The colleges then feel obligated to resort to businesslike marketing tools and modeling methods to try to predict and influence an unstable market. Controlling the spiraling increase in financial aid becomes a major goal. Finding the right students today means not only attracting those who are the best academically and who bring special talents to campus, but also enrolling a critical mass who can pay all or a large part of that sticker price. And the relationship between college and family becomes more strained. Suspicion grows like a weed in a rose garden.
Consultants emerge to help families negotiate the process.
Parents are told to appeal admissions decisions directly to the top, to engage in hard-ball negotiations with the financial aid office, to persist at all cost. It is not uncommon now to find highly selective universities actively bidding against one another for the same pool of students, some even offering scholarships to students who have not applied. Such strategies undermine public trust in the long run. Recently, colleges have been promoting early decision or early action programs to a greater degree than in the past, in part to assure that they meet enrollment goals. Because fewer spaces are left to fill, the regular admissions process becomes even more competitive.