most private colleges- certainly not all but most. Consider Tufts, Gtown, ND, Emory ect. With a few notable exceptions, the average total undergrad class size of the elite and near elite colleges is in the range of 4k-7k students. As BC’s total undergrad enrollment is just under a whopping 10k, reducing that population to within the range of average schools would of course, have a significant affect on the overall acceptance rate, knocking it down into the teens. Not rocket science or profound but just trying to keep it real. 10k is a large undergrad class for a private school. Also, I’m curious how the addition of the engineering school will aid in admission stats overall. Since no additional housing is being added (a critical issue on campus not withstanding) some of the schools will see a drop in acceptance.
I’m not sure what you mean. It’s plenty selective and getting more so. The extra 2000 students is perhaps 50 million dollars a year. At 25k per. Probably a lot more since that last 2000 is mostly full pay. That’s a lot of services and help for low income students.
Here’s the numbers last year
“Boston College accepted 8,400 students out of over 31,000 total applications for admission to the Class of 2022, making for a 27 percent acceptance rate, Director of Undergraduate Admission John Mahoney said in an interview on Friday. Last year, BC accepted 9,200 students”
So acceptances are down and stats are up. The endowment is extremely respectable in the billions. That’s how you build engineering schools, new gym facilities, elite faculty and integrated sciences.
The size of class is pretty static.
This year, I think the accpetence rate will be lowered below 25 percent and median scores again way up. There’s not much room to go. Average act 34 in ea this year. Only 25k students out of 1.6mm students score at that level.
And they have to admit more pell grant students to help with usnwr. The extra kids pay for that.
The school has been and will be elite in the years to come. Even more so with the caliber of students currently enrolling. And the buildings. The new profs and new disciplines.
And there is also a school of nursing. Many others don’t have that and if you remove that school and it’s the same size as elsewhere. Plus a stand-alone school of education.
Every place is different and has its strengths. BC is special place.
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Sorry one edit. 38k out of 1.9mm test takers scored a 34 or better. 21 or higher puts you above the average. So 32 33 34 and up are elite. It gets lost on this site. Info below.
“In the class of 2018, 1,914,817 students took the ACT. The average composite score was 20.8 out of 36 (for more on how the ACT is scored, read our article). This means that a score of 21 or higher puts you above average.
But if we consider 21 and up good scores (since they’re above average), what would qualify as an amazing score?
To find out, let’s look at ACT percentiles—the rankings tied to composite scores. For example, a 90th percentile score means you scored higher than 90% of test takers.
On the ACT, 34 and up is the 99th percentile. So if you score 34 or higher, you’re in the top 1% of test takers!
But exactly how many students earned a 33, 34, 35, or 36 in 2018? And which score is the rarest? Let’s take a look:
Score # of Students Percentage of All Test Takers
36 3,741 0.195%
35 14,928 0.780%
34 21,836 1.140%
33 26,930 1.406%
Source: ACT.org”
I don’t think the purpose of the future engineering program is to help admission stats, although I would be interested to see any links or updates on the program. It would probably need to start small and accordingly would not take a significant share of the class for some time. (I’m poking around SCU and Villanova to find engineering enrollment numbers but I must be looking in the wrong places…)
10,000 undergraduate students is actually small for a major private research university. BC is not nor has it ever been a LAC.
bbfan:
I’m a little perplexed about the point of your post.
Of course, something similar could be said for any school. So what? (Both Penn and Cornell have large undergrads, and they don’t seem to be hurting…)
Keep what, real? What is "it’?
Are you asking about Admin rate, a number that can be highly misleading particularly with ED schools, or test scores/GPA/rank?
When you refer to “schools” above, do you mean the individual colleges at BC? Then, surely your assumption is incorrect. No way Engineering will affect the Nursing, Education schools or B-schools. A&S might see some melt from physical science majors, but not very likely IMO. I’d guess that they’d target ~100 students into the first class, so, in terms of total campus community, the additional students won’t be noticed.
