

College Competitiveness Reconsidered - tokenadult
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/10/27/hoxby

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btilly
I'd be curious to know how selectiveness changes over the next few years when
you subtract out seats taken by foreign students. China in particular exports
a rapidly increasing number of students, many of whom will go to US schools.

~~~
lhuang
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
_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/41382...](http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-
admissions/413821-sat-score-frequencies-freshman-class-sizes.html)

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.htm...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/education/09admissions.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp)

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=...](http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11058525&CFID=4596233&CFTOKEN=12382953)

~~~
lhuang
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.

