Getting into the right college is more stressful and competitive than ever before.
The frenzy is happening all over the United States at this very moment.
Parents are poring over brochures showing pictures of students in front of lush trees. High schoolers are plotting which activities are the “right” ones to enroll in. Admissions officials in the nation’s top colleges are beginning to court not just high school seniors to fill their next class, but also juniors, sophomores and freshmen -- even reaching out to some middle school students.
This “right college” frenzy is responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for companies in college preparation and college admissions, and it’s shortening the childhood of our nation’s teenagers. It’s not sustainable, either.
“It’s not a pretty picture in the ecology overall,” says Mitchell Stevens, professor at Stanford and author of "Creating a Class: College Admissions and the Education of Elites." “It’s a hyper competitiveness for a small number of schools and a maldistribution of seats in the more open access. There are 5,000 colleges and universities in the United States; there are plenty of seats in the system overall. There are just a limited number of seats at the top.”
Because of many changing factors over the past decades, the children of the baby boomers entered a college landscape drastically different from the one their parents saw. The group of college-going students is larger than in the past and experiences more stress and a longer timeline for college admissions. While some see the payoff in the form of increased salaries after graduation, many never finish college or, if they do finish, they don’t obtain the skills needed for employment, and are saddled with loans they can’t pay. These factors have led to a crescendo over the last decade that is about to change the landscape of college admissions -- again.
More Students
There are more students considering college than in the past. And that means more people to compete with and more students to choose from.
From population increases seen with the children of the baby boomers, there are more college-aged students in general. Between 2000 to 2010, the population of 18 to 24 year olds surged from 27 million to well over 30 million, a 13 percent increase. By contrast, the increase in children aged 5 to 17 was 1.6 percent. The greatest increase of any age group was for the aging baby boomers -- 31.5 percent for ages 45 to 65 -- who are the parents of these college-aged students.
There are also more students considering college. Between 1980 and 2012, the overall college enrollment rates increased from 26 percent to 41 percent. More students now see college as an option. Some will apply and are accepted into selective colleges (those that accept less than half of applicants) but the increase has also been driven by for-profit colleges. More students are also eligible to consider college. The percentage of young women and men with at least a high school education increased from 79 to 84 percent for women and from 75 to 81 percent for men from 1980 to 2012.
In addition, greater gender and racial acceptance over the last decades has meant colleges are more heavily recruiting diverse students. Although percentages of college enrollment have increased for all racial groups, Hispanic and blacks have seen the highest increases.
“When I went to University of Georgia, there were maybe 20 African American students,” says Carol Wingard a retired AP teacher. “It was almost an all-white Southern college and it’s changed drastically to recruit students from all states and all races.”
International students come to the United States seeking undergraduate degrees more, and that means American undergrads face more competition from home and abroad. At Emory University, international first-year enrollment has increased from 1 percent in 1997 to 15 percent currently, according to Scott Allen, senior associate dean of undergraduate admissions.
But even domestic students have more choices now than in the past, thanks to easier-to-access airline transportation and telecommunications which make parents more willing to send their kids across state lines. Students apply to more colleges now, because of this and because of the common application, which has made applying to multiple schools as simple as a few more clicks.
“Universities have wider audiences, greater constituencies than three decades ago,” Allen says. “So what I think has improved is most admissions offices’ ability to truly practice holistic review and to understand everything about a person’s background to know how a seventeen or eighteen year old arrived where they are today.”
More Stress
The increase in students and applications continue to push acceptance rates lower and lower. In 1988, the acceptance rate for Columbia University in New York was 65 percent, according to U.S. News & World Report’s Best Colleges edition that year. In our most recent guide, 33,531 applied to Columbia and 2,311 were accepted. That’s not even 7 percent.
The same change happened across the board for selective schools. Yale’s acceptance rate went from 17 percent to almost 7 percent. University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill went from 33 percent to almost 27 percent. University of Michigan went from 52 percent to 33 percent. University of Alabama went from 77 percent to 56 percent.