Sorry for the confusion of my in-artfully worded post. This post was to question and to theorize if BC’s “large” underclass student body was contributing to an overall higher acceptance rate of BC relative to peer colleges, who have significantly smaller underclass populations and a lower acceptance rate? I believe the answer is YES. For a private university, 10k underclassmen is a fairly large size. Yes there are other private schools with larger undergrad populations, but not many. As I stated in my original post, Tufts, MIT, ND, GTown, ect- all have significantly smaller undergrad classes. Limited availability = more selectivity and exclusivity. Hence, a lower acceptance rate and perceived higher status. Why is this important? Well, it is and it isn’t. When many high achieving prospective students consider colleges, the USNWR rankings weighs heavily. Yes, there are other factors to consider but for many of my friends and myself, USNWR ranking was the starting point and it holds sway with lots of families and high achieving students.
@bbfan1927 My understanding is that acceptance rate is no longer included in the US News calculations, starting with the 2019 US News ranking published in Sept 2018.
On the upside, consider that a large student body results in a large alumni network 
if I remember correctly BC had an issue a few years ago when they added an essay or two that dropped their application pool.
ND has a smaller undergrad program but close to BC with an acceptance rate of 20%.
Remember BC lacks Engineering (they are developing) and medical school so they also need the size to attract research dollars.
If I’m not mistaken BC undergrad has always been this size since I went to BU in the early 90s. Schools enlarge undergrad population but decreasing is not that easy and could be looked at negative.
‘Acceptance rate’ only counted for 1.25% of the rankings points in USNews prior to this year, when it was dropped. But you are correct in your math, the larger the class size, the more you have to accept. As there are not that many 1400 SAT scores to go around…
Regardless, IMO, “status” has little to do with undergrad acceptance rate, but instead almost solely results from academic status (of PhD programs) on the peer assessment score on USNews. Universities with an undergrad focus and thus, small doctoral programs – like BC – are at a decided disadvantage. (Compare % of total student body that is undergrad at BC, vs. say, Columbia or Stanford. The % is flipped as the latter two have much larger Grad programs as a % of total – and thus, peer assessment scores? – than undergrad-focused colleges like BC or even Dartmouth.)
See NRC. (yes, they are due for another update, but academic prestige moves very slowly.) It was only a generation ago that BC was considered a Catholic commuter school, which was easy to get into.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-History/124736
IMO, over time, the new Engineering program will help with the peer assessment scores of BC’s physical sciences. (BU has engineering and it is considered stronger than BC in physical sciences.) BC already has a strong Organic Chem program for example, so add in physics and math and they all will rise…
Just my $0.02.
as an example of increasing academic prestige, BC moved into the r1 of Universities in the most recent update. (Schools like Tufts and Georgetown have been so classified for quite awhile.
To provide another perspective, BC gets about 50% more applications than either Notre Dame or Georgetown - arguably supporting BC’s competitive admission rates despite a somewhat larger class size (about 20%) than either of these two schools. Yields, however, work against BC’s acceptance rates as they need to admit more students (relative to ND or Georgetown) to fill their enrolled class.
BC is an excellent school that is only getting better. Prestige lags reality, and comparisons to Catholic “peer” schools such as Notre Dame and Georgetown inevitably end up with BC viewed as somewhat behind these schools (from a prestige standpoint). I would argue that BC competes against a much broader peer school universe than just ND or Georgetown (many kids at my son’s high school readily apply to BC but not to ND or Georgetown for a variety of reasons), hence the greater number of applications. Part of this is the city of Boston. Part of this is the view that BC is, arguably, less Catholic on a day to day basis (at least compared to ND). Part of this is proximity to a number of Ivy League schools where BC is viewed as a viable geographic and academic alternative.
In sum, acceptance rates are important but only tell part of the story. Focus also on the stats of the enrolled students! After all, those students are the ones who you will actually be going to school with. I would be entirely comfortable stating that BC is arguably the best college out there compared to schools with similar acceptance rates - and I would place it about 8+ spots ahead of where USNWR ranks it (certainly ahead of Wake Forest, NYU, Brandeis, UCSB, UCI, Rochester, and Florida).
