue–it’s the popularity of the major that may affect class size.
• Professors generally do not like teaching huge courses–not because they hate lecturing–but because they hate grading so many tests and term papers. So they ask administrators to cap enrollments, insisting that “small classes are better” (when, in fact, they are simply concerned about their own work load).
• Professors and administrators cap enrollments in popular courses in order to keep the average class size small. Even the most popular courses at small, liberal arts colleges are not allowed to grow large–because those colleges are protecting the ratio. In a competitive environment that values small class sizes over large ones, institutions of higher education are loath to allow classes to grow too large. So from an administrator’s point of view, the question is not so much access to great courses or the quality of the individual course (some large lecture classes in the hands of an outstanding professor can be awesome). An administrator’s job is to keep “average class size” as low as possible.

This final point leads to some very troublesome effects on college campuses. An article a few years back from the alumni magazine of my alma mater, Dartmouth College, points out that the real, untold story is how the mania to protect the “average class size” statistic is shutting students out of popular courses. The article makes the point this way:

In [the department of] economics, with 453 students registered as majors, minors, or modified majors, students get closed out of as many of 20 percent of their course choices, a rate that far exceeds the rate of closeouts campus wide, as estimated by [Dean of the Faculty Carol] Holt.

To further elaborate the point, a “small class” in the economics department at Dartmouth is 30 students: the department would likely cancel a class with such “low” enrollment. While in the department of anthropology, a “small” class might be 5 or 6 (in my department at the University of Denver, a course with fewer than 7 students was considered “uneconomic” and therefore cancelled).

(Note to future economics majors: if you really want to small classes, go to a college where economics is NOT a popular major.)

Believe me, this is not the sort of information you will hear from an admissions counselor. They will sing out their statistics on student-to-faculty ratios (8-to-1 at Dartmouth) and “average class size” is probably around 15 or so.

Student to Faculty Ratios Can Mislead

But the statistics, beautiful though they are, do not tell you the whole story. In fact, they can be grossly misleading. And they do not necessarily bear any relationship to the quality of the education being delivered.

As an alumnus, of course, I would tell you that the quality of the education at Dartmouth is more a function of the quality of the faculty and the quality of the student body. Dartmouth can afford to be more discriminating in its offers of tenure, it offers higher salaries to faculty, and the student body is one that any high-quality faculty member would love to teach. And only teachers who love to teach undergraduates would be motivated to apply for a job at Dartmouth–for there are few graduate students.

In the same breath, however, I would criticize the quality of a Harvard undergraduate education, where the student-to-faculty ratio is an ultra-low 6-to-1, but average class sizes are generally much larger, and graduate teaching assistants perform the overwhelming majority of grading and lead almost all the class discussions. To be graduate student at Harvard is to be on top of the heap; to be an undergraduate is fun an exciting, but the teaching is just not as good.

Why would I say that?

Two reasons.  First, my experience while a graduate teaching fellow.  I was an assistant for two different courses over a few semesters.  These were 200-level courses in the economics and political science departments (international political economy and political theory, respectively).  While I enjoyed my experience, I found the lectures by the professors to be relatively boring, and I also found it weird that I was leading discussions on the readings despite my relative lack of expertise in either subject. I also was in charge of grading all papers and exams, some of which were awesome, and other were complete pieces of crap. But the professors allowed us to give nothing less than a “B” grade to anything, no matter how horrible or off the mark the work was.

The second is that a friend of mine wrote me a note about his experience in choosing and attending Harvard.  While he enjoyed his time at Harvard overall, his classroom environment not all that memorable.  Here is what he wrote:

I didn’t think very critically about which college was the right “fit”. All I knew about college was gleaned from family trips to University of Notre Dame for football games. I knew I wanted to go away to college, and I had been to Washington DC so I applied to Georgetown. I applied to University of Michigan Ann Arbor as my “safety” school. And at the last minute, my Dad told me he had spoken with a friend whose daughter had gone to Harvard and enjoyed it. So I applied to Harvard.
When I got into Harvard, I was so overwhelmed with people’s responses to that fact that it seemed to me the right thing to do to go there. I had never been to Boston and had no idea what Harvard looked like and no real appreciation for its history. In fact I almost cried when I rode into Harvard Square because it didn’t look at all like “college” to me!
It turned out to be a wonderful experience for me, not because of the undergraduate academic offerings (three or four truly exceptional courses) or the career guidance (zero) but because of the terrific students and graduate students I met and became friends with. It is a part of my life I treasure. Looking back, I’m not at all sure that I couldn’t have gotten an equally wonderful (though of course different) experience at any number of other colleges. I will say though that the Harvard name has opened many doors for me, many of which I am probably not even aware.

