College Uncovered

Kirk [00:00:07] Alana Wolf has a really cool job. She works for one of the world's biggest cruise ship companies. Elena spent three months on a cruise ship learning the ropes, and now she's in the corporate office in Miami, rotating into a new job every six months.

Jon [00:00:21] Of course, it helped that a lot of went to the best hospitality school in America, the one at Cornell University. But she didn't get into Cornell when she first applied in high school. She found a way in that almost no one knows about.

Alana [00:00:33] When the applications and everything came out. I knew that there was a chance I was going to get this, and I don't think anyone else knew what that was, but I definitely wouldn't regret it. It was an amazing opportunity and I'm so glad I did it in the end.

Jon [00:00:46] We're about to tell you how people like Alana get rejected by colleges, but end up in them anyway.

Kirk [00:00:51] It's one of the many secrets admissions offices don't want you to know about. Welcome to College Uncovered, a podcast pulling back the Ivy to reveal how colleges really work. I'm Kirk Carapezza with GBH in Boston, and.

Jon [00:01:13] I'm John Marcus with The Hechinger Report. Between us, we've been covering higher education for decades, and.

Kirk [00:01:18] In the process, we've learned that higher education is a huge, multi-billion dollar a year industry. And colleges operate just like other mega businesses, or worse. And we're here to tell you their most closely held secrets. Today on the show, the secret sauce of sophomore admits.

Jon [00:01:38] Okay, did you know that getting turned down by your dream school doesn't actually always mean you've been rejected? Highly selective colleges proudly boast about their low freshman acceptance rates, but quietly, they're telling some rejected applicants to come back as sophomores.
 
Kirk [00:01:53] The reason they do this is they know that a shamefully high percentage of freshmen will inevitably drop out. And that leaves a lot of extra seats to fill. Plus, they know it won't hurt their rankings to take people as sophomores who have lower high school grades and test scores. That's because the rankings are based on the characteristics of only freshmen, not sophomores.

Jon [00:02:13] Reserving seats for so-called sophomore admits is among the many secrets college admissions officers don't want you to know about. For example, they buy the names of test takers from the companies that administer the SAT and Act. Tens of thousands of them. At about $0.47 per name.

Kirk [00:02:30] They also recruit students they know they'll turn down just to increase their selectivity.

Jon [00:02:35] Some schools are even paying lead generators to post official looking advice websites that students stumble into online.

Kirk [00:02:41] But the real purpose is to suck up prospect's names and their contact information.

Jon [00:02:46] So why are selective colleges telling students to go somewhere else and then accepting them as sophomores?

Kirk [00:02:52] Well, even as more and more Americans are rejecting going to college straight out of high school, the most selective schools are harder to get into than ever. And those schools publish and publicize the number of applications they've rejected, almost as a badge of honor.

Jon [00:03:05] But like a lot of things colleges say, that's misleading. In fact, there aren't more applicants out there. There are a lot fewer of them. But each applicant is applying to more schools. The average student now sends out seven applications, and some these days apply to 20 or 30 schools. That means colleges can brag about how they've turned down record numbers of applications. Notice that they're very careful not to say record number of applicants, which is very different, but they like to do this as a marketing ploy, leaving parents and students feeling really lucky just to get in.

Kirk [00:03:36] At the same time, more of these colleges are doing something else they don't want you to know about inviting applicants to come back as sophomores, but they don't even need to reapply or write an essay.

Jon [00:03:49] And Alana Wolfe, who we heard from at the top, is one of the people who benefited from this strategy.

Kirk [00:03:59] When I first talked to her a few years ago, Alana was moving into her dorm room at her dream school, not as a freshman, but as a sophomore.

Alana [00:04:06] I wanted to go to Cornell originally, and then I got this option where you go anywhere freshman year, and then your sophomore year, you can go to Cornell and you don't really have to do anything. Just reapply and keep up a certain standard of grades.

Kirk [00:04:17] That's right, Alana didn't even have to fill out another application or sit down for another interview. She was in. That's it. Cornell just told her to come back 18 months later and take her spot. The Ivy League school told her to go somewhere else for a year, maintain at least a B average, and then come back in the fall.

Alana [00:04:36] I'm technically a transfer student, but it was a lot easier than applying to be a transfer. I went through the transfer application, but I didn't have to write any essays or really do anything except get my teachers to sign things.

Kirk [00:04:47] Colleges don't loudly advertise this. They don't blasted on their websites or on their Twitter feeds or TikTok accounts, but they're increasingly admitting students this way.

Jon [00:04:56] It worked out for Alana, but it's not out of the goodness of their hearts that universities like Cornell do this. Kirk. It's all about the money.

