S3E25: College Admissions Have Changed. But How?
Today's question of the week: “How have you seen college admissions changing recently?"
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Today's question of the week: “How have you seen college admissions changing recently?"
SHOW NOTES
Episode Summary:
In this episode of the Admittedly Podcast, host Thomas Caleel explores the evolving college admissions landscape, comparing the challenges of today’s process with that of previous generations. He offers insights into how applicant expectations, the applicant pool, and the criteria for top schools have changed, and answers some questions from listeners!
Key Takeaways:
The Shifting Admissions Landscape: While admit rates have decreased, the fundamental traits that colleges value—intellectual curiosity, academic achievement, and community involvement—have remained constant.
The Dangers of Over-Scheduling: More isn’t always better. Thomas discusses the importance of choosing a few activities that truly matter to you, rather than overloading on extracurriculars for the sake of impressing admissions officers.
Quality Over Quantity: Schools prefer applicants who show passion and depth in one or two areas, rather than those who scatter their focus across numerous activities.
Parental Support: Parents can play a crucial role by encouraging their children to pursue their true interests and avoid the pressure of “keeping up” with peers.
Authenticity in the Application Process: Schools are looking for genuine applicants, not overly-polished versions of what they think admissions officers want. Be true to yourself and let your story shine through.
Conclusion:
Navigating the college admissions process can be daunting, but it’s about finding balance, focusing on what truly matters, and being authentic. Embrace the journey, trust in your unique story, and aim for colleges that truly align with who you are.
Have your own question you want answered? Leave us a comment on social media @admittedlyco for a chance to be featured!
About Thomas Caleel:
Thomas is an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania. After earning his MBA at the Wharton School of Business in 2003, he moved to Silicon Valley. For three years, he was Director of MBA Admissions and Financial Aid at Wharton. He worked closely with admissions professionals, students, alumni, and professors to curate the best possible MBA class. Thomas has been an entrepreneur his entire life in the fields of finance, agriculture, wellness, and sporting goods. As the founder of Global Education Opportunities LLC, he works as a high-level admissions advisor to help families and students achieve their education goals. Thomas started the podcast Admittedly because he is passionate about demystifying the application process for all parents and applicants.
Related Links
Apply to be a guest: www.thomascaleel.com/apply-for-podcast
Follow Admittedly on Social Media
TikTok: @admittedlypodcast
Instagram: @admittedlypodcast
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Hello, and welcome to The Admittedly Podcast. I'm your host, Thomas Caleel, and today we're going to talk to the parents. We're going to talk about something that's been coming up a lot in my emails and my DMs, and it's something too I hear from students, and that's admissions is so much different today than it was when parents applied.
And I'm going to put myself in this bucket because I'm a parent. You know, I matriculated into the University of Pennsylvania way, way back in 1990, and things were much different then, but also very much the same. And I think that this gets lost a lot when we're comparing time eras because we're not necessarily comparing apples to apples here.
And I want to talk about that. And I want to talk about how, yes, on the surface, the numbers look much different, but really things were always very competitive at the top schools. But there are a lot of factors that have changed around that.
So let's kind of jump in, and then I'm going to address some questions that parents have been asking because I know a lot of us as parents are concerned about our children. We want the best for them, we love them, we want to support them. And unfortunately, a lot of parents these days don't know how to support them in an admissions process that is changing, evolving, and, again, very different from when we applied.
So let's start by just looking at a little bit of data here. And let's look at Harvard. So, Harvard in the 1980s was running an admissions rate around 16 to 18%. In 1990, when I applied, they had 1,990 admitted students, an admissions rate of 14.3%, and that was about 12,000 applications.
Last year, they had 43,000 applications and an admissions rate under 5%. And so, you know, when people look at that, they say, okay, it was very clear that in the 90s, it was really easy. Mom, Dad, you know, appreciate that you went to good schools, but things are different now—you just don't get it.
And certainly, by 2015, Harvard had tightened its admissions rate down to 6.2%, and it's just continued to fall from there.
So, what is going on here? Well, there's a lot of things, and let's start with the mechanics, right?
