<p>How much has the acceptance rate for a university such as UCLA UC Berkeley decreased over the past decade?</p>
<p>That’s not difficult to find. Have you googled?</p>
<p>The acceptance rates for top schools decreased in the past decade as more and more students applying to multiple top schools to increase their chance.</p>
<p>^The important nuance there is “multiple <em>top</em> schools”. All else being equal, having everyone apply to, say, twice as many schools shouldn’t change the acceptance rate. What it should do is drop the yield in half. However, because most everyone wants to go to the same 50 schools, the yield for those schools doesn’t drop. Hence the lower acceptance rates. </p>
<p>I imagine there are still plenty of schools that have not lowered their acceptance rates, and maybe even have gone the other way if their yields are dropping. There are something like 2,500 4-year schools in the US. We tend to ignore about 2400 of them on this site…</p>
<p>^ No. The fact is there are around 20% increase in the number of applicants for each school over the last few years to top schools while the number of admitted students only increased 2-5%. For instance, if a student would apply to 5 reach schools a few years ago, a similar student would apply to 6 reach schools now. That alone decrease the acceptance rate by 20% when the number of admitted students was not increased in the same extend. The yield rate would also be slightly lower as it is only affected by those who actually accepted by multiple top schools which are not as often.</p>
<p>Sorry, but ‘no’ back atcha!</p>
<p>You are lumping together the increase in students going to college, the (slight) increase in students at each school, and the increase in the number of applications submitted by each student. I only looked at the last variable, hence my “all else being equal” disclaimer in the post.</p>
<p>My only point is that having every kid submit more applications doesn’t lower acceptance rates in and of itself. Other factors, including an increasing number of college-bound kids and the strong preference for highly selective schools, are what drive acceptance rates down.</p>