NYT: "Peak College Admissions Insanity"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our family is just getting started in the college process, so forgive me if I’m totally wrong here, but this article has me confused. I thought for ED, you could use the college’s aid calculation tool to get a sense of what aid you might get and then if accepted ED, you could wait until the aid information was received before pulling your other applications, and reject the ED offer if it wasn’t in the ballpark of what the school calculator had indicated. This article seems to say that if you apply ED but also apply for FA and get in, you are obligated to pull your other applications before knowing your FA result and have committed to go regardless of FA result—although the article does indicate colleges would not be able to force a student to attend a school they couldn’t attend.

So which is correct as far as ED if you need FA?

Yeah, he hangs a lot of his argument on this misconception. Even with an NPC, the ED process is intimidating for folks with financial limitations—and it does prevent the applicant from shopping around for even better offers, which is a big limitation—but it’s demonstrably not true that a student is required to attend a school ED if the school does not meet their financial need.

DP. Yes. This made me look back and see that it was an opinion piece, not actual journalism. This guy is a little out there and seems to be trying to gin up the "merit" crowd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Seems about right to me:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/01/opinion/college-admissions-applications.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ok0.G9-F.xk2gFRSMz5Td&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

The answer is simple, there was a spike in birth rate around 2006-2007, so there are more kids competing for approx. the same number of places in college, ie more competition and harder to get in. Based on the graph, it will be less competitive for the 2010-2015 cohort when they reach the college application age....

That small blip, 10% between peak and trough, with 2007 similar to the 1990 peak, is not nearly enough to explain the effect.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/195908/number-of-births-in-the-united-states-since-1990/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the so-called elite employers think they're doing well recruiting from a certain set of schools, what incentive do they have to spend more time/money looking elsewhere for (in their mind) marginal value?

None which is why the insanity will continue. The name of the school does not matter for some degrees, and I think most people understand it, but the name on the degree is the only thing that matters for certain professions as much as people insist otherwise. For all of the Barista jokes, who has a better shot at a hedge fund job- a lax player with an english degree from Princeton or someone with a 4.0 in business from Towson?

Trick question. They both have low odds. Hedge funds are hiring the lax player's classmate majoring in something more suitable for the job.

My English major investment banker college-roommate disagrees.

You know that is the exception, right? Give me break.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the so-called elite employers think they're doing well recruiting from a certain set of schools, what incentive do they have to spend more time/money looking elsewhere for (in their mind) marginal value?

None which is why the insanity will continue. The name of the school does not matter for some degrees, and I think most people understand it, but the name on the degree is the only thing that matters for certain professions as much as people insist otherwise. For all of the Barista jokes, who has a better shot at a hedge fund job- a lax player with an english degree from Princeton or someone with a 4.0 in business from Towson?

Trick question. They both have low odds. Hedge funds are hiring the lax player's classmate majoring in something more suitable for the job.

My English major investment banker college-roommate disagrees.

You know that is the exception, right? Give me break.

Np.
Not really. But tell yourself that if it makes you feel better?

I can tell you do not have one of these types of jobs/in the industry. I do.
Ask questions in a new post and I’m happy to answer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Seems about right to me:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/01/opinion/college-admissions-applications.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ok0.G9-F.xk2gFRSMz5Td&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

The answer is simple, there was a spike in birth rate around 2006-2007, so there are more kids competing for approx. the same number of places in college, ie more competition and harder to get in. Based on the graph, it will be less competitive for the 2010-2015 cohort when they reach the college application age....

Oh sweet summer child.
https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1201798.page

Thanks! Wasn't aware of that thread, I'll post it there too....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They expect the college admissions process to find the exceptions.

Bingo. If college admissions officers are already doing the front-end vetting for you, why bother reinventing the wheel? As the saying goes, work smarter not harder.

Because college AOs are vetting high schoolers, which is different from the adults they will become, and becaise an employer isn't worried about having the right number of tuba players and shortstops and foret-gens in each hiring round.

It's an easy first cut. Even if they are wrong about a few, there are still far more applicants than jobs or even interview slots

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the so-called elite employers think they're doing well recruiting from a certain set of schools, what incentive do they have to spend more time/money looking elsewhere for (in their mind) marginal value?

None which is why the insanity will continue. The name of the school does not matter for some degrees, and I think most people understand it, but the name on the degree is the only thing that matters for certain professions as much as people insist otherwise. For all of the Barista jokes, who has a better shot at a hedge fund job- a lax player with an english degree from Princeton or someone with a 4.0 in business from Towson?

Trick question. They both have low odds. Hedge funds are hiring the lax player's classmate majoring in something more suitable for the job.

My English major investment banker college-roommate disagrees.

You know that is the exception, right? Give me break.

Np.
Not really. But tell yourself that if it makes you feel better?

I can tell you do not have one of these types of jobs/in the industry. I do.
Ask questions in a new post and I’m happy to answer.

Yeah. Thanks. I’ll just ask my husband that works as a portfolio manager for a hedge fund. But I’m sure you know lots of English majors at Edward Jones.

