Ben Crair seems like an ideal college applicant. The Niskayuna resident had a grade-point average of 3.88 and an SAT score of 1420 out of 1600. He runs track with his high school team, plays piano, volunteers at a local soup kitchen and recently traveled to Ecuador with his church youth group.
Nevertheless, his top choice, University of Pennsylvania, deferred his application for early admission. He's awaiting word from Penn and six other colleges.
“You do all you can to get in,” he said. “But there's always students who are better than you.”
What's true around the country is true here, too: Colleges are more competitive than they used to be. In the Capital Region, college officials at Union, Saint Rose, Siena and Skidmore all say they have received record amounts of applications for the school year beginning in the fall.
Officials were quick to extol the merits of their various institutions as the cause of the increase. But one factor is more universal: a lot of high school students are out there.
The number of college students in the United States increased from 13.8 million in 1990 to 14.7 million in 1999, according to the U.S. Department of Education. The department projects enrollment to increase by 15 percent, to 15.3 million, in the next 10 years.
“Every college I've talked to is up,” said Mary Lou Bates, dean of admissions and financial aid at Skidmore College, which has received about 5,900 applications this year, an increase of about 6 percent over last year. “We're feeling as though we're in a very healthy position.”
But what's good for colleges is tough for students.
“It's kind of a bummer,” said Crair, 17, who is awaiting what he hopes are fat envelopes from Northwestern, Tufts, Cornell, Rochester, Syracuse and Lehigh, as well as Penn.
“It's just really stressful,” he said, “getting everything done, and then you have to wait, what, five months?”
Dan Lundquist, vice president for admissions at Union, said the college received more than 4,200 applications this year, an increase of 10 percent over the previous year.
“We're starting to get more kids choosing Union as their first choice,” he said. “We're doing a good job at marketing Union.”
At Siena College, applications will be coming in until March 1. But Noel Hogan, vice president for enrollment and planning, said he expected the school to have 5 percent to 7 percent more applications than last year. He's expecting more than 4,000 applications, based on the amount already received.
“The quality (of students) is as good or better than last year,” he said.
There's another reason schools have received so many applications: students are sending more in. A decade ago, students generally applied to three or four schools. Now, because of increased competitiveness and, in some instances, free online applications, students are applying to as many as a dozen schools, say guidance counselors and admissions officers.
“There's more concern,” Hogan said. “The word is out that a lot of colleges are closer to capacity. The risk that you may not get your first choice is higher than it has been.”
Mary Grondahl, vice president for admissions and enrollment planning at the College of Saint Rose, said she was pleased with the increase there. Saint Rose, which received 1,730 applications this year, is up 7 percent from 2002. It's the fifth consecutive year of increases, and the school now receives twice as many applications as it did five years ago, she said.
She and other officials said the diversity of the applicants also had increased. There were more from out of state, and more minorities.
Applications at the Sage Colleges also are up — not record amounts, but close, according to Tim Williams, vice president for enrollment. Russell Sage College received 364 applications this year, compared with 307 last year. Sage College of Albany — now in its first full year — received 226 applications, compared with 212 last year, according to the college.
Meanwhile, both UAlbany and RPI reported no significant increases in student applications. Karl Luntta, spokesman for UAlbany, said the school expected to have 1 percent to 2 percent more applicants by March 1, with a slight overall increase in grades and SAT scores.
Teresa Duffy, dean of enrollment at RPI, said technology universities were not seeing increases because of the lack of jobs in computer fields.
“Everybody's reading the newspapers,” she said. “They see the problems the technology sector is having. It makes students pretty nervous. It's a tough thing to get past.”