Admissions Committees Are Gaming Their Rankings

As if the college application process isn’t stressful enough, top colleges spam would-be hopefuls to apply to their colleges even after their official deadlines! They give these seniors false hopes that they might just get in with their less-than-stellar grades or SAT/ACT scores. That’s just plain cruel!  This year, a record number of colleges actually rolled back their deadlines and emailed thousands of students to encourage them to enroll after their deadlines had passed. What is this teaching our students who applied by the deadlines? RULES DON’T MATTER.

What is this saying about admissions ethics? By getting more students to apply (and pay between $50-$75 for each application — DO THE MATH!), it lowers the college’s acceptance rate — something that U.S. News and World Report uses to rank the colleges. I’d love to see the colleges cough up some stats on how many of these “late deadline submissions” are actually accepted. My guess is that the number would be even closer to zero than their “official” acceptance rate.