And why do I talk about the mechanics? Well, mechanics are very, very different. So, if you go back in time to the 1990s, 1980s, when a lot of parents were applying to college, we didn't have the internet. We didn't have all the information that's available today.
So, how did you find out about schools? Well, if you were lucky enough to be at a school where colleges came and did a college fair, they did a college fair in your city, and they advertised it, you could go to that, and you would, you know, kind of rub elbows with a bunch of people and fight for some attention. And you're hoping at that point, hey, you know, get noticed, get your question answered.
But in general, most of us would go to the library. And I say the library because, if you went to the bookstore, these books were very, very expensive. And these big, thick volumes on very, very thin paper and very, very tiny type—you'd go in, and you'd look up the, you know, particular school, and it would tell you their SAT range, their GPA range, and something interesting about the school, a couple of facts. And it was just this Bible, if you would, of schools.
And it was something that you really had to be diligent about. At that point, we relied a lot on our college counselors at school to kind of give us directions, tell us what schools looked like. If you were fortunate enough to be able to go and visit schools, you know, that was a huge plus, but a lot of people weren't even able to do that.
And so, when you finally decided, okay, I want to see these schools—and keep in mind, if you did visit the school, you wanted to do a tour—what'd you have to do? You had to pick up the phone, you had to call, you had to play, you know, see if you could contact the receptionist. If you did figure out when you were going to be there, was there a tour available? It’s a lot of back and forth.
And then what you would do is, you’d tell them your name and address, or you would mail in a card and they would send you back a book. It was, you know, like a brochure. And the brochure would have some glossy pictures of students and green lawns and ivy-covered halls, and it would have the application actually inside it. You would tear the application out, and you would either handwrite it, or you would put it in your typewriter, and you would peck away and fill in all the information, hand-type out the transcript report, and hand-type out the recommendation reports.
And I mean, I don't even know how our teachers did it because they had to do a recommendation for each student, for each school. And the result was, there's just a lot of effort in that. So most students would apply to maybe four or five schools, right?
And so, when you look at that, and you say, okay, when you think about 12,000 applications in that environment where people were having to handwrite, use the liquid paper for parents that remember that, or whiteout, and, you know, write that out—it was a lot of work. It was a staggering amount of work. And so, in doing that, you necessarily constrained your applications.
But even so, 12,000 applications in that environment is a lot. Certainly now, with the Common App, it's much easier for students to just, you know, shotgun-approach schools. And so that's where we're seeing. You know, last year, Harvard had 43,000 applications.
So certainly, you know, part of the decline in admit rates has to do with the fact that there's a much, much larger number of applicants. Because really, the number of admitted students hasn't changed. These Ivy League schools, you know, highly competitive schools, they're not adding more capacity. It's very difficult to do that. There are geographic concerns, and in most cases, they can't expand.
It's very difficult to hire and retain the best faculty to keep that quality level consistent. And they don't honestly really have a lot of incentive to do that. Doing that is dilutive to their brand. It's dilutive to the exclusivity. And they'd rather focus on being even better with the resources that they have for the students that they have.
But let's go back to the dark old days, dark old days when dinosaurs roamed the earth. So you would send in this, you would send in this application. You'd organize, you'd get your recommendation letters out. And there were a lot of self-addressed stamped envelopes going on.
And you would also ideally do an interview. And then many, many months later, you would stand anxiously by the mailbox, and you would get either a thin letter—and you knew what that meant—or you'd get a nice, big fat letter, and you knew, like, "Ooh, there's good news in here."
And I know that sounds crazy to students today, but that was kind of the way it worked, right? There was no email, there was no instant feedback, and there was flexibility in the system.
You know, I talked to a lot of international students. International students, their parents kind of, you know, came over to a lower-ranked university, got established, got their, you know, their feet under them, and then wrote to, you know, an Ivy or a really good school, and said, "Hey, I'm here from this country. I'm studying this. Here are my grades." And they sometimes would just transfer right over.
So certainly, things were very different. But does it mean that they were easier?
And a lot of people point to the fact that, you know, admissions rates were higher. You know, average GPA for some of these schools was like a 3.5–3.6, average SAT was like 1450, and on the surface, it looks like, yes, things were much easier.
