I'm going to opine on this topic for a second:
While I'm picking on Yale because it is the only school I've applied to that follows this process, I believe the following applies to other schools as well. I'll preface this with a quote from the NY Times article "Application Inflation" written by Eric Hoover on 5 Nov. 2010.
"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.
Admissions officers are chasing not so much a more perfect student as a more perfect class. In a given year, this elusive ideal might require more violinists, goalies, aspiring engineers or students who can pay the full cost of attendance. Colleges everywhere want more minority students, more out-of-state students and more students from overseas. The pursuit reveals the duality of the modern college. It’s a place that serves the public interest, and a business with a bottom line.
Applications are, of course, a proxy for popularity and metric of merit. Such is the allure of exclusivity, and the appeal of simplicity. Measuring quality is difficult; measuring quantity is as easy as counting. The more apps a college receives, and rejects, the more impressive it seems.
As application totals soar, colleges struggle to predict yield — the number of admitted students who actually attend — leading to longer wait lists and other competitive enrollment tactics. Students hedge against the plummeting admissions rates by flooding the system with even more applications."With that in mind, there seem to be two types of application review processes at this point in time. I'll use Harvard as an example of the first. Harvard sets a date that applicants will hear back about interviews- no interviews, no admission (or waitlist). The date for this is stated clearly on their webpage as November 3rd.
For all of the time an applicant puts into his/her application (plus the relatively expensive fee associated with submission), I find this defined process much more professional and responsible on the part of the school. It not only gives the applicants an idea, early on, of how competitive their application is, but also lets them pursue other options with an early notification date if necessary. Most importantly, it 'releases' applicants who really have no shot at admission, and we know that there are a few thousand of those that likely apply to Harvard in this instance, without dragging them along with any false hope up until the admission deadline.
Now lets get to Yale. Yale has continued to offer hope to all applicants who have not yet been interviewed. We know for a fact that out of the thousands of applications that Yale has recieved, a large percentage will not be receiving an invitation to interview. Yale admissions essentially knows who this group is. But yet, these folks will be dragged along until December, further compounded by the recent "You still have a shot!" email. Honestly, I was perfectly content waiting until December for a decision, but I feel their choice to consistently issue vague statements of where they are in the process actually worsens the situation for applicants. Be clear on where the applicant stands.
The reason for this, in my eyes, is largely due to the push to get more and more applications, and the admissions desire to sculpt a more unique class and increase their yield. While this is reasonable on the part of the school, I feel that it is unfair to a majority of the applicants who they will continue to string along until December.
Cut the ones who are out early. Keep the ones you are still considering. DEFINE your admissions process. But don't send an email like the one yesterday to ALL remaining applicants who have not recieved invitations, because that, Yale, is just false hope.
I assume someone from Yale admissions will read this, and hopefully, somewhat consider the above for next year. And finally, this isn't just a poke at Yale, this is typical across most of the bschool spectrum.
17 Nov 2010, 15:30
