College Application Inflation — Marketing Meets Admissions 256
gollum123 sends this quote from the Chronicle of Higher Education:
"The numbers keep rising, the superlatives keep glowing. Each year, selective colleges promote their application totals, along with the virtues of their applicants. For this fall's freshman class, the statistics reached remarkable levels. Stanford received a record 32,022 applications from students it called 'simply amazing,' and accepted 7 percent of them. Brown saw an unprecedented 30,135 applicants, who left the admissions staff 'deeply impressed and at times awed.' Nine percent were admitted. Such announcements tell a story in which colleges get better — and students get more amazing — every year. In reality, the narrative is far more complex, and the implications far less sunny for students as well as colleges caught up in the cruel cycle of selectivity. To some degree, the increases are inevitable: the college-bound population has grown, and so, too, has the number of applications students file, thanks in part to online technology. But wherever it is raining applications, colleges have helped seed the clouds — by recruiting widely and aggressively for ever more applicants. Many colleges have made applying as simple as updating a Facebook page. Some deans and guidance counselors complain that it's too easy. They question the ethics of intense recruitment by colleges that reject the overwhelming majority of applicants. Today's application inflation is a cause and symptom of the uncertainty in admissions."
Unsolicited parental input (Score:3, Insightful)
Too Many Applications are Stressful and Useless (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is why I applied to exactly ONE college, where I knew I would get in wanted to go. Half the people I know apply to Stanford and crap just so their parents can brag about it, and brag even more if they get accepted. They have no intention of actually going there.
But frankly, the elephant in the room is that the students they DO accept get stuck with loans they can't pay off--proving their education was wildly overpriced. Being from a Big-Name School these days just isn't worth the extra $50,000. It's insane.
Vocational Schools (Score:5, Insightful)
So maybe this increase in college applications is indicative of the trend that, when a society obsesses over a college degree in all walks of life, then that is one thing that most coming-of-age adults value.
Re:Will high school grades determine kids' destini (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Will high school grades determine kids' destini (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, does this mean that what kids do in high school will increasingly set their destinies for life?
It certainly should. here's no question that most high school kids do not take education as seriously as they should. For many, high school is really just a social gathering.
Reflection of the economy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Am I the only one who think it's more likely a reflection of today's bad economy?
I imagine with how difficult it is to get a job right now, even a student just graduating high school is aware that he'll have a hard time getting a decent job without a college or vocational degree.
Sure it's easier to apply online...but I don't think it's really harder for someone to send the application by mail, just slower
View from the ivory tower (Score:4, Insightful)
Being a Ph.D. candidate in mathematics at one of the big name Ivy League schools, I am yet to see all these "amazing" students. Yes, practically every student get the basics (something that doesn't happen at less selective schools), but give them a problem that requires creativity and you'll see that a handful of students in the class are able to solve it. They might work hard and they are motivated, but it's not like every student is terribly smart.
What's the problem? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because all the applications are amazing doesn't mean they have to accept all of them. Maybe they don't have the resources to support that many amazing students. There's no incongruity here.
Not to mention the fact that (Score:5, Insightful)
What's easier than making money from overpriced tuition? Convincing underqualified people to apply, taking their application fee, and instantly throwing out their application in a GPA/SAT filter.
Where you go matters -- for grad school (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Will high school grades determine kids' destini (Score:4, Insightful)
I've always heard that unless you go to one of the top schools in the nation for your degree, it doesn't really matter where you go. So while Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, Stanford, and a handful of others are excellent, there's no point spending the money on a Vanderbilt, USC, or SMU when you can go to a state school or University of Phoenix. I suppose there are regional exceptions (if you plan on staying in North Texas, SMU can be worth the money) or certain professions (USC is a much better choice for budding Speilbergs than just about any other college in the country), but outside of those two specifics it just doesn't matter a whole lot.
Re:Too Many Applications are Stressful and Useless (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is why I applied to exactly ONE college, where I knew I would get in wanted to go. Half the people I know apply to Stanford and crap just so their parents can brag about it, and brag even more if they get accepted. They have no intention of actually going there.
But frankly, the elephant in the room is that the students they DO accept get stuck with loans they can't pay off--proving their education was wildly overpriced. Being from a Big-Name School these days just isn't worth the extra $50,000. It's insane.
The biggest name schools aren't so expensive. The Ivies, and I assume Stanford, won't leave you with more than ~$20k of debt, and places like Yale and Princeton replaced loans with grants a few years back, leaving you with 0 debt. If you made the mistake of having a college fund, though, the amount they expect you to pay will magically increase by exactly the size of that fund.
Re:Will high school grades determine kids' destini (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Where you go matters -- for grad school (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Will high school grades determine kids' destini (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, one could argue that the education you get is largely unrelated to the school you attend. I would instantly pick an A student from UC Berkeley (or even someone from a cow college in flyover country) who was actively involved in outside projects over a C student at MIT who wasn't involved in outside projects. At an undergrad level, you can get the basic skills anywhere, and beyond that basic level, what you get out of your college education is directly proportional to what you put in. In the grand scheme of things, I'm not convinced that there's a dime's worth of difference on the average between a Berkeley grad who puts in the effort and an MIT grad who does the same. Most of what you really will need to know on the job, you'll be picking up in your first few weeks anyway, and (good) employers know this.