But I want to put a couple of things in context. Okay, first of all, when we look at the applicant pool, right, it was a very, very different applicant pool. So what you had were, yes, you had fewer applicants. But in order to apply, you had to be diligent, you had to be focused, you had to be prepared, right.
There was a lot less outreach to underrepresented groups, a lot less outreach to women, other, you know, high schools outside of the main feeder schools. There was not the pipeline that schools have worked so hard to build today to increase all aspects of diversity, socioeconomic diversity. And that's actually important too, because if you were low-income or, you know, like middle class, and you looked at the tuition of a Harvard, Stanford, MIT, et cetera, you might say, "Hey, I can't afford that."
And they didn't have—the schools didn't have—the financial aid resources in place at that time. They weren't really trying to go for socioeconomic diversity. It was great if it happened, but it wasn't something that they had prioritized in the way that they do now.
And so, yes, you had a smaller applicant pool, but it was a very competitive applicant pool.
Right now, people are going to come at me and they're going to say, "Well, what about athletes? What about legacies? What about wealthy donors?" And yes, certainly that has changed and tightened up over the years. And I'm not going to be the one to argue that, you know, in the '80s and '90s, having wealthy parents or being a legacy, a child of a donor—that was important, and the schools prioritized that. That was something that was certainly meaningful.
And that has abated quite a bit. And has it gone away completely? No. But some schools, like MIT, for example, have completely disregarded legacy status. Stanford, next year, under the new California law, legally cannot consider legacy status, and so things are certainly changing.But it wasn't like you could do nothing and have a 3.0 GPA and, you know, just walk into Yale. You still had highly intelligent people that were doing really interesting things.
Now, did they do all the things that students these days are doing? No. But it was much harder to do things, right. And so the opportunities for students back in the '80s and '90s to do competitions, to do internships, were much, much different.
And so, at a core level, the universities are still looking for the same things, right? What are they looking for? They were looking for intellectual curiosity. They were looking for evidence of academic achievement. They were looking for involvement in your community.
And there was certainly a difference back then where colleges were saying, "We want well-rounded people. We want students who do community service and sports and do well in school and are involved in some clubs."
And so everybody kind of scrambled to put together this portfolio, but it wasn't this kind of death race that we have now, that students have created—this like "more is better."
And if you follow me, you know that more is not always more. More is often less.
But you were looking at something very different, whereas now schools have shifted to less well-rounded and more just deeply interested and passionate about one or two things because they find that that approach yields deeply interesting, deeply curious humans that can then go to college and be exposed to other deeply curious humans and expand from there.
So what I'm trying to say, I think, is it's a little bit of yes and a little bit of no when you ask, "Are things different?"
Yes, they're different because, you know, certainly admit rates have tightened and students are doing more and more and more advanced things to be successful.
But also no, because at their core, it was a much more focused group of applicants, right? And it was something that they still were looking for the same thing—it was just evidenced differently.
So parents, as you're looking at this application process, I get it. When we're shaking our heads, you're not really sure how to help. That you're here is a really good step.
I would encourage you to have your children follow me on socials at Admittedly Co. Listen to the podcast. I know the podcasts are not really a thing for most high school students right now, so I wouldn't push that too hard, but there's a lot of information here that can help you best manage this process.
Because, you know, we're not experts in this anymore. I am because this is what I do. But when I talk to friends of mine, you know, they understand things have changed, and they're not really sure where to go, because there's so much contradictory advice out there. So just remember that, you know, working hard, being curious, getting good grades—these are all kind of basic things that have translated across time. And now how you evidence that is really what has changed.
Let's stay with this theme. And what I want to do now is talk about some questions and comments we've gotten from parents—questions and comments on this topic and things that really kind of resonated with me as a parent.
So, this is a great one: "There's so much stress on my really high-achieving kids that's not coming from me or my husband. I don't like it. It's hard to enjoy life if every minute is dedicated in some way to reaching the top of the heap. My question is, how can we dial this back a notch or two? It's not healthy, and there's less time for thinking with so much doing."
And yes, absolutely, could not agree more. There is a lot of stress, and ironically, the stress is coming from the students. It's coming from their peers a lot of times. Yes, it's coming from parents, and it comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of the evaluation admissions process.