So how can you uncover the truth behind the statistics?

Here’s a short video I did a while back expressing gratitude for the clarity with which Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, calculated its student to faculty ratio.

The Truth Behind Student to Faculty Ratios

How can we compare and contrast the educational services offered by different institutions? How can we get beyond these simplistic numbers?

You must ask more substantive questions about how courses are taught, and not to focus solely upon the size of the class.

But there are other questions that prospective students and their parents might ask in order to understand and predict what their experience might be like if they matriculated to a particular college or university.

1. What is the “course load” for faculty members? How many undergraduate courses is each faculty member expected to teach every year? Is this number the same for all departments, or does it vary by discipline?
2. What percentage of courses is taught by adjunct or part-time faculty? Is this percentage the same across departments, or do some departments rely on part-timers more than others?
3. What percentage of courses has a waiting list? How does the college (or the individual department) determine who gets off the waiting list and when?
4. How many campus lecture halls seat 100 students? 50 students? 500 students? How many seminar rooms are there? What is the ratio of lecture halls to seminar rooms?
5. How small must a class be before it is canceled by the administration?
6. What is the most popular course on campus (or in your department)? Is enrollment in this course capped? Who gets in, and who doesn’t?

As you ask these questions, you should not permit admissions people to give vague answers. They will hem and haw. They will will be imprecise.

But these figures do exist on campus, and they exist in the office of institutional research. The administrators in this office crunch the numbers. They have the facts. If you really want to know this information, you need to ask to be put in touch with someone in the office institutional research who can provide this information to you.

Still, you must not focus solely on the statistics. Every educational institution has administrative problems like the ones at Dartmouth described above You will never be able to guarantee that your son or daughter will not be shut out of a class. You will not be able to ensure that every course he or she takes is a gem.

But if you dig deeply enough, you may be able to figure out how forthcoming and honest the faculty and administration is about the difficulty of measuring educational quality, and you will learn how they are working to deliver the quality you expect–and will be paying for.

Need to understand the data and how it applies to you?

The college admissions counselors at Great College Advice have access to the latest higher education data to help students and families make the right decisions about their educational paths. We can guide you toward the information you need to choose the right colleges and ensure that you get the educational opportunities you most desire. Give us a call for a free consultation or fill out our contact form. We’d be delighted to get acquainted and explain how we help families make the admissions process less stressful and more successful.

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The post Class Size & Student to Faculty Ratios: What Research Says? first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

Sadly, there is very little research to indicate how much you could expect to earn after gaining a degree from this, that, or the other college. We do have statistics reports of averages. This one at Payscale.com is an example. But an average is not a prediction of what your son or daughter will make upon graduation. About half the kids make more than that. And half make less. Which will be your child? Above or below the average?

Even with salary averages by college, educational ROI would not be predictive for an individual student. An average is an average, after all, and how could we predict that Susie would earn above the average and that Sam would earn below that average? (Unless, of course, Susie were from Lake Wobegon…where all the children are above average…).

Plus there are kids at cheaper schools that make way more than the averages for those expensive private schools. Who made the better bet: the kid who paid less for college, or the one who paid more?

The fact is that aggregate data is unhelpful in providing clear guidance to individual high school graduates. Would you buy a Harvard degree if you were destined to earn below the salary average for that institution? What crystal ball will tell us where we will end up five, ten, or twenty-five years after graduation?

The reason for the dearth of the sort of solid research for which we all pine is that it cannot be done. Solid, scientific, and predictive research requires double-blind experiments with variables that can be controlled. When it comes to educational ROI, such controlled experiments would be impossible.

Why? Because human beings are darned complex, and too many uncontrollable variables enter the equation. What are the variables that have an impact on one’s financial success in life (other than the name of the university on one’s diploma)?

Let’s start a list.

