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At the very elite level I'm not sure it would really change much, but I'm not sure I fully understand what you're implying so I'll defer to you for clarificatio

by lhuang 17y ago

At the very elite level I'm not sure it would really change much, but I'm not sure I fully understand what you're implying so I'll defer to you for clarification. The article makes a good general point but misses many of the nuances that define college admissions. For one, schools, at least at the top, admit students in the context of the class and not necessarily on the basis of individual merit. This explains in part why students at a school like Harvard are not uniform 4.0 2400 students. There is value in diversity, so admissions committee will select students from different family backgrounds, states, race, etc. and adjust their gpa/sat requirements accordingly. Second, I disagree with the author's premise that students are motivated to apply to top schools because of the per student resources spent. I'm sure this has some residual effect, but the REAL value added by going to a top school are the fellow students, reputation, and post-graduation opportunities. There is not much difference in your large 100+ student general econ class from one school to another. I wonder instead if the increase in selectivity is due more in part to simple population ratios. Baby boomer offspring have been hitting the college circuit for the past few years which accounts for the large increases in applicants. It also helps explain the contrast in selectivity at the high and low ends of the spectrum.

tokenadult 17y ago
This explains in part why students at a school like Harvard are not uniform 4.0 2400 students. The main reason Harvard's class does not consist solely of students with 2400 on the SAT is that such students are too scarce. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/413821-sat-score-frequencies-freshman-class-sizes.html http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/41382... Here's a FAQ about demographic trends from 2008, which perhaps needs a bit of adjustment in light of the current economy: Population trends in the United States are not the only issue influencing the competitiveness of college admission here. The children already born show us what the expected number of high school students are in various years, but the number of high school students in the United States, which is expected to begin declining in a few years, isn't the whole story. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/education/09admissions.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/education/09admissions.htm... First of all, if more students who begin high school go on to college, there will be more applicants to college even with a declining number of high school students. And that is the trend in the United States and worldwide. Second, colleges in the United States accept applications from all over the world, so it is quite possible that demographic trends in the United States will not be the main influence on how many students apply to college. The cohorts of high-school-age students are still increasing in size in some countries (NOT most of Europe). Third, even if the number of applicants to colleges overall stays the same, or even declines, the number of applicants to the most competitive colleges may still increase. The trend around the world is a "flight to quality" of students trying to get into the best college they can in increasing numbers, and increasing their consensus about which colleges to put at the top of their application lists. I do not expect college admission to be any easier for my youngest child than for my oldest child, even though she is part of a smaller birth cohort in the United States. And now I would add to this that at the very most selective colleges that have just announced new financial aid plans, next year's (and the following year's) crush of applicants will be larger than ever. When colleges that are already acknowledged to be great colleges start reducing their net cost down to what the majority of families in the United States can afford, those colleges will receive more applications from all parts of the United States, and very likely from all over the world. The Economist magazine published a brief article about these trends in April 2008. http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11058525&CFID=4596233&CFTOKEN=12382953 http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=...
- lhuang 17y ago
  The point I made regarding uniform students was to emphasize that admissions committees admit students based on the profile they want the class to look like and not just on the individual merits of the student themselves. I think this is an important point that often gets overlooked by applicants. Good points about the demographic trends. I'm still not very convinced. The points you raised are just as speculative as mine. True a higher % of hs students may be going to college, but is that rate of increase faster than the rate of decline in the total number of applicants? In a few years the bottom will fall out, can the % of hs students attending college rise to meet that gap? I see your point about the trend in international students. Though I find it doubtful that any elite US school will ever have more than 10-20% of their class be composed of non-US students.
btilly 17y ago
What I am saying is that as China grows in affluence, Chinese students are able to go to university in rapidly growing numbers. Many both want to and can afford foreign schools, and the USA is one of their top choices. This is a rapidly evolving trend. If I remember correctly enrollments grew about 6% in 2006, 20% in 2007, and the preliminary numbers I saw suggested that 2008 saw substantially faster growth than that. I've also heard suggestions that 2009 is seeing about a doubling in applications going abroad. Absolute numbers are currently fairly small and the final market size is hard to estimate. But the addition of large numbers of highly motivated students who are willing to pay top dollar should increase selectivity at good universities.
- lhuang 17y ago
  How many of these students are attending elite schools? I agree that more and more Chinese students will head overseas for school, but what real impact does this have on selectivity? The elites will always cap the number of internationals they admit, so it would only appear that selectivity will increase for their cohort, but not necessarily the university at large. This of course only holds true if the enrollment cap for internationals is fixed and does not vary significantly year over year.
  - btilly 17y ago
    The very elite schools? Sure. However what about the merely good ones that want to move up? An interesting data point is the University of Southern California. By extending welcoming arms to the best students they can get from anywhere, they've managed to go from being decent to being top notch. Believe it or not, their SAT scores are higher than UC Berkeley's. Their next goal is to get ranked in the top 5 in the USA in math and science. I doubt that USC will be the last university to try this strategy. And the more universities that succeed at this, the more pressure there is on other universities to try it as well. Particularly if there is a good supply of top notch international students available to try it with.