The only real advantage I can see for MIT and other schools that have strong specialization in a particular area over smaller, less specialized schools is that students have more opportunities to work in various areas of specialization that would not be feasible at other schools. This matters if you are hiring somebody in that area of specialization, but only for maybe a few years after graduation. After that, the field has changed too much for what they learned to be relevant anyway. The ability of a graduate to learn is far, far more relevant to that person's success than which specific pieces of information the person has learned upon graduation. Also, a fair amount of what you need to know for a given job is going to be specific to that job anyway, so it is critically important to be able to hit the ground running and learn as you go. That matters much more than what you know going in.
Re:Not to mention, what's the reward? (Score:2, Insightful)
Your friends lack motivation.
Re:View from the ivory tower (Score:3, Insightful)
Motivation to work hard is far more valuable to a future employer than genius. Past a certain size, any enterprise (for proft or otherwise) needs regular hard workers more than it needs hard-working geniuses. This is even true in specialized fields like engineering.
To understand this is to understand the appeal of an Ivy pedigree to employers.
-Isaac
Re:Will high school grades determine kids' destini (Score:4, Insightful)
To a certain extent; I'd extend the top school list down more, though. Like Vanderbilt is first-rate, has a strong alum network and great academic reputation nationwide (no, I didn't go there). USC probably not worth the money, even if you want to be the next Spielberg. SMU is way too expensive unless you're staying in Dallas and need to rely on the alumni network. I would not lump University of Phoenix together with even obscure state schools. I would always take the state school over UoP.
To add to the parent's point, there are tiers. There is the top tier populated with the Harvards and MITs. There is the second tier populated with good schools (both public and private). Going to one of these will look good on a resume but shouldn't make any recruiter drool. The third tier is populated with the safety schools of students who went to the first and second; you can still get a good education but it's not going to jump out on a resume. Fourth tier would have trade schools like University of Phoenix.
Disclaimer: I literally put these definitions together on the spot. Feel free to critique them but understand they are underdeveloped definitions.
Re:Will high school grades determine kids' destini (Score:2, Insightful)
In general, yes. Some other schools have more pull, especially if you're applying for a job within a few states. For instance, I'm in grad school for Economics and there are several very big multi-national corporations in my home city, and as such due to the research the professors / grad students do for the businesses in the area, you have more pull in getting a job with one of those companies.
For instance, when I was in high school applying for college and advisor told me that if I was planning on staying in the area, the nearby high reputation private school would be a good choice but if I was planning on leaving the area, then another much more nationally known university would be a better choice.
Re:Will high school grades determine kids' destini (Score:2, Insightful)
Is the article completly wrong? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Start a new college (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a task akin to asking your local Little League team take on the (recent World Series winning) San Francisco Giants.
Seriously, those schools got where they are based on decades/centuries of work. No new school is going to be able to recruit the professors, have the billions to invest in the infrastructure, attract the top tier students...
Re:Will high school grades determine kids' destini (Score:4, Insightful)
I think there's maybe an exception for known bottom of the bucket schools too. I mean, University of Phoenix is no 'any real college'.
Re:Will high school grades determine kids' destini (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Will high school grades determine kids' destini (Score:3, Insightful)
And that should be considered a serious problem, because even high school students who do take their high school education seriously are adversely affected by how not seriously everyone around them takes it. And that factor is affected generally by how rich and/or white your neighborhood is.
In addition to that, high school students who take their education seriously are affected adversely by teachers who don't. There are many high school teachers who have an unjustifiably low opinion of their students. They're convinced that high school students are mindless dummies who are capable of no intelligent activity beyond regurgitating information - and acting on this theory, they eliminate any element of actual teaching/learning from their course material in favor of a "here is information, you must memorize, you must pass test" approach. That, in turn, interferes with the education of the students who actually do care. These are often the same teachers that demand complete respect from students while giving none in return. They don't realize that they don't even deserve respect. From my experience and observations, most high school teachers are not like this, but the above profile does describe a minority significant enough to interfere with the quality of education. And that's not even taking into consideration the teachers (at least in the US) who base their curricula on the contents of horribly inadequate state-administered tests.
Re:Will high school grades determine kids' destini (Score:2, Insightful)
I think it would be better to say "top or bottom" schools. I would say avoid the unaccredited programs like the plague, because the quality of education really is often quite a bit lower there.
Moreover, having spent the last 25 years in the academic world, I'm not so sure about the "superior" quality of the undergraduate education at even the top schools. I doubt very much that you could tell a Harvard grad from a SMU grad in any meaningful way. Where the Stanford-Princeton-MIT-types really shine is in two areas: their graduate schools and in their professional networks. A Harvard degree isn't so much a better undergraduate education as a place to meet the future movers-and-shakers in the business world.
Re:View from the ivory tower (Score:3, Insightful)
If you really believe that the people around you are not smart, then I think (as someone who has a PhD from one of the big name Ivy League schools =P) that you have perhaps an inflated opinion of your own skills... a common problem at said schools.
Re:Will high school grades determine kids' destini (Score:3, Insightful)
Ahhhahahah hohoh hehehe, stop it your killing me.
Re:Will high school grades determine kids' destini (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah right, you got poor grades on the test because you were too intelligent to do your homework and too advanced to be bothered learning the basics. Sure lots of people teach themselves but when they do very few of them realise that their teacher is just as ignorant as their student.
"High school basically exists to ensure that people will be ready to do as they are told, nothing more."
Yes, you're told to learn and you're told to get along with your peers, would you employ an arrogant missfit who can't cheerfully follow simple instructions?