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The College Process

As a high school graduate, I couldn’t imagine that I would ever think about the college process again, but I must admit that being a spectator isn’t so bad. As I see all of the current high school seniors sending in their early college applications this week, I can’t help but reminisce about my experience with the process exactly one year ago. I remember the intense competition between students as they battled it out for acceptance letters from many of the same institutions. It all happens so fast that you don’t really have much time to think about the process as a whole, but as I observe it now I begin to realize its similarities to certain concepts in our Networks class.

Everyone applies to the same schools. In past generations the process was much more relaxed. Kids did not dedicate all of their time towards test-prep, uninteresting extra curricular activities, and other methods of application padding, but rather most applied to a few target schools and were nothing but satisfied with the outcome. This is the exact opposite of the way things are today. As stated in a high school account of the college process at Princeton High School in Princeton, New Jersey, during their first semester of senior year students face direct competition with their friends– contributing to what many would agree is an unenjoyable experience overall.

http://www.centraljersey.com/articles/2011/10/31/the_princeton_packet/news/doc4eaf2414a985f447920754.txt

Kevin Qui, a student at Princeton High School, speaks for the masses when he says, “I’m definitely not a huge fan of the process in general, it’s really time-consuming, and everyone is so competitive with one another. It’s just not a good feeling.” This is a common feeling among college applicants and one I remember from applying last year. For example, my high school had a graduating class of 189 people in 2011 and more than 40 of those students applied early to Yale alone. Applying to the same institutions however, isn’t the only problem with the process today. If students have no set limits on the amount of schools that they can apply to then the dominant strategy becomes to apply to all of the top schools, even if they can only enroll in one. The current system only drives students to devote more time towards padding their applications, perpetuates the competition that is already felt between applicants, and leaves people wishing for an application process similar to the one their parents can reminisce about: “There just weren’t as many students competing for each slot.”

When reading the first hand account of the college process (linked), the word “slot” as it’s used by Carol Lee, a chemistry teacher at Princeton High School, stuck with me. It made me think about our Networks class and the similarities between the slots for advertisers on the web and the slots for college acceptances. In class we talked about multiple advertisers competing over advertising slots that are ranked in the order of how many clicks they receive by a web user. An advertiser’s total value then depends on his value per click times the amount of clicks that each slot receives. If we assume that every student is what would be an advertiser and every college is a slot, we will begin to notice many similarities in the two networks and their set ups.

The roles can be divided up in many ways. If we are to assume, however, that each “advertiser” is a student and each “slot” is a college, then we also find direct similarities between click through rate and school reputation, and value per click and “target” school level. In this scenario, the student with the best application/ highest ranked target level is going to end up with the top slot just as the advertiser with the highest value per click is going to end up with the top slot. The college process, however, has one big difference from the problems we covered in class. Students can and almost always do apply to more than one college (in this case slots) throughout the process. This is actually more similar to the way advertisers buy up slots in real life. Advertisers can and will advertise in more than one slot if they find it valuable enough, and if they have the funds to do so. Using VCG, the advertisers’ price is then determined by the “harm” that their existence does to the other advertisers, but in the case of the college process, students do not pay a price that is determined based on the slots they take up. The closest similarity to VCG is the price it is to send in each application via commonapp (in an attempt to limit the amount of schools that kids apply to), but this is in no way reflective of the values of the slots (school reputations) as it is in true VCG.

It is for this reason that the college process has become so competitive and unenjoyable. Although it would be impossible to implement a price based on the reputations of the colleges that high school seniors apply to, it is obvious that something needs to change. In my high school, students were not allowed to apply to more than 8 private institutions throughout their application process. This did not get rid of the competition between students, but it did force students to apply to less “top tier” colleges, take up fewer overall slots, and think more heavily about actual targets and safety schools. Can you imagine a network in which the top advertiser took every possible slot and didn’t have to pay proportionately? Directly comparing the topics from our Networks class only calls attention to the unfair and competitive market that is the college process.

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