• Educational background prior to entering college (e.g., Philips Exeter vs PS 142)
• Socio-economic status prior to entering college (e.g., New England blueblood vs. first-generation Sudanese)
• Grades earned in college (e.g., a studious 3.5 GPA or a slacker 2.4
• Major in college (e.g., engineering vs. education)
• Location a person chooses to live in after college (e.g., Santa Barbara vs. Omaha)
• The type of profession one seeks (e.g., teacher vs. neurosurgeon)
• Other skills a student develops beyond the major (e.g., the philosophy major who also studies organic chemistry)
• Jobs or internships the student might have had during college (e.g., dishing ice cream on Cape Cod vs. doing an accounting gig with PriceWaterhouseCoopers)
• Absence or presence of well-connected family members (e.g., a mom who CEO of Acme Technology and raised gobs of dough for a presidential campaign vs. a dad who drives a cab in Brooklyn)

Get the picture? Controlling for all these variables so that we could develop a scientific study that gave us meaningful comparisons to help us predict educational ROI for a particular student is virtually impossible. No aspiring academic with an understanding of research methodology would take this on.

But the biggest problem is that we can never compare a single kid who had two lives one in which he went to a high-priced college and one in which he went to a community college and later transferred to the state school.

Or the student who majored in business in his first life and then majored in English in his second.

Or the student who earned good grades in his first life, and then floated by with a C-average in his second.

Now, if we could clone people and set the clones off in two different directions that would be really cool. And conclusive. We could see which genetically identical person earned the most after having attended this school or the other. As long as those genetically identical individuals had lived identical lives in the same household to the age of 18 (if, however, the clones were “separated at birth,” we’d see our research devolve into the nature vs. nurture morass).

The fact is, folks, that we all want to be able to scientifically tote up the numbers to come up with a predictive return on our educational investment.

Can’t be done.

So we’re left with a silly, vapid argument between those who say “spend the money” and those who say “save your money.” Both are right.  Both are wrong. The argument gets us nowhere.

Fundamental principles we can consider in making the decision

Still, might there be some fundamental principles we can consider in making the decision about whether to spend tons of money on a college education? Let’s see if we can’t come up with some.

1.  How big an investment is the price tag, relative to current family income? Some can easily afford a quarter of a million dollars for an education. Some cannot. So if you have the money, it’s worth it. If you don’t have it, it’s not worth it. (Remember Aesop’s fable of the “Fox and the Grapes”?). Hmmm…this is not a very satisfying fundamental principle. Next!

2.  Will you have to go into debt to finance this expensive degree? The bigger the debt burden, the less likely the return on the investment will cancel out that debt. Then again, it depends on what you end up doing after that degree. If you’re a brain surgeon or a successful venture capitalist, then who cares? You’ll be able to pay off that debt in the blink of an eye. But if you become a teacher or an unsuccessful venture capitalist, then clearly the investment wasn’t worth it. But notice: you can’t know whether the investment was worth it until AFTER you have a successful–or unsuccessful career! This is getting frustrating, isn’t it?

3.  Speaking of which, your professional aspirations do play a role. If you plan to be a kindergarten teacher or an orchestral musician, then spending a quarter of a million bucks for an education isn’t worth it. However, if you want to be a brain surgeon, you have no choice but to go to college…and then go into debt for medical school. But here’s a contrarian thought: do you have to go to college to be a successful business executive?

Not necessarily, of course (we all know the story of Bill Gates, for whom Harvard “wasn’t worth it”). To go a step further, do you really have to go to college at all to make a lot of money? I have a cousin who went to school to learn how to do auto body work. He can now buy and sell me several times over, sends his kids to elite private schools, drives a brand new Mercedes, and has a vacation home in Vermont. Where did I go wrong….?

4.  Savvy shoppers for educational services should do some price comparisons. But the fact is that very few students pay the actual tuition sticker price. You see, because of the way financial aid (both merit-based and need-based) is allocated, each individual pays a different price for that education–especially at the colleges with heavy price tags.

So here again we have another variable for which we much provide some scientific control in our research: we need to compare students who paid full price or students who received a full scholarship. Or half a scholarship. Or something. (Oh my:  not another variable for which we need a control!)

