Thread: I bet you're wondering what's going on in the mind of your friendly local EM or admissions/FA professional.

So follow along.

There are no reliable trends. We have anecdotes. Harvard up 57%. Colgate up 102%.

Princeton ended up 15% ahead of last year, probably because they dropped all early options in response to COVID-19.

Refer to this tweet if you ever ask why colleges keep early plans.

Big public universities with panache in their state are up. UCLA and UCB blew 100K apps out of the water. We're up about 35%, but our in-state rival is also having a record year.

Cal States appear to be down. Most unis with a direction in their name are seeing similar trends.

Privates are also a mixed bag, depending on where you are on the hierarchy of American higher ed. Gains at the top, decreases near the bottom.

Flat is the new up for some of these colleges.

So, uncertainty: What does it all mean?

I'm luckier than some of my colleagues, who have to hit a number right on. If we over-enroll a bit, we're large enough to absorb it without too much trouble.

But at some super-selectives, going under your number is actually better than going over. Not here. Not most places.

Of course, apps in admissions are like shots in golf: Drive for show; putt for dough. Except in EM it's apps and yield.

Your yield is based on whom you admit; and how many and whom you admit is based on your yield. This is the great paradox of EM.

Read that again.

So, how do you predict yield? Almost all the tools we have are gone: No high school visits. No yield events. No fall visit programs. FAFSA position was nuked several years ago (don't get me started on that).

And no SAT scores, or at least not for all students.

You read that right. The SAT was essentially useless in predicting anything about a specific student academically; but it was a good tool to use in predicting yield. Why?

EZ. Because society told students it was meaningful. So it drove app patterns, expectations, entitlement.

And all those things drove behavior.

What about net price? That too is an extraordinarily valuable predictor of yield. (Note to economists: Lower prices cause people to differentiate).

But at many schools, net price was driven by two things colleges have wanted to maximize:

GPA and SAT. We know the SAT is out, so many institutions are awarding merit aid on the basis of GPA. Well, that works, right?

Um, usually. In most years without pandemics. But GPA is probably less meaningful this year, for a lot of reasons beyond the control of students.

To wit: Some schools last year gave everyone A grades. Some switched everyone to pass fail. Some allowed students to choose. That's a systematic issue. So is instructional method: Online, in-person, or blended.

But individual issues are also germane here:

Not every family has a PC for everyone to work on at the same time. Not every family has internet access. Not every family has an adult home to supervise younger kids. The list goes on.

And guess who these problems affect the most? Not @Stanvard_U students.

So, when I say none of us in EM know what in the hell to expect, or how to estimate what we can expect, I'm not exaggerating.

One final thing: How many apps are hedges against unanticipated COVID-19 developments? If you have a waitlist a mile long, you don't need to care.

Oh, your admit rate might go a bit higher, but you'll make your class.

If you don't have that waitlist, you probably have just one chance to get it right.

(Aside: Now you know how 17-year-olds feel applying to college).

Apparently, when you land a fighter on an aircraft carrier, you want your plane to catch the second of four wires across the deck.

But you really just want to land the plane. You'd be happy with any wire as long as you get it down safely.

And when you're doing that, you want a) an experienced pilot, and b) really good instruments.

This is even more true when you are landing at night. In a storm. With a undulating deck.

If you can only choose one, you probably choose the good pilot. Right now, that's you. Your instruments are shot. They're kaput.

This is not a "everyone lived happily ever after story." I prefer my crime shows Swedish, where reality sets in at the end as you're waiting for everything to be tied up in a bow.

Not all the news will be good.

But this is what we signed up for, and this is what we have to do.

Oh, and did I mention we are supposed to do this all ethically? Even though there is no more mutually-agreed upon mandate to do so?

So faculty, be nice to your EM and admissions people. Don't send chocolate, though. There is plenty going on in our nervous systems right now, and we don't need any more caffeine.

A little encouragement would be great. A little help would be better.

After all,

Oh, and #EMTalk