Kirk [00:05:03] First of all, an incredible 1 in 4 freshmen drop out on average before they even reach their sophomore year. That's obviously a huge failure of the higher education system that we have in this country. But it also leads to a big dip in colleges revenue stream.

Eric Endlich [00:05:18] It helps the university keep their numbers up.

Kirk [00:05:21] Eric Endlich is an advisor to college applicants and their families, and the founder of the company Top College Consultants. He told us that more colleges are admitting students as sophomores to increase diversity, accepting full paying foreign students who need to work on their English and American students who didn't make the first cut. That also includes the children of alumni and donors. 

Eric Endlich [00:05:43] Colleges aren't really looking to highlight it unless it comes up as an issue. Say, if a student's academic performance is subpar.

Jon [00:05:52] But even if the students academic performance is subpar, that's okay, because they enter as sophomores. They're not counted in college rankings, which are based on such things as the GPAs and SAT scores of only freshmen.

Kirk [00:06:05] Exactly. So colleges can take those applicants without risk to their reputations. Take Southern Methodist University in Dallas, for example. More than a decade ago, SMU began accepting students as sophomores, requiring that they maintain just a 2.7 GPA in their freshman year somewhere else.

Wes Waggoner [00:06:23] And that's I mean, we're pretty generous with it, quite honestly.

Kirk [00:06:26] That's Wes Waggoner, SMU associate vice president for enrollment management. He says the private university offers sophomore admission to about 1000 students a year. Some of those are the children of alumni and donors, and others are students from diverse backgrounds that the university wants to admit, but who don't get in as freshmen.

Wes Waggoner [00:06:45] Primarily it was it was identifying students who wanted to be at our institution, and we wanted them here. We just didn't have room for them as a first year student. It might be children of faculty or children of alumni. It just depends on on the group.

Jon [00:07:03] Wagner's being surprisingly candid there about who's getting in this way and why.

Kirk [00:07:07] Yes, kids who are connected and kids who are definitely not connected.

Wes Waggoner [00:07:12] We know that we have space and we have capacity in these upper level classes. And and we can welcome those students there. It's also an opportunity for a student who might not be admissible academically, in that first year to take a year, go to another school. Often, you know, here it's a community college and sort of get get their academic college, you know, get their feet on the ground and prove themselves in a college classroom that they're ready for a highly selective, competitive college environment.

Jon [00:07:45] So what happened with Alana Wolfe at Cornell?

Kirk [00:07:47] Well, she spent her freshman year in upstate New York, less than a mile away from Cornell at Ithaca College. It's a small, financially struggling private college where she studied theater management, and after a year, she left and went across town just a few miles away to much more highly ranked Cornell. She told me at the time she was a little nervous.

Alana [00:08:07] Because it's a very big change from what Ithaca was, because I was a small liberal arts college and I was in a very small department. But I think I'm excited because I'm not a freshman, so I understand college and understand how it works.

Kirk [00:08:18] We reconnected with her at her job in Miami to see how it all worked out at Cornell. Hey, Alana.

Alana [00:08:24] Hi, Kirk.

Kirk [00:08:25] So how was the transition from Ithaca to the Ivy League?

Alana [00:08:29] I wouldn't say that it was the best transfer social experience that they had set up. They mixed all the transfer students with the freshmen who already had friend groups. So it was harder to find my people. And it took a lot more time because I kept going back to social events at Ithaca College.

Kirk [00:08:45] Was there a bit of imposter syndrome?

Alana [00:08:47] Definitely, I would say, I walked in and I knew that I wasn't supposed to be there freshman year, but everyone around me had been so both, I guess, like socially, I had imposter syndrome because I thought. Like, I mean, maybe I'm not up to this level. I even thought it was going to be hard to socialize with people like at this Ivy League school.

Kirk [00:09:05] Did you get the sense, though, that some of your classmates thought the guaranteed sophomore transfer wasn't an acceptable route to your top choice? 

Alana [00:09:12] The people that were their freshman year definitely like noticed the transfers and thought of them a little bit differently. But I think once you get acclimated about like a semester in, you kind of blended in with the rest of the class, right?

Kirk [00:09:23] And in many ways, economically and socially, Ithaca College looks more like the world than Cornell.

Alana [00:09:29] I would definitely say so. I think Ithaca is more diverse, at least that rather than the hotel school that I was in. So it felt like a very different transition from reality to this, like pedestal school.

Kirk [00:09:40] Pedestal school. Interesting. And so you found yourself going back to the other side of the hill to socialize with your friends from freshman year.

Alana [00:09:47] It was the easier option, right.