Met with an influx in applications, selective colleges have refined the way they look at students. In the 1980s and before, colleges looked primarily at scores on standardized tests and grade point averages. Now, anything about a student is fair game, since so many have qualifying SAT/ACT scores and grades.
Students do more SAT or ACT preparation in the form of courses, books and tutoring. They take more AP courses than ever before and score higher on them. They spend more time on homework.
“Being a teenager is simply different than it was 20 years ago,” Stevens says. “Young people are expected to be measurably productive in a way that we only expected adults to be.”
But aside from the standardized testing, rigorous coursework and grades, students must develop their personality’s unique dimensions, if they want to get into the elite schools. They need to speak French, play the sitar, volunteer to clean up their local rivers, play on the school’s soccer team and hold a position in the student government, on top of high grades and test scores. These attitudes trickle down to the entire system.
“There seems to be a perception that there are ‘the right’ courses to take, ‘the right’ activities to be involved in, and ‘the right’ colleges/universities to attend,” says Sharon Sevier, a school counselor in Missouri. “I’m not sure who determined all of those things that are ‘right,’ but you hear it in conversations with students and parents. Those situations can really impact a student’s stress level and make high school a lot more competitive than it needs to be.”
They also need a fantastic application, which has pushed the age when a student needs to start thinking about college earlier and earlier. At Columbus High school in Georgia, where Wingard taught, students projects on college in the ninth grade. Essays much be interesting enough to set the student apart and are often worked on in class through multiple revisions. Teacher recommendations, too, aren’t the form letters that were once standard. To get into elite schools, students now need highly personal letters, according to Wingard.
The high stakes environment has a great affect on students. Sevier says she sees more students with anxiety issues, depression and other significant mental health issues in her office. This added stress and anxiety affects students and parents that aren’t gunning for the ivy leagues. The environment of college admissions has led to higher confusion, which means stress for parents and students.
“The problem is that most parents and students have come to believe that the process of applying to college in the United States generally is like applying to Harvard,” says Claudia Buchmann, a Sociology Professor at Ohio State University. “For those kids, the unfortunate aspect of all the talk and all the media discussion of the rising competitiveness of getting into this very small group of colleges and universities in this country is driving this frenzy, much of which is unnecessary.
More Status
Where a student goes to college is a lot more important in American society than it was decades ago. Previously, a college degree was something to be proud of, and while that certainly is still the case, where a student got the degree is more important than ever -- to employers, strangers and potential spouses.
“People are looking at colleges now and they are saying, ‘Not all colleges are the same,’” says Richard Vedder, an expert on the economics of higher education. “A generation or two ago people just thought, ‘He’s a college graduate’ or ‘She’s a college graduate.’ That’s a special person. Now, degrees are pretty commonplace so a person just because they’re a college graduate isn’t so special anymore. The special people today are those who went to the elite private schools or the very top public flagship universities.”
Some of the competition can likely be attributed to the growing options for college and the need to separate elite from average students now that a college degree isn’t rare. Americans are more attuned now to where a college ranks on the scale of prestige. There is a lot more information on the Internet about colleges and data released on SAT, GPA and after college earnings, mean comparing schools is easier. Our rankings and other like them have likely played a rule, according to several sources interviewed.
“The seats in these small numbers of schools have become more coveted as parents increasingly see ongoing economic uncertainty for young people who would like to be in the upper middle class,” says Stevens. “Ironic, but it’s harder to be affluent in America today than it was 20 years ago. Parents understand that their children are going to be changing jobs more over the course of their lives, entering and leaving perhaps multiple marriages. They want to prepare their children for multiple competitions over the course of their adult life and a degree from a named institution is an asset that young people can take with them from job to job and from marriage to marriage.”
New research has shown not only college completion but also college prestige is now important in selecting mates. Not just women, but also men, seek educational parity in their partners.
