How does this work?

Yeah, so it's a much simplified application process.

It's a lot like a social media profile.

They ask for your basic info.

There's no essays.

There's no requirement to fill out extracurriculars or activities.

There's no mandate for standardized scores.

What are the kinds of schools that are doing this, and why?

Roshan, what did you find?

Yeah, so Caltech University, the California Institute of Technology, has this small team within their admissions department.

Um, they call themselves the Fraud Squad, and they are sort of the investigators who are in charge of, of vetting applicants who are accepted to, to the school.

And so, um, you know, colleges have all sorts of systems in place for, for checking applications.

From, from what I understand, I think Ca- uh, Caltech has a pretty extensive process, um, in that they, you know, they really value integrity and honesty.

And, you know, a lot of schools do that as well, but they just kind of have a very formalized and thorough process to check every single application, um, for students who they're admitting.

And so they kind of go through these applications, um, extensively, you know, leaving no stone unturned.

Uh, did they reveal, like, what kind of busts or ahas, uh, that they've found here?

WSJ reporter Roshan Fernandes says that making the application easier to do also affects how many people apply.

The biggest thing is they wanna see more applications.

When you see more applications, then you can choose to accept the same number of students, and you can inflate your ranking or your prestige.

Now, some of these schools also wanna grow enrollment.

So for example, Texas Christian University told me that they removed some supplemental essays because they wanna grow their enrollment, and they saw a 14% jump in applications.

Another reason colleges are doing this now is because of artificial intelligence.

Tulane University was saying it's just become so much harder to tell whether the responses are AI-polished.

So tell me a bit about this alternative backdoor students are utilizing.

Yeah, for sure.

I mean, it's been a thing for a long time, but I think we're kind of seeing this, um, pick up some traction.

We're seeing more and more kids become interested in this, particularly with big public flagship schools.

Um, and that's just because, you know, the admissions process has gotten so much more competitive.

It's so much more difficult to get into, you know, University of Texas at Austin or University of, of Florida or some big schools like this which students might be interested in.

So a number of these schools have, um...

Are they, are these students who are taking these backdoor plans, are they involved in the colleges socially at all?