5.  There are aspects of education that do not boil down to dollars and cents. For some, education is not merely about preparing for a profession. For some, it’s also about intellectual inquiry–pushing your capacities to the limit. There is a spiritual element to education that transcends a “market price.” This is all well and good: but it certainly doesn’t get us any closer to calculating our educational ROI. To do a calculation, we need numbers, and these folks who find an intrinsic value in education just aren’t numbers people.

The fact is that the argument as to whether or not an expensive private education is “worth it” simply cannot be won. The argument isn’t really an argument: it all boils down to one’s personal values and preferences.

Can people who go to state universities have satisfying, successful careers?

You bet. Can Ivy League graduates end up earning less than $40k per year for the past 25 years? You bet (I have a Dartmouth friend who is a respected ornithologist who lives in the Amazon, has discovered many new species, and has never made more than $40k in a year: was his Ivy League investment “worth it”?).

Advice on the worth of an expensive private college education

So in the absence of research, we need a crystal ball. Or we need good, solid, personalized advice from someone who can help a family identify their priorities. Perhaps a professional guidance counselor who can help a student explore his or her academic strengths and weaknesses.

Who can discuss “educational philosophy” with a family to find out whether the educational priority is on “getting a job” or on “leading the examined life.” What it all amounts to is “different strokes for different folks.” My job is not to win an argument. My job is to figure out which stroke you’re swimming and help keep you moving in your chosen direction.

Great College Advice

The post Is An Expensive Private College Education Worth the Money? first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

Not too long ago, there was a major ethnographic study of how college students actually use libraries for research and learning demonstrated the degree to which students make use of libraries and librarians: not much.

The fact is, college libraries now serve multiple purposes. If I take a college tour, and the tour does not include at least a cursory look at the lobby of the library. Then I double back after the tour and try to figure out why. Some of them are palaces for the studious. The library at Grinnell College has tiered study carrels that all face the windows, each with its own comfy study chair and lamp.

Libraries also do store a bunch of stuff. But as the world goes digital, some of that stuff can be stored off-site, away from campus, and held for those who really take an interest in 16th century mining techniques in Serbia. Some libraries, like Widener Library at Harvard, are gigantic, with many sub-basements and tunnels connecting to other libraries. Being something of a geek, I always enjoyed studying in a library.  Something about the smell of all that ancient paper, the binding glue, the leather-bound volumes helped me take my task seriously.

But libraries have always been social spaces, too. Some of the rooms in large libraries are places to meet people, pass a few pleasantries, or to make eyes at one another. At my alma mater, it was the ’02 Room where more social interactions took place. The stacks (yes, that’s where I hung out) were a sort of solitary confinement that people enforced upon themselves to get their work done.

The last decade, however, has taken the social aspects of the library to new levels. At most places, you will find that each floor–or parts of floors–that are designated as “high volume,” “low volume,” and “silent” workplaces. At some, you can barely hear yourself think above the roar of the cappuccino machine, which has become de rigeur on an increasing number of campuses (and parents wonder why college costs keep going up…we’re all addicted to lattes).

Anyway, I have begun to ruminate on the place of libraries on college campuses, and I did this short little video at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on a recent trip there. Libraries will continue to evolve. This video points to the fact that the digital age may actually allow some colleges to recover beautiful common spaces that had to be refitted to hold “stuff.”

Have a quick look. Or you can read the transcript below, if you are so inclined.

Right now I’m on the campus of Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and I’m in the library. It’s a very nice space, but I noticed a couple of things that were kind of interesting. This room is a vast, old room. Architecturally, quite nice, but you can see here behind me that these metal shelves were put in here—this is the periodicals room—and to shelve periodicals; so there’s a copy of the London Times, Le Monde, La Stampa from Italy, Die Zeit from Germany; all these newspapers and then periodicals, including scholarly journals.

An interesting phenomenon happening on campuses today is that all of these periodicals are being eliminated because everything is available digitally. There are some libraries that are actually moving their entire book collections off-campus so that they can repurpose some of the buildings and the storage spaces. So you can see that this room—I don’t know how many years ago, but not all that long ago—was divided up, and they put these metal shelves in to actually create more storage space. Well, now the storage space is all on a computer chip.

It’s going to be interesting to see what colleges do with their space—if they repurpose it and if so, what are they going to repurpose it for?  I’ve talked before about the fact that a lot of common spaces on campus are not used that much. Because students are connecting via Facebook and text rather than actually congregating in particular places as they used to. So I think college campuses will make a pretty rapid evolution to repurposing the spaces that they use. It’ll be interesting to see.

