What Are the Latest College Trends?
More students are applying to college than ever before. Even with the increased competition, most who apply to four-year colleges are admitted.
Let's start with the good news: the odds for admission into a four-year college or university are good — seven out of every 10 seniors who apply get in, according to a recent report.
And the bad news? The competition to get into selective colleges is more intense than ever before.
In its annual report on the state of college admissions, the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) has identified several
reasons for the recent increase in college applications, and consequently tougher competition to get into "brand name" colleges. Two of the biggest reasons are:
- More students are graduating from high school
More high school students are graduating, mainly due to the "baby boom echo" - a term that describes all those children of all those baby boomers. - Students are applying to more schools
The ease of researching colleges and submitting applications online, and applying to multiple schools using the Common Application, has contributed to this phenomenon.
Top College Trends
GreatSchools identified these trends for two- and four-year, selective and not-so-selective, colleges, using information from the NACAC report, reports from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, and other sources.
Trends in College Admissions
A college education is becoming less affordable.
Families are now devoting a larger percentage of their incomes and taking out larger student loans to finance a college education.
The average tuition for in-state, public, four-year colleges has ballooned by 35% since 2001-2002. The tuition for private colleges grew at a lower rate, but the actual dollar increases are much larger than for public colleges.
According to the Measuring Up 2006, a study from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, 62% of public college graduates and 73% of private college graduates leave their institutions with a large debt as well as their degree. The report claims current graduates "are the most heavily indebted young Americans in our history."
More applicants are using the Early Decision or Early Action option.
Early Decision is defined by NACAC as "the application process in which students make a commitment to a first-choice institution where, if admitted, they definitely will enroll. Early Action is the application process in which students make application to an institution of preference and receive a decision well in advance of the institution's regular response rate."
Harvard and Princeton announced plans to drop the Early Decision process starting in the fall of 2007 — actions which could influence the direction of this trend for 2007-08. Opponents of Early Decision and Early Action believe these programs create an unfair disadvantage for low-income students by forcing them to make decisions about colleges before receiving all of their financial aid offers. (Harvard's early admissions program allowed students the freedom to change their minds, but Harvard officials still felt that it was an obstacle for less affluent students.)
In October of 2006, NACAC members agreed to a new policy that bars member colleges from accepting students earlier than September 15th and creating application deadlines earlier than October 15th. This action is an attempt to block college frenzy from creeping into summer vacation, a time when high school counselors are unavailable for advice.
The number of colleges that do not require SAT or ACT scores for admission grows. Fair Test, the anti-standardized-testing organization, lists 730 colleges on its Web site that have dropped or de-emphasized the ACT or SAT tests, including 30 competitive liberal arts colleges, such as Bennington, Goucher, Middlebury, Mt. Holyoke, and Lewis and Clark.
Colleges that have dropped the admissions test requirement say these tests do not accurately predict a student's college success and unnecessarily add to the stress of their high school years.
High school GPAs are often recalculated by colleges.
About 50% of colleges recalculate high school GPAs to account for grade inflation and to standardize grades across high schools. For example, many colleges give an extra point to grades from honors, AP or IB classes, making an A worth 5 points rather than the traditional 4 points.
The gender gap grows wider in undergraduate admissions.
A 2006 American Council of Education report found that in 2003-2004, of students under the age of 24, 45% were men and 55% were women. This marks a widening of the gap since 1995-1996, when males represented 48% of the same age group. The authors of the report point out that the number of degrees granted for men, and women, is growing over time. In other words, men are not losing ground — they're just not keeping up with women — in the acquisition of bachelor's degrees.
Many colleges track a student's interest in attending and will use it as a factor in the admission decision.
A student's interest can be used as a tie breaker if the decision to admit is tight. Colleges measure interest by keeping records of communications with the admissions office, contacts with faculty members or tours taken of the campus by prospective students.
Private colleges are more likely than public colleges to give weight to "tip" factors like extracurricular activities or the personal essay.
"One-stop" state-wide college Web sites are catching on.
State-wide Web sites, such as Georgia's GACollege411, offer information about the state's colleges and universities, and admission and financial-aid applications. Users can also find free SAT prep classes, class planners for high school students and virtual campus tours. Over 35 states now offer these sites. Visit xap.com for a partial list of these sites.
For-profit and online universities continue to be a growing force in higher education. The Society for College and University Planning reports that more than 1.5 million students are engaged in online post-secondary education in 2007, an increase of 24% from 2005.