What do I mean by that? What I mean is that a lot of people think that doing more is better when it comes to admissions, right? That that school only likes these frantic, over-scheduled kids that are just never slowing down. And nothing could be further from the truth, all right? And I talk about this a lot on podcasts, on socials—doing more is not always more. You want quality over quantity.
And so it's really important, by like sophomore year, you really need to step back and do a very kind of cold-eyed analysis of what you're involved in. Does this serve you? Does it interest you? Or are you just doing it to do it?
And if you're layering on activity after activity after activity at school, that's not helping you. That's contributing to burnout and unhappiness, and I'm a big believer in being able to pause and think and be intentional in your choices, right? But that also requires courage, and I've spoken about courage on this podcast before. It is not easy to go against the grain. It is not easy to say, "You know what? I'm not going to layer on 20 different things. I'm going to be very intentional and focus on two or three things and do them really, really well, because I care about these things and I love these things, and this is what motivates me, and I'm going to commit to that."
So what I would say is parents giving your students, giving your children permission to pursue their interest, giving them permission to not do what's expected of them by their peers or the people around them. And that is hard as a parent because, you know, we all stand in, you know, around at pickup, or we talk to other parents, and there's a lot of, you know, "Oh, what is your child doing? What is your child doing? My child's going to Yale over the summer," and all of this, right?
And so it takes courage to stand against that. But what I have found in my experience is the parents that do stand against that, the parents that do hold space for their child to pursue what they love, end up with the most interesting children, and they end up being the most successful in this process.
The other thing, too, is that a lot of this gets focused on colleges. It's the college's fault. The universities are what's driving this. And the answer is, no, not really, because the universities come out and they say, "Look, don't do more. Do better. Do right. You don't need this frantic hamster wheel of a high school experience." But the problem is, is that students—parents, a lot of parents—just don't listen. They don't believe it. They'd rather believe somebody on the internet, you know, who's anonymous or who graduated from that school and doesn't really have experience in admissions than an admissions officer.
And I always laugh about this, because when I was at—I mean, laugh kind of sadly—because when I was running admissions, MBA Admissions at the Wharton School, I would literally stand in front of an audience of hundreds and hundreds, sometimes thousands of people, and I would say, "I don't want there to be any mystery here. This is exactly the process that I implement in my office, how we review files." And I would have people stand up and say, "That's not true." And I have to scratch my head, because I said, "Well, okay, last I checked when I was in my office three days ago in Philadelphia, this is exactly what we were doing, and I did not get a notice that we've changed." But, you know, there's so much false information out there, so much misperception, and again, because it takes courage to stand against that, I can see where a lot of people fall into that trap. So don't feel bad if you're in that trap. It's not too late. You can take a stand and create space.
Next one: Why is there so much confusion? It feels like secrecy around admissions. They use very broad, meaningless terms to describe the admissions process, like, "holistic approach to reading essays." It feels like you're trying to solve the unsolvable math equation. What is the best way to find out exactly what a college is looking for?
But I love this question. It's a great question, because here's the thing, they aren't looking for anything specific. And that's what's so hard. That's what really frustrates people. And I get this, right? Admissions is a black box, because until you actually see the files, you have no idea what you're working with, right? And so there is no algorithm. There is no a plus b plus c divided by SAT score equals admissions, right? It really looks at the context of your accomplishments. Where are you coming from? What advantages or disadvantages did you have? What have you done with those opportunities? How have you achieved in school, outside of school? And they're not being evasive, they're not being secret, they're telling you right out. Look, we evaluate candidates holistically. There is no algorithm. We—yes, we look at the essays, but we look at the recommendations. We look at their attention to detail. We look at the courses they've taken, the grades that they've gotten, why they decided to do things, their extracurricular activities, involvement, leadership, intellectual curiosity, all of those things, right?
This is not like hiring for a company. If you're hiring a CPA, you want a CPA who's really, really good at being a CPA to work in your finance department, for example. And yes, you look at fit. You need to assess fit and culture compatibility, but you want somebody who's really, really good at their job. The problem with admissions is, when you're crafting a class, there are so many different metrics that you want to hit to create an effective class for a university, right? That you can't just say, "This is what we want," because you don't know what you want again until you see the applicant pool.
