Early App Rate Rises 9 Percent

Heeding the advice of the College Counseling Office and their advisers, 82 percent of this year’s seniors sent in their applications in early November—rather than in January, the regular application date—marking a nine percent increase compared to that of last year’s seniors.Last year, 73 percent of students from the class of 2013 applied early to college, and of the early applicants, 63 percent were accepted according to College Counseling Office figures.However, this year, out of 319 total seniors, 260 applied early to a wide range of colleges this fall, according to a number of faculty members who were present during last Monday’s faculty meeting when the current figures were announced.The early deadline not only kept seniors busy this fall, but also the teachers who wrote letters on their behalf. Dean of Faculty Ron Kim, in thanking the faculty for their efforts, noted the increase in work when it comes to the writing of college recommendation in addition to teaching, coaching, evaluating midterm grades and preparing for family weekend.“Every applicant needs at least two or three college recommendation letters written by teachers. So we have three hundred plus seniors that need to be accounted for,” Kim said. “In total, faculty probably ended up writing about 1000 recommendations.”Despite the Academy’s five-to-one student to teacher ratio, the distribution of student requests is not even among the faculty.Each student is required to submit letters from a specific academic department, placing an inconsistent demand for extra work on teachers of certain departments.“It certainly takes up quite a lot of extra time,” math instructor Jeffrey Ibbotson said. “In terms of how much it varies, it always depends. It could start at a low point of 4 hours to a high point of 20 hours in total. It’s an increase in workload—and at times, a hassle—but I’m doing it because we’re here for the students.”English instructor Rebecca Moore typically spends an hour per letter, not counting the time she spends collecting the information necessary to write it.“It comes in stages,” she said. “I collect all of the students’ comments in the spring, their RAL notes, as well as all of the notes they write to me. I also ask them to fill out their form fairly carefully so that I can quote them. Once I have all that information together, I can write it in between thirty minutes to an hour.”“If you average the number of letters that need to be written, it is relatively manageable with everyone writing about five or six, but that is not how it works,” Kim said. “There are some faculty who write a tremendous number of recommendations and with the early application period, teachers have an earlier and more pressing deadline of late October.”Math instructor Eric Bergofsky felt that because the bulk of recommendations are written by certain departments, the task is not evenly allocated.

“It is a burden and a hidden piece of faculty members’ workload that is frankly not evenly distributed with the bulk of the recommendations written mainly by a few different departments,” he said.

Moreover, Bergofsky also noticed an addition to the number of requests for him to write recommendations this fall as compared to last fall.“I wrote nine this year, but last year it was closer to four to six,” he said.Ibbotson discussed the effects of the majority of his students requesting recommendation letters earlier than usual. “In the past, before so many people applied for early applications, Thanksgiving Vacation was largely devoted to writing them,” he said. “Now, it hits earlier in the year and occurs when a lot of other things are going on, such as classroom visits and evaluations,” he added.Kim agreed that the time period was more relaxed in previous years. “The recommendation period used to be spread out a little bit more between the early action period and the normal college application period, but now there is an increase in early applications,” Kim said.However some teachers felt that the amount of work was inevitable, regardless of the season.“There is always a lot to do. We have to write letters for every single student in the school,” Moore said, “Although now they come earlier, on other hand, you don’t write them later. So it’s pay now or pay later.”Regardless of the amount of letters written, with twelve teachers writing twelve or more, Kim made a point to stress the duty taken on by faculty and acknowledge the time commitment.

“This is a significant and important responsibility at an important time in a high-school student’s career, and the least I could do is to acknowledge and thank the faculty members for writing the letters,” Kim said.

“This is a significant and important responsibility at an important time in a high-school student’s career, and the least I could do is to acknowledge and thank the faculty members for writing the letters,” Kim said. “The faculty really do put a lot of care into the process. They want students to succeed.”CCO declined comment on early application statistics.