For weeks, I told myself I was going to cut my hair. I needed a change. Two inches. Maybe three inches. Layers. The whole bit. But the moment I sat in the chair at the hair salon yesterday, I chickened out. I decided to just go with another trim—imperceptible to even my family.
Did that mean I lacked the courage to do something drastic? As I settled into the chair, I reminded myself that steadiness is confidence.
I wish I could say the same for American colleges right now. There is no steadiness. There is uncertainty. And colleges' fear or lack of confidence manifests itself in sweeping changes to their admissions processes. Each college has a different strategy. Here are the three biggest policy changes colleges are making and why they are making them:
1. Colleges with Early Action are adding an Early Decision round.
University of Southern California, University of Michigan, University of Florida, and Florida State University instituted Early Decision programs recently. What do all of these schools have in common? They are nationally-known powerhouses with longstanding Early Action programs. Why do they need an Early Decision program? An Early Decision program means one thing: Their yield rates (the percentage of students who accept the offer of admission) are not as high as they want them to be. Don't get me wrong, these schools are super popular. But when push comes to shove and they look at their yield rates in Early Action and Regular Decision, they are losing students to other colleges at a surprising rate.
READ MORE: Big Changes at the University of Michigan
When a college's yield rate is weak, they are forced to admit more students. Early Decision can control or even lower the acceptance rate because every student admitted presumably enrolls. It's one for one. One student admitted translates to one student enrolled. In Early Action or Regular Decision, a college may need to admit three, four, five, or more students just to get one of them to enroll. This increases the acceptance rate and lowers the yield rate. Colleges want the opposite—the lowest acceptance rate and the highest yield rate possible.
2. Colleges with Early Decision are adding an Early Action round.
Washington University in St. Louis, Syracuse University, and Connecticut College will offer Early Action for the first time this coming year. Why does a college offer Early Action? To get more applications. Early Action is non-binding. Students can apply to as many Early Action programs as they want (unless they are applying to a handful of Restrictive Early Action programs, like Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, and Yale). And, students tend to apply to a lot of Early Action programs, thus driving up application totals where Early Action is offered. Applying Early Action seems to give an advantage in admissions, although we don't know this for sure as most colleges never reveal how the acceptance rates vary from Early Action to other rounds of admission. No matter what, though, just because a college gets a lot of applications, doesn't mean it will yield students better. But the optics of getting more applications is one data point colleges always reveal.
3. Colleges dropping supplemental essays.
University of Miami, University of Georgia, and Tulane University will no longer have supplemental essays. There are many reasons why a college doesn't have supplemental essays. It speeds up the reading process, significantly. Only a few years ago, for example, Tulane had one of the longest supplemental essays of any college in the U.S.—up to 800 words. Now it will have 0 words when it comes to supplemental essays. Imagine how much faster admissions officers can read a student's application. Now imagine how many more applications a college will get when they don't have extra essays.
READ MORE: A Letter to My Rising Junior
When I picked up my daughter from the pool after my anti-climatic hair appointment, I asked her if she could tell I got a haircut. She looked at me with kind but doubtful eyes and said, "I think so." My kids often tell me that they don't want me to cut my long hair or do anything different. I represent stability for them. They know what to expect from me. I wish we knew what to expect from colleges. Maybe then we'd trust them more than we do.
