The Application Bubble

First, it was the “secret shoppers,” students who stealthily visited our college Web sites, learned what they needed to know and applied to the school without traditionally inquiring. Admissions reports showed a drastic decline in inquiries with steady increases in applications. Admissions marketers were quick to take credit thinking their efforts had led to a more targeted inquiry pool thus increasing inquiry-to-application yields. They were wrong.

Now there’s a new gremlin wreaking havoc on the admissions funnel. If you haven’t heard the news, college applications are up  all over the country, many by double, even triple, digits. And just like the secret shopper story, people are lining up to take credit for it. I hate to be the one to burst the bubble, but the recent surge in applications has nothing to do with early action deadlines or efforts to build relationships with prospective students. The answer is much simpler than that.

Two phenomena have come together to produce the perfect storm of application proliferation — the largest high school graduating class in U.S. history and a record number of high school seniors applying to multiple schools using online applications. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates 3.3 million high school diplomas will be granted this year. And the National Association of College Admissions Counseling reported that freshmen applying to seven or more schools increased 18 percent in fall 2006 and this trend is continuing as schools adopt universal Web applications, waive online application fees and eliminate paper applications.

Think about it. There aren’t enough new students out there to account for so many schools having double and triple-digit increases in their application numbers. Census data shows that an estimated 3.2 million high school diplomas were granted in the 2006-2007 school year versus an estimated 3.3 million for 2007-2008. Admittedly, I was excited to hear that our applications were up 32 percent this year. But when I heard that our competitors were experiencing even larger increases — some as high as 100 percent — my excitement turned to suspicion. The reality is, students are cross-applying.

This represents a huge challenge for admissions officers. With so many students cross applying, the likelihood of accepting the same top students will increase dramatically. Students can also apply to more safety schools than ever before, throwing a wrench into the whole admissions process that could trickle down into the state school systems.  At the end of the day, there may be more losers than winners this admissions season.