Kirk [00:09:48] And that made it difficult to make friends. That at Cornell?

lana [00:09:51] Definitely.

Kirk [00:09:51] And what about academically?

Alana [00:09:53] So academically was the opposite. I was really nervous. I said, like, I'm at this liberal arts school, I'm going to this Ivy League top hotel school in the world. And it turned out to be way easier than I expected. I fit in really well and ended up excelling and being a TA for a lot of my peers. And I ended up graduating in the Honor society and the top of my class, which was totally the opposite of what I expected. So kind of ...

Kirk [00:10:18] And you graduated early.

Alana [00:10:19] I did, which again, was not expected at all.

Kirk [00:10:21] So you were barely on campus.

Alana [00:10:23] I was on campus like three and a half semesters. It is crazy.

Kirk [00:10:27] Would you recommend that to to high school seniors who are considering whether to to go this route?

Alana [00:10:33] I would say take it as an opportunity. What I did is I studied something completely different and took it as a chance to do something else, but then pursue it if you feel like you still want it after a year, it gives you more time to think about it. But I definitely wouldn't regret it. It was an amazing opportunity and I'm so glad I did it in the end.
 
Kirk [00:10:50] As someone who took the guaranteed sophomore transfer route, why do you why do you think colleges are doing this?

Alana [00:10:57] They know who is passionate enough to want to come sophomore year. So I did hospitality in high school. I worked at a hotel. I went to summer college. I was a very passionate kid, who clearly wanted to graduate from the hotel school. But my GPA and my ACT scores were just quite like just a little bit under what they wanted on the statistics. So I believe they do it because, they don't want to mess up their, their statistics and what they have on paper as a student.

Kirk [00:11:26] They're playing the ratings game, making sure that the US news and those all important ratings that they stay at the top.

Alana [00:11:32] Exactly.

Kirk [00:11:33] Did you feel like this was some like kind of magical secret that no one else knew about? 

Alana [00:11:37] Definitely. When the applications and everything came out, I knew that there was a chance I was going to get this. And I don't think anyone else knew what that was. 

Kirk [00:11:46] Did you tell your friends.

Alana [00:11:47] I did, I did tell my friends because I didn't want it to be like, you didn't get in at all. But I did get in just later.

Kirk [00:11:53] So now you're working in the hospitality industry. What do you do?

Alana [00:11:55] I am, I work for Royal Caribbean International. So down in Miami, as you said. And I'm in a two year hotel operations rotational program. So that's everything from, housekeeping to entertainment to beverage to onboard revenue. And I got to spend three months living on a ship, learning all of the operations. And now I work in the corporate office, rotating every six months into doing something new.

Kirk [00:12:19] Alana, thanks so much for coming in and catching us up on your story.

Alana [00:12:22] Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Kirk [00:12:27] So how much of a secret is sophomore admission? We asked Jennifer Simonds, a former admissions official at Tufts and Northeastern universities. Jennifer, thanks for being here.

Jennifer [00:12:35] Thank you so much for having me.

Kirk [00:12:37] So how did you first find out about sophomore admission?

Jennifer [00:12:41] So I first became aware of it in my career at Tufts University when, quite frankly, I would engage with students there and discovered that they were going to be potentially leaving Tufts after a year because they had been guaranteed admission elsewhere. Then I thought it was a joke. I thought that, well, first I thought, are they going to transfer? But in fact, they were not going to transfer. They were not going to have to do anything. They were already reserved a spot.

Kirk [00:13:14] And when you say elsewhere, you mean somewhere else more elite, it's the idea that Tufts University isn't elite enough.

Jennifer [00:13:20] Yeah, right. Exactly, exactly. So, generally we're talking about places like Harvard. We're talking about places like Cornell. Although University of Chicago, did this as well. You're correct. If you if you're thinking that these are elite schools that are going to be engaging in this process.

Kirk [00:13:41] This is a, kind of a little known secret, right? I mean, you didn't know about this until you were behind the scenes at Tufts. Why do some families know about this and others don't?

Jennifer [00:13:50] I was a school counselor for a couple of years, and, at the time, there was a student who I had who was a little bit weaker, than other students. And I won't go into specifics, but, I was very surprised that the student was admitted to Cornell, for his sophomore year, and I actually didn't think of it at the time as being indicative of a larger, you know, possibility for other students, but rather something that was just for this particular student because, his family was very connected.

Kirk [00:14:27] Jennifer Simons is a former admissions official at Tufts University and Northeastern University.

