SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — “Overwhelming.”
That’s how 17-year-old high school senior Alex Zaret described the college admissions process during a tour this fall of Skidmore College — the fourth campus Zaret had visited, with another half a dozen to go.
“It is kind of a full-time job,” Zaret’s father, Owen, said.
He wasn’t joking. With research to do, visits to make and applications and financial forms to fill out, “it’s a lot, and it’s a lot on top of two full-time-employed parents and a very engaged high school student,” Owen Zaret said.
But even in the year or so that the family has been doing this, the Zarets have detected a subtle shift.
“It used to be more an ivory tower approach,” Zaret said, which signaled, “ ‘You’re lucky if you come here.’ And now, I think, for a variety of reasons, that’s changed. It’s more like, ‘We want you to be here.’ ”
As they compete to attract a dwindling supply of students, colleges are striving to transform an admissions process that has often been intimidating, secretive and stressful into an experience that’s open, easier and downright friendly.
“It’s one of those things that’s in everybody’s interest,” said Marc Conner, the president of Skidmore, which has been making a particular push to do this. After all, he said, “we depend on students coming to our campuses and, when they do come, getting them to enroll.”
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Some universities and colleges are waiving application fees and promising additional financial aid for students who show up for campus tours. Public universities in 17 states now admit high school students who haven’t even applied, according to the Education Commission of the States; more than 150 private colleges also make direct admissions offers to students who fill out the Common App, a standardized online application used by about 1,200 institutions. And the overall odds of getting accepted to college are going up.
Now Skidmore and a small number of other institutions have taken a surprising next step. They’re enlisting faculty to help recruit new students by meeting with and opening their labs and classrooms to prospective and admitted applicants — a role previously left to the admissions office.
“It creates a feeling of what it would be like to be seen, valued and to find a place of belonging on a campus,” said Jess Ricker, the college’s vice president for enrollment. And that, Ricker said, can help distinguish Skidmore from the other schools on students’ lists.
Admissions leaders are looking for any advantage. Two-thirds of them had trouble meeting their enrollment targets in at least one of the last two years, according to a survey by the ratings platform Niche. Ninety-seven percent expect the competition to increase even more.
The problem is that the supply of traditional-age freshmen has begun to fall, with the number of high school graduates nationwide projected to decline by 13 percent between last year and 2041, according to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. The proportion of high school graduates choosing to go on to college right away is also down, from 70 percent in 2016 to 63 percent in 2024, the most recent year for which the figure is available, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.
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One little-noticed result: Being accepted to college now is generally easier than in the past — and easier than Americans seem to think it is.
The average overall undergraduate acceptance rate for first-time applicants is nearly 80 percent at public and 70 percent at private, nonprofit colleges and universities, the National Association for College Admission Counseling, or NACAC, reports. That’s up from 68 percent and 65 percent, respectively, about 10 years ago. Nearly 9 in 10 private, nonprofit four-year universities and colleges admit half or more of applicants, according to separate research by the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute — a proportion that is also up over the last decade.
This news has been slow to trickle down to students. More than 40 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds wrongly think it’s harder for today’s students to get into college than it was for people in their parents’ generation, a Pew Research Center survey found.
“Most of the public actually doesn’t understand that the majority of institutions in the United States actually accept the majority of students who apply,” said Angel Pérez, NACAC’s CEO.
He blamed an obsession with impossible-seeming acceptance rates at institutions such as the California Institute of Technology, Harvard, Princeton and Stanford, which each take about one applicant in 25.
“If you looked at mainstream media stories, you would automatically assume if you were a high school student or a parent, ‘It’s so hard to get into college,’ or, ‘I’m never going to get in,’ ” Pérez said.
In fact, only 33 colleges and universities in the country admit 10 percent or fewer of their undergraduate applicants, NACAC figures show.
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The intensifying competition for them might be good for students, but it’s making life tougher for many colleges. At many, offices of admission are struggling to shake what Ricker joked is their historic reputation as uncaring “offices of rejection.”
That’s among the reasons some are starting to appeal to the faculty for help. At Ohio Northern University, at least one member of the faculty now meets with every visiting applicant. Faculty at Washington College in Maryland sit down with visiting applicants on designated Fridays during the admissions season and at open houses.
