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Well, ultramarina, I think that there are several things at work.

1. Yes, common app means that kids with money (and those whose parents can afford to be throwing a lot at the problem to start with) are applying EVERYWHERE. They no longer apply to one :reach: the way our generation did-- they apply to five or six, as well as the half dozen more 'safe' bets.

2. Yes, many many students who would have been considered "marginal" as college material are now applying. Basically, the top 75% of a high school class is being advised to 'go to college' and the lowest quartile is being encouraged to 'build skills' in order to 'eventually' get there. (Which, to be clear, is probably kinda crazy to start with-- and it creates a LOT of problems elsewhere... a rippling through the system, as it were.) While I'm thrilled that accommodations for disabling conditions exist in K-12, it becomes less and less clear whether or not it's a good thing in higher ed... because honestly, how much "accommodation" is a hospital supposed to grant a surgeon in performing his/her job? Not much way to give time-and-a-half for brain surgery. This is a problem-- supports SHOULD fade through college, and way too many students and parents don't seem to understand that they HAVE to develop personal work-arounds during those years, or switch fields to something that allows for them. Life just plain isn't fair. Boy oh boy do I understand that one. But it really isn't a level playing field. In K-12, "compulsory" education, absolutely critical that it be as fair as we can make it. Yes. But not everyone can be an ______ (artist, brain surgeon, rocket scientist, fireman, etc. etc.)-- this is also a problem which has developed in this system over the past 25y.

3. Elite schools also have competition like never before from international students. So do less-elite-but-still-tier-one public institutions, and those private colleges whose endowments took a huge hit in 2000 and again in '08. They are admitting increasing numbers of foreign students not because (as they maintain) that those students are 'more competitive' than their American peers, though that is a pleasant fiction that they TELL people in PR materials... nope. But they PAY extremely well for the privilege.

This has been a HUGE problem in public institutions along the west coast-- so big, in fact, that there is no longer any way to deny that there is a financial incentive for the institutions to be doing so. Why straight-A's may not get you into UW this year

The situation is even worse in the UC system. Now, the reasons for the financial dire straits are open for debate, certainly-- but the fact that they are hurting enough for money that they are willing to alienate the voting public over it is pretty telling in and of itself.



In other words, it isn't just the US population expansion which is fueling this trend. It's that US residents are often competing for FEWER spots at top universities, among a cohort which has easily tripled in size.


So what used to be "high achievement" that didn't especially worry about what it could 'demonstrate' or 'document' has now become indistinguishable from the grooming that only highly savvy and slightly unscrupulous parents used to indulge in to get well-off but hardly stellar scholars into top universities. Because EVERYONE in that group started the document, document, document (oh, hey, look... I can slip in this exaggeration here and there)... which eventually turned into outright obfuscation and worse...

because the people just slightly lower on the savvy and UMC scale started doing it, and therefore that first group had to up the ante so that mediocre-kid could STILL come out on top...

well. You get the picture.


Jon makes an excellent series of points in his most recent post, by the way.