Is Applying To College Unfair?

Yes, of course it is.

Tulane University’s recent action against Colorado Academy placing it on an early decision (ED) suspension for a year did not come as a surprise to me. The school’s transparency about the practice did. For years, it has  been an open secret in college admissions that high schools are punished by colleges if their students renege on an early decision agreement. (I don’t think that’s fair, but that’s for another day.)

And the Vassar student’s statement that applying ED is not a level playing field when it comes to financial aid has long been known, as well. An ED student does not have the opportunity to compare aid packages – or even try to negotiate an aid package among colleges. Since ED acceptance rates are generally higher than those for regular decision (RD), that’s another reason why an RD applicant may be at a disadvantage.

The simple truth is that college admissions are unfair – and the system works more to the advantage of the colleges than to the students. This year alone, I have seen early applications spike in my practice with students applying to 15 or more schools, often in a very short period of time – by November 1 of senior year, the most popular early deadline.  Even though they have already been accepted to a few, they keep on applying. I used to think that it was because students were afraid they wouldn’t get in anywhere, but now I think that for some, it’s so they can add more feathers to their caps.

That contributes to the problem. It is the clamor of thousands of applications for a limited number of beds that makes for many sleepless nights and caffeine-charged days for admissions readers. (Yes, it’s more about housing students than it is about having room in academic halls.)  Asking students to apply early spreads out the work in addition to guaranteeing a set number of students and fudning that is so necessary for the following academic year. But what has happened is that more and more schools have early plans – not just Early Decision but nonbinding Early Action – and students are taking advantage by applying to many nonbinding programs. By doing this, the response dates from the colleges are getting later and later. When I started doing this work 20 years ago, the University of Michigan used to reply to EA students by Christmas (it has added ED this year). For the past number of years, that release date for EA was some time in January. So if a student really wanted to go to Michigan, he would not hear from that school until after most of the Regular Decision deadlines. So what happened? He kept applying to other schools.

The advent of more schools not requiring SATs and ACTs (test optional admissions) has also led to students applying to more schools than in the past. A student with all As who couldn’t land over a 1200 SAT used to see Harvard University as a school “within reach” because it had adopted a  test optional policy during Covid.  Although grades are important, so is the curriculum that the student takes and the rigor of the high school the student attends, but a student may just see the GPA number and figure she has a chance of getting in. Now that Harvard has returned to requiring testing, that student won’t apply.  Harvard would probably say that it has decided that testing is a good indicator of a student’s first year performance (other studies may say the opposite), but I can’t help thinking that one reason is also to try to control the volume of applications. Those numbers are so great that colleges routinely hire and train outside readers; there aren’t enough hours in the day for admissions staff to get through all of those applications.

Colleges, even though they are not-for-profit institutions, still need healthy finances to survive. In the rat race of college admissions, they also need to build and refurbish dorms, pay faculty and administrators, update research facilities, feed students and staff, and build the things that entice students and families, such as rock climbing walls (!) and spacious fitness centers.  Some colleges just can’t keep up and either go out of business or are taken over by another institution. Take a look at the number of campuses of Northeastern University, for example, as it has gobbled up, among others, Mills College in California, New College of the Humanities  in London and more recently, Marymount Manhattan in New York City.

So what can students and families do beyond just realizing the inequities of the system? Recognize that there are thousands and thousands of colleges in the United States where students can get a great education. Recognize that there are institutional priorities about choosing students, which can range from the recent trend to find and accept students from rural communities to seeking to fill seats in a particular major to not accepting yet another student who wants to study computer science. Recognize that most colleges accept more than 50% of applicants. Recognize that people can and are successful no matter where they went to college. (See Warren Buffett.) Recognize that despite Early Decision, there are many colleges at which a particular student will be happy.

If it were up to me, I would get rid of Early Decision and Early Action and have all deadlines as of Winter Break. But then again, I don’t run a college admissions office.