Applications to Harvard, Columbia etc Surge to All-Time Highs

Ace! NewsFlash

A pedestrian walks past the Harvard University Business School in Boston, Massachusetts.

Applications for undergraduate admissions to Harvard University and Columbia University rose to all-time highs, making it harder than ever before to get into the colleges.

Harvard, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, received almost 35,000 applications for the next academic year, a 15 percent increase from 30,489 for the current year, William Fitzsimmons, dean of undergraduate admissions and financial aid, said today in a statement. Applications to Columbia, in New York, rose 32 percent to a 34,587, from 26,179 a year earlier, according to a statement today.

Harvard admitted 6.9 percent of applicants last year, and Columbia 9 percent. The most-selective colleges are setting application records because students are seeking a chance at “the luxury brands of higher education,” said David Hawkins, director of public policy and research at the National Association for College Admission Counseling in Arlington, Virginia.

“If you want to be seen in a Mercedes, you have to go buy one,” Hawkins said in an interview. “If you want to be seen as a Harvard student, you pay the application fee and take your chance. As more students are performing better academically in high school, they are taking their shots.”

Harvard is the richest university in the U.S., with an endowment of $27.4 billion last June 30. It is a member of the Ivy League, a group of eight universities in the northeast U.S.

‘Global Awareness’

Behind the surge at Columbia, also an Ivy League member, were outreach efforts, “global awareness of Columbia’s reputation,” and New York’s drawing power, Jessica Marinaccio, dean of undergraduate admissions at Columbia, said in the statement. She said the university for the first time used the Common Application, a form accepted by more than 400 institutions and helps high school students apply to multiple colleges.

Columbia rose to fourth place from eighth in the U.S. News & World Report’s rankings of top U.S. academic research institutions. Harvard took the top spot in the rankings, which were released in August.

Columbia, founded in 1754, counts among its undergraduate alumni U.S. President Barack Obama, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft.

Applications at Stanford University near Palo Alto, California, climbed 6.8 percent to 34,200 from 32,022 a year ago, Bob Patterson, director of admission, said yesterday in an interview.

Penn, Northwestern

The University of Pennsylvania, the Ivy League member in Philadelphia, received a record 30,800 applications for undergraduate admission, according to a statement on Jan. 6. Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, said in a statement on Jan. 10 that 30,605 students, the most ever, sought undergraduate admission.

Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire; the University of Chicago; Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge; and Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, also received record numbers of undergraduate applications, according to statements this month.

The percentage of students applying to 7 or more colleges almost doubled to 23 percent in 2009 from 12 percent a decade earlier, according the Cooperative Institutional Research Program’s Freshman Survey. Each year, about 500,000 students participate in the survey, administered by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Hedging Bets

As colleges receive more applications, the admit rates go down, and students are hedging their bets by applying to more schools, said Linda DeAngelo, assistant director for research at the Institute. The ease of applying online has also increased the number of applications, she said.

Harvard’s record total may be attributed to the university’s new school of engineering and applied science, the ease of applying online and financial-aid policies, Fitzsimmons said in the statement.

In 2007, Harvard said that most families making $180,000 a year or less would pay no more than 10 percent of their income toward college costs. The college is free to students whose families earn $60,000 or less in annual income.

The cost to attend Harvard for the 2010-2011 academic year is $50,724, according to the university. Harvard was established in 1636. About 6,650 undergraduates are among the total of about 21,000 students, said Jeff Neal, a spokesman.

Harvard counts among its alumni Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, both graduates of the university’s law school.

Bloomberg 15 Jan 2011

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Early Apps & Common App: The Race for Class of 2015 is on!

Ace! NewsFlash
 

Pulling an All-Nighter for the College Application

Cree Bautista was the first high school student to submit a Common Application to his first choice, N.Y.U., early on Aug. 1.

Cree Bautista’s application for next year’s freshman class at New York University isn’t due until Jan. 1, but Cree, an incoming high school senior from Pflugerville, Tex., was not taking any chances.

The Common Application is the passport to more than 400 colleges and universities.

For the essay, Cree Bautista drew on an earlier paper he wrote, “It’s Not a Phase.”

Just after 12:01 a.m. on Aug. 1 — when this year’s version of the Common Application, the passport to N.Y.U. and more than 400 other institutions, was first posted on the Web — Cree sat down at the computer in his parents’ bedroom and began filling out the form. The room was dark, because they were sleeping.

After listing his extracurricular activities (including cross country and show choir), tallying his Advanced Placement courses (seven) and putting a final polish on his essay, he pushed the “send” button. It was about 3:30 a.m. Never mind that he had never visited New York, let alone New York University. This, he said, was his “dream school,” and he was determined “to be the first to apply.”

As it turned out, Cree, 17, was the first applicant for the class of 2015, not just at N.Y.U. but to any institution that accepts the Common App, including those of the Ivy League. By Tuesday he had plenty of company: Nearly 1,000 applications had been filed by students to colleges —Harvard, Miami of Ohio and Vanderbilt, among many others — a nearly fourfold increase over the comparable period last year.

