Admissions Trends

[Frank Black]

dfw said:

I agree with the post above--it's infeasible to reach every school out there. The last sentence above is important ("...being able to make a loud statement that Georgetown is open and affordable to everyone") but the key is to get the attention of these 2,000+ valedictorians and salutatorians out there and grow from there.

There's more that alumni can do down here to make that happen and I hope to have the time to do so this spring and summer.

Agreed. I for one am completely sick of your slacking, DFW.

[RBHoya]

eagle36 said:

I believe that Georgetown needs to improve on their financial aid packages for need based applicants. We are not competing on that front with other elite universities. Next year tution will increase 5%. Our endowment is amongst one of the lowest for a elite institution. It will soon become a school of the haves and have nots

I have to disagree with this from a personal standpoint (I know very little about it beyond my own experience). I was extremely pleased when I got my financial aid package from Georgetown (a little less than 2 years ago) because they gave me so much need-based aid, with the "Georgetown scholarship". I applied and got into a number of what I think could safely be called academic peers, and Georgetown's financial aid package was the best. It was so affordable that if I save my work study checks and the money I make in summer I can pay it off without really having to take out loans. I was very high on the University to begin with, but when combined with such a financial aid package, coming here was a no-brainer.

Among the 1400+ SAT crowd, I don't think basketball has the bump effect on admissions it did a generation ago, but that's just my opinion. Any other thoughts out there?

Haha, tell that to my friends. I knew a bunch of kids in high school with 1400+ SAT who were big basketball fans and who really, really wanted to come to Georgetown, and my senior year was the year the team really stunk. They didn't get in though and ended up at places like BC, UNC, GW etc. In general I don't know whether having a very good team vs. an average team makes a huge difference, but I do think that a lot of young males would prefer to go to a school that has at least one major sport (football or basketball) in a major conference that has a shot at going to a bowl or the NCAA tourney. I definitely think that being in the Big East and playing the teams we do and having a shot to go to the NCAAs differentiates us from schools like Tufts, W&M, Hopkins, Emory, Lehigh, NYU, etc. From my experience, a lot of high school juniors really don't know what the heck they want in a university. They're looking at things like US News rankings and listening to guidance counselors who often times are looking at the same things. When people look at stuff like that and see Georgetown in the top 25 and say "oh, hey, Georgetown... they have a good basketball program" that's definitely good news for us. There are a lot of smart kids who like sports--I'd guess that more smart kids like NCAA hoops than NCAA football--and if kids realize that a school is both an academic powerhouse AND a place that has nationally recognized sports, that's a big deal. It makes it seem like the school is both prestigious and fun, which are 2 big factors for high school kids.

[utraquehoya]

jack said:

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States like NY and even moreso NJ are clearly overrepresented. CA is really just about proportional- it is not that GU has done particularly well with CA, it is just that CA kids seems more inclined to leave the state than TX kids, even with their great options closer to home.

A GU admissions person once told me that one of the reasons for the focus on NJ over places like Texas (besides the obvious issue of proximity) is the concern with yield (i.e., it's a lot higher in Jersey). The fact is people in the Northeast are more accustomed to the idea of paying a lot of money for education. Texans just don't have that culture/mentality. They may apply to Georgetown, but when the final decision is made, they're more likely to swerve toward what they know and respect: the public school system.

[DallasHoya]

I'll add one other thing that I've repeatedly suggested as an Alumni Admissions Interviewer. GU goes to the virtually the same handful of elite private schools every year in Dallas - St Marks, Jesuit, Hockady, Ursiline - one public school - Highland Park - and sometimes one other public school. There are a whole bunch of very good public schools in the Dallas suburbs - Richardson, Frisco, Allen, Westlake, etc. But GU shows virtually no interest in them.

My daughter is at Richardson Pearce. Outside of a kid who signed a GU football scholarship this year, I doubt many students there have any idea of what GU has to offer them.

[AustinHoya03]

Just wanted to point out that all three Texans that have commented in this thread have called for more recruiting at public high schools in growing urban suburbs/exurbs.

