My D17 just returned from an accepted students overnight thingamajig at the college she’ll be attending next year. She had a great time and we’re happy she made the right choice (Colorado College). The head of admissions told the overnighters that the acceptance rate this year was 14.8%, down from 16% a year ago. Which raises my questions of the day: Are ALL schools seeing lower and lower acceptance rates each year, due to the Common App and kids applying to more than a handful of schools? What’s the end game? Are colleges also getting better at teaching their students, or just playing games like yield protection and waitlisting, to lower their acceptance rates?
Not every place in the country is becoming more difficult to get into - just the institutions that are targeted by the kind of students/families that post here at CC. There still are a sizable number of institutions that are open admission or have guaranteed admission for students with specific grades and test scores.
Probably a combination of all those things. I suspect that the highly selective colleges are getting more applications. High stats kids are worried so they are applying to more and more colleges in order to hedge their bets. More apps equals lower acceptance rates.
Yeah, clearly more apps = lower acceptance rates. But that doesn’t make the school literally a higher quality higher ed school. It only means more apps. I remember reading a couple years ago about NEU being an example of a school that wasn’t “as good” as its acceptance rate would indicate, for example.
Many schools have slowly increased ED acceptances to build the “base” of the class. That effects overall (and RD) acceptance rates. When a school accepts a student ED, they only need to accept one for each spot available whereas most need to accept three or four (or even more) for each RD seat because they have no way of knowing whether the applicant will attend.
Plus ‘100%-need-met’ schools are very desirable, so they receive LOTS of apps because of that. they also tend to be the higher ranked schools. CC doesn’t abuse the WL like a lot of other schools, but many definitely play that game too to manage yield and keep their admit rate as low as possible.
“I remember reading a couple years ago about NEU being an example of a school that wasn’t “as good” as its acceptance rate would indicate”
I think NEU gets too much unwarranted flack from certain corners of those in New England. It used to be a commuter type college. They have made real strides in the last decade or so to make improvements - attracting a higher caliber of students through merit aid, physical plant investments, improvements to academic quality. It’s not the NEU of a generation ago. Some people don’t see that.
I didn’t mean to insult NEU – I live out west and have no skin in the game – it’s just something I read a while back. 
I didn’t take it that way. Just wanted to give color as I’ve heard it many times. No skin in that game, either.
Less selective schools, particularly private ones with poor financial aid, may be getting easier to get into. Some such schools may be in danger of closing due to insufficient student interest and therefore tuition revenue.
In some states, particularly in the Northeast and Midwest, the public university systems face a real possibility of long-term decline in college enrollments, due to demographic trends. Pennsylvania, for example, is thinking seriously about merging or closing some of their state university campuses due to falling enrollments.
http://abc27.com/2017/01/27/pennsylvania-state-schools-consider-merging-closing-campuses/
Many private schools are also facing enrollment declines. This forum tends to focus on selective private schools that have significantly stronger academic reputations than the public schools in their state. However, there are many other private schools with weaker academic reputations that are having a tough time justifying their higher cost relative to state universities. Such schools may be struggling to attract applications and to enroll new students.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3515947/Growing-number-small-colleges-struggling-stay-afloat.html
I know that here in GA, since the HOPE and Zell Miller scholarships went into effect in the early 90s (free or nearly free in-state, public tuition for GA students, based on GPA), the acceptance rates at our “coveted” institutions have been going down every year. Plenty of kids who would’ve previously gone out of state or to private schools are being bribed by their parents (or simply have the good sense to see the financial advantage) to choose a public uni and take the free tuition.
This means that plenty of parents my age 'round here are UGA grads who fully admit that they would never be able to get admitted by today’s standards. :)) Also my youngest is headed to GA Tech in the fall – always a well-regarded school, even in the past, of course – and there’s an old thread on the Tech board here asking why the acceptance rate is “so low.” The question was asked several years ago, when the acceptance rate was still over 50%. This year it was 22%. My kid knows plenty of classmates who applied there “for the heck of it” knowing full well they wouldn’t get in.
I think as acceptance rates drop, the number of applications per kid goes up (someone upthread already mentioned this), which in turn makes acceptance rates drop further because applications are up. Vicious cycle. When I was applying to college in the 80s, just about everyone I knew was applying to 3-6 schools. Now it’s commonplace for kids to submit upwards of 20 applications. It’s all become a bit nuts.
