Here are highlights from Bloomberg:
- While parents might still stretch for Ivy League education, they may not feel the same way about the next tier of private schools:
- "While attending an Ivy league school, such as Harvard University in Cambridge, may be worth the cost for families that don’t qualify for financial aid, the next level of elite schools may not carry the same value in a sour economy, educators and parents said in interviews today and last week."
- Among individual schools, Williams saw applications drop 20% while other top liberal arts colleges also saw declines:
- Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, ranked third-best among liberal-arts institutions by U.S. News and World Report, drew 10 percent fewer applicants than last year
- There was a 12 percent drop at fifth-ranked Middlebury College in Vermont.
- Amherst College in Massachusetts said applications fell 1 percent
for the next school year.
- Amherst and Williams are tied for first in the ratings.
- Applications also fell at Carleton College in Minnesota, Bowdoin College in Maine, and Pomona College in California.
- Only
Wellesley College in Massachusetts reported an increase among the
top eight liberal arts schools ranked by U.S. News.
- Wellesley said applications rose 2 percent, to about 4,200.
- Students may be happy with this news given the rising number of high school seniors which had been swelling applications in recent years
- "The decline in applications may mean students have a better chance gaining admission to top liberal-art schools."
- As for reasons for the drop in the number of applications:
- “Certainly the economy has to have an effect,” said Richard Nesbitt, director of admissions at Williams. “Some of these kids might have applied to 14 schools last year. Instead of 14, they’re applying to 10 now and maybe the last four are lower- cost public institutions.”
- “This year it might be about the money,” Bock said [Jim Bock, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Swarthmore]. “We just don’t know.”
- “I told my kids that below a certain level of private college, it’s more reasonable to go to a public school,” said Linda Moses, a New York banker.
Related posts:
- Admissions 2009: A Student's Market (March 8, 2009)
- College admission application numbers for Fall 2009 come rolling in (January 23, 2009)
- How has the recession affected the admissions process and financial aid (December 17, 2008)
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