Colleges have long had access to students’ transcripts, test scores, and other measures of academic and non-academic performance. They use this treasure trove of data to decide who gets in and who doesn’t.
But can colleges see where else you’ve applied? In most cases, no, colleges can’t see where else you’ve applied. This information rarely, if ever, appears on your transcript, and there are new laws that prevent schools from using your financial aid forms for that purpose.
Do Colleges Know What Other Schools You’re Applying To?
Except in the rarest of cases, none of the colleges you apply to will know where else you’re seeking admission. This information isn’t furnished on your transcript, and you don’t have to list it on your application. Recent laws prevent colleges from using financial aid data or other software to glean this information.
In short, the only way the admissions department at a particular college or university will know where else you’ve applied is if you decide to tell them yourself.
Not to mention, most admissions departments are way too busy during admissions season to even take the time to investigate where else their students are applying. Particularly at big, popular state schools — UCLA, for instance, gets well over 100,000 applications every year — it’s all they can do to simply get through every candidate in the stack.
Why Would Colleges Want to Know Where Else You’ve Applied?
Let us repeat that you shouldn’t worry that colleges will find out where else you’ve applied. You definitely shouldn’t worry that they’ll use that information to influence their admissions decision.
With that said, there have been reports in the past (as in more than 7-8 years ago) of certain schools — usually smaller private colleges trying to “game” the U.S. News rankings — using sneaky tactics to find out where else their prospective students are applying.
The two most common ways colleges were doing this were by combing through students’ financial aid forms and by using proprietary software that ran alongside the Common App.
As of 2015, both of these methods have been made illegal. Colleges can no longer use financial aid data to find out where else you’re applying, and the software that was invented for that purpose has effectively been shut down.
Why were colleges seeking this information? Most likely, they were trying to maximize their yield rate by admitting the students most likely to choose their school.
By looking at what other schools each student was interested in, the admissions officers could make a guess as to whether their school was the student’s first choice, second choice, or safety school.
Suppose, for instance, that you’re an admissions officer at a private school ranked in the vicinity of #70 in U.S. News. You get an application from a student who appears to be a strong candidate — their test scores are above your school’s 75th percentile, and they rank near the top of their high school class.
You would love for this student to choose your school, but something tells you that with their stats, they might have better options. By seeing where else they’ve applied, you can get a sense of where their head is.
If the other schools are more prestigious than yours (but not so prestigious as to make them a longshot for the applicant), you might conclude that the applicant will choose one of those schools over yours.
If, on the other hand, the student’s other college choices are one run-of-the-mill flagship state school, a few directionals, and a couple of lower-ranked privates, you might feel more confident that your school is the applicant’s first choice.
Why Would You Not Want Colleges to Know Where Else You’ve Applied?
The main reason you might not want colleges to know where else you’ve applied is because of the potential scenario described above.
If you’re applying to a school that should be a fairly safe admit based on your grades and test scores, but the school sees that you’re seeking admission to several other schools that are more competitive and more prestigious, you might fear that the school will reject you because they think you won’t choose to go there anyway.
In college admissions parlance, the practice of a school turning down a qualified student it thinks is only using them as a safety school and will probably choose to go somewhere else is called “yield protection.”
A college’s yield is the percentage of students they accept who actually decide to go there. For example, if a college accepts 10,000 applicants but only 2,500 of them enroll, then the school’s yield is 25%.
The most prestigious colleges and universities in the country — schools like Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford — have yields above 80%. Other schools have yields of 10% or below. Most colleges want to have a higher yield than their so-called peer schools, as it makes them look like the more desirable choice.
No college or university has ever actually admitted to practicing yield protection, and most of the evidence supporting the practice is anecdotal, e.g., “Three kids at my daughter’s high school with near-perfect grades and SATs got turned down by Tulane! It’s clearly yield protection!”
And, like we’ve said repeatedly in this article, colleges no longer have a way to see the other schools you’ve applied to. So there’s absolutely zero reason to worry that a school will turn you down because they see the other colleges you’re applying to and assume you’ll pick somewhere better.
Why Would You Want Colleges to Know Where Else You’ve Applied?
Some applicants want colleges to know where else they’ve applied. This happens most often when a student is trying to leverage admission at multiple schools in order to get a better scholarship or financial aid package.
For example, say you got accepted to School A and School B and that both colleges offered financial aid. The two schools are considered peers, but School A is considered the slightly better college and is ranked several spots higher in U.S. News.
However, you prefer School B because it’s a better cultural fit and has the specific major you want. The small difference in reputation and rankings doesn’t bother you.
You received similar financial aid packages from both schools, making the difference in total cost negligible. However, you believe School B might be receptive to increasing your aid if you present your offer from School A.
Why? Because in today’s hyper-competitive college admissions landscape, where U.S. News has an outsized influence on students’ (and parents’) decisions, those few ranking spots likely result in School B losing quite a few students to School A every year.
So, you present School B with your comparable offer from School A and tell them that you really want to go there, but if the cost is going to be the same, you feel like you should attend the higher-ranked school. But if they can find a way to lower your cost…
Hundreds of students every year are successful in bumping up their financial aid by playing schools against each other in this way.
Can Colleges See Where Else You’ve Applied? The Bottom Line
Applying to college is stressful in so many ways, but one thing you absolutely shouldn’t worry about is whether colleges can see where else you’ve applied, and whether that will impact your chances of getting in.
Colleges cannot see where else you’ve applied, so there’s no need to worry about them finding out. Just focus on putting your best foot forward, applying to a good mix of reach, match, and safety schools, and letting your best self shine through in your essays. Good luck!
