This University Wants YOU!

It is a buyer's market as colleges scramble to fill spaces

Mid-April is nail-biting time for high school seniors as they stand vigil over their mailboxes, looking for letters of acceptance from colleges. The weeks that follow, on the other hand, are nail-biting times for the colleges, as they fret over how many students will accept their acceptances, fill their dormitories and keep their budgets in the black.

With the pool of applicants growing smaller every year, many colleges increasingly are being reduced to using hard-sell tactics to fill their classes. By 1985 the high school age group will have dwindled by an estimated 15% to 30%, and the downtrend is likely to continue at least until 1990. Predicted one admissions officer: "It will become a buyer's market."

It already looks like one. Bari Boshes, 17, a senior at New Trier East High School, in a suburb north of Chicago, was besieged with letters from Coe College, a small liberal arts school in Cedar Rapids, Iowa--and she had not even applied there. "Learn why we might be the right choice for you," implored the Coe admissions office.

Nor does the hard sell end when acceptance letters go out. Tom Rice of Irvington High in Westchester County, N.Y., applied to several Ivy League colleges, as well as Wesleyan, Georgetown, Haverford and the State University of New York at Binghamton. Accepted across the board, he was "practically blitzed with brochures," he says. Yale invited Tom and other successful applicants, along with their parents, to a reception at the local country club, and even supplied music by a popular Yale chorus. He is headed for New Haven next September.

The smaller, less prestigious colleges are having to scramble even harder. Nathaniel Hawthorne College in Antrim, N.H., offers flying lessons as an inducement, and still has only managed to attract half the day students it needs to fill its freshman class this fall. "We simply can't sit back and let the applications roll in any more," mourns Ed Schoenberg, assistant director of admissions at California's Whittier College. Among Whittier's schemes for luring students: generous scholarships, attractive brochures, and "Spring Dessert Days," when candidates are entertained by alumni. Many colleges are placing advertisements in newspapers; some schools, like the University of Texas at Arlington and Dallas Baptist College, have even resorted to television spots. Concedes Peter H. Richardson, admissions director at M.I.T.: "Marketing is part of the language of admissions."

A trauma for colleges, the drive to recruit is proving a boon for high school seniors. The State University of New York at Stony Brook, considered a selective school, must accept 5,000 applicants to fill a class of 1,500--a "yield" rate, as educators call it, of only 30%. The ratio between those accepted and those who enroll varies widely. Harvard boasts one of the highest yields, but it is only 74%, which means that four acceptances must be sent out for every three spaces in the freshman class. Also in the high-yield range: Yale, 69%; San Jose State (Calif.), 67%; Stanford, 65%; University of California at Berkeley, 60%; M.I.T., 51%; Princeton, 50%; Lewis and Clark College (Ore.), 50%. As M.I.T.'s Richardson notes, "Anybody in the trade knows that if you get over 50% of the kids to whom you offer admissions, you're doing better than average."

Not many exceed 50%. Wagner College on Staten Island in New York City hopes to get 1,500 applicants and must accept 1,100 of them to fill a class of 500 --a yield of 47%. Georgia Tech has the same yield, and Emory University in Atlanta has a 38% rate. There is no dearth of colleges with still lower yields. Notes Writer-Educator David Tilley in Hurdles: The Admissions Dilemma in American Higher Education, published last week (Atheneum; $13.95): "Many institutions labeled as selective are not."

To weather the crisis, colleges are considering a number of innovations. Some are beginning to stress career-oriented courses and work-related programs to satisfy the more pragmatic job applicants of the late 1970s. Quite a few colleges have inaugurated rolling admissions, deciding on applications as they come in, thus enabling students to determine their fates before the dreaded 15th of April.

"The emphasis has been on selection. In the future it will be on recruitment," noted Richard Skelton of Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa. In the meantime, small colleges are fearful. Says Tom Daniels, director of admissions at the 800-student Buena Vista College in Storm Lake, Iowa: "The next 15 years may well be some of the most crucial times in higher education."

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