More Cost
Another drive of the stress surrounding college admissions is no doubt the cost of college. After discounting for grants, the cost of college has increased for families at all income levels. For those with high income, the cost for one year of college increased from $20,000 to $26,000 from the 1999-2000 year to the 2011-2012 year. For low income families it increased from $11,000 to $14,000. The average net price for all groups increased by 24 percent in that period. The cost of a college education is 12 times higher than it was a generation ago, according to Mother Jones.
In response to the rising cost of college, more students take out loans, and those taking out loans borrow more money. In 2011-2012, about 68 percent of young adult undergraduate students in their fourth year of college or above received loans, up from half in 1989-1990. The average amount of those loans was $25,4000, compared to $14,700 in 1989-1990.
“Eighteen year olds may be spending $250,000 on their undergraduate education,” says Seppy Basili, Vice President of College Admissions and K-12 Programs at Kaplan Test Prep. “This is a really big investment. Taking it seriously is part of the process of growing up and making good decisions.”
Part of planning, is researching. Parents want to know they, and their students, are getting the best education for the money and can turn to online resources to help decide between colleges.
“I also think that the public is more educated on college and wants to educate themselves on this process because the cost of college is going up a lot and our rankings and information have been part of how they educate themselves,” says Bob Morse, director of data research for U.S. News & World Report. “They are interested if they are spending all this money on knowing the relative standing of one school to another.”
Less than half of students are actually benefiting from the increased stress and financial burden of the college process though. Only 59 percent of first-time students at 4-year institutions complete their degrees within six years, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Of those that make it to graduation, one-in-three hold a job that does not require a college degree, according to a new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Recent college graduates are more likely to be unemployment and underemployment for recent graduates has risen since 2001.
The rising financial and psychological cost of college, coupled with declining benefits and the student loan crisis make for a bubble in college admissions. And some point to the slower rise of college enrollment as a sign that the cracks are beginning to show.
“College graduates aren’t getting jobs, aren’t getting good jobs,” Vedder says. “For those students the burden of college, which they have already paid for in most cases with student loans, is still with them, yet the benefits of going to college don't appear to be terribly real.”
Despite universities own lack of transparency with these statistics, Vedder says people are beginning to wise up. State schools and small liberal arts colleges that aren’t as selective are going to be hit the worst, along with historically black colleges. These schools don’t have the endowments or prestige of the top 100 schools in the system, yet often carry similar price tags.
Prices have increased across the board for colleges, as they lower teaching loads, pay administrators more, higher more administrators, and build more luxury buildings and accommodations. A recent article in The New York Times reported on the rise of lazy rivers, water theme parks and “dive-in movies” at college campuses. These facilities come with multi-million dollar price tags. Vedder calls it an “academic bombs race,” motivated in part by the federal student loan program.
“We got carried away and the prices got out of line,” he says. “I don’t think the beneficiaries of these student loans programs were the students, I think they were the colleges, who were taking advantage of these loans to raise their fees thinking that the kids will just pay it. It’s worked. It’s worked until very recently and now that’s starting to change.
Although most would probably say, at its face, educating more students is a good thing, not all agree. Steve Schneider, a counselor at Sheboygan South High School in Wisconsin says he has been working to encourage less of his students to go to college and more to get the tech skills needed in the community, which come at a cheaper cost and result in viable careers. He points to America’s gap in STEM skills as another result.
“We have to battle the perception of I want something better for my kid than to work in a factory,” says Steve Schneider, a school counselor in Wisconsin. “Factories aren’t what they used to be and it’s a very viable career in our area. There are some perceptions that are driving students in a direction they may not need to go.”
Part of the blame for high college dropout rates and underemployment rests on the shoulders of high schools, he says, which have used a “lazy approach” to push all students toward college.
“As we start to look at what’s almost amounting to a national crisis of student debt, if we don’t change what we are doing on a high school level and continue to say, ‘Our job is just to make sure you are highly educated so you can get into any college you want,’” Schneider says. “If that’s our goal and that’s kind of what we’ve operated under for the last 25 years, we see what the result of that is.”
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