<p>I keep hearing that this years admitted student class is more competitive than last year. Kids are being rejected from schools with stats that would have admitted them five years ago. What is the reason for this and will it plateau or taper off in the years to come? What do you predict for college admissions 5 years from now?</p>
<p>A) There are more kids applying to top schools.
B) More people have access to professional college counselors
C) Admissions are looking more at ECs and essays and therefore kids with near perfect STATS with no great ECs and poor essays are being rejected in favor of applicants with good/great STATS but steller ECs and essays.</p>
<p>Just my opinion.</p>
<p>I understand the why but does anyone have a hypothesis as to the
"how long"? What is the prediction for five years from now? Will the applicant pool that my now 11 year old is in be even more competitive?</p>
<p>A lot of it is because the baby boomer kids are all going to college now. Once there are fewer college aged kids (and thus fewer applying), the competition should drop.</p>
<p>Unless colleges increase the available space (slots) for incoming freshman, acceptance will always be more selective and competitive.</p>
<p>Your 11 year old will face higher tuition and more selectivity. That is just the way of life!</p>
<p>Here in California, the UC system opened a new campus in Merced. Building a new college campus is about the only way to handle the ever increasing applicant pool. Maybe electronic/distance learning, as an option, will become more popular.</p>
<p>My concern is more the cost of an education. Will your family be able to handle a 20%-65% increase in the cost when your 11 year old is ready in enter college? I read somewhere on the net that the inflation rate for the cost of a college education is an average of **7% a year<a href="4%%20-%2013%%20annual%20increase,%20depending%20on%20the%20school">/b</a>.</p>
<p>Many are predicting the competition to taper off around 2008 or 2009. Mostly because of population trends, I believe.</p>
<p>Kids used to apply to 5 or 6 schools. Now many are applying to 10-15, especially the brighter kids. We are also seeing the result of the baby boomers having kids now which is supposed to taper off in 5 years.</p>
<p>If colleges saw a payoff for expanding the class size they would have done so. I am thinking that this "bubble" of boomerbabies is working its way through and no pain relief will be had until the bolus is gone.</p>
<p>Competition for top tier schools will continue to increase, and a challenge will be finding slots for the average student. </p>
<p>I see a time in the near future when Stanford, UCLA and UC Berkeley could easily fill every freshman class with 100% 4.0+ GPAs if they wanted to.</p>
<p>Another issue is how some hs seniors are so out of control by applying to so many colleges. There is CC thread where posters share how they apply to as many as 30+ colleges, with 10-20 apps being the average!</p>
<p>So you are saying that the top10% of CA will all be 4.0??? Is that what you are saying?</p>
<p>
The growth is expected to continue for another 10 years, and then it should taper off.</p>
<p>California has 6.3 million children in K-12 public education, with 409K in 12th grade and 455k in kindergarten. True, children will drop out along the way, and not all 409k 12th graders are UC/CSU eligible graduates. But there is no indication that fewer children in California will apply for college during the next 10 years. </p>
<p>I am looking for GPA data for hs graduates, but can't find anything quickly.</p>
<p>i dont think the problem is population, the problem is the way people apply to college now. I do not think the population in the US could fluctuate enough within a few years to make much of a difference on college acceptance rates. The problem is, a lot of competetive applicants apply to like 10-15 schools nowadays (partly because of insecurity, indecisiveness, and ability to easily apply online), so everything gets more competetive.</p>
<p>You mean to engage in the old argument that a 3.9 at a hard school is better than a 4.0 at an easy school? Did you happen to ready teh NYT article today on ranking of HS? and tying that to financial aid? Your model may not be what is used in the future.........*College Aid Plan Widens U.S. Role in High Schools *
[quote]
By SAM DILLON
Published: January 22, 2006</p>
<p>When Republican senators quietly tucked a major new student aid program into the 774-page budget bill last month, they not only approved a five-year, $3.75 billion initiative. They also set up what could be an important shift in American education: for the first time the federal government will rate the academic rigor of the nation's 18,000 high schools.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>can you explain your point hazmat, sorry i dont understand</p>
<p>Some kids got Fed Funds no matter what HS no matter what college. No matter their level of achievement. That all looks to be changing. If your HS doesn't qualify you for FedFunds and then achievement level of student kicks in how would CA schools still be overcrowded? Berkeley isn't going to make up the lack of funding from the Feds and with funds dropping for students who don't meet the achievement criteria the whole game of admissions for kids need FA may be changing dramatically. Was that at all clear? It seems very clear to me but that doesn't always mean I got my point across.</p>