@yankeeinGA The situation at UGA and GA tech is just nuts. Some really good students cannot get in, and are going out of state. At the big college faire last fall around here, many of the smaller privates push real hard and state how with merit, their schools can cost the same as instate here in GA.
What really hurt education in GA as well, was the merger between polytech and Kennesaw.
to the original poster, i believe that for many select colleges with the ease of applying , that the admit rates have gone down. There are still plenty of decent schools that accept over 70%, and with a good student body.
I believe it does make it harder for the “average” B or B+ grade or lower student. For example, If a A+ student in NJ did not get into Princeton or any Ivy League, they may apply to Rutgers (which wasn’t that selective 6 years ago). That means that the B+ student has less chance to get in. So The B+ student Applies to Rowan or other less known state schools who used to Accept B- or C+ students, so now those B- or C+ students either have to go to a CC or a Private college with rolling admission.
@JenJenJenJen
you are correct about that. Selectivity is somewhat related to quality but just because a school’s admit rate is lower than another doesn’t make it a better school. And more apps, doesn’t necessarily mean better qualified applicants. It can mean fee waivers, marketing efforts, popularity, a good sports season with lots of media coverage ect.
@yankeeinGA wrote, “I know that here in GA, since the HOPE and Zell Miller scholarships went into effect in the early 90s (free or nearly free in-state, public tuition for GA students, based on GPA), the acceptance rates at our “coveted” institutions have been going down every year. Plenty of kids who would’ve previously gone out of state or to private schools are being bribed by their parents (or simply have the good sense to see the financial advantage) to choose a public uni and take the free tuition.”
I believe it was just a couple of days ago that the governor of NY signed something to make SUNYs free for in-states too, with a string attached. Perhaps this means that SUNYs (other than Bing which is already there) will also start to see admission rates that indicate increased desirability!
@MOMofFJ Out in California we have seen the exact same thing with the UC system, with the added freakshow of top OOS students also seeing the top ones as desirable (mainly Berk and UCLA, maybe Davis too I dunno). Top CA resident students who pay the instate tuition don’t get into schools they would have a decade ago and sometimes it’s because they’ve been displaced by higher-paying but equally qualified OOS kids.
But my question is, I wonder if all these schools being harder to get into, which is part of the USNWR rankings, are providing the same quality higher education as they used to though, or if they are improving the undergrad experience to match the rankings.
Here in California I know many kids who were shut out of instate public schools this year, some were fully shut out as that’s all they applied to. At many of the UC’s I believe acceptance rates dropped by over 10% from last year. Much of this is because of the record number of applications, but even those students applying more widely are being shut out. Part of it is an unwillingness to look at certain schools. My daughter was telling me yesterday about a friend who was shut out, I asked her if he’d applied to UC Riverside, Merced, Sonoma or San Jose State, Cal Poly Pomona… the answer was no, he wouldn’t consider those schools and would rather attend CC if those are his options. Many kids don’t feel UC Riverside or Merced are worth the money, and the CSU’s other than Cal Poly and maybe SDSU are commuter schools with dubious reputations. At least here, I think the gap will continue to widen between those desirable and undesirable schools. My daughter is one of those kids in the top 9% of California seniors shut out of the UC system, thankfully she did get into Cal Poly. Here in California it does seem true that acceptance rates are dropping every year.
@socalmom007 Cal Poly SLO is a great school, and in a gorgeous part of the state (congrats!) whereas I’m not sure Merced isso great yet…it’s certainly not in one of the more visually stunning parts of California.
Imagine Common App and College AO require applicants to disclose ALL the schools they are applying (with mandatory updates)! That will stop some of the insanity of the same bunch of kids chasing after schools either they are ill-fit or have no interest to attend. Look at CC these days, all these threads of XXX vs YYY school, jeeze whiz, should these kids know what they are applying and have an idea of how XXX comp YYY? If they don’t, that means the just randomly applying to schools where they might well have taken the spots from others who are really interested. The system is sick when high school GCs are now telling kids to apply at least 8 schools with 12 being optimum. Get real, I doubt among the top 50 schools where I can find 8 to 12 with similar cultures or strengths. This insanity has to stop somewhere… somehow. JMHO>