Great College Advice

The post What Is a College Library For? first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

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After a grueling four years, I was finally able to limp to the finish line and put a cap on my four year high school career. The college admissions process had come to a close months before and the coursework had subsided, but I was still feeling bogged down. I was burnt out- schoolwork became a dread and I was feeling rundown. The thought of another four years of education created feelings of anxiety, not excitement. It was at this point I started considering taking a year off, a “gap year” as it has come to be called.

My gap year provided me a time to decompress and refocus for the upcoming years of study. During the year I kept myself busy. I worked as a line cook in a Mexican restaurant. As well as a laborer at a landscaping company, and an intern at the Massachusetts State House. All of these experiences offered unique experiences. And subsequently lessons- lessons I would not have been afforded had I not taken a gap year. On top of being able to decompress, I was able to make money as well as boost my resume.

While gap years have risen in popularity, I still believe some people are against the practice. I admit I had some trepidation about taking a year off. Which derived from the unwillingness of me to “waste” a year of my life. I believed that by putting my academic career on hold would somehow put me behind my peers. In retrospect, I can honestly say I couldn’t have been more wrong. I entered college with a hunger to learn and appreciate my surroundings. Taking a step back also provides you with an opportunity to take an honest look at the future. And appreciate the opportunities set out before you. During my time off, I was able to learn the do’s and don’ts of gap years:

DO:

• Take the odd job. I learned valuable lessons while working outside of my comfort zone. I was able to learn a lot about myself by being in situations outside of my comfort zone. These have allowed me to navigate my college career with enhanced wisdom- a luxury afforded by my gap year.
• Relax. The social and physical toll of a demanding high school career is large. Don’t be afraid to take a day to watch Netflix, and do a whole lot of nothing. You earned it, and if you’re like me, you need it.

DON’T:

Get complacent, especially at the start. When I decided to finally take the gap year, I got complacent at the beginning, figuring “I’m taking a WHOLE YEAR off, I have some time to think about what I want to do.” However, the next time I thought about it, it was already January, and I had closed myself off to a variety of opportunities- -especially in relation to travelling.

 
Colin Smith
BA Candidate in Sociology and Economics
Harvard College Class of 2015
  
 

The post Harvard Student Thankful For Gap Year Experience first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

While most of the article is a tirade against the “unfair” admissions systems at Harvard (when was it ever fair…see Jerome Karabel’s book, The Chosen:  The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton), the article does offer some backhanded advice to would-be Ivy applicants:

The Article

Yet for the last few years, it’s felt like the normal, inquisitive, relatively unfiltered teenager of the early 2000’s has been replaced by dozens of little Russell Wilsons. Gone are the hard edges and the unintentional flashes of personality that made it seem like I was actually getting something accomplished in the course of (most) of these interviews. Nowadays, I’ve gotten layers of carefully constructed defenses, designed to reveal only the most admission-friendly parts of the student.

Just once I would have loved to get an applicant who called out a stupid, predictable question for being what it is instead of dutifully reciting an impossibly trite, hand-wavingly general answer that cannot apply to all that many people. Someone who didn’t sound like Mitt Romney when trying to relate to the challenges faced by people without blue blood.

Instead, I’ve seen a boringly predictable, on-trend parade of general excellence, like eating a dozen cronuts for dinner. It’s interesting in the abstract, but the palate needs cleansing after a while. Hearing the liberal-upper-middle-class consensus view of the world (but with a twist, like backpacking through Southeast Asia!) certainly does not hurt an applicant. On the other hand, if I wanted that I would just sit on the toilet and listen to NPR.

Anonymous goes on to offer some more advice for young Ivy interviewees:

Otherwise, the official party line, as taken verbatim from Harvard’s longtime Dean of Admissions, William Fitzsimmons (class of 1963, dean since 1986) is that Harvard selects for “academic excellence, extracurricular distinction, and personal qualities.” And that sounds good—who doesn’t love excellence?—until you think about it.

What Dean Fitzsimmons really means is that he isn’t going to tell you anything substantial (that’s why he’s lasted for so long in his job). So I will tell you that in this context, measuring “academic excellence” really boils down to two things: Will this applicant graduate on time and happy?

