Is BYU in trouble?

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Undergrads are the lifeblood of any university.

I always tell high-school seniors this: you will get into college. They need to you stay alive. You're going to get into schools. Relax.

That said, part of what makes for one of those much-coveted rankings that "fancy" schools boast about is the percentage of students they accept who ultimately attend. And that number will be higher if they can successfully reject students who will ultimately decide not to attend. That's one reason your Ivy Leagues and your CalTechs reject students that on paper look like good fits—they're trying to reject students before students reject them. Po' wittle Stanfwowd's feewings are at stake here, people!

Anyway, I suspect this is part of the reason Son #1 wasn't accepted to BYU last year. Which is fine. He ended up going to his top choice anyway (tuition-free!) and this way it wasn't his fault his mom's sad he's not attending our alma mater. Getting rejected was, some might argue, a boon for him.

Besides, given all the embarrassing reasons BYU gets into the news these days, I feel weird pushing a BYU education on anyone. I mean—it's a great school and you can find every sort of excellence there . . . but then it'll get in the news and embarrass you.

I can't help but wonder if BYU is confused as to how popular it actually is in 2022. Maybe this embarrassment is getting more students to choose another university? Or maybe BYU just overestimated how "fancy" it actually is? I don't know, but how else to explain this?

(A couple notes: First, if you want that image on a sweatshirt, BYU wants your money. Second, I didn't delete the names from the audio because I thought it was too funny that the name of the person calling us is the same as the university he wanted to attend all along.)

This raises a lot of questions for me. Starting with me just being kind of mystified. Does BYU just assume that the kids they reject are sitting at home waiting for BYU to suddenly open up space for them? Or maybe that BYU has such draw that they will drop out of whatever school they are attending to show up in Provo in the middle of winter? What are they thinking? What kind of an ego do they have?

(Speaking of ego, get these posts in your valuable email space.)

All my other questions are variations on this theme. But the most likely answer seems to be desperation. BYU is desperate for more students and thus they are looking for students who are also desperate. And that makes me think freshmen didn't show up this year in large enough numbers such that a serious explanation is demanded. And the best one I can come up with is freshman embarrassment.

And if that is in fact the reason, well. Well! Seems like BYU needs to stop being embarrassing.

Any other theories?