College Application Roulette

By Quetzal Mama • April 22, 2015

College Application Roulette

The phenomenon of Overmatching

by Latino students

and why their parents should care.

For the past several years I’ve been focusing my research on mitigating the undermatching phenomenon of high-performing Latino students. However, lately I’m concerned about the overmatching phenomenon of mid-level performing Latino students. Before I explain my concern and why Latino parents should care, let me explain the differences between undermatching and overmatching.

Undermatching refers to high-performing, college ready students who select and enroll in colleges with selectivity levels significantly lower than their academic profile or forego applying to college altogether. Overmatching occurs when mid-level college ready students apply for admission to selective colleges where they are underqualified.

In a nutshell, the high performing undermatched kids should be attending schools like Harvard and Yale, but opt instead for Community College (or no college at all). The mid-level overmatched kids should be attending mid-level campuses but are instead hedging their bets and applying mostly to competitive universities.

Why am I concerned? I’m concerned because both phenomenon yield devastating results for Latino students. In both scenarios, our Latino students have the potential to end up at universities where they are unhappy or depressed, failing to actualize their potential, and where they have significant odds of dropping out. While the annual pool of undermatched students is relatively small, the pool of students with the potential to overmatch is quite large.

When Latino students undermatch, they will be situated in an educational institution misaligned with their academic and intellectual abilities. They are also disadvantaged from a financial aid perspective, graduation success metric, networking opportunities, career outcomes, and a host of other disadvantages. And, the group most impacted by undermatching among all demographics is high-performing, low-income, first generation, Latino students.

However, when our Latino students overmatch, they will be left with equally dire options. Their admission offers tend to be extremely limited (sheer number of college admitted), and the accompanying financial aid packages are also disadvantageous. This is because they focused their energies applying mostly to campuses that were significantly out of their range. Meaning, their academic profile was inferior to the profile of students traditionally admitted to the targeted campuses. They end up with one or two offers from safety campuses they had no intention of attending.

Overmatching is particularly harmful for low-income, mid-level performing Latino students because of the way fee waivers are allocated. For example, qualifying low-income students in California will receive four fee waivers for the UC system and four fee waivers for the CSU system.

If a mid-level performing student uses all four fee waivers on the top four UC campuses (Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego, and Santa Barbara), the odds of admission will be extremely low. If they use the other four waivers for highly impacted CSU campuses – like Cal Poly, Long Beach, San Diego State, and San Jose State, they also diminish their odds of admission. By applying to heavily impacted campuses, or those that are out of their academic range, they essentially “waste” all eight fee waivers. This may result in little to no college options.

These college-bound Latino students understand the general concept of “match,” “reach,” and “safety” campuses. They know to diversity their mix of college campuses including private, public, and those with a range of geographic diversity. They hear me when I repeat how these strategies will yield greater offers of admission on the table, the opportunity to compare and contrast multiple financial packages, and to feel empowered in the decision making process. All good stuff.

But, when the time comes and it’s 11:00pm on a Sunday night in late November, all these rules somehow fly out the window. It’s as if these students decide that despite the incredible odds against them they are willing to potentially sabotage their college choices by taking a substantial risk. Common sense tells them to focus on matched schools, but their ego screams, “But this could be your lucky chance!” I wonder if this type of gambling is similar to playing the lottery? We know our chances of winning the Powerball Jackpot are about one in 175 million, but we continue to play because the prospect of chance is an enticing motivator.

But, it’s not fair to compare lottery playing with college application roulette. To play the lottery, the cost is only $1. However, the cost of losing to college application roulette is priceless. The losses include gambling away the opportunity to matriculate in a solid college or university, future career prospects, and future income, to name a few.

So what’s driving overmatching? According to many research studies, including my own informal studies, in almost all cases it is student decisions that drive overmatching. For the past five years I’ve collected data on several groups of mid-level to high-performing Latino students. My data set includes high school name, composite SAT and/or ACT scores, GPA, and the list of colleges applied. At the end of each year I compare their application list with their list of admission decisions including admitted, waitlisted, and denied.

Sure enough – each year, those students who used my calculated, strategic, “80-10-10 Rule” combined with a diversified portfolio yield the highest number of admission offers. Those who gambled, who took an uncalculated risk, were the biggest losers. On average, they yielded only one to two admission offers – typically to campuses they felt were inferior.

I may never know the reasons why so many smart, hard-working Latino students self-sabotage by gambling through college application roulette. However, I’ll continue researching this fascinating psychological phenomenon of overmatching until I can make sense of it, and ideally, create tools to help our kids avoid this costly mistake.

Quetzal Mama is the pen name and marketing brand of Roxanne Ocampo. Follow her on Twitter or find her books on college admission here!