Expanding Early Admissions
Going ACT/SAT Optional: Fair Test
Opening up International Campuses
The Distance Learning Option is mostly Free
When is enough ever enough? You might want to ask William Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions at Harvard, that very question. This year Harvard received over 35,000 applications for 1,700 offers. That is slightly over a 4.8% acceptance rate. By some estimates, 1 out of every 50 college-ready high school seniors sent an application to Harvard. Frankly, with Harvard’s aggressive financial aid package for any family making HHI under $180,000, and with its single essay supplement to the Common Application, the applicant pool might exceed 40,000 next year.
Despite these numbers, Harvard has decided to resurrect its early decision program. Too many outstanding candidates are going to Stanford and Yale, and that is unacceptable. Even though Harvard, along with Princeton and University of Virginia, abandoned early decision in 2006, it is back for fall 2011. Brown University, its applicant pool for 2015 up a paltry 3%, is also taking action. Last summer it removed restrictions on its Early Decision policy. The policy now allows candidates to apply to other early action programs.
Another trend that many selective colleges are joining is the move to make SAT and ACT tests optional. This is not, as yet something Harvard has done, but the list of schools making the submission of SAT or ACT scores optional is over 830. De Paul, a Roman Catholic university in Chicago with over 16,000 undergraduate students, one of the largest private universities in the country, just joined the list. The list, part of the Fair Test movement, already includes Smith College, Mount Holyoke (MA), Wake Forest, Hamilton, Bowdoin, Middlebury (VT), and NYU. NYU’s policy is probably better described as test-flexible. You can submit any combination of test scores: 3 AP scores, 3 SAT II Scores, or just the SAT/ACT. Middlebury is similar in requiring SAT, ACT, or 3 SAT Subject Tests be submitted: the choice is yours. What is happening, is leading universities are recognizing the limitations of standardized tests in predicting performance and they’re actively seeking talented students who are not top standardized test takers. Expect this to be happening at more and more universities and colleges over time.
Opening campuses abroad is now in full swing for many selective schools. One of NYU’s personal statements now asks: “ NYU is 'In and of the City' and 'In and of the World.' What does the concept of a global network university mean to you? How do you think studying in New York City, Abu Dhabi, or one of NYU's global sites would change you as a person and equip you to build cross-cultural relationships at NYU and beyond?’ Yale is opening a campus, in conjunction with the National University of Singapore, in Singapore in 2013; it will be named Yale-NUS College. In Qatar, in the Persian Gulf, you can now study medicine at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, international affairs at Georgetown, business at Carnegie Mellon, and, coming soon, journalism at Medill School of Journalism of Northwestern University. All have campuses outside of Doha, the capital.
Free access to courses at some of the most selective schools is expanding aggressively. Yale on line http://oyc.yale.edu/, offers free downloadable courses (along with transcripts of the classes) across a dozen disciplines. At iTunes U, you can find offerings from Cambridge, Cornell, Duke, Emory, Oxford, Stanford, UC Berkeley, University of Tokyo, and Notre Dame.
What do these trends suggest? Within the confines of the traditional admissions process, the demand for the Ivy, Stanford, or Duke degree appears insatiable and ever more expensive. Further, the use of early action or decision is expanding as admissions offices seek to actively control the composition of their classes as early in the process as possible. Separately, using standardized tests as an accurate measure of future performance is being called increasingly into doubt. Furthermore, U.S. universities and colleges are increasingly going global. This will absorb some of the demand. Distance learning, being able to actually take a Yale or Oxford course online is widespread; whether that satisfies the demand for the name on a sheepskin is another matter entirely.