Distinctive

By Victoria Tillson Evans, Ph.D.

Have you ever failed at something that you were pretty confident you’d achieve? Maybe it was your sports team losing to the worst team in the league, or maybe it was not being able to figure out a server’s tip, even though you were planning to leave 20% on a $100 bill. Sometimes the world just doesn’t go your way for seemingly inexplicable reasons, and off days are just part of life. While we’re sure you do everything you can to avoid such circumstances, they’re often completely out of your hands. We’re sad to say that we’re starting to see more of this in the realm of college admissions, too.

For years, everyone has developed a list of Reach, Target, and Likely Schools, believing that they should not only aspire and aim for the middle, but also create a safety net. It now appears that that safety net is fraying. Colleges are now deferring, wait-listing, or outright rejecting students with better-than-average stats. While this seems counterintuitive, and it is certainly ego deflating, there are four main causes for this increasing phenomenon, which you should be aware of.

The first is Slate. Slate is “customer relations management” software that over 1,500 colleges use to track, communicate with, and ultimately determine whom to admit and whom to deny. It will register how many times you’ve ever visited a college’s website, which specific web pages you visited, how long you spent on the website, and even which zip code you’re visiting the website from. It will log every form of contact that you’ve had with the college, from a visit to a college fair table, to an email with your rep. Admissions offices will then use this data to determine just how interested you are in them, or if you likely have the socioeconomic background that they’re looking for. If you feel like this is a little creepy, you’re probably right – but this is also the modern world we live in!

Using Slate, colleges can also figure out what are the typical GPA and test scores of students who choose to enroll from your high school and/or region. If your stats are well above, then the school has every reason to believe that you’re using it as a Safety School, and the admissions team may feel inclined to reject you before you reject it. 

The second is growing admissions pools. Every year, we build college lists for students based on past years’ data. Unfortunately, we don’t have a crystal ball to predict how much any one particular school’s applicant pool will increase in the coming year. While we saw some huge spikes in numbers at popular colleges in the 2020-2021 admissions cycle due to COVID, this phenomenon has been going on for much longer than that. Between 2014 and 2019, USC’s admissions rate dropped dramatically from 17.5% to 11%, and between 2016 and 2020, Northeastern University’s admissions rate dropped from 29% to 18%.

Think about it – most students have their sights set on brand name schools. Most schools have their sights set on moving up the rankings, which involves encouraging a greater number of students to apply whom they can reject. It’s a vicious cycle, and you have to accept that you may have chosen a Safety School with Machiavellian ambitions to rise above and take over its competitors.

The third is you didn’t demonstrate interest. Most applicants take their Safety Schools for granted, and focus their time and energy on their Targets and Reaches. This is a seriously misguided approach. Colleges can easily tell if you are making an effort to connect with them (remember what we said about Slate?). Even colleges that claim that they don’t track demonstrated interest still take your connections with them seriously. People have a subconscious preference for what’s familiar (it’s known in social psychology as the mere-exposure effect). It’s why I order the same box of chicken nachos from Pica Taco every time I go. It’s why I walk one of two specific routes every other morning. And it’s why admissions reps pick some students over others. Don’t underestimate the value of striking up conversations with your reps at those college fairs or school visits. They’ll notice that you were there!

The fourth is bad blood. If your high school has a history of students using a particular college as a Safety School, and no one ever really enrolls, that college may choose to stop accepting applicants from there, plain and simple. Alternatively, if someone applied to a college as an Early Decision candidate, got in, and then reneged on their agreement, then you can count on that college not wanting to take anyone else from your high school for a very long time. Such an action is a betrayal of trust, not only between the college and the student, but also between the college and your high school’s counselor, who signed the Early Decision agreement for that student. While neither of these actions is new, they are important to keep in mind if things don’t go as you expected.

Now that you understand why an increasing number of students are not getting into certain Safety Schools, think about how you will approach them when it’s your turn to apply. While some parts are completely out of your control, there are aspects to your success that are entirely up to you! Make the most of those, and rest assured that you’ve done everything you can to come out of the admissions process empowered with choice!