Federal data change means colleges can’t count unfinished applications in admit rates


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A seemingly trivial tweak in how colleges report application numbers to the federal government could cause them to more closely scrutinize barriers, like fees, that make it hard for students to finish applying, enrollment experts say. 

In turn, this change could help demolish roadblocks that prevent historically underrepresented students from seeking a college education. 

Federally funded institutions must send their application counts to the U.S. Department of Education each year as part of information gathering for the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, known as IPEDS. 

IPEDS is a public-facing database containing statistics on individual institutions, covering areas such as enrollment. It can also be used to view national trends over time. 

The Education Department recently clarified IPEDS data collection practices for the 2022-23 cycle, stating explicitly that colleges may no longer include incomplete applications in their reported count. That may mean some institutions’ admissions rates will rise as the application numbers they disclose to IPEDS shrink.

Some colleges may begin to evaluate how big their file of incomplete applications is, said Andy Borst, director of undergraduate admissions at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. 

“Schools have been somewhat dismissive of that pool,” Borst said. “This will really make them start to question what students are missing.”

What’s important about admissions rates?

Almost all competitive colleges care about their admissions rate — the percentage of students they accept, versus those who applied — for one reason or another. 

Most colleges admit a majority of applicants. But a band of selective institutions have reinforced their exclusive reputations with low, even single-digit admit rates. The California Institute of Technology and Harvard University both admit only about 4% of students, according to U.S. News and World Report.

College reviews influential to students and families, like those from The Princeton Review, also factor in selectivity. Some colleges have gone so far as to purchase SAT test takers’ names to broaden their applicant pools and bolster their rejection rates. 

Less-selective institutions also focus on the share of admitted students, more often for reasons like eliminating barriers for historically marginalized groups than prestige. 

Bond rating agencies like Moody’s Investors Service also consider selectivity when assigning a score.

Admissions rates thus represent an institution’s market power, said Robert Kelchen, a higher education professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Those with low admit rates can accept more students as needed, he said. 

The ability to recruit students is particularly important in an admissions landscape that the coronavirus scrambled and in which the Common Application is a mainstay. The Common App online portal enables students to easily apply to its 1,000-some member colleges — allowing applicants to throw their hat in the ring at many institutions.

Colleges are under pressure to receive as many complete applications as possible, Kelchen said.

However, with changes in IPEDS reporting, colleges may be more inclined to eliminate elements of the admissions process, like application fees or essays, if they discover they contribute to students not completing their applications. 

Institutions may also reach out to students in some way to urge them to finish their applications, Kelchen said. 

“We just don’t have a great sense how this will turn out,” he said, noting that the sector doesn’t know how many incomplete applications exist. 

However, admit rates could change under the clarified reporting policy.

Borst said his institution had a 44.8% admissions rate for fall 2022, accepting 28,354 students compared to 63,257 submitted applications. 

However, about 6% of applications were denied for being incomplete. The new reporting rules would have altered the university’s admissions rate to be 47.8%.

“That change is statistically significant, but will it be practically significant when the change is implemented at all universities at the same time,” Borst said on Twitter.




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Jeremy Bauer-Wolf

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