Anybody know what the admissions stats was for class of 2023 EA? I haven’t seen it anywhere yet and it usually comes out around this time. Interested in seeing how they treated the large increase in EA since people speculate it might just be a shift from RD to EA rather than a large overall applicant increase.
BC sent a note to guidance counselors that I did not personally see but have been read into by someone who did.
The 16k ea applicants will translate to 35k applications vs 30k+ this year and the admissions rates overall will go below 25%. The sat act average went up to. 34 and high 1400s I was told. But should find out for sure in the next few weeks.
@CCSavant Good points. And only this year with the reduction of admission rate values and increase in pell grant experience did most of these schools slip ahead in usnwr.
Wake and NYU are peerish but the others not at all. They certainly are not listed by BC as peers.
Fine schools for sure but uci and UCSB. UF? Fine schools but not peers in any job interview outside of their geogtaphic locations. Especially business schools. Usnwr has bc in top 15 nationally.
But part of it is the current rage of engineering and cs. Bc doesn’t lead in these areas or have engineering option at all. That’s why the integrated science school and billion dollar effort plus the engineering school coming is important. Add those and easily a top 25.
Rochester is good too. But alumni networks etc endowments. Not in the same league. Especially ex cs and engineer. Sorry. And usnwr is not the only ranking out there but we will see what happens over time.
EA acceptance rate was 28% this year according to school gc.
Actually I just checked Forbes 2018 rankings which includes LACs and Unis. BC is 50 out of all of these schools and approx tied with NYU and ahead of every other school mentioned above. Actually the closest out of wake and Rochester and UF UCSB and uci Is wake at 62. This ranking reflects my view as stated above. If top 50 was evenly split with 25 unis and 25 lacs which can include service academies. This makes sense. BC around 25 in the national uni list. Although this is all micro fiber levels of differences.
@privatebanker Agree that the new (even more) politically correct USNWR rankings fail to capture some basic realities. that are important for students selecting a school to attend rather than whether the school is serving a valuable social purpose. Looking at the Common Data Sets for BC vs. Wake and NYU is instructive. Most recent data shows enrolled students at BC with a 31 - 34 ACT range, vs. 29 - 33 for NYU and 28 - 32 for Wake (which doesn’t require standardized tests suggesting that these scores may actually he higher than those of the total student population).These are statistically meaningful differences. Never understood how Wake gets ranked so high in the USNWR rankings.I would agree that the Forbes ranking provides a much better view of where BC sits in the world of colleges. I note that Emory is slightly behind BC in the Forbes rankings as well, consistent with my world view. Emory’s ACT range is 30 - 33, yet is ranked #21 in USNWR rankings. While these are micro levels of difference in many cases, it is such micro level differences among applicants that can determine where they get accepted!
Yup. And the strength of the pool if applicants is more important than admit rate. If you only have Val’s and sals applying and you take half as an extreme example. Does that mean a school with. 20 percent admit rate like a NYU or Tulane with so many Applicants below the mean and not competitive after first read mean the lower admit rate is more selective.
I keep telling people this fact and no one seems to care. It’s strength of pool that matters and with bc gtown and Nd it’s much stronger than wake Tulane and NYU imho. That’s why they are peers and not the later. Some of it is the religious affiliation. It caps the amount of apply just for the heck of it students which drives admit rates down.
@CCSavant
BC’s ACT range is not that high for the class of 2021 ( US news Data). Forbes is the least respected among rankings in most of the general public’s eyes, and it funny that you site them as they don’t utilize standardized test scores in their formula. Emory is ranked higher in all of the others. US news, Times, Niche, etc. It would be interesting to know who is all in your circle/world view.
Emory’s
ACT range 30-33
SAT range 1350-1520
Avg ACT- 32
Avg SAT 1423
BC
ACT range 31-33
SAT range 1320-1490
Avg ACT- 32
Avg SAT 1405
Also, we all know stats aren’t the only thing that separates students from getting into certain schools, often times its EC’s , writing ability, wealth, connections, etc. Then for ranking things like resources, reputation, graduation rates, etc all important metrics for how schools rank in addition to test scores.