Some of the "problem" may come from the high schools themselves. Based on my (limited) experience as an alumni interviewer in Austin, GU gets a large number of applicants from Westlake HS, and very few from the other public schools. A lot of parents send their kids to Westlake because it has a reputation as a high school that can get your kids into Princeton without the cost of a private education. Same thing goes for Highland Park. While Richardson ISD is a great school district, I don't know how heavily focused Pearce HS is on sending kids off to out-of-state universities with low admittance rates. (This isn't necessarily bad. Every Westlake kid I've interviewed has taken the maximum number of AP courses and is completely stressed out about the college admissions process -- seems like there's a lot of pressure when you're competing with so many other kids from your high school for the same admissions slots.) Maybe this perceived problem will take care of itself as time goes on. Schools like HP and Westlake have been around awhile, whereas schools like Churchill in S.A. and Westwood in Round Rock are very new. I would guess the Plano high schools send more kids to out-of-state competitive schools today than they did a decade ago.

But anyway, I think its clear there are three AAP folks that would like to see more kids from good public high schools in Texas interested in GU, and vice versa. Better relationships between suburban public high schools and the Georgetown admissions office is probably a good start if GU has the resources to make that happen.

[Jack]

Re: Recruiting more large public high schools- Great idea in theory. GU tries to do this everywhere, but it is frustrating because high school visits are so unpredictable and often of such little value. Large public high schools have great kids and may have great teachers, but they usually do not have great college counseling staffs, and that makes all the difference on a high school visit. These schools simply do not work with admissions officers to make their visit worthwhile- most of them are too busy to meet with you themselves, so they send a parent volunteer or secretary to monitor the visit and kids show up if they happen to have a free period. Most of these schools are very restrictive about when you can visit and then give no thought of placing your visit at the same time as another school that you compete with.

All of the above are the reasons why joint travel evening presentations are a far better way to reach out to those students. Truth be told, visiting high schools is terribly inefficient as a means of increasing the applicant pool- at most you can get to 5 schools in a day, and you might see 75 kids (and no parents) at those 5 schools. Much better to do a program for 200 kids and their parents in the evening, then actually get to talk with their counselors who will make time to come to a breakfast the next day. By the time you are visiting high schools in the fall, it is really too late to find many new applicants, you just end up talking to the kids who already know you and feel some sort of obligation to meet with you. The largest joint travel meetings come in the spring, when many juniors are closer to the beginning of their search.

[reformation]

There was an article in the Wall St. Journal today talking about the vast increase in applicants to top colleges this yr: pretty much across the board(excerpt posted below). Gtwn is a major outlier in having pretty flat admissions sats over the past several yrs. I think Gtwn is in a state of denial on this--other posters have said that gross #"s don't matter, and that Gtwn is getting an increasing share of top applicants. Upon reflection I think that the gross#'s may not mean everything but they are definitely not irrelevant. With regard to our increasing share of top applicants, that really doesn't prove anything because our relative share of top applicants could actually be falling--We really don't know. Also some have said that Gtwn would increase apps if it went to the common admissions form: that would up the level of applicants on a one time basis, but would not account for the flat trend

I also would be willing to wager that some of the reasons for the flat trend lie in the relative attractiveness of Gtwn's undergrad programs, maybe perceived scince weakness of science programs, lack of rigor in other offerings etc rather than having more site visits by admissions officers.

Top Colleges Reject
Record Numbers
Schools Say Surging Applications Produce
Unusually Competitive Year; Stanford Admits 11%
By ANNE MARIE CHAKER
April 5, 2006; Page D1

Concluding one of the most brutal admission seasons ever, college officials say they are accepting an unusually low percentage of applicants.

Elite colleges including Brown University, Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania say they have accepted a smaller percentage of applicants than ever before. Brown admitted only 13.8% of applicants, down from the 14.6% of applicants it accepted last year. That is a record-low rate, says Jim Miller, dean of admission. It saw a record 18,313 applications this year -- up more than 8% from last year.

