March Madness is my favorite time of year, and March madness is my least favorite. This week I am experiencing both, courtesy of the same university.
This week is the beginning of March Madness, as the NCAA basketball tournament is now branded. I must confess that I find college sports less enjoyable these days due to conference realignment and players transferring multiple times, but that won’t keep me from spending Thursday and Friday glued in front of the TV watching the first-round games. One of my quirks is that I never fill out a bracket because it keeps me from enjoying the games, and another is that I always root for the underdogs.
This year that group includes Miami University of Ohio, which barely made the tournament after going undefeated during the regular season before losing in the first round of its conference tournament, and Santa Clara University. There is an interesting connection between the two. Santa Clara is making its first tournament appearance since 1996, and back then its current coach, Herb Sendek, was Miami’s coach.
March madness has nothing to do with sports, but does involve games. It takes place not in arenas or on playing fields, but rather in admissions offices.
On Monday, March 9, at least some applicants to Santa Clara received an email from the Admissions Office with the subject line, “SCU is releasing decisions soon–are we your top choice?” What followed was an offer of the “If you order now” variety.
The text of the email noted that college decisions were starting to come out, and that “your plans may have changed and that your plan B might have become your plan A.” It reported that some applicants had reached out to express their desire to attend Santa Clara, and that the university wanted to give all applicants the same opportunity. It invited students interested in committing to Santa Clara to opt in to a new Early Decision option by Thursday, March 12.
The email raised eyebrows–and much more. Colleges inviting applicants to switch their applications to Early Decision, which is generally considered binding, is not new, but not in March, 2-3 weeks before regular decisions are being released. Baseball Hall of Fame catcher Yogi Berra is alleged to have said, “It gets late early out here.” It apparently gets early late at Santa Clara.
Santa Clara presented two rationales, two potential benefits to students, for the offer. One is that those opting in would receive their admission decisions ahead of the release date for regular decisions. I don’t find that compelling. It’s mid-March, so at best the earlier decisions will arrive a week earlier. Today’s teenagers have unquestionably grown up in an instant gratification world, but is the opportunity to receive a decision a few days earlier a good reason to switch to Early Decision 3? (Santa Clara already has two rounds of Early Decision along with Early Action and regular decision.)
The other benefit is much more interesting. The email stated that “Our team will know SCU is your number one choice and you are excited to enroll if admitted.” Let’s examine that issue more closely.
I think it is entirely appropriate for colleges to want to know how interested applicants are. I think that interest is a legitimate consideration for admission offices, that it benefits a college or university to enroll students who want to be there.
I wonder about the timing, though. If Santa Clara wanted to give students a formal opportunity to communicate that SCU is “Plan A,” perhaps it should have been done sooner than the Ides of March. There is also the matter of the three-day turnaround to respond.
I also wonder if adding a third round of early decision is necessary. It is certainly possible for a college to give applicants the opportunity to communicate sincere interest without asking them to commit to enroll. SCU is trying to manage admission metrics like yield and admit rate. Heavy use of Early Decision has become a popular enrollment management tool, with a number of highly-selective institutions admitting more than half their classes through ED.
That is easier said than done. To use early decision strategically, a college or university has to have a certain level of demand. The marketplace doesn’t allow Santa Clara to do that, despite the fact that it’s a good, venerable institution. According to its 2024-25 Common Data Set, only 609 of its nearly 19,000 applications came through Early Decision. Santa Clara admits just under half its applicants, but its yield (the percentage of accepted applicants enrolling) is around 18 percent, meaning that Santa Clara has to admit five students to enroll one. But if you pull out those admitted through Early Decision and off the Wait List, both of which should have close to 100 percent yield, Santa Clara’s yield is closer to 11 percent.
What Santa Clara is facing is the higher education version of an issue found as well in college athletics and American society at large, the disappearing middle class. The rich are getting richer, and everyone else is falling behind. In college athletics the big conferences get most of the television money and post-season spots, while mid-majors get dinged for lack of schedule strength but can’t get the big schools to play them. If a mid-major develops star players they get poached by wealthier, high-profile programs. There is currently a debate about whether the Cinderellas that have made March Madness so memorable are a thing of the past. Meanwhile, in society at large the top one percent is thriving, with no concerns about or understanding of affordability.
In higher education there is talk about the “enrollment cliff,” but it is really an “enrollment earthquake.” There is an increasing chasm between rich and poor, with wealthy institutions becoming more popular and many smaller institutions fighting for their very existence. Caught in the middle, right on the fault line, are places like Santa Clara. They want to think of themselves as “elite” (an adjective that probably needs to be retired), and have the right to feel that way based on their history, but the marketplace doesn’t allow them to act elite. They wonder whether the shifting ground underneath them are just tremors or the beginning of the “big one,” and they are grasping for lifelines.
Is adding another round of ED that lifeline? I am sympathetic with Santa Clara’s need to manage its enrollment, but its March 9 “solution” raises more questions than it answers.
How does Santa Clara intend to use the information? Responding affirmatively presumably helps a student’s chances of being admitted, but what happens if a student does not respond? Will that be seen as evidence that the student is unlikely to enroll, and will that result in students being waitlisted or denied for that reason alone? And how does this factor into financial aid? In a worst-case scenario, an unscrupulous college or university (which I am in no way accusing Santa Clara of being) could use this as a tool for financial-aid leveraging, providing smaller packages for those who respond because they have shown they are likely to enroll.
Is asking for an ED commitment in March ethical? Is it necessary to achieve Santa Clara’s goals? Is it manipulative and coercive? No, no, and yes. I am not a fan of the “switch your application to early decision” game, but doing it this late puts students-and counselors in a difficult spot. Those of us who believe that college admission should be grounded in ethical practices face a dilemma. How should we advise our students? On one hand, we believe that students should make early decision commitments carefully and thoughtfully. On the other, this case qualifies as “early decision” in name only, done at the last minute without the student having any idea about finances. I may be alone, but I don’t see it being unethical for a student to respond affirmatively and then choose another institution. A college or university doesn’t have a right to ask for a commitment at this point in the process, and certainly not with 72 hours to decide.
We can be sure that we will see more admission games like this being played, proving the wisdom in another quote from Yogi Berra, “The future ain’t what it used to be.” I hope that colleges, even those challenged by the enrollment earthquake, will adhere to the principle that students should be allowed to make college choices based on good information and following their heart, not coerced through FOMO.
Let the March Madness games begin! And let the March madness games end.