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According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, college enrollment is down 8% since the start of the pandemic. But in a seemingly contradictory stat, the Common App is reporting that early applications on its platform have jumped 22% since pre-pandemic levels. And most of these apps? They are coming from kids in the nation’s wealthiest zip codes. So, fewer students in college, but more college apps? This is a case of kids applying to more colleges than in the past, a good decision in an era when college admissions are getting hard to predict.
We’ve advised our clients to increase the number of colleges they are applying to
At Union Hall Advising, we’ve advised our clients to increase the number of colleges they are applying to in order to keep pace with the increasing number of applications that top colleges are receiving. This makes us part of the problem, we know, but there are simply too many unknown variables in this second year of test-optional admissions. In fact, we’ve done away with our firm’s entire pricing model, which is based on the number of applications we help students with, and have gone to an “unlimited” number of applications per student (which we will continue with next year even at the same rates). Our only limiter is how many quality applications a student can submit. We’d rather they focus on fewer good ones than many so-so ones. This has meant more work for our advisors, and more essays for our students to write, but we believe that applying broadly is the most prudent way to approach competitive college admissions in the current environment. Our expectation is that this new policy will continue for at least the next two years. And it’s also our suspicion that high school counselors will not like this strategy and continue recommending that kids apply to just 7-10 schools. This may still be the right number if you are not applying to a slate of competitive colleges. But if you’re looking to crack an elite college, you’ve simply got to have more applications in the works.
