Admissions Statistics by Year - Trend and Comparison Analysis

Hi Everyone, Is there a resource to research statistics by year? Most sources only have the current year (or most recently available).

I know I could look at the CDS for each school, but they may not go back more than 5 or 10 years. I’m specifically interested in seeing specific trend charts for schools going back 10, 20 and 30 (or more) years. For example, Vanderbilt used to admit 40% or more of its applicants as recently as 2005, and was at around 60% in the mid-90’s.

Just wondering what tools are out there. Thanks in advance.

still looking for an answer on this one

IPEDs data goes back 10 or 15 years, but not much farther than that, IIRC.

USNWR has been doing rankings since 1983 and acceptance rate has (probably) always been one of the factors. I bet you could pay for a subscription that would give you access to archived issues and go from there.

ahhhh - for $$$$ - probably so. but i hate spending money. :slight_smile:

If your question simply stems from curiosity, this topic may be of some interest to you @lz57c4 :

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1897982-the-historical-selectivity-of-colleges-by-sat-score-tiers-p1.html

Thanks @merc81 - enjoyed reading the thread.

Several months ago I found this historical data from the usnwr rankings. goes back to the first rankings and is useful to id trends, though not specific to test scores:

https://sites.google.com/site/andyreiter/data

go to the bottom of the page and see:

  • US News Liberal Arts College Rankings
  • US News University Rankings