Online and for-profit institutions, such as the University of Phoenix and Kaplan University, are projected to serve over 11% of all students in degree-granting colleges by 2008.
Trends in College Completion
Students take longer to graduate
Students in public colleges are now taking an average of 6.2 years to graduate, instead of the traditional four years. Their private college counterparts are taking slightly less time — 5.3 years.
The United States falls behind in college completion
The Measuring Up 2006 report shows that the U.S. has fallen from the number one spot in the world to seventh in the proportion of 25- to 34-year olds holding college degrees. Even worse, the U.S. is in the bottom half of all developed nations for rates of college completion.
Two factors account for these concerning statistics. One, while the United States made rapid progress in sending its citizens to college between World War II and the 1990s, the rate of college participation has leveled off since then. Why this is so is not clear, although the drop in college affordability probably plays a major role. Secondly, other countries, such as Canada, Japan, Korea and Finland, are making rapid progress in improving their rates of college completion.
Trends for Selective Colleges
David Montesano, director of college planning at College Match, a Seattle-based college placement firm, identified these trends for highly selective colleges, the target institutions for many of his clients:
- Students have less than a 5% chance to get into top tier colleges like Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford. According to Montesano, "Chances for admission are very unlikely for most candidates who don't have a 'flag' or 'tag' in the admission process. 'Flags' and 'tags' represent varying degrees of admission importance to colleges and include sought-after athletes, under-represented minorities or legacies."
- Merit scholarships have become more common as colleges award money to applicants for academic, artistic or athletic merit, rather than for financial need. Says Montesano: "High quality, yet slightly less selective, colleges such as Allegheny and Lewis and Clark, routinely offer top students modest scholarships to help offset the cost of attendance."
- West coast colleges have become more attractive to applicants. "West coast universities and liberal arts colleges now feature more prominently in the admission picture and often overlap increasingly with Ivy League and Little Ivy (Amherst, Wesleyan and Williams) applications. 'West coast ivies' include: Caltech, Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Occidental, Pomona, Reed, Scripps, Stanford, USC and Whitman," says Montesano.
- There's a movement toward a "holistic" admissions philosophy, even among larger public universities, where GPA and test scores are not the only major determining factors. College admissions officers, faced with an avalanche of qualified applicants, now increasingly use personal essays and other factors to get a more holistic picture of the applicant.
Keep It Sane
Applying to colleges can be stressful, but the process should always be kept in the proper perspective, says Lloyd Thacker, director of The Education Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that aims to improve the admissions process. Thacker advises parents to do whatever it takes to avoid getting caught up in the growing frenzy to get kids into prestigious schools.
Thacker contends that "college rankings, standardized testing, costly test preparation, expensive marketing consultants for colleges and highly-paid independent consultants for students are profiting from fear, anxiety and myths they have helped create. A commercialized point of view is what turns the admissions process into a game and education into a game," says Thacker.
Do Your Homework
All of these trends illustrate the fact that parents and students should do their homework and plan ahead. Make a list of the colleges you'd consider, then dig in to do the research on requirements, financial aid and deadlines.
Thacker adds this cautionary endnote: "There's very little evidence that correlates the status or reputation of a college with effective educational practice. Parents need to listen to the facts, not their friends at cocktail parties."
Be aware that colleges are constantly changing the emphases they place on different admissions factors. Have your student talk to her high school counselor and stay current on the requirements and trends. Brown University, for example, requires multiple essays on its application form, while the University of Oregon requires none.
Books
Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think About Colleges by Loren Pope, Penguin, revised edition 2006.
Earnings from Learning: The Rise of For-Profit Universities edited by David W. Breneman, Brian Pusser, Sarah E. Turner, SUNY Press, 2006.
Updated March 2008
More on GreatSchools.net
- Understanding College Admissions Tests
- SAT or ACT: What's the Difference?
- SAT or ACT: How to Help Your Child Get Ready
- 10 Ways to Jump-Start College Planning
- My Son's Job Is His Only Activity. Do Colleges Care?
- Applications: A Parent's Role
- Study Survival Skills for Middle School and Beyond
- How to Take Great Notes
Related Links
- U. S. Department of Education's List of Accredited Post-Secondary Institutions
- ACT College Admissions Exam
- SAT College Admissions Exam
- FairTest: The National Center for Fair and Open Testing
- National Association for College Admission Counseling
- The Common Application
- The Education Conservancy
- College Confidential
- Colleges That Change Lives
