Phillip B. Caffrey had never seen such an avalanche. During the final weeks of 2009, a record number of applications had buried Iowa State University’s admissions office. Staffers were working late, but each day brought another load.
One evening, Mr. Caffrey, senior associate director of admissions, sat at his desk, looking worried. “What’s wrong?” asked his boss, Marc Harding, assistant vice president for admissions. Mr. Caffrey described the immense backlog of applications, the thousands of dollars his office was spending on overtime, the wall-to-wall stress.
Something had to change. While discussing ways they might streamline the process, Mr. Harding asked: Why not let applicants report their academic information online? That way admissions staff members would not have to wait for a high-school transcript to arrive before they could evaluate an applicant. Mr. Caffrey and Mr. Harding first laughed at the idea, which seemed odd, even crazy. Then they decided to try it.
Last summer Iowa State moved to a “self-reported” application program. High-school seniors who apply online enter their credentials—class rank, grade-point average, standardized-test scores. Using a drop-down menu, they also note all the courses they have taken. Once they submit their applications, the university’s automated system takes over. Iowa State uses a quantitative index to admit applicants, which allows for a quick decision. Applicants who meet the entrance requirements receive a decision, by e-mail, within 48 hours.
Students are told upfront that there’s no use exaggerating their grades. Those who choose to enroll must ask their high school to submit official transcripts after they graduate; students must also send official score reports for the ACT or SAT exams. Iowa State admissions officers verify that applicants’ credentials match the information they provided. If not, the university will withdraw the acceptance. Of nearly 10,000 applicants whom Iowa State had admitted as of mid-January, it withdrew just three offers (to students whose schools had already sent their transcripts).
The new process speaks to the pressures on the nation’s bulging college-admissions system. As application totals climb year after year, enrollment offices are straining to handle unprecedented demands. On many campuses, budget cuts and hiring freezes have prompted admissions deans to seek ways of improving efficiency. One tactic is to reduce the number of documents that must be sorted, scanned, and evaluated.
Some enrollment experts suspect that self-reported applications will become a fixture of college admissions. At least among large public universities, such a system might prove necessary. Processing tens of thousands of applications is an epic chore, something like assembling an enormous jigsaw puzzle on deadline, with many of the pieces not materializing until the last minute. And a lot of that work is on behalf of applicants who do not end up matriculating.
At Iowa State, for instance, Mr. Caffrey’s staff previously had to assess the transcripts of about 15,000 applicants just to enroll a freshman class of about 5,000. “We were scratching our heads,” he says. “Each year we were processing all these applications from students who would never show up.” Now Iowa State will not need to deal with transcripts from roughly two-thirds of its applicants.
The change has helped the university deliver decisions earlier. As of mid-January, it had admitted 33 percent more applicants than it had at the same time last year. In turn, students now receive scholarship offers sooner. This leaves admissions officers more time for communicating with admitted students. “I believe this gives us a competitive advantage in recruitment,” Mr. Caffrey says. “We’re admitting them so much earlier, so they really get locked into Iowa State.”
‘Drowning in Paper’
Although Iowa State uses a straightforward admissions formula, several prominent institutions that conduct holistic (and more time-consuming) reviews of applications also have a self-reported process for high-school grades.
The University of California, with its vast applicant pool, has used a self-reported application for in-state students since 1985. Susan A. Wilbur, the system’s departing director of undergraduate admissions, says the program has served students and colleges well, with few snags: “We’ve done it for so long, it’s just second nature.”
Self-reporting has recently become standard practice at several other prominent institutions. Last fall the University of Georgia started asking first-year applicants to report their own grades. In 2008, Rutgers University did the same, and two campuses in the State University of New York’s system, Binghamton and Stony Brook, have adopted self-reported applications.
Last year the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign decided to see how self-reported applications would work for a fast-growing segment of its applicant pool: international students. For fall 2008, Illinois received 4,600 applicants from overseas; this year the number grew to more than 7,000. “We knew that if we were going to get more and more international applications, we were just not going to get them all done,” says Stacey Kostell, director of undergraduate admissions.
The process has worked well, giving her staff more time to review applications, and allowing them to reach decisions sooner. The university, which is also testing the program among applicants from an Illinois high school, plans to adopt a self-reported application for all students starting next fall.
Although self-reporting allows institutions to evaluate applicants faster, Ms. Kostell says the do-it-yourself application comes with a trade-off for students: “The advantage is that it gives them peace of mind—they know their application will be complete the next day. But that’s more time that every student has to spend on the application.”
That’s one reason Michael Barron sees no need to switch to such a model. “I understand why some colleges are doing this, because they’re drowning in paper and process,” says Mr. Barron, director of admissions and assistant provost for enrollment services at the University of Iowa. “But it just doesn’t make sense to our academic administrators and faculty.”
Iowa, too, uses a quantitative index, but it conducts a holistic review of about two-fifths of its applicants. Typically they get answers in three to four weeks. Although Mr. Barron suspects that the ability to make faster decisions could yield some students, he worries that it might turn off others. “Some students are a bit leery about fast applications and fast turnarounds,” he says. “It might sound like an assembly line or crowd management.” Moreover, he wonders why a college would even tempt students to misrepresent their academic records.
Richard Clark understands that concern but says it’s unwarranted. Mr. Clark is director of admissions at the Georgia Institute of Technology, which has used a self-reported application for about 10 years. Applicants are “overly honest,” he says, and are more likely to deflate their credentials than to inflate them. In a three-year study, Georgia Tech found a 99-percent accuracy rate when it compared applicants’ final transcripts with the information they had reported. Although Georgia Tech requires an ACT or SAT score report before evaluating an application, officials have discussed the possibility of allowing students to self-report their test scores, too, like Iowa State does.
“We take these kids at their word for everything else,” Mr. Clark says. “We’re not calling to check that they really were president of the French Club.”
When verifying the credentials of students who have sent deposits, Georgia Tech’s admissions officers typically call a dozen students to discuss discrepancies. Most have made honest mistakes, Mr. Clark says; the institution revokes only one or two admissions offers each year. “The trade-off is incredible,” he says. “It’s a major time savings for a couple of uncomfortable phone calls in the summer.”
And the system has reduced the university’s need for temporary staff to help process applications. Mr. Clark estimates that self-reporting saves about $45,000 a year.
Fast-Track Answers
The growing appeal of self-reported applications is a reminder that the traditional admissions calendar is changing. Within a system long known for its deliberate pace, some colleges and students now see a benefit in speed. The era of fast-track applications, it seems, has raised expectations for fast-track admissions decisions as well.
Tom Shively, a college and career counselor at Dowling Catholic High School, in West Des Moines, Iowa, thinks that’s a good thing. He wishes that more institutions would adopt a system like Iowa State’s. “Students are impressed by the fact that they get a quick answer,” he says. “There’s nothing more frustrating for students than to apply to a school and then they’re waiting and waiting and waiting.”
The program intrigues Phil Trout, a college counselor at Minnetonka High School, in Minnesota, but it also concerns him. After all, self-reporting allows a student to short-circuit the counseling process. “This serves the 21st-century student, who likes instant response, instant gratification, and instant reward,” Mr. Trout says. “They don’t need a guidance counselor, they don’t need a guidance secretary, and they don’t need the Postal Service.”
Recently one of his students told him that she had just been accepted by Iowa State. He didn’t even know that she had applied.
