Acceptance Rates--Reality Check

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
1

<p>Yeah, so, we know that the number of applications are up a zillion-fold at just about every college in the nation. Why? Because every school has gotten savvy about marketing and outreaches, etc. They all want to boost their US News & World Report stats. I get it. Get more kids to apply, reject more kids, boost your denial rates, and get a higher ranking.</p>

<p>My friend (a high school guidance counselor) recently attended an info session at Stanford with her senior D. The tour guide told the kids not to be discouraged if they had lower SATs or GPAs, "Just apply! Everyone has a chance!" they said. My friend's D had a below 1700 SAT and 3.0 GPA, but she was encouraged by this speech.</p>

<p>(I admit, while I hated the snooty Harvard rep at our local college fair, I now appreciate her brutal honesty: "Don't apply unless you're incredible."</p>

<p>The truth is this:</p>

<p>The acceptance rate at Harvard isn't 8% (or whatever they say it is). It's that for EVERYONE, including the insane reaches (BTW, I encourage and support insane reaches).</p>

<p>My point is this: schools should post actual acceptance rates that MEAN something to applicants. Like:</p>

<p>-applicants with a 1700 SAT? 2000 SAT? 2200 SAT?
-applicants who are valedictorians/salutorians?
-3.5UW? 3.85 UW? 4.0 UW? 5.0 W?
-AP 5.0s?
-applicants who have translated cat meows into English?</p>

<p>College acceptance rates and yield and rankings and all that...everything has become meaningless to the applicant. According to every college, everyone has a chance, but we all know this is a lie perpetuated to pad stats.</p>

<p>I posted this here because Harvard is "that school," but this commentary applies to everyone. I just wish rates were more meaningful to each school's "average applicant."</p>

<p>I apologize if this is a rant that others have made recently. I just had to make it.</p>

<p>That is all. Thanks for listening.</p>

2

<p>Colleges are business. Posting those statistics wouldn’t make good business sense.</p>

3

<p>The meow stat would be cool though, right?</p>

4

<p>Discouraging applicants isn’t a good idea. Especially for college that want to maintain their lead in selectivity.</p>

5

<p>I feel you, but…</p>

<p>Seriously, it’s a false stat. A leading university like Harvard or any top college should care about selectivity of top applicants only not a fairy tail stat of a high-reach applicant pool. Who cares about that? I predict a shift in this sort of stat-making in the next few years.</p>

6

<p>i wish i could remember which school i saw recently that did state statistics like percent and SAT scores, gpa, and rank- it was in the top 20</p>

7

<p>I wish you could too, because that would be an honorable school. ;)</p>

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<p><a href=“https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/133336[/url]”>https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/133336&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

9

<p>it is more difficult to find colleges that do not disclose acceptance stats… Google “Common Data Set” and the college name.
[The</a> Office of the Provost | Common Data Set](<a href=“http://www.provost.harvard.edu/institutional_research/common_data_set.php]The”>http://www.provost.harvard.edu/institutional_research/common_data_set.php)</p>

10

<p>It is true, top-tier colleges these days rarely discourage applicants, even grossly unqualified ones, from applying. But other things contribute to the increased size of the applicant pool. Revamped financial aid, for example, are making it possible for people to apply who before never could have afforded an Ivy-League education. Statistics are slightly misleading, but there’s no doubt that it’s gotten more competitive over the years.</p>

<p>And as far as specific statistics go, schools often do release them, but they’re not widely publicized, nor are they required. Harvard, for example, said that 3,200 of their applicants last year (almost 14%) were Valedictorians. Stanford released a huge breakdown of info. 58% of their applicants had GPAs of 4.0 or higher, 81% were in the top 10% in their class, and 66% had ACT scores ranging from 30 to 36. 12%, 10%, and 12%, respectively, were admitted from each category. Out of applicants who scored 800 on their SAT math, only 15% were admitted. </p>

<p>So statistics show that it still is competitive, even among those with great academic credentials. Sure, the overall acceptance rate might have been buffered a couple percentage points by unqualified applicants encouraged to apply, but overall, the majority of applicants are still very well qualified for these top-tier schools.</p>

11

<p>I’ve seen breakdown by SAT scores or rank on a lot of college stats. MIT does them. I think Princeton and Stanford do. So schools do “post actual acceptance rates that MEAN something.”</p>