But as more students each year seek to get the earliest possible jump on the nerve-racking process of applying to college, as if they were securing tickets to a soon-to-be-sold-out rock concert, the deans of admission at N.Y.U. and elsewhere are sounding a cautionary note. They say that there is no reason to apply five months in advance, let alone two, and that they are far more inclined to put a premium on thoughtfulness and contemplation than speed.

Asked when a member of his staff might first see Cree’s application, Shawn Abbott, assistant vice president for undergraduate admissions at N.Y.U., said it would probably not be until mid-October at the earliest. “We won’t even download it until months from now,” Mr. Abbott said. “It’s not a horse race.”

While Cree is applying to N.Y.U. in the regular-decision round, several deans said Mr. Abbott’s plea for deliberation and patience was also good advice for those applying to selective colleges through their early application programs.

For example, the deadline for students to file early-action applications to the University of Michigan — which is accepting the Common Application for the first time this year — is Nov. 1. Asked if filing well in advance of that deadline would give an applicant a leg up, Ted Spencer, the longtime executive director of undergraduate admissions at Michigan, said no. “As long as you pay attention to the deadline, you’re going to be in good shape,” Mr. Spencer said.

Rob Killion, executive director of the Common Application, said he was particularly unnerved by the flood of early submissions through the organization’s Web site because he feared that students were rushing their essays. (This year’s Common Application was actually posted several weeks later than last year’s — not as a prod to get applicants to file later, but instead to allow high schools extra time to send final documents before the new year begins.)

Cree said he felt he was as ready as he would ever be. He said the essay that he submitted in answer to the application’s array of broad questions — including “Discuss some issue of personal, local, national or international concern and its importance to you” — was actually drawn from a paper he worked on last semester in his junior-year English class.

Titled “It’s Not a Phase,” his essay begins: “I grew up in the same neighborhood, in the same house, in the same bedroom, for 10 years. Throughout that decade, I grew into the person I am today, changing who I thought I was just about every five seconds. As I came to terms with what was on the inside, my parents came to realize that no matter what, I was still their son.”

Cree, who hopes to study music at N.Y.U., will not have his application considered until his teachers have submitted their recommendations, his school has sent along his grades and the College Board has sent an official record of his SAT scores. But Mr. Abbott of N.Y.U. — who spoke only in general about early filers, and not Cree in particular — said he hoped that other students would wait to file their applications until they have actually begun their senior years, and can let the colleges know how things are going so far, whether in class or out.

Cree, whose parents are both teachers and who hopes to also apply to three Texas colleges that have not yet posted their applications, said he was just glad to have this one done and out of the way. After essentially pulling an all-nighter, he was calm and fell immediately asleep.  “I was exhausted,” he said. “I just kind of collapsed.”

A version of this article appeared in print on August 11, 2010, on page A10 of the New York Times.

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Columbia, Michigan & a German university accept Common App

Ace! NewsFlash

Columbia, Michigan and Connecticut Among 25 Colleges to Add Common Application

The Common Application Web site

Students applying to Columbia, the University of Michigan, the University of Connecticut and 22 other institutions in the next admissions season will, for the first time, be able to use the Common Application.

Rob Killion, executive director of Common Application Inc., the nonprofit organization that produces the form, said in an e-mail message that the new additions would bring the total of participating institutions to 414. The next version of the Common Application, which has spared many recent applicants the chore of composing original essays for every institution they apply to, will be available Aug. 1.

In a statement, Jessica Marinaccio, dean of undergraduate admissions at Columbia, said that adding the Common Application would “make applying to Columbia more accessible to students from every background.” She added:

“We recognize the anxiety students and families feel throughout the admissions process, and hope that the standardized nature of the Common Application will make applying easier, more convenient and less stressful for students and the counselors and teachers who support them.”

Still, for all the paperwork it saves students, the Common Application is also believed to have contributed to the arms race mentality among highly selective colleges and their applicants. Ms. Marinaccio noted in her statement that Columbia had received more than 26,000 applications for this fall’s freshman class at Columbia College and the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, the most ever.

Among Ivy League institutions, Columbia is the last to add the Common Application.

Here, as provided by Mr. Killion, are the 25 colleges adding the Common Application:

Alaska Pacific University

Albany College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences

Columbia University

Concordia University in Portland, Ore.

DePaul University

Fontbonne University in St. Louis

Husson University in Bangor, Me.

Jacobs University, Bremen in Germany (the first international member)

Johnson State College in Vermont

Maritime College (SUNY)

Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh, N.Y.

Morrisville State College (State University of New York)

Otterbein College in Westerville, Ohio

School of the Art Institute of Chicago

St. John’s College in Annapolis, Md., and Santa Fe, N.M.

Stephens College in Columbia, Mo.

SUNY Potsdam

University of Maryland, Baltimore County

University of Connecticut

University of Michigan

University of North Carolina, Asheville

Western New England College

Westmont College in Santa Barbara, Calif.

Xavier University of Louisiana

Yeshiva University

At this point, Mr. Killion said, the colleges with national profiles that do not accept the Common Application are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgetown, the University of Southern California and Howard.

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