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

The post Early Application Results from Highly Selective Colleges: What Do They Indicate? first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

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Keep in mind, however, that it’s rarely a good idea to emulate someone else’s topic or writing style.  The point of asking students to write these essays for their college applications is to get a sense of who that individual is as a person.  Copying someone else’s format or incorporating others’ ideas into your own essay is a sure-fire way to muddle things up.

So, by all means, have a look at some good essays to give you a general idea of how other students have completed this highly personal, highly specific assignment.  But when you sit down to write your own, look into your own mind, your own heart, your own soul to formulate the essay that works for you.
Here is a list of college websites that have examples of college essays on them.

Johns Hopkins University‘s Office of Admission

Hamilton College’s Alumni Magazine

Tufts University’s Office of Admission

Connecticut College‘s Office of Admission

The College Board‘s advice on writing essays has a few examples with critique.

If you want a sense of how important the opening lines of your college essay can be, see my own post here, with samples from Stanford.

And if you run across other colleges and universities that public successful examples of essays, please let me know!  I’ll add them to this list.

The post Essays That Worked–Examples of Successful College Applications first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

Here’s a brief overview of what I learned from DeAngela Burns-Wallace, an assistant dean of admission (and, I may add, an excellent spokesperson for Stanford).

This was a record year for applications to Stanford.  The office of admission received 31,000 applications for admission, a whopping 22% increase over last year’s numbers.  Ms. Burns-Wallace speculated that many factors led to this increase, including the economic turmoil, continued demographic shifts, the changes in early admissions policies at some of its peer institutions, and the fact that Stanford has very rich financial aid packages, especially for those students from families of modest means.  In addition, Mr. Burns-Wallace credited the Dean of Admission, for ramping up Stanford’s recruiting efforts to attract more and more outstanding applicants.

Of these 31,000 applications, Stanford admitted only 2300, for an admissions rate of 7.6%–a figure that nearly identical to Harvard’s admit rate in 2008.  Of these 2300, Stanford is aiming for a class of 1700 first year students.

Applications at Stanford are read first by territory, and then at least one or maybe two other individual readers examine each and every file.  Then the file moves to a committee of at least four admissions officers, and depending on where the applicant falls in the process, the file may even come to a committee of the entire staff.

Stanford has a “restricted early action” admission program for those students who are certain that Stanford is their first choice.  Nine percent of early applicant were admitted, making it slightly easier (statistically speaking!) to be admitted early.  But the admissions crew was very cautious in admitted students early, in part because of the difficulty of predicting eventual numbers of applications in the regular admissions pool.  Stanford doesn’t hesitate to reject applications outright in the early pool, and 14% of early applications were deferred to the regular admissions pool.  Of those who were deferred, 10% of those were offered admission.  Ms. Burns-Wallace stressed that if an applicant is deferred to spring, it is because the admissions office feels that the candidate is a viable applicant with many strengths.

During the Question and Answer period, many of the counselors asked good questions that elicited helpful information from Ms. Burns-Wallace, and from an undergraduate student who was on hand to provide the student perspective.  Here is a rundown of the questions and the answers.

Questions and Answers

1. One counselor asked a rumor she had heard that Stanford was somehow required to admit a certain percentage of applicants from the state of Califonia.  The answer is no.  Ms. Burns-Wallace explained that 40% of the applicant pool is from California, so naturally a relatively large percentage (33% this year) of accepted students were also from California.  Obviously this is a big state, Stanford is in California, and as with other colleges, the home state of accepted students reflects the composition of the applicant pool.

   2.    Another counselor asked which programs are strongest.  The answer is that all are top notch.  Ms. Burns-Wallace stressed that the advising system at Stanford is also quite strong, so every student has the opportunity to explore a variety of different disciplines during their undergraduate program.  However, the student piped up to say that three programs, in particular, have grown in popularity in recent years:  human biology, product design, and earth systems.

   3.    In response to a question about international admissions, Ms. Burns-Wallace (herself a former Foreign Service Officer in Beijing) highlighted the deep collective international experience of the admissions officers.  Several of the admissions officers have strong overseas experience, and several have been reading international application for years.  In addition, there is an committee dedicated to international admissions.  The only difference in the process is that international applications are read with an eye to the student’s ability to pay:  international admissions is not need blind.  Few international students (about 30 this year) receive any financial assistance to attend.  It’s important to note, however, that American citizens living abroad and permanent resident aliens are considered within the “regular,” need blind admissions pool, and are not really considered “international” students.

   4.    The Stanford supplemental questions to the Common Application are super important in the admissions process.  The admissions committee is best able to discern one’s true interest in Stanford in the answers to these questions.  in addition, they are able to get a strong sense of how the student thinks.  What is important with most of these questions (as in most essay questions offered up by just about any college) is to explain not the “what” of the question, but the “why.”  Thus the committee is not looking for “right” answers to the questions.  They are looking for genuine, creative, interesting, and revealing answers that give the reader a sense of the writer.  They seek students who have original ideas, whose minds are burbling with curiosity—and the wherewithal to turn that curiosity into questions—and answers.  Stanford does not seek out intellectuals who are purely theoretical thinkers. Stanford searchers for doers, people who will relentlessly pursue solutions to problems of whatever sort.

