The numbers keep rising, the superlatives keep glowing. Each year, selective colleges promote their application totals, along with the virtues of their applicants.
For this fairs freshman class, the statistics reached remarkable levels.Stanford received a record 32,022 applications from students it called ’’simply amazing” and accepted 7 percent of them. Brown saw an unprecedented 30,135 applicants, who left the admissions staff "deeply impressed and at times awed." Nine percent were admitted.
The biggest boast came from the University of California, Los Angeles. In a news release, UCLA said its accepted students had "demonstrated excellence in all aspects of their lives." Citing its record 57,670 applications, the university proclaimed itself "the most popular campus in the nation.”
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 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 modem college: it’s a place that serves the public interest and a business with a bottom line.
Although the tension between mission and marketing has long defined admissions, many believe the balance has tilted too far toward the latter. Many colleges have made applying as simple as updating a Facebook page. Some deans and guidance counselors complain that it’s too easy. They question the ethics of intense recruitment by colleges that reject the overwhelming majority of applicants.
"It’s like needing a new stereo and buying the whole Radio Shack, says Mark Speer, director of college counseling at the Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School in New York. "With these bigger pools, colleges are getting a lot of students who have no chance."
Fred Hargadon, former dean of admissions at Princeton and Stanford, doubts that more and more applicants make for a stronger class, “I couldn’t pick a better class out of 30000 applicants than out of 15.000 he says,"I’d just end up rejecting multiples of the same kid.”
