College Admission, Continued

Jay Mathews' weekly Class Struggle column focuses on college admissions, referencing the piece on the same topic I wrote for the American Prospect Online a couple of weeks ago. In short: the declining college admissions rates you read about in the newspaper every year aren't an accurate measure of whether it's actually getting harder to get into an elite college. Matt Yglesias weighs in here.

Jay raises a legitimate question in wondering whether the increase in the number of college admissions might actually be a function of colleges adjusting their policies in the face of declining yield (the ratio of enrollments to admissions). In the context of this analysis, the answer is no. During the same time period that Ivy League admissions rose by 10.6%, as noted in the Prospect article, Ivy League enrollments increased by 10.8%. (All the data comes from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, nces.ed.gov/ipeds) In retrospect, I probably should have found a way to work that number into the original piece.

I can't help but note that on the same day Jay's thoughtful column runs, the Post print edition features a brand-new article about...drumroll...how colleges are rejecting more applicants than ever before. It concludes thusly:

And in the end? Even after all those rejection letters, things have a way of working out. Every fall, UCLA does a national survey of freshmen.

Most of them say they're at their first choice college.

Such a contradiction. Why might that be....