“We’re seeing more colleges leaning into more engagement involving everyone on the campus,” said Rob Springall, a consultant at the executive search firm WittKieffer and former executive director of undergraduate admissions at Pennsylvania State University. “Presidents and vice presidents of enrollment are telling people that every interaction counts.”
There’s another reason for this push that’s less widely understood among consumers. As students hedge their bets by applying to more colleges than their historical counterparts did — Common App users now apply to an average of more than seven schools apiece, a number that’s been steadily increasing — it’s getting harder for enrollment managers to predict how many of the students they admit will actually enroll. In admissions lingo, this is called the yield, and nearly 8 in 10 enrollment leaders in that Niche survey said it’s become another on their growing list of problems.
Yield declined from 32 percent to 22 percent at public colleges and universities and from 24 percent to 18 percent at private nonprofits, on average, between 2014 and 2024, federal data shows. That’s the last period for which the figures are available.
This means colleges have to admit around five times as many students as they hope to enroll — and that campus hospitality can’t end with the admissions deadline. Admitted applicants need to be persuaded to follow through and put down their deposits, including the many who come back to take another look around.
Colleges “are realizing that everyone has to help with the recruiting process, full force,” said Leah Beth Hubbard, assistant vice president of enrollment strategies at the enrollment consulting firm The Parish Group. She advises clients to “teach everyone to smile. Teach everyone to introduce themselves and say what they do at the institution.”
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Coaxing faculty to do this, on top of their existing obligations, isn’t always easy, campus leaders said — at least, at first.
“Some faculty didn’t want to be part of it,” said Johnnie Johnson, Washington College’s vice president for enrollment management. “They’d say, ‘You go recruit and I’ll teach.’ ”
Like other university and college administrators, Johnson said he countered with a frank assessment of enrollment trends.
“When you put a financial figure on every student who comes in, that equates to programmatic funding. That equates to raises,” he said. And faculty are seeing what happens when those numbers fall. “They have colleagues who have been at colleges that closed” or whose programs have been cut, said Johnson. “They don’t want to be next.”
Now, he said, “We have faculty volunteering” to let applicants sit in on their classes. “We have faculty volunteering to send emails. When we do our open houses, the faculty who might not have participated in those are more willing to participate.”
Skidmore, which has about 2,700 students on a pastoral campus near the famous Saratoga Race Course, hasn’t experienced the problems many other small private, nonprofit colleges are confronting. It’s in the enviable position of seeing its number of applications rise, not fall; unlike many other colleges, its acceptance rate is down, from 37 percent 10 years ago to 24 percent today. Yield is up slightly, to an above-average 24 percent.
Still, said Conner, the president, “the challenges are real. And even if the school is doing all right during these times, we’re still facing the same headwinds as everybody else. So you’d better pay attention to it, or you’re going to be in trouble pretty soon.”
As elsewhere, part of the response has been to make prospective applicants and their families feel more a part of the campus when they visit, rather than spectators disconnected from it. Everyone from dining hall workers to groundskeepers is encouraged to be welcoming, and faculty are urged to meet with students and let them sit in on classes and in labs.
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“I can’t think of a professor who [said], ‘Don’t bother me with that. That’s not my thing,’ ” said Conner. “It helps that we’re in a tough time in higher ed and they see what’s happening at other schools, and they know a school is going to rise or fall depending on how much the community joins together.”
More than three-quarters of admitted students who came to the campus last year other than for a weekend open house requested to sit in on a class or meet with a faculty member, the college says. That added up to 300 face-to-face visits.
There’s not yet data about whether those young visitors apply or enroll. But psychology department chair Becca Johnson, who often meets with applicants, said she hears feedback that the extra effort makes a difference.
One mother told her, “ ‘You know, my student has applied to so many schools, been accepted, had a number of wonderful possible possibilities,’ ” Johnson recounted. “ ‘And you’re the first person from outside of an admissions office to contact us.’ And that was so meaningful for them in their decision.”
Johnson, whose students call her Dr. J, displays an award in her office for her work with the admissions office. She keeps emails from students who followed up to thank her or let her know that they were planning to enroll.
“Students and parents, they’re savvy shoppers. They’re making really wise decisions,” said Johnson, the mother of a college student herself. “And I think more information is better than less.”
Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556, jmarcus@hechingerreport.org or jpm.82 on Signal.
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