<p>MIT: [MIT</a> Admissions: Admissions Statistics](<a href=“http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/admissions_statistics/index.shtml]MIT”>http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/admissions_statistics/index.shtml)
Princeton: [Princeton</a> University | Admission Statistics](<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/admission/applyingforadmission/admission_statistics/]Princeton”>http://www.princeton.edu/admission/applyingforadmission/admission_statistics/)
Stanford: [Stanford</a> University: Common Data Set 2009-2010](<a href=“http://ucomm.stanford.edu/cds/]Stanford”>Stanford Common Data Set | University Communications)</p>

12

<p>Stanford puts acceptance rate by score and gpa on their mailings . . .</p>

13

<p>I don’t understand what Harvard or any school has to do with it. The schools themselves do not interact in any significant way with students when they are considering applying. The decision to apply rests with students, families and guidance counselors, not admissions.</p>

<p>I think that the financial aid initiative at Harvard and other schools must have had an effect on the number of applicants (though that should mean applicants to state schools have gone down, which I don’t think is true).</p>

<p>I think the biggest factor in the increase in applicants and decrease in admissions percentages is that students are applying to so many schools. This throws everything off. If students are applying to 10,15 even 20 schools, and only go to one, statistics on applications, admissions and acceptances are just houses of cards.</p>

<p>A corollary to that is the common application, which makes all these applications so easy to do. Anyone can apply to top schools with a “what the heck” kind of attitude.</p>

<p>I think the whole admissions apparatus and process would improve if kids went back to applying to 4 schools (maybe 5), and if people did research, visiting and those hard choices before applying, not after admission.</p>

<p>Right now, using the common application, students can apply to many schools that they don’t really even have any intention of going to, and schools for which they may have little chance of admission. Since the Harvard name is so well-known, even among people who don’t know that much about college choices, it makes sense that their acceptance rate would be so low, since there would be even more of those “what the heck” applicants there.</p>

<p>All these stats about selectivity have become sort of meaningless.</p>

<p>When our family went to accepted students’ day, half the students there were trying to decide between Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT and Stanford. We heard complaints all day about how hard the choice was going to be. (The other half, like our daughter, were walking around wondering why the heck they were accepted). Each of those students took up an acceptance slot at each of those schools. Wouldn’t it have been better to choose before applying, so that someone else could have that slot?</p>

<p>I realize that the college admissions people allow for this kind of thing, but their job can’t be getting any easier at getting those numbers right.</p>

14

<p>Thanks, bioslick. Good tip.</p>

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<p>Compmom, where we live, Harvard & Princeton actively campaigned for votes, er, apps. They held a huge rah-rah seminar at a huge hotel. Together with increased mailings of late… I believe I read somewhere (NYTimes education blog?) that marketing by colleges has in fact greatly increased and impacted the number of apps. So what they’re doing is working.</p>

<p>But I agree with you that the Common App has helped as well.</p>

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<p>My point exactly.</p>

15

<p>Simple solution: Every parent and student has the right to read the Harvard 25-75th percentile test scores in USNWR and believe the numbers. If your child’s numbers do not fit in, you can save your money and decline adding to the application numbers.</p>

<p>If there are tons of unqualified kids applying to HYPS, they are pursuing the brand-name, unable to admit they do not have a chance at a designer Ivy. I think it is more a function of the consumerist culture of entitlement, nurtured by striving parents, than a plot by the Ivies to pump the numbers.</p>

<p>At our school, roughly half the kids applying to top Ivies are unqualified, but they (and their overly optimistic parents) enjoy the glamour of the association during the hopeful waiting months.</p>

16

<p>Idk about unqualified but a lot of the people I know who are applying to top schools are grind out the grades, years of SAT prep, EC laundry list type who yes have the grades, board scores that could would make them “qualified” according to stats but who seem to have no real passion besides getting into HYP. I assume that adcoms can see through this…</p>

17

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<p>I have noticed the same within my own school. About ten students each are applying to HYPS, but frankly, they have ACT scores in the low 30s (the SAT is not the popular test of choice here), minor extracurricular activites, and are predominantly of Asian descent.</p>

18

<p>I have a similiar situation at my school in Canada. Its odd because most of the top students who would have a chance are not applying to the states while some thoroughly average people are applying to HYPS</p>

19

<p>At my school:</p>

<p>1 kid who thinks he’s a sure bet for Princeton even though he has a 1780 SAT, he’s actually researching the housing and dorms there
5 kids who applied to every Ivy and are worried about how they will be able to choose from all of their acceptances, despite the fact that they all have <2000 SATs and did almost no EC’s, nevermind the fact that they’re boring
1 kid who applied to Washington University in St. Louis as his safety school, despite the fact that he has a 30ish ACT and also did nothing interesting</p>

<p>I could go on and on…</p>

20

<p>Applying while only being in the top 20% of my class for the loss :(</p>