Admission stats revisited

Since I posted some scary news about college admissions, I'm happy to point to a less alarmist review of the same news. Kevin Carey, a contributor to The Quick and the Ed, takes a closer look at why the rising tide of college applications and the every diminishing admit rates are nothing to fear in this American Prospect article: Admission Impossible?

Every spring, the media send a bolt of fear into the heart of the upper middle class. The message is clear: 'Your children are never getting into a good college.'

As Ivy League universities report -- once again -- that admissions rates have fallen to record lows, newspapers rush to publish stories documenting the increasingly 'frenzied' (variants: 'frantic,' 'brutal') competition among students vying for a coveted slot in an elite school. The stock characters include the tearful student -- dreams crushed under an avalanche of rejection letters -- the angry parent, the frenzied guidance counselor, and the college admissions official or other expert who notes with grateful wonder, 'If I had to apply to my alma mater today, I couldn't get in.'

There's just one problem: it's not true. The declining odds of getting into an elite college are mostly a statistical mirage, caused by confusion between college applicants and college applications.

His analysis makes sense to me, and fits with comments others made to me after I posted the scary news. Unfortunately, I doubt the general hysteria surrounding the college admissions process will subside any time soon, so students will continue to make ever more applications, which will drive the scary numbers to ever scarier extremes.