3 Ways the College Admissions Process Gets It Wrong

This is a contributed post by Kian Simpson of Cohort, a college admissions advising program.

It’s no surprise that the college admissions process is broken. Every year, millions of high school seniors and their overworked parents pound at the gates of colleges across the nation in hopes of an acceptance letter from their dream school. The college application process has transformed from a tool that enables students to unlock their greatest potential into a barrier that fuels stress and anxiety. Improving the college admissions process is essential for all applicants, and there are three main ways to do it.

3 Changes Colleges Need to Make to Better Support Applicants

There are three key improvements colleges can make to better support high school students applying for admission, and we hope to see such changes in the coming years.

1. Only schools that can meet 100% of student need should be allowed to offer early decision

There are several different types of college admissions, one of which is early decision (ED). Early decision is a process where a student applies to a college at an earlier date, usually November 1st. If the student is accepted, they are obligated to attend that school. This is different from early action (EA) where you are not obligated to attend, and restrictive early action (REA) where you are not obligated to attend but cannot apply early action or early decision to certain types of other schools.

Students applying early decision clearly demonstrate their interest in a university. ED acceptance rates are several percentage points higher than regular decision rates, so ED can, in some cases, help slightly less competitive students get into their stretch schools. 

For example, Columbia’s ED acceptance rate was 12.47% for the class of 2026, while its regular decision acceptance rate was a mere 2.72%. Unfortunately, when students apply ED and get accepted without significant aid, they believe they are locked into paying thousands of dollars in unforeseen tuition expenses before even stepping foot on campus. They may have qualified for better financial aid elsewhere, but assume they have  no choice but to attend their ED school. Families CAN back out of an ED commitment if the financial burden is too high, but few know this is an option. By requiring all ED acceptances to cover 100% aid as determined by the FAFSA Student Aid Index (SAI), students will be better protected from unreasonable tuition payments and enrollment that they cannot afford.

2. The Common App should replicate the UC essay writing system

Long gone are the days of mailing individual college applications and portfolios across the country as you wait for a return letter from the admissions office. Thanks to the Common App, prospective students can apply to several schools while only filling out key information one time. Even the notorious 650-word personal statement can be sent to several colleges at once. However, many colleges require additional supplemental essays, which often bear a striking resemblance to one another. This results in students copy-pasting large portions of text across multiple applications to make slight tweaks to essays to fit a school’s specific prompt. Those tweaks could include changing the name of a college, or swapping out a sentence that doesn’t apply to a particular school’s offering.  

The University of California school system’s application process is much more efficient from a student perspective. They provide a bank of eight essay prompts from which students can choose 4 to answer. The student writes the essays once, and that’s it. It saves the student time and standardizes the admissions process. The Common App could (and should) similarly have one personal statement paired with a few thematic essays. Then, if a school desires an essay that illustrates a student’s reasons for wanting to attend, they can ask for a 250 word “Why our college” essay. Plain and simple.

Related: Helping Your Teen with Their College Essay Doesn’t Need to Be the Worst

Many college guidance services already take this approach. They identify the different “types” of supplemental essays that high school students might have to write, and strategize how to use essays from one application on another. Doing this mixing and matching is a pain, and it’s an error prone process that can result in students putting the name of a different school in an application! 

3. Limit the number of applications that a student can send

College acceptance rates are at an all-time low, and it may not be for the reasons you think. The 2023-2024 Common App applicants pool rose 21% from the 2019-2020 school year. However, the total number of applications rose by 30%. The average student now applies to 6 schools, and many college advising programs suggest applying to at least 10 schools. 

As generative AI makes essay writing easier and acceptance rates continue to fall, students will enter a cycle of applying to more and more institutions, each application less focused and bespoke. The Common App does have a limit of 20 schools a student can apply to, but that should be much closer to a number like 10. This forces students to be intentional with choosing safety, target, and reach schools. 

It also limits the number of top-performing students from crowding out interested applicants, which happens when a student applies to and is accepted to dozens of schools. These students often don’t rescind applications at the schools they don’t intend to attend, which blocks other qualified students and lowers university yield rates (yield is the percentage of students who ultimately attend of those that were accepted). When university yield rates go down, it becomes more difficult for universities to predict who will actually enroll, making their acceptance decisions feel much more random. Limiting total applications per student stops high achievers from crowding out peers and gives more predictability to the overall process.

How to Navigate the Broken College Admissions System

The college admissions process is incredibly complex, but there is hope after all. Knowing how to find which ED options cover total aid, how supplemental essays should be written based on theme, or even how to choose from the 2,000+ U.S. 4-year colleges can be difficult to do on your own, especially with so many admission decisions to make.

Related: 5 Things Every Junior Needs To Do To Prepare For College

About Cohort:

Every year, over 160,000 juniors admit to using a private counselor as they plan for their higher education. The average cost of a program is $6,069, but Cohort has built a program that provides the same great advice for only $600 ($99/month). Get personalized mentorship from 50+ on-demand counselors that will help your child apply with confidence, navigate various deadlines, and even get a scholarship to go! The upcoming Junior Cohort class starts March 24th, but services are ongoing.

Cohort leverages insights from over 50 mentors who’ve excelled in the application process. This affordable, effective approach helps students navigate college admissions, providing access to resources, scholarships, and events tailored to their success.

Looking for additional resources on college admissions?

For more helpful information on the college admissions process, we recommend Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions. The author, Jeff Selingo, goes inside three different college admissions offices and gives a first-hand account of how admissions officers are painstakingly making decisions about student applications.

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