Is this not opt-in on the part of the students? When I took the LSAT, it was definitely an opt-in (possibly default opt-in, don't remember specifically), and it

Is this not opt-in on the part of the students? When I took the LSAT, it was definitely an opt-in (possibly default opt-in, don't remember specifically), and it was pretty clear to me that the reason to opt-in was that schools might offer application fee waivers. I did well enough on the LSAT that I was able to apply to only schools that waived the application fee, plus two others that I really wanted to attend. While I think this practice should definitely have an opt-out, I'm not really sure if I think it's a problem that colleges market themselves aggressively. This is probably hard to rigorously study, but my hypothesis is that application rates (particularly to better schools) are going up because applicants are realizing that there is extremely little financial cost to being rejected from a "stretch" school relative to the total cost of a degree and substantial upside, should one get in.