   
   

   5.    In this vein, both the admissions officer and the student representative stressed the “entrepreneurial spirit” of Stanford.  The focus, again, is on seeking solutions, not on sitting around in contemplation of how many angels dance on heads of pins.   Stanford students are not geeks: they are smart folks who want to solve problems and create stuff.

   6.    Our hosts stressed that Stanford’s campus is big.  Huge, in fact.  Eight thousand acres.  Getting from place to place on foot can take sometime.  So having a bike on campus is key—everyone’s favorite mode of transport.  Biking is so common that lanes have been painted on the walkways and bikeways, and even a traffic circle has been installed in at least one busy biking intersection to cut down on accidents and frustration.  And this was borne out on our tour—bikers zipped in and out and around our group.  Being a pedestrian on this campus can be a bit unnerving, because everyone seems to be mounted upon a two-wheeled conveyance.

All in all, I enjoyed my visit to Stanford, and feel fortunate to have finally been able to see this renowned campus for myself.

Mark Montgomery
College Counselor

The post A Visit to Stanford first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

Here’s what she wrote:

Hi, Mark. I have a quick question. I have a student who is interested in applying to Stanford. She asked whether she would be able to classify herself as “Hispanic” given that her dad’s family is from Spain. I am not sure what the definition of “Hispanic” is. She did tell me that she’s always marked Hispanic before, but wanted to make sure that this would be proper for her college applications.

Race is such a sticky issue. On the one hand, kids have an incentive to declare themselves members of “minority” groups, simply because colleges have an incentive to admit larger numbers of minorities to demonstrate their “commitment to diversity.”

So since the admissions game tends to give those of different racial or cultural backgrounds an edge. Isn’t it best to play the game by ticking off that “Hispanic” category? Since there is no single definition of what it means to be Hispanic, then by all means. The student should identify herself as Hispanic.

On the other hand, this student is asking the question precisely because she understands that to claim to be a “minority” is, in a sense, to claim that she is somehow underprivileged. Or that she is a victim of discrimination. She knows, in her heart of hearts, that her Spanish surname is the only thing she has in common with a girl with a similar last name who grew up in Queens of a single mother who cleans hotel rooms for a living.

Personally, I loathe these racial categorizations. They seem to contravene everything that Martin Luther King stood for a world in which kids are judged “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Race is not a biological fact: it is a social construct. “Race” is whatever we say it is.

“Race” is whatever society says it is.

(I had a professor in graduate school who told us he was “pink.” Indeed, his skin was very pink. A veteran of the civil rights movement and Lyndon Johnson’s administration. He grew tired of America’s obsession with skin color–and surnames).

This student’s question is an indicator of how complicated race has become in our country today. In which both Tiger Woods and Barack Obama and others have begun to modulate the way we talk and think about race.

Confronted with the shifting definitions of racial categories, this young student is troubled by her claim of “Hispanic” heritage. She understands the game that privileges those with Spanish surnames in this country. Yet she does not want to leave the wrong impression that she is disadvantaged.

My advice to this young woman was to go with her conscience. To my mind, there is no clear moral or ethical line here. She can either claim “Hispanic” on her application or not. But she must be comfortable with her decision. A good admissions officer at Stanford will be able to read between the lines. The Spanish surname or the checked “Hispanic” box will not likely sway an admissions decision at such a competitive school where 11.3% of the students identify themselves as Hispanic.
(Unlike many colleges, Stanford already does a great job of enrolling minorities. In addition to its Hispanics, Stanford’s undergraduate student body is 24% Asian, 10% black, 2.4% American Indian, 6% “international” of undetermined “race”, 41% white, and 5.3% unreported).

I have no qualms, morally speaking, about this student claiming Hispanic heritage. It won’t make much difference in her particular case.

But part of me yearns for the day when this question is no longer asked.

Mark Montgomery
College Admissions Consultant
Former Member, Interracial Concerns Committee, Dartmouth College

The post Race and College Admissions first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

The wait-list bonanza isn’t because colleges have more slots available for students — in fact, overall enrollment levels at many schools remained the same as last year.

Instead, colleges this year faced more uncertainty in the applications process. For one thing, there’s a growing population of high-school seniors — many of whom submit applications to multiple schools. But for highly selective schools, what really affected the process was the move by two Ivy League schools to end their early-admissions programs. Also at play were policy changes that made more financial aid available to middle- and upper-class students.

So while this is good news for some students on waiting lists, keep in mind that the numbers are still quite small. Here are the numbers that will pulled off the waiting list at some schools:

University of Wisconsin-Madison: This year: 800; Last year 6
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill: This year 300; Last year 226
Boston College: This year 250; Last year 117
Harvard University: This year 200: Last year 50
Princeton University: This year 90; Last yaer 47
Georgetown University: This year 80; Last year 29
Yale University: This year 46; Last year 50
Hamilton College: This year: 36; Last year: 24
Massachusetts Institute of Technology: This year 35; Last year: 20
Johns Hopkins University: This year: 30; Last year: 86
Swarthmore College: This year: 22; Last year: 42
Pomona College: This year: 16; Last year: 17
University of Chicago: This year: 10 to 15; Last year: 0
Stanford University: This year: 0; Last year: 0
University of Virginia: This year: 0; Last year: 150

Mark Montgomery
College Counselor

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