Admissions update

Last year, Harvard, Princeton and the University of Virginia announced they were ending their early notification programs. Administrators at these and other schools have been concerned that these programs give an advantage to students from affluent families and that the costs inhibit socioeconomic diversity in the applicant pool.

Many people wondered how the new admissions policies at these universities would impact college applications this year.

So far, we've seen applications increase at a number of highly selective schools that continue to offer early application programs. Preliminary reports indicate that early action applications have increased by more than 35 percent at Yale this year. Georgetown is up 30 percent, and Boston College expects a 16 percent increase in early action applications. Stanford doesn't seem to be seeing the same kind of increase.

It's likely that some students who would have applied early to Princeton, Harvard or Virginia are applying early to other schools just to apply early somewhere. They may want to lock in an acceptance even if it's from a school that's not their first choice. But will these students then apply to Harvard, be admitted and toss aside their early acceptance from their second choice school?

Predicting the yield, or number of students that will accept a school's offer of admission, has become increasingly difficult in recent years and may be even more tricky this year.

Schools such as Princeton, which accepted more than 45 percent of the freshman class through their binding early decision program in previous years, will probably accept more students this year since they will no longer be locking in close to half the freshman class early. They are also likely to see a lower yield this year for the same reason.

Managing the yield is an ongoing concern for admissions officers at colleges across the country. If they have too many students, there won't be enough space in residence halls and they'll have to scramble to add freshman classes. Too few students and they end up with empty beds and less money.

Recently many schools have been faced with larger than anticipated freshman classes as more students have accepted their offers of admission. This has been happening both at public and private schools.

Pitzer College has been telling prospective midyear transfer students that they can't guarantee housing for them because fall enrollment is higher than expected. On the East Coast, Amherst College had targeted a freshman class of 440 but ended up with 474 students. Thirty-four extra students may not seem like a lot, but at a small college it can mean increasing the size of some freshman classes. Admissions officers at Amherst had hoped to admit 20 students from the waitlist, but this was the third year they didn't go to the waitlist.

When a school is overenrolled, admissions officers are likely to be more conservative the next year, meaning fewer students will be offered admission. That's what happened at UCLA, where this year's freshman class has 4,564 students, a decrease of almost 300 from last year. The smaller class size was intentional since the university is currently overenrolled.

The news isn't all bad. A number of East Coast schools are trying to increase their enrollment of West Coast students. One selective university that is actively recruiting here plans to set aside a number of spaces for students from the West Coast. It may not be as strong a hook as being a recruited athlete or having parents who donate a building, but it's nice to know that geographic desirability could give you a little edge in the admissions process.

At a time when competition for admission to selective schools is so intense, students who are open to the possibilities can still have many great college choices.

Audrey Kahane, MS, MFA, is a private college admissions counselor in West Hills. She can be reached at (818) 704-7545 or audreykahane@earthlink.net.