One of comedian Steve Martin’s bits early in his career was “So You Want to Be a Millionaire.” The punch line was “First, get a million dollars.” The premise seems quaint today, when only billionaires are invited to the cool kids table or the White House ballroom.
An article in last week’s New York Times seems to reframe Martin’s joke within a college admissions context. Author Ron Lieber dubbed two enrollment managers, Satyagit Dattagupta at Northeastern and Jim Nondorf at the University of Chicago, as the “Millionaire Masters of Early Decision” based on their compensation packages and strategic use of ED.
Their salaries place them in rarified air in the enrollment management world, although their deals pale compared to the money being paid to football coaches who leave their teams for greener pastures right before the playoffs and those leaving in mid-season because they have been fired. Shouldn’t securing enrollment be more important to a university’s well-being than football? If you answer yes, you qualify as an optimist, maybe even a Pollyanna. In any event, more power to Dattagupta and Nondorf for being appropriately compensated for holding down the “hottest seat on campus.”
While the article is ostensibly a profile of the two admissions deans and an exploration of how Tulane (where Dattagupta worked prior to moving to Northeastern) and Chicago have pursued early decision as a path to enrollment success, it also raises some interesting larger questions and issues about the practice of college admission.
How much of Tulane’s and Chicago’s success is attributable to early decision? Both have been beneficiaries of a larger trend extending from the beginning of the century until the onset of Covid where national universities saw a dramatic increase in application numbers, especially in the decade from 2009-2019. Tulane and Chicago are part of a group of urban universities, once upon a time considered the next level below the Ivies, that saw the greatest increases in application numbers and selectivity. In the Ivies, Columbia and Penn saw the greatest increases, and other universities in the group include NYU, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Rice, Washington University, and Southern Cal. Chicago was the biggest mover, with application numbers increasing nearly seven times from 2000-2020, but the biggest factor was its adoption of the Common Application in 2007.
Tulane has received plenty of attention, scrutiny, and criticism for its use of early decision, and the Times article states “Its leaders knew that early decision could attract teenage true believers.” But are those who apply early decision “true believers” or more like Black Friday shoppers or those who respond to “and if you order now” commercials, looking for a deal and worried that time will expire? And does Tulane or any other institution care?
It is hard to know how much early decision benefits Chicago, because it refuses to reveal what its ED numbers are. I find that lack of transparency indefensible. Applicants have a right to know the rules of the game, and institutions have an obligation not only to “practice what they preach,” but also “preach what they practice.”
A couple of Chicago’s practices described in the article provide hints that early decision is very important at the university formerly known as “the place where fun goes to die” (my favorite unofficial school motto of all time). One is its controversial contacting some deferred early action applicants inviting (or inciting) them to move their applications into the early decision 2 pool. The other is a newer gimmick creating an “early” early decision option for students attending some summer programs. For years I cautioned students (and parents) that they were mistaken believing that attending summer programs would give them a leg up as an applicant. Now that is apparently no longer the case at Chicago. I wouldn’t characterize that as “wrong,” just “sketchy.” It creates a new kind of “side door” admission. All side doors to college admission are inherently dubious, but especially one that requires payment for a summer program.
Tulane and Chicago are far from alone in heavy reliance on early decision as an enrollment strategy. According to the Times article, there are 73 colleges and universities that admit more than 40 percent of their freshman classes through early decision. That’s great for the universities as an enrollment management tool, but is it good for students and for society?
I want to believe that there is a role for early decision in a rational admission process, but what we have now doesn’t meet that low bar. It benefits students from schools with savvy college counselors and those who don’t need to compare financial aid offers. With so many institutions admitting a large part of their class early, it puts pressure on students to declare a first choice before many of them are ready. It accelerates the application process, may increase stress and mental health issues, and it impedes the developmental value of the senior year of high school.
For students hoping to attend a selective college or university, applying Early Decision maximizes their chances of admission. Because applying early to one place in effect closes
doors to other selective colleges, to quote the medieval knight from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, “You must choose. But choose wisely.” That’s not to say that admission to an elite college is a Holy Grail or that college choice is a life or death decision. You probably won’t turn to dust if you choose “poorly.”
Years ago I heard a college president announce that his university would only admit students in early decision and early action, while his admission staff stood in the back of the room cringing because the deadlines for both had already passed. I worry that the heavy investment in early decision could lead to the death of regular admission at many institutions. We may already be there. I recently saw an infographic prepared by Moore College Data showing nearly 25 prominent national colleges and universities that enroll between 1 and 4 percent of students who applied through a non-binding program. Applying ED may or may not be advantageous, but applying regular decision is clearly disadvantageous. That fact, combined with the restrictive nature of early decision programs, makes me wonder if ED policies aren’t ripe for an antitrust complaint on behalf of students or other institutions.
The other issue raised by the article is whether the practice of college admission is a business or a profession. I asked that question in an article in the Journal of College Admission back in 2004. My answer then was that it is clearly a business, but hopefully more than just “the Sales Department of the Enrollment Management Division of Higher Education, Inc.”
The question is more pertinent today than it was then. Colleges and universities face an existential crisis from the confluence of the demographic enrollment cliff and the federal government’s attack on higher education. That puts increasing pressure on drivers that generate revenue. Hitting enrollment goals is about more than filling classrooms and dorms. It’s about saving colleagues’ jobs at the institution and preserving the economic stability of the surrounding community.
There has always been a tension within college admission between sales and counseling, but I worry that tension is disappearing because college admission offices do relatively little counseling these days. Are college admission and college counseling part of the same profession or two different professions? Should NACAC rebrand itself as “NACACEM” (National Association for College Admission Counseling and Enrollment Management)?
I am happy for, and trying not to be envious of, colleagues who have achieved “Millionaire Master of Early Decision” status, but I hope that we will keep the counseling in college admission counseling. The only way most of us will become millionaires is to follow Steve Martin’s advice, “First, get a million dollars,” but helping young people discover who they are and what they want from their lives is a far more satisfying reward.