Pure intelligence is one part, hence the focus on scores and GPAs. Harvard is difficult, and someone who has never seen a differential equation will probably struggle in the basic required math courses; someone who has never read a Steinbeck novel or a Shakespeare play will probably feel excluded from general English Lit.

But so is extracurricular activity. You might be smart, but do you have the discipline to keep going for four years? How do you respond to setbacks, challenges, opposition? Do you show signs of life in the wider world? In short: are you of sound mind?

The 4.0 student who just works the ball-washing station at the country club does not necessarily demonstrate great time-management skills. On the other hand, we’ll take the person who has an A-minus GPA but spends most of her free time in a research lab breeding generations of flies for genetic tests, thank you very much. This is why admissions officers will say “well-rounded” until they’re blue in the face. There’s nothing wrong with plain old eggheads—but let’s try and get out there once in a while, too.

My takeaway from this article is that students bucking for the Ivy League need to find ways to be interesting.  Real accomplishment and deep interest can’t really be faked.  You can prep and polish for an interview. But if you don’t have the substantive qualities the Harvard admissions office wants, you’ll not be accepted.

Oh, and the other takeaway?  If you’re looking for “fairness,” don’t look to Ivy admissions as a shining moral example.  It ain’t.

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The post Are Ivy League Admissions a Sham? first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

As a response, many high schools have instituted community service requirements for graduation.  Similarly, one of the main attractions of the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum is its emphasis on community action through its CAS program (“Creativity, Action, Service).

Coincident with these trend is the rise of “voluntourism”, by which well-off adults travel to Africa or Latin America or Southeast Asia to do “good works” in a poor community during their vacations.  These programs also build upon similar efforts organized by churches and other religious organizations.  This demand has created a significant niche of the international travel industry that caters to altruistic adventures.

To grossly oversimplify, the idea is for folks in wealthy countries like the United States to see how others live and to contribute in some way to the development of a less well-off community. From the standpoint of college admissions, these sorts of “voluntourism” programs have become increasingly common.  Many affluent families routinely send their kids off on some sort of community service adventure to work in an orphanage, dig latrines, or paint school buildings in poverty-stricken communities around the world.  Invariably, these experiences become fodder for college essays.

From the admissions standpoint, these pay-to-play experiences are so common–and so superficial–that their impact in the admissions process is negligible.  Given that so many kids write about such experiences, the resulting essays can even become a strike against the student.  I’ve heard admissions officers crack jokes about the insipid essays that emanate from these international volunteer experiencs.

To give you an idea of the essays I’ve seen kids write about such experiences, I offer the following made-up example (warning: I am exaggerating for effect…):

“My life changed when I spent two weeks digging ditches in Upper Slobovia last summer.  I never knew that people who were so poor, who ate bugs for dinner, and who used a tin can as a potty could be so happy and generous.  These unfortunate people taught me so much about life: especially, how lucky I am not to be one of them.”

Obviously, I’m not really a fan of these “voluntourism” programs.  I studied international relations in graduate school, and spent a good deal of my time thinking about poverty alleviation in developing countries.  I also have many very close friends who spent years of their lives doing “real” development work, living in hardship in places like Guyana, Malawi, and Laos, actually delivering well-developed, well-funded development aid.  And many of these friends will confide that they were never too sure that their efforts really amounted to much.  So how could a teen with a shovel actually do any real and lasting good during a two week drive-by trip to the Dominican Republic?

Actually, these teens could be doing do more harm than good.  A recent article published on Al-Jazeera America caught my eye.  It highlights the growing demand in the rich world for altruistic vacation opportunities.  Both in the teen and adult markets, scads of companies have cropped up to feed this demand, and more and more rich white folks are traveling to poor places where the dominant skin tones are several shades darker.

The overall tone of the article is fairly critical of “voluntourism” The author cites several egregious examples of voluntourism gone wrong in South Africa and Haiti and elsewhere.  However, the author does soften the critique a bit by saying that such volunteer experiences abroad can be improved through due diligence, better awareness, and a more realistic attitude on the part of the tourists that what they are doing can have negative as well as positive consequences for a community.