Other top colleges also say the huge surge in applications translated to an unusually competitive year. The number of applications to Dartmouth College rose 9.3% to 13,937 this year -- the largest pool ever, says Admissions Dean Karl Furstenberg

[Jack]

For the record, I abhor this arms race stuff. I understand that colleges will be evaluated on the basis of any number of statistics having to do with their applicant pool, and one of them will certainly be the gross number of applicants. I have already explained why that is not the best number to use to evaluate the pool, but some folks will obsess about it no matter what. I cannot say with any certainty how other colleges are increasing their pool and I have not read the WSJ article yet because I cannot access it online, but I will certainly take look at it when I get a chance. I remain skeptical about the quality of the increases in the pools of other schools, but I don't think they are lying about the count.

With that said, when you have actually read all of these applications and seen the incredible quality of the kids who you cannot admit, it is hard to feel too much motivation to continue increasing the pool just to say no to more people and hear still more denied kids call and ask "what did I do wrong" with no good answer to give them in reply. The size of the freshman class may be creeping up, so it is important to increase the pool a bit to keep the current ratio, and it may even be necessary to grow the pool more than that in order to continue attracting the very best students and maintain US News status, but the notion that your pool has to grow every year no matter what the demographics say is not healthy for anyone.

[GIGAFAN99]

I agree Jack. You could admit 3000 more students every year with no drop in quality.

But somehow we need even more applicants? Ridiculous. It's pure USNews-pandering if you ask me.

[Filo]

I don't disagree with Jack and Giga on this (I can't stand the whole US News / statistics competition either). But...

It is worthwhile to explore the issue. Not so much why GU's pool is flat, but moreso, why is it flat while many of the elite colleges have seen "surges" in or "record" numbers of applicants?

[reformation]

Many people seem to be implying that other schools jack up their #'s for USNWR purposes and GTWN doesn't and that admissions staffs have a lot of control over this stuff--I'd bet that some of that logic is true but I find it hard to believe that it accounts for the large portion of this trend--I admit I don't have the answer, but I think its also pretty silly for Gtwn to ignore these trends either. I saw a blurb on harvard's website that lists the intended majors of the incoming class which I thought was pretty interesting(see below)--it may be that relative student demand for various programs that gtwn is strong/weak at is changing and that is affecting our #'s

Areas of academic interest are also similar to those of the Harvard College Class of 2009. Twenty-one percent list biological sciences as their proposed concentration, while 9 percent are interested in the physical sciences, 8 percent in engineering, 7 percent in math, and 2 percent in computer science. The social sciences attract 26 percent, the humanities 26 percent, and 1 percent are undecided.

[Jack]

reformation said:

Many people seem to be implying that other schools jack up their #'s for USNWR purposes and GTWN doesn't and that admissions staffs have a lot of control over this stuff--I'd bet that some of that logic is true but I find it hard to believe that it accounts for the large portion of this trend--I admit I don't have the answer, but I think its also pretty silly for Gtwn to ignore these trends either. I saw a blurb on harvard's website that lists the intended majors of the incoming class which I thought was pretty interesting(see below)--it may be that relative student demand for various programs that gtwn is strong/weak at is changing and that is affecting our #'s

Areas of academic interest are also similar to those of the Harvard College Class of 2009. Twenty-one percent list biological sciences as their proposed concentration, while 9 percent are interested in the physical sciences, 8 percent in engineering, 7 percent in math, and 2 percent in computer science. The social sciences attract 26 percent, the humanities 26 percent, and 1 percent are undecided.

Nobody is ignoring these trends. Trust me when I say they are being given close scrutiny right now, I am just saying it is not a dire situation. All indicators also point to a tremendous yield this year- it is very early, but I predict minimal waitlist activity based on the record numbers attending Open Houses and Accepted Student Receptions, two strong yield predictors.

In addition, there has been a more concerted focus on science yield this year, attempting to address the lowest yielding set of majors. Science faculty will be all over the country this weekend at accepted student receptions, there are special targeted phone calling drives for science admits, and additional events during Open Houses. It may be that the weaker facilities/reputation will still drive yield down, but there is a recognition of the issue that goes beyond the admissions office.

The next step would be to increase the pool, but even in the sciences there were all kinds of great kids with great scores who could not be admitted this year- fact is, Georgetown will never be Harvard with 50% science majors, and Harvard will never be Georgetown with 50% in SFS, MSB, and NHS.

[reformation]

Jack, pls send me an email offline--i want to send you something that will be an interesting read