by lhuang 17y ago

tokenadult 17y ago

This explains in part why students at a school like Harvard are not uniform 4.0 2400 students. The main reason Harvard's class does not consist solely of students with 2400 on the SAT is that such students are too scarce. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/413821-sat-score-frequencies-freshman-class-sizes.html http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/41382... Here's a FAQ about demographic trends from 2008, which perhaps needs a bit of adjustment in light of the current economy: Population trends in the United States are not the only issue influencing the competitiveness of college admission here. The children already born show us what the expected number of high school students are in various years, but the number of high school students in the United States, which is expected to begin declining in a few years, isn't the whole story. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/education/09admissions.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/education/09admissions.htm... First of all, if more students who begin high school go on to college, there will be more applicants to college even with a declining number of high school students. And that is the trend in the United States and worldwide. Second, colleges in the United States accept applications from all over the world, so it is quite possible that demographic trends in the United States will not be the main influence on how many students apply to college. The cohorts of high-school-age students are still increasing in size in some countries (NOT most of Europe). Third, even if the number of applicants to colleges overall stays the same, or even declines, the number of applicants to the most competitive colleges may still increase. The trend around the world is a "flight to quality" of students trying to get into the best college they can in increasing numbers, and increasing their consensus about which colleges to put at the top of their application lists. I do not expect college admission to be any easier for my youngest child than for my oldest child, even though she is part of a smaller birth cohort in the United States. And now I would add to this that at the very most selective colleges that have just announced new financial aid plans, next year's (and the following year's) crush of applicants will be larger than ever. When colleges that are already acknowledged to be great colleges start reducing their net cost down to what the majority of families in the United States can afford, those colleges will receive more applications from all parts of the United States, and very likely from all over the world. The Economist magazine published a brief article about these trends in April 2008. http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11058525&CFID=4596233&CFTOKEN=12382953 http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=...

lhuang 17y ago
The point I made regarding uniform students was to emphasize that admissions committees admit students based on the profile they want the class to look like and not just on the individual merits of the student themselves. I think this is an important point that often gets overlooked by applicants. Good points about the demographic trends. I'm still not very convinced. The points you raised are just as speculative as mine. True a higher % of hs students may be going to college, but is that rate of increase faster than the rate of decline in the total number of applicants? In a few years the bottom will fall out, can the % of hs students attending college rise to meet that gap? I see your point about the trend in international students. Though I find it doubtful that any elite US school will ever have more than 10-20% of their class be composed of non-US students.

btilly 17y ago

What I am saying is that as China grows in affluence, Chinese students are able to go to university in rapidly growing numbers. Many both want to and can afford foreign schools, and the USA is one of their top choices. This is a rapidly evolving trend. If I remember correctly enrollments grew about 6% in 2006, 20% in 2007, and the preliminary numbers I saw suggested that 2008 saw substantially faster growth than that. I've also heard suggestions that 2009 is seeing about a doubling in applications going abroad. Absolute numbers are currently fairly small and the final market size is hard to estimate. But the addition of large numbers of highly motivated students who are willing to pay top dollar should increase selectivity at good universities.

lhuang 17y ago
How many of these students are attending elite schools? I agree that more and more Chinese students will head overseas for school, but what real impact does this have on selectivity? The elites will always cap the number of internationals they admit, so it would only appear that selectivity will increase for their cohort, but not necessarily the university at large. This of course only holds true if the enrollment cap for internationals is fixed and does not vary significantly year over year.
- btilly 17y ago
  The very elite schools? Sure. However what about the merely good ones that want to move up? An interesting data point is the University of Southern California. By extending welcoming arms to the best students they can get from anywhere, they've managed to go from being decent to being top notch. Believe it or not, their SAT scores are higher than UC Berkeley's. Their next goal is to get ranked in the top 5 in the USA in math and science. I doubt that USC will be the last university to try this strategy. And the more universities that succeed at this, the more pressure there is on other universities to try it as well. Particularly if there is a good supply of top notch international students available to try it with.