When asked by parents whether such volunteer opportunities for teens are really worth it, I tell them that they have become virtually worthless in the admissions process. The only people who can really go are those who can afford to fly to Timbuktu and back again.  Colleges might actually prefer to hear from applicants who have done something significant and important in their own local communities.  Certainly, such efforts may lack the “wow!” appeal of teaching English to kids in South Sudan, but what colleges want to see  is an activity that has a measurable impact–and not the experience that took place that even Google Maps cannot find.

To be fair, I have had a small handful of kids write excellent, reflective, and balanced essays on their time abroad as volunteers.  Generally, the best ones are written by kids who spend four or more weeks in a community, during which time they actually begin to see beyond the superficial level of what poverty means, and begin to connect with people in a more interesting and fundamental way.  Not all “voluntourism” is horrible.

But don’t latch on to such opportunities as the quick way into Harvard, Princeton, or Yale.  These universities will be much more impressed your impact, your capacity for reflection, and your intellectual and personal curiosity much more than the stamps in your passport.

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Columbia and Harvard saw small decreases in applications, too, while the others (Cornell, Yale, Princeton, and Brown) had modest gains in their application numbers.
Why does this happen from year to year?  Hard to know.  UPenn credits its partnership with KIPP charter schools for at least part of the increase:  more applicants applied for application fee waivers than ever before.

Dartmouth’s precipitous drop may be due to a lot of factors, including ending the practice of accepting AP (Advanced Placement) courses for credit, its lousy publicity in recent months, and the continued dominance of the fraternity system in campus social life. The director of admission, Maria Laskaris, is leading an analysis of the reasons for the decline.
Whether winners or loser, we can expect that overall it will continue to be more and more difficult to get into the Ivy League in coming years.

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With the exception of Dartmouth, which saw a decrease in its applications of ~12.5% (which we hypothesize is due to the relatively recent bad press that the school received about its Greek life), and Cornell, who has not reported final numbers, yet, the balance of the Ivy League schools saw an increase in early applications over last year.  Harvard, for example, reported a whopping 15% more applications for the Class of 2017 than for the Class of 2016.  Other highly selective schools such as MIT (up 9%) and Northwestern (up 7%) also saw a significant increase in their early application numbers year over year.

While many schools haven’t reported their early results, here is a chart that we pulled together to give you a flavor of what’s been happening out there.  It details selected highly competitive schools and their early admissions acceptance rates.  If you follow overall admissions rates at these types of schools, you’ll see that the Early Admit Rates noted below are significantly higher than each school’s historic overall admit rates.

In doing my research, I also noted that a number of the schools deferred a significant portion of their early applicants to the Regular Decision pool.  Yale, for example, deferred over 55% of its early applicants, Brown seems to have deferred around 70% and Dartmouth 35%.  Anecdotally, it seems that MIT has also deferred a tremendous number of its applicants, but we don’t have any firm numbers.
These deferral numbers indicate that the schools are getting early applications from large numbers of qualified candidates, and the schools are not prepared to say “no” until they see what the Regular Decision pool brings.  Still, the schools are also not prepared to say “yes” to these applicants, either, and historically, the number of deferred applicants who ultimately get admitted are few.
The schools that offer an Early Decision plan seem to be filling an unbelievable 40%+ of their freshman class from their early applications.  This means that students who apply Regular Decision to these very selective schools will have an even tougher go of it simply because there are fewer slots to fill.  A while ago, I wrote a blog post trying to answer the question:  Is it easier to get in if you apply early?  Many of the points in that post are relevant here.  Essentially, early applicants most definitely benefit from indicating that a school is their top pick and applying early, but only if the candidate meets the admissions standards of the school in the first place.
The sad part about this current situation is that because qualified students appear to have an advantage if they apply early to these highly competitive institutions, candidates are using early application plans as a strategy to gain admission, even if they are not sure that a given school is actually where they want or ought to go.  Especially if they apply as part of a binding ED program, then whether they are sure or not, if they get in, that’s where they will have to go.  These dynamics are forcing students to make their decisions about college several months earlier in their high schools careers when, perhaps, they haven’t had time to fully explore their options and figure out what is best for them.
The lesson is that if students believe that they might be interested in applying to highly selective schools, they should start their research early.  Applying early can be advantageous, but don’t apply early to a school simply because it is a name brand.  In doing so, other options might be shut out that would ultimately be more suitable.
Andrea Aronson
College Admissions Consultant
Westfield, NJ

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