So I promise you this, the schools are not playing games with you. They're not trying to be difficult. They're not trying to complicate your life. They are telling you the truth; it's just not an easily digestible truth, and it's not a truth you know. Most people are very, very uncomfortable with uncertainty, and it's also frustrating. And I understand this, because you can do everything right—and I use the term "right" in quotes—and still not be admitted. There is an element of luck to this. There's an element to what you have is great, but it's not what the school needed for this class this year. And so I always tell people, right, don't take an admissions decision as an indictment or an endorsement of you and what you've done. If you got in, you worked hard, but you were lucky. If you did not get in, you probably worked hard and were unlucky, right? And getting that admissions letter is an amazing feeling. It in no way guarantees your success, and you've got a lot of hard work ahead of you.
Now, another person asked, you know: “I know you are focused on helping students get into elite colleges, but would you mind also addressing how your intent applies to students that aren't looking at the big IVs?” And I hear this a lot from parents. And here's the thing, right, as the pool of applicants has grown, the admissions rate at all levels of universities has decreased, right? And everything is getting more competitive. And so there really isn't, you know, there's just an article, I can't remember if it's New York Times or Wall Street Journal, the other day about University of Miami. And, you know, look, great school has been considered something of a safety for many, many years, but it's getting more and more and more competitive these days, and a lot of students that thought that they were just going to walk right in are getting denied. And so I always believe, listen, you need to understand what it's like to hit the highest marks and then adjust down from there. But you can't just adjust down too far, because then you're going to miss the mark. And it's also important to realize that it depends on the program that you're applying to, you know, if you want computer science or business, those are the two most competitive majors there are. And so any school, any university, State University, Ivy, that offers those that's going to be really hard to get into, you're not just going to cruise into, you know, UT, Austin McCombs School of Business just on a whim, you're going to have to fight for that place, right, just as hard, in some cases, as an Ivy plus, because it's an exceptional program with very, very high demand.
So aim high, do your best without burning yourself out. And I get that also. You know, balance has gone out the window, as teens are expected to be Nobel laureates for top schools. Again, that's not true, right? That is that what happens is it's a self-perpetuating feedback loop where students are creating this pressure on themselves. And I get it, I'm not. There's no condemnation here. And parents, you know, without knowing better, are kind of pushing this because they see their neighbor child who got in and they did all these things. But really what matters here is stepping back and being authentic in this process, and being able to tell your story and differentiate yourself because you are breathing, because you have balance, because you are self-aware, and you're taking that time to focus and center and do things intentionally and well.
So parents, you know, yes, things have changed. No, they haven't changed. At the same time, and also, I hope, through the questions, I've been able to answer some of your concerns about your children. Because we love our children, want to push our children, want to build good habits for success, but the same time, we want to protect them from burnout. We don't want them miserable. We don't want them stressed all the time. We do want them to enjoy their childhood. You know, I hear this all the time on socials that what a terrible human I am, and I want to rob these poor children of their childhood. And I think that, in my experience, these things can coexist, right?
The successful students that I work with over the years have been happy. They have been involved. They're doing really good things. Are they stressed sometimes? Absolutely. Why? Because they're high achievers and they're working hard and they're challenging themselves on every metric. But they also know how to disengage. They know how to be good friends. They know how to be good family members, brothers. Sisters, sons, daughters, right? And they have some of that balance. And look, over time in high school, in your high school career, you're going to be ultra-focused, you're going to be stressed, you're going to be time-strapped, and that's preparation for college, right? I can't give you a happy answer to that, but I think that always being stressed and always scrambling invites questions around, am I doing this right? Am I doing this the way that I should be? And I think the answer there is probably no, and we need to take a very careful look at what we're involved in, why we're involved in it, how we're involved in it.
Do some cutting, do some pairing, right? So when you think about if any of you garden, right, sometimes you have to pair the tree to help it grow to its full potential. So paring back some of the things that are no longer serving you can really yield much better results.
We've got lots more to say on this. I really, really want your feedback. Email me, contact me on socials, @admittedlyco would love your feedback. Would love to know what's on your mind, parents and students, and let's continue this conversation and have a really successful year ahead of us. Thank you.
