March Madness 2022: The College Admissions Edition

For high school seniors and admissions officers, “March Madness” is more than just a storied basketball tournament. This month, seniors will begin to learn the outcome of applications they submitted as early as last fall. For the lucky ones, virtual “fat envelopes” at dream schools signal the end of the madness. Some may find themselves in admissions purgatory (the waitlist), with no firm offers in hand. Those who entered this process without a well-thought-out application strategy could find themselves headed to their safety school and contemplating a do-over next year.

In the admissions office, March Madness perfectly describes the scramble to complete the review and decision-making process on a crushing volume of applications from prospective students in the US and around the world. This volume increase isn’t just occurring at the Ivies. It is also affecting admissions decisions at colleges and universities across the country, regardless of selectivity tier. For example, UNC Chapel Hill received just over 57,000 applications for the Class of 2026, which is 6.5% more than last year and a new university record. Brown University also had a record applicant pool for their Class of 2026 with almost 51,000 applicants, a 9% increase from their Class of 2025. The University of Miami saw a record-high applicant pool of 49,000 for the fall 0f 2022. This reflects a 16% increase (from 42,000 applications) from the previous year.

By now, we all know how we got here. Nearly two years to the day, the pandemic shut down life as we know it. The major disruptions caused by COVID had a ripple effect on the college application process, beginning with students applying in the fall of 2020. In the aftermath of George Floyd’s death at the hands of police officers in late May, 2020, powerful efforts to address racial inequality swept the nation. Colleges and universities responded in multiple ways, including changes to their recruitment and admissions priorities.

MARCH MADNESS 2022: COLLEGE ADMISSIONS EDITION

We note several trends that all contribute to this year’s admissions “madness:”

A new decision outcome: straight to the waitlist.

• We have heard that students who applied EA or ED to a handful of schools, including Colgate, NYU, Tulane, and UNC, were placed directly onto the waitlist, bypassing the more traditional deferral option. We are unsure of how widespread the practice is this year, but anticipate that it will grow. We can think of a few reasons for this new outcome:
  • Placing students directly onto the waitlist means colleges don’t have to divert resources from the regular decision review process to review these applications in the busy winter months;
  • Should colleges need to admit students from the waitlist, it stands to reason that those who applied early would be likelier to accept a spot from the waitlist (therefore protecting their yield stats).
  • Colleges may be sensitive to the pushback from admitting too great a percentage of their class through the early round (many admit almost half the class in EA/ED). A student admitted from the waitlist is no longer bound by any early agreement and so is no longer counted as an early admit.

Lack of transparency around key application metrics.

• We note more schools choosing NOT to share data that would help future applicants be more thoughtful about their application strategies. Among the specific data points that we wish more colleges would share include:
  • The number of early applications submitted by round (ED1, ED2, EA) and how many were admitted, deferred, denied, and waitlisted in each round.
  • The percentage of students admitted who did not submit an SAT or ACT score.

• Of course, we also know why a university chooses not to share these data points:
  • Knowing the unlikelihood of admissions might depress application volume.

The shrinking “selectivity middle class.”

• An interesting blog post from 2019 noted that the number of schools admitting fewer than 20% of their applicants more than doubled since 2008. Unlike the well-known surge in applications at highly-selective schools, less attention was focused on the shrinking number of schools that was once dubbed the “selectivity middle class” – colleges accepting between 20% and 30% of applicants. Not that long ago, colleges and universities including Bates, BU, Carleton, Davidson, Emory, Middlebury, Northeastern, Notre Dame, NYU, Tufts, Wash U, and Wesleyan, among others, were in range for students who weren’t necessarily in the top of their class. This is no longer the case.

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More applications submitted per student.

• The Common App reports that applicants are applying to more Common App schools, on average, in this admissions cycle than in past years. Applications submitted per student rose 6.1% from 5.46 to 5.60 applications per student.

Record application volume continues.

• Although only a handful of top colleges have reported data on the total number of students applying for admission, what’s been shared thus far points to another record year: NYU – 105,000 (up 5%); Boston University – 80,797 (up 6.7%); Brown – 50,608 (up 9%); and UCLA – 149,700 (up 7%).

UC Berkeley must cut enrollment this fall.

• In response to pressure from local activists and after losing an appeal to the California Supreme Court, UC Berkeley must reduce the number of enrolled students this fall by 3,000 students. In order to meet this target, the admissions office will cut the numbers of admitted students by 5,000 (a mix of first-year and transfer students). This decision comes at a time when the university received over 128,000 first-year applicants. The admit rate at Berkeley will plummet this year to sub-10% from last year’s admit rate of 18.3%.

SIS-BOOM-BAH

Watch our blog for more of our “March Madness 2022” analysis as more colleges and universities release their admissions data over the course of the next few weeks. And, remember, we’re rooting for you!

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Maria Laskaris

Senior Private Counselor at Top Tier Admissions

Maria Laskaris joins Top Tier Admissions as one of the most experienced admissions deans in the country. She graduated from Dartmouth College in 1984, and served as Director of Admissions at Dartmouth for over a decade where she evaluated tens of thousands of applicants. From 2007-2015 she served as the Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Dartmouth, overseeing all facets of the admissions and financial aid processes. She played an integral role in developing key enhancements to the Common Application, serving on the 14-member Board of Directors. With over 25 years of admissions experience at one of the most selective colleges in the country, she provides an insider’s perspective like no other, with deep knowledge of selective college admissions.

In addition, Maria is proud of her long-term volunteer work with Opera North (Lebanon, NH) in fundraising, marketing and audience engagement. She is an avid masters rower with the Upper Valley Rowing Foundation (Hanover, NH) and also serves as a member of its board of directors.

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