<p>Will admission rates go down again like this year or do you think they will go back up this year</p>
<p>Down .</p>
<p>why do you say</p>
<p>yea...curious....i actually thought they would go up</p>
<p>I heard somewhere it will continue to go up till like 2013. Then, it will decrease slightly, but in general, competition is going rising (at a very fast rate)</p>
<p>I heard something similar to kevster, only that it would start to plateau in 2011 based on population due to the end of the children born from parents of the baby boom. However, population will make competition stronger each year.</p>
<p>Down imo, that's because there will be another huge influx of Asian applicants. Anyone born in 1988 and 1.5 months into 1989 is dragon -- Chinese zodiac. The dragon is a very good omen/sign/whatever you want to call it in Chinese culture. When the dragon year rolled around, many women were timing pregnancies and getting C-sections to make sure their kids were dragons. Since 2007 graduates will include the later half of the dragon year, there will be even more applicants due to last minute C-sections and births from women who wanted dragon kids.</p>
<p>Not crazy, completely cultural. =) And yes, the baby booms will play into that too. For instance in Taiwan, applicants now are around the end of the baby boom.</p>
<p>lol...how about a non superstitious theory :)</p>
<p>It's likely to go down over the next couple of years because there are still a lot of kids whose parents are first generation Asian-Americans. When these kids grow up and start raising their own kids, they're not going to be as strict as their parents were about studying, so then the rate will go up.</p>
<p>More applicants = less acceptance rate</p>
<p>Simple stuff.</p>
<p>Colleges are expected to be MORE competitive each year until about 2010 because of the echo baby boom. Each year, more US students are applying to college than every occurred before. There also are many highly qualified foreign students who are applying to U.S. colleges.</p>
<p>If you think that admissions was hypercompetitive last year, prepare yourself: Next year will be more competitive, so make sure that you pick safeties -- real safeties -- that you'd love to go to, and do careful applications to them.</p>
<p>i think talking about this is pretty useless. Trying to analyze the applicant pool if it's more competitive or not is a waste of time. Focus on what you can do yourself, and just hope for the best.</p>
<p>HeavenWood: It's not superstition. I'm Chinese/Taiwanese so I know what I'm talking about.. this is very real. The first dragon baby was headline news, and so was the last minute push right near Chinese New Year. (Yeah, kinda crazy if you take off the culture thing). But seeing where you're from, it's quite understandable that you think it's superstition. =) </p>
<p>Well, if you couldn't accept the culture thing, at least the baby boom must be more palatable. I think these years are baby boom years for China and surrounding countries.</p>
<p>I'm so scared to start applying to college with things being so competitve now</p>
<p>"When the dragon year rolled around, many women were timing pregnancies and getting C-sections to make sure their kids were dragons."</p>
<p>that's not superstitious. the women who had babies deliberately in the dragon year were the superstitious ones. so basically, more asian babies (with very involved parents) were born in the dragon year than in the previous year. that means, a slightly more competitive pool.</p>
<p>there are, of course, many more factors...</p>
<p>correct me if im wrong but itsnt the class of people born in 1989 the year of the snake</p>
<p>Jaw, you are right.</p>
<p>If you are born in 1988, you are the year of the dragon. I'm pretty sure you have to be born between September and December in order to be a "full" dragon. >]</p>
<p>Use of the common app allows more people to apply to a greater number of schools more easily. As applicant numbers increase, admissions rates decrease. Use of the common app, i think, will play a lot larger role than chineses birthrates...</p>
<p>More applicants, more schools per applicant, and more competitive applicants.</p>