Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Application Season By The Numbers

(Image January 21: LOST Originally uploaded by keribeth)

I could stare at this list of college application trends for hours. My take aways: the Common Application really does have a huge impact, some people are clearly smitten with schools that they shouldn't be, and we've apparently finally discovered Macalester.

Before you have a knee jerk freak out reaction (so many applicants, so few spots, I'll never get in!), I'm reminded of the thoughtful comments of Jim Bock Dean of Admission from Swarthmore during a pre-NACAC tour in 2009: when a school gets more applicants that normally indicates a larger trend that the student has more schools on their list, which means the college has to send out a larger number of admit packets to fill their class. So be sure you think about the numbers in context, the percent admitted at some of these schools may not actually change.