In February, Ariel Prince, a high schooler from Calabasas, CA, came to campus for an overnight visit with a student host. Of the 20 schools she applied to, the New Community Jewish High School senior said Northwestern was her number one choice.
Prince competed against nearly 29,000 other Regular Decision (RD) applicants, 4,853 of which received fateful notification emails March 24. Considering this stiff competition, the question at hand is why she — and thousands of other seniors — sought Northwestern.
She said that a combination of nationally ranked athletics, personalized academics and proximity to Chicago drew her to the school. The School of Education and Social Policy (SESP) also interested Prince, and she said she views a Social Policy degree as an asset in someday applying to law school.
“I would like to know how policy works, instead of just what it is,” Prince said. “Just knowing how policy works in terms of implementing and revising it is better than just studying the history of it.”
Those are Prince’s reasons, but what about the other applicants? Early Decision (ED) applications went up 21.6 percent from the class of 2014, while the number of RD applications increased by 10.1 percent. Combined, the total number of applications went up 10.9 percent from the previous year, peaking at 30,620. Paired with minority applicant increases, this rise has instilled a sense of optimism in university officials.
Careful speculation
Each year, Northwestern conducts an extensive survey completed by several members of the incoming freshman class. With this questionnaire, the university seeks to collect information regarding not only what sparked students’ initial interests in Northwestern, but also the features they found appealing at other schools to which they applied. This knowledge allows officials to improve Northwestern based on student preferences while providing a competitive edge in the college market. The survey for the class of 2015, however, has not been administered yet; officials can only guess why the number has surged.
“Reputationally, Northwestern is growing,” said Michael Mills, Northwestern’s associate provost. “We’re attracting applicants that even five years ago we would not have, a certain type of student, and I think that’s wonderful.”
In fact, in a survey conducted of the class of 2014, 92 percent said that Northwestern’s academic reputation was “very important” to their application decision. Mills said that this percentage has been fairly consistent in recent years.
Christopher Watson, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions, hesitates in speculating about the new class, but Mills shared his “informed conjecture” regarding factors that may have contributed to the application surge, such as students gaining more fellowships and other types of recognition than in previous years, the hiring of President Morton Schapiro and even the possible depiction of Chicago as a “sophisticated city” during the 2008 presidential election.
He clarifies that, demographically, the ED applicant pool is not simply a smaller version of the RD batch. The typical ED applicant, by contrast, is more likely to hail from the east coast, and he or she does not anticipate a financial aid package. Yet due to the implementation of Good Neighbor, more low-income students have opted for ED.
Transparent recruitment methods
Watson said Northwestern uses “altruistic recruiting methods” when trying to convince students to apply. In other words, rather than deliberately attracting students who fall below the university’s standards just to raise rejection numbers, Watson affirms that Northwestern caters to those who would not only be accepted into but also thrive at the school.
“We’ve never been given an application target number by the administration,” Watson said. “All they’ve ever asked for is to keep enrolling a great class for the university, so we have very high recruitment standards, and very ethical standards.”
Mills thinks that receiving a larger number of applicants does not necessarily guarantee that students are more qualified to attend the university, but rather they indicate that selecting a group of talented, suitable students becomes easier when there are more from which to choose. They concur that although some universities work to raise their prestige behind the closed doors of an admissions office, Northwestern strives to maintain transparency, and that the university’s reputation is built upon integrity, not manipulation.
“You can’t finesse that kind of stuff,” Mills said. “You’re either that type of school or you’re not, and Northwestern is increasingly that type of school.”
Watson said his primary goal is to gain a positive reputation within high schools around the nation, as students return home and report their satisfaction with the university. He also said he works to “reassure” all applicants that they will be granted financial aid.
“Urban legends”
The admissions office encounters a great deal of myths regarding the application and selection processes. One example is the attribution of the Common Application to the rise in applicants due to technological ease. Watson said that Northwestern does not receive a large percentage of applications from students who have not “demonstrated interest” by contacting or visiting the university prior to applying, however.
“Over the last five or ten years, on average, the number of schools that kids are applying to has barely budged, and it’s about four, “ Mills said. “So where is the evidence that joining the Common Application in and of itself lends itself to growing your applicant pool?”
Watson believes that Northwestern’s presence on the Common Application may help to introduce the school to students who otherwise may not have applied, but that usually, students research the school before clicking submit and signing electronically.
On the other hand, prospective students may be deterred from applying due to what Mills describes as “urban legends.”
“They’ll say things like, it’s well known at our school that Northwestern has a cap, and you won’t take more than ten of our students,” Mills said. “I think most of it is just people trying to read tea leaves that don’t really exist. We’re trying to pick the people that we think will have the biggest impact at Northwestern. All of the other stuff is just, it’s not even a factor.”
Holistic, qualitative selection
Mills says that these circumstances are rare, and that two students are rarely pitted against one another. He also claims that demonstrated interest is only used as a “tiebreaker” for admission. Adam Boffi, Weinberg freshman, said that he applied to Northwestern “randomly,” just before the Nov. 2009 ED deadline, with no vested interest in the university. Two of his more passionate high school classmates, however, were rejected.
“To be honest, I just wrote some bullshit essay about how it’s cool that you can take a bunch of different classes from different schools or something,” Boffi said. “I don’t really know why they liked it.”
Watson said that he likes students who do their research. Many other students who had specific goals were accepted, however.
“My counselor and I researched schools that were good in Economics, and Northwestern kept on coming up,” Debora Martins, Weinberg freshman, said. “And I’m sure now, with the Nobel Prize winner, that’s going to also help applications come up.”
Admissions also does not numerically rank students based upon their credentials. Watson said the application reviewers put students in bands, partially based upon geographic origin, although he said he could not fully divulge the band system.
“We don’t have a formula, it’s very much a holistic process,” Watson said. “We never give students a number after evaluating them.”
Managing the influx
Mills says that because Northwestern received more ED applications than ever this year, the university accepted a greater number of these applicants (720) to maintain an ED to RD ratio of 1-to-3. Yet despite the initial surge, the number of students admitted into the class of 2015 from both the ED and RD pools actually decreased due to underestimation for the class of 2014. The overall acceptance rate was 18 percent.
“Last year, our target was 2,025, and we enrolled 2,128 freshmen,” Mills said. “We do not want to have another large freshman class.”