Oh, your husband. Right?…. Lol
Not familiar w/EJ.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the so-called elite employers think they're doing well recruiting from a certain set of schools, what incentive do they have to spend more time/money looking elsewhere for (in their mind) marginal value?

None which is why the insanity will continue. The name of the school does not matter for some degrees, and I think most people understand it, but the name on the degree is the only thing that matters for certain professions as much as people insist otherwise. For all of the Barista jokes, who has a better shot at a hedge fund job- a lax player with an english degree from Princeton or someone with a 4.0 in business from Towson?

Trick question. They both have low odds. Hedge funds are hiring the lax player's classmate majoring in something more suitable for the job.

My English major investment banker college-roommate disagrees.

You know that is the exception, right? Give me break.

Np.
Not really. But tell yourself that if it makes you feel better?

I can tell you do not have one of these types of jobs/in the industry. I do.
Ask questions in a new post and I’m happy to answer.

Yeah. Thanks. I’ll just ask my husband that works as a portfolio manager for a hedge fund. But I’m sure you know lots of English majors at Edward Jones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I thought it was good and covered all bases, except one, that I continue to rant about.

Part of the reason there is so much competition for the top schools is because so-called elite employers only recruit from them. We need companies to see that there are tons of bright students everywhere. Just look at the girl profiled in the article who is clearly smart and likely has a ton of grit. She's going to Hunter College where no investment bank or MBB would ever look to hire from. Until that mindset is broken, things will not change.

Only in very select industries/firms. And that has taken a huge battering in recent years.

IRL definitely not the case.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our family is just getting started in the college process, so forgive me if I’m totally wrong here, but this article has me confused. I thought for ED, you could use the college’s aid calculation tool to get a sense of what aid you might get and then if accepted ED, you could wait until the aid information was received before pulling your other applications, and reject the ED offer if it wasn’t in the ballpark of what the school calculator had indicated. This article seems to say that if you apply ED but also apply for FA and get in, you are obligated to pull your other applications before knowing your FA result and have committed to go regardless of FA result—although the article does indicate colleges would not be able to force a student to attend a school they couldn’t attend.

So which is correct as far as ED if you need FA?

The former is correct.

Well then I wish someone had told that to the girl in the article so she could have applied ED to Barnard like she wanted to. Glad she got a full scholarship to Wesleyan though.

+1 especially because they said she was working with some organization to help with the process. They gave her bad advice.

[Anonymous]

"It’s been a while since top students could assume they’d get into top schools, but today, they get rejected more often than not."

So then all these top students are going to "second-rate" schools. But the thing that makes schools top-rate is mostly the students, which makes those second-rate schools ... top.

The teaching at most colleges is going to be good, because there's a surplus of good academics. So if you go to a school with many classmates who are smart, engaged, and motivated, you're probably going to end up with a good education, whether that's a top 10 school or a top 50 or even top 100 school.

[Anonymous]

Another ED q here - if you are accepted at your ED college, are you not given the financial aid/merit package soon after/before pulling other apps?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"It’s been a while since top students could assume they’d get into top schools, but today, they get rejected more often than not."

So then all these top students are going to "second-rate" schools. But the thing that makes schools top-rate is mostly the students, which makes those second-rate schools ... top.

The teaching at most colleges is going to be good, because there's a surplus of good academics. So if you go to a school with many classmates who are smart, engaged, and motivated, you're probably going to end up with a good education, whether that's a top 10 school or a top 50 or even top 100 school.

Poor use of the transitive property.
There are second tier students at second tier schools. Plenty of them. I’m not saying they are underperformers or unintelligent by any means. But the average kid at Villanova is not the average kid at Princeton. No way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Seems about right to me:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/01/opinion/college-admissions-applications.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ok0.G9-F.xk2gFRSMz5Td&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

The answer is simple, there was a spike in birth rate around 2006-2007, so there are more kids competing for approx. the same number of places in college, ie more competition and harder to get in. Based on the graph, it will be less competitive for the 2010-2015 cohort when they reach the college application age....

That small blip, 10% between peak and trough, with 2007 similar to the 1990 peak, is not nearly enough to explain the effect.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/195908/number-of-births-in-the-united-states-since-1990/

That's the birth rate, but you also need number of women of reproductive age, and college participation rate to gauge competition. Enjoy the cliff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Seems about right to me:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/01/opinion/college-admissions-applications.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ok0.G9-F.xk2gFRSMz5Td&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

The answer is simple, there was a spike in birth rate around 2006-2007, so there are more kids competing for approx. the same number of places in college, ie more competition and harder to get in. Based on the graph, it will be less competitive for the 2010-2015 cohort when they reach the college application age....

That small blip, 10% between peak and trough, with 2007 similar to the 1990 peak, is not nearly enough to explain the effect.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/195908/number-of-births-in-the-united-states-since-1990/

It's also the effect of rich full-pay international students. They can more than make up for any decrease in the American birth rate. Absent new national legislation, I fully anticipate the Ivy League to be 30%+ international students in the 10 years. That share will only grow bigger. Further, these kids go back home with Ivy degree and are elites....which is very important for large US corporates doing work in those countries.