Future applicants may breathe easier

Good news for 8th-graders and their parents (like me, as well as co-blogger KC)! The super-competitive college frenzy is expected to mellow by the time it rolls around for those kids, according to the New York Times. Too bad for our high school juniors. Although if someone emerged from living in a cave and asked my advice, I'd say, "Those CSUs are really great colleges!"

New York Times

March 9, 2008

Math Suggests College Frenzy Will Soon Ease
By Alan Finder

High school seniors nationwide are anxiously awaiting the verdicts from the colleges of their choice later this month. But though it may not be of much solace to them, in just a few years the admissions frenzy is likely to ease. It’s simply a matter of demographics.

Projections show that by next year or the year after, the annual number of high school graduates in the United States will peak at about 2.9 million after a 15-year climb. The number is then expected to decline until about 2015. Most universities expect this to translate into fewer applications and less selectivity, with most students probably finding it easier to get into college.

“For the high school graduate, this becomes a buyers’ market,” said Daniel M. Fogel, president of the University of Vermont.

That won’t help Charlie Cotton, a senior at Madison High School in New Jersey. He has the grades and scores to aim for the nation’s elite universities, yet in the hyper-competitive world of college admissions, his chances of winning a spot at his top picks — like Middlebury, Dartmouth and Oberlin — are highly uncertain. When his sister, Emma, who is in eighth grade, applies to college, she is expected to face a less frantic landscape with fewer rivals.

Read the rest of the story.