Ivy or Bye-vy!

Do you remember around this same time last year (maybe 2-3 years ago) when you were refreshing your email everyday? Your eyes would nervously shift to and from the clock in the back of the classroom, fingers tapping, looking down at your shoes color coded to match the college of your dreams, maybe that would bring you a sliver of luck! College decision time. You had been chatting with your friends at lunch two days prior about your chances of getting admitted. You shared that you read online that admission chances had decreased by 5% over the year.

Time goes by, the emails are out! You read that this year is the record number of applicants. Again, again, and again. School after school after school. Sure enough it says that is every email... you applied to 12 schools after all....

"Record number of applicants selected for the Class of 2022". 

What is the cause for these consistently upward trends? What ideologies, objectives, facilitations, and encouragement is happening in high schools and households that is substantially increasing the amount of applicants for top schools across the United States? Are applicants making the choice themselves to apply to many schools or are they encouraged by parents and college counsellors? What prompts the urgency to apply to so many universities of similar nature? Through a personal lens, I hope to tackle some of the these questions. 

First and foremost, the applicant pool is increasingly more and more competitive, with the highest range of SAT scores and 4.00's across the board. Thousands of students exactly like yourself applying for the same position at the exact same schools... how scary is that! So why is there is such a drive to apply to a school where uncertainty is guaranteed and luck of the draw if a given? What is the allure to ravaging competition and little promise? 

Due to new online college application catered platforms such as Naviance, the system of applying to College can often be divided into "safety schools", "match schools" and "reach schools". Hence, schools that would be an almost guarantee get into,  schools that you match with perfectly, and schools that will be hard to get in to. This classification certainly contributes to the great influx of applicants over the past year. College counsellors promote the usage of this platform to create structure for students, however the number of schools students end up applying to triples in order to fit each category. Students end up applying to nine schools of similar region, programs, and values despite differing acceptance credentials. When everyone applying is encouraged to do a similar strategy,  overlaps happen, even if one person's safety school is one person's reach etc. 

A large proponent of the mentality involved when applying to so many schools is "I'll apply to every thing I'm interested in and if I don't get in, then I'll just go to _________". In some cases, the blank can be filled with Canada or the UK! Personally, growing up at an international school, I watched a lot of peers apply to the top schools in the US, and if not accepted, ultimately end up a less competitive equivalent in Nottingham, United Kingdom.  This strategy was implemented by their parents who, in hopes of them receiving a top education, encouraged choosing the best schools in the United States. Though this is an extreme, American parents do the same. They encourage their children to apply to their alma matter, as well as the school their aunt went to, also the school where their high school pal is a professor at... so on and so forth! Children begin to beef up the list of the schools they apply to based on parent influence, perhaps out of guilt, and safety they feel with such a large life decision at hand... much more research can be done to investigate the record hitting numbers of applicants at American universities, but taking a close look at personal experiences, we can understand on national sociological level.

Works Cited 

“Mail from Colleges.” Homeschool Success, 28 Jan. 2019, homeschoolsuccess.com/mail-from-colleges/.

“USC Sees Record Number of Applicants for Fall 2018 Admission.” USC News, 23 Mar. 2018, news.usc.edu/139338/usc-acceptance-rate-fall-2018-admission/.