Jon [00:14:40] Okay, so if you're a high school student or their parent and maybe you're not so well connected, what you really want to know is, how do I work this trick? If you or your son or daughter is applying to college, how do you find out about the sophomore admissions route? Joining us now is Joanne Casey. She's a consultant who advises college applicants and their families. Thanks very much for being here.

Joanne [00:15:01] I'm really excited to be here. Thanks, John.

Jon [00:15:03] So sophomore admissions, how do you find out whether that's a possibility for you? So usually the way it happens is that, you know, a student will apply to a college, and then we'll get a letter denying them. And they'll be offered this chance to go to the college, for their sophomore year if they meet certain requirements. And so sometimes they're told to take particular courses. Sometimes, you know, they usually always have to maintain a certain GPA. And to my knowledge, you know, it's sort of something that you don't know about until you get that letter. What kinds of students get offered this option? Well, I've seen it happen in a number of cases. You know, at University of Southern California, for example, I think they do that often with legacy students. So if it's a younger sibling who maybe doesn't have quite the GPA or maybe doesn't have the rigor of curriculum, they might offer that. I've also seen, you know, at Cornell, for example, it might be a similar thing, like maybe the student doesn't have a high enough level math for the college that they wanted to go to. But there's something really compelling about that student that they want to give another chance, although probably not something that they'd want to offer to low income kids because that's just going to drain more financial aid. Right. That's that's my assumption, is that it's a it's a way to manage enrollment, but also perhaps a way to balance the budget a little bit. So clearly, sophomore admission has tremendous benefits for the student who had his or her heart set on that initial college. Go away. Go somewhere else. Come back. Are there downsides to this? I mean, I really do think there are because I think, you know, like take the example of Cornell, you know, we in our culture, we have really become so focused on a small set of colleges that educate, you know, if you look at like top liberal arts, top, you know, in the rankings. Not that I think rankings are the most important way to pick a college, but, you know, they educate about 2% of, of, you know, people that are in, higher education. And, you know, there are so many other great places that these kids could go in, start and stay for years and establish friendships right from the get go, that I'm not convinced that it's a good idea. But I think that because our culture has put so much emphasis on the status of schools, it's really hard for students and families to turn those schools down.

Jon [00:17:23] So, Joan, when a student isn't necessarily offered the option of sophomore admission, it's perfectly acceptable for them to go back and ask, as with many other questions they might have for the admissions officer. It's not the last word, right?

Joanne [00:17:37] Right. I don't think it's usually done, but I don't see why not. There are some schools that are allow appeals. Not many, but there are some schools that allow appeals. And, you know, students can do whatever they want. There is another thing that I know Cornell does where they send you the letter that you didn't get in, but they invite you to transfer. So it's a little different than sophomore admission. They're not saying you can come next year. They're saying we're inviting you to try to apply to transfer next year. So you can imagine that if somebody calls, you know, perhaps they would be offered that opportunity to transfer. It certainly couldn't hurt to reach out and ask if that's something that a student is really interested in considering.

Jon [00:18:17] And when you say that only a certain number of colleges officially say that they allow an appeal, that doesn't mean you can't still ask, right?

Joanne [00:18:24] Yeah. I mean, people can do whatever they want, right?

Jon [00:18:27] Right. No. Right. And but the reason I ask this question is I wonder if they know that or if they think that.

Joanne [00:18:33] Probably not. Yeah. Probably not. The truth is, Jon, I wish that colleges were more transparent about all of their policies. And I understand they're worried about enrolling a class, but, like, I shouldn't have a job. Part of the reason I have a job is because it's become so complicated, I could find something else to do. I really wish colleges would just be honest with families about all the options and really tell them what's up. 

Jon [00:18:59] That's a pretty good last word, Kirk.

Kirk [00:19:01] Yeah, that about sums things up here. More transparency please.

Jon [00:19:06] This is College Uncovered from GBH and The Hechinger Report. I'm John Marcus, and.

Kirk [00:19:10] I'm Kirk Carapaz. Our show is created by Jon.

Jon [00:19:13] And Kirk and edited by Meg Woolhouse.

Kirk [00:19:16] Gary Mott and David Goodman are our mix engineers. In this episode, we use some sound from Freesound.org and FreeMusicarchive.org.

Jon [00:19:25] All of our other music is by college bands. Our theme music is Groundswell by Left Roman, a group out of MIT.

Kirk [00:19:31] College uncovered is made possible by Lumina Foundation.

Jon [00:19:35] We'd love to hear from you. Send us an email to GBHNewsconnect@WGBH.org. And tell us what you want to know about how colleges really operate. And if you're with a college or university, tell us what you think the public should know about higher education.

Kirk [00:19:50] Thanks so much for listening.