Autumn in many areas of the country means the leaves are turning colors, evenings are crisp and days a little less steamy. Football season is kicking off and the World Series is not too far away. In schools across the country, the new season means lots of eager students and teachers who are once again joining in the enthusiastic pursuit of learning. For many twelfth graders, though, autumn means the official onset of the all-too-stressful college admissions season.

Another Round of the College Admissions Game

Some new language has entered the college admissions scene in recent years. There is now talk of “the college admissions game,” and “beating the odds” with multiple early applications, and how parents and students are attempting to “game the system” to gain some sort of edge in the whole process. This game- or gambling-related terminology is relatively new, but it is unfortunately a very accurate description of the current state of the process.

One book, The Early Admissions Game, compares the college admissions process to a game of Martian Blackjack. The metaphor works on a number of levels:

“The players (applicants) do not know the rules (that is, the standards for admission), and the casinos (college admissions offices) do not describe them, at least not fully or accurately. The players’ perceptions depend on their own experiences, and perhaps the experiences of others at their high school. And each player participates only once.”

—from The Early Admissions Game, by Christopher Avery, Andrew Fairbanks, and Richard Zeckhauser
Harvard University Press, 2004, pp. 71-72

The metaphor continues, with the role of college counselors taken by old-timers who watch — but do not play the game for themselves — and tentatively offer advice to the players as they approach the table.

Colleges have in recent years become much more forthcoming about the quality of the student experiences on their campuses, and this year more than 250 public colleges and universities are updating families through College Portrait, a standardized approach to reporting on their websites information about the quality of undergraduate life. But no such transparency has come to the application and admission process itself, and there seems to be little movement in that direction.

Families respond to this uncertain admissions situation by seeking advice from as many advisers as they can find. They use school guidance and college counselors. They avail themselves of Internet resources, including online counselors who can help with essays and specific questions about applications. Those with perhaps the greatest means employ private counselors who not only help students prepare for standardized tests, but also shape a student’s resume, college list, and application essays. In short, families seek the counsel of as many experienced observers of Martian Blackjack as they can.

This may be the best blackjack/application strategy available, but that still doesn’t mean that it is a good one. The casinos/colleges frequently change the rules, and no one really knows what the consequences of these changes may be. Some colleges change from Early Decision (ED) to Early Action (EA) systems, or vice versa, and in the fall of 2007 a handful of the country’s most selective universities did away with early admissions altogether.

Even the “casinos” themselves were unable to predict the impact of these rule changes, as seen by the highly unusual degree of waitlist activity at some Ivy League universities that badly overestimated their ability to convert acceptances into enrollments.

So, can things change? It doesn’t look promising. College applicants have been playing Martian Blackjack for at least forty or fifty years. What is different in the past fifteen years is the steadily growing number of players who are sitting down to play a hand, as well as the increasingly competitive landscape for the casinos. The advent of the US News and World Report rankings for colleges and universities has put pressure on many admission offices to manage enrollment in ways that will enhance an institution’s standing in the rankings. This, in turn, leads to frequent changes in admission policies and practices as colleges look to gain an advantage over their competition.

It may be that families and schools will not be able to approach the college application process in a straightforward manner unless the unwritten rules of the game are made clear to all of the players. And until that can happen, it looks like the process will continue to resemble Martian Blackjack, with constantly evolving and inconsistent rules that lead to confusing and even contradictory outcomes.