International applicants are also partly driving the crazy increase in applications. And schools do court them. But I’m wondering if that is going to slow down due to the political climate.
And with regard to admit rates this year - yield may go down, forcing schools to take more off the wl - so the final acceptance rate really can’t be determined until the wl closes.
Never mind.
Some Chinese foreign students at my school told me it’s common for Chinese students to apply to 40 or 50 colleges in the US, and many of them use agencies to fill out applications for them. Many many Foreign students applied to the Ivies, UCs and flagship state schools.
When UMich joined the commonapp quite a few years ago, the admission rate took a significant dip. After that, the admission rate continue to drop slightly year after year and the admission scores kept climbing up. Nevertheless, the yield rate also increased steadily (~0.5% per year). It seems the main reason is simply the increase in number of applicants to these schools (both domestic and international). Of course, that is partly driven by the number of schools each student applied. As the CoA is getting higher and higher, those schools with need met would certainly attract more applicants to apply. Besides more applicants from overseas these days, the economy also drives more domestic high school graduates to apply to college.
college admissions has gotten out of hand especially wrt the selective schools and the students are the ones that are most impacted negatively. Meanwhile, colleges, test prep orgs, advising companies, parents are putting more and more stress. I think the guidance counselors are in the middle, they do advocate or the students, but are not as stressed as they are.
Yes, as @ucbalumnus stated - the more selective just keep getting harder to get into as applications increase from US (due to ease of Common App and stronger URM and First Gen outreach) and China, and the less selective private schools are struggling to keep their doors open as the value proposition as compared to many public schools isn’t there anymore. In our experience, the guidance counselors are as perplexed as the students as historical data from Naviance and alike just isn’t holding up.