This is my first go round, but I have friends with college freshman and didn’t hear it last year. Guess it’s not the thing you want to publicize, but I have heard of 3 decent students not getting in ANYWHERE, so either having to apply to a school with rolling admissions or go to community college. I think one shot high with places she had the grades for, but that have low admit rates and maybe had safeties that aren’t quite safeties anymore. 3 in my smallish cohort seems high. On the other hand, my son got into all 7 of his comfortable picks statwise (non with the abysmally low admit rates), in to his safety school within weeks of applying, and waitlisted at one out of 2 that have abysmally low admit rates. So, it just seems squirrelly this year.
I think “admissions were really competitive” and/or "admissions were so unpredictable " seems to be the replayed story every year.
I’m not sure if it really is getting worse every year or not. This is supposedly a smaller high school graduating class this year so there should be room for all. I do think some kids, perhaps encouraged by parents or teachers, build poor college lists.
Do your friends know to check the NACAC openings list?
https://www.nacacnet.org/news–publications/Research/CollegeOpenings/
The list will have schools adding and removing themselves over the next couple months.
A lot of schools that used to be safeties are not safeties any more. Some have tightened up just in the last 4 or 5 years. It’s really bad luck if your kid picked a non-safety safety list. Many state flagships that used to be easy to get into are now turning away 4.0/1600/36 kids.
Luckily there are more tools to find places with rolling admissions, and taking a gap year isn’t strange and suspicious any more.
Seems like they overreached; see post #0 of the following thread for possible reasons:
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/2074058-why-applicants-overreach-and-are-disappointed-in-april-p1.html
I haven’t heard of anyone in our circle not getting in anywhere but plenty of kids who are super unhappy and disappointed to be at their bottom of their list safety. IMO, an “overreach” problem but there were some surprises. Many kids, that per Naviance were well into the green sector, were rejected or wait listed Michigan and Case Western. Couple of my daughters’ friends were considering those match schools, especially Case.
I know where one of them applied, and I wouldn’t have thought it an overreach. But it could have been impacted majors and/or parents not as engaged as I (which I wouldn’t have thought was a BAD thing) in steering against overreach.
Yield protection also comes to play - if a student applies to a college and doesn’t show interest, even a safety isn’t always a safety. My D applied to two schools at the last minute in December and she put a lot of effort into the applications but didn’t have time to visit. Both were academic safeties - she was rejected by one and “Spring Semester” admitted by the other and I’m pretty sure it was because the schools recognized that a last minute application meant they weren’t on her top choice list. We were very lucky that she had other acceptances.
What happens is that people neglect to identify true safeties that they like (auto admit for stats, absolutely guaranteed to be affordable), and trust previous years’ data from their high schools about what is likely to be safe. As soon as human judgment enters into the admission process, what is “safe” by stats one year can easily be a rejection the next. The only way to be dead-on certain of having a place to go for the fall is to find at least one true safety.
My second kid did a rolling admissions safety - get the acceptance quickly and moved on to match and reach schools.
My son had a true safety, we knew he could get in because the academics were between a CC and where he is academically. For us, it was important that he start his journey of independence, so if that’s where he had to go, he would do that instead of a CC. It was nice for him to have that first “win” and the minute he got his first comfortable choice acceptance, he declined.
I haven’t heard of that happening to any of our 600 seniors.
Personally, coming from a metropolitan suburban area, I think there has been a lot of grade inflation since we were high school. The SAT has also become more “study-able.” Those two factors combined makes for lots of kids with 1600 SATs and 4.0 gpas. And then they all think they are brilliant and can get in to Harvard and MIT and don’t target schools where they have more realistic hopes of admission. It’s really kind of sad.
My son wanted to go to Caltech or MIT. His grades and SAT were strong, but we suspected it would be tough. there was a calculator somewhere that said he had a 1% chance of getting in. Then we put in a 5.0 and 1600 SAT and the chances went up to 5 percent. We let him apply to Caltech and told him if it was meant to be, he’d miraculously get an acceptance to MIT without applying since he had about as much chance applying as not applying 
He did get rejected from Caltech but we told him it was highly unlikely. By then, he had about 5 acceptances and just said “oh well” and moved on.
Is it more study-able, or is it just that more students are studying explicitly for the SAT (as opposed to English teachers giving weekly vocabulary words without saying that it was to help students get higher SAT scores)?
Note that the SAT scoring has been recentered, probably to be more useful in the middle range where most test takers are, but compressing the top end together.
I wish the English teacher that was recently trying convince my d19 that prestigious schools are better (for chemical engineering!) would hear about this happening. Ugh.
I find this really bothersome, if true. Any application submitted by the advertised deadline should be given due consideration. I have a really hard time imagining that the timing of submission would be weighed in the manner you suggest.
I’ve seen the pattern of believing one can get into reach schools and not having any safeties. Because of our conversations, the GM urged her GD to apply to UF, which has rolling admissions. “absolutely not” was the response. She wanted a city, but applied to Williams. Why, the prestige. Columbia rejected her ED app, but she wouldn’t consider Barnard. And so on.
If it’s a school with rolling admission, waiting until the published deadline could cause a student to be closed out of popular majors.
@bookworm I think the attitude, “I don’t want to be a part of any club that would have me as a member” is real. The rankings are not completely useless, but they’re not the last word in where one can get a good education either. It’s sad the narrow-minded way some families use them.
@colfac92 I find this really bothersome, if true. Any application submitted by the advertised deadline should be given due consideration. I have a really hard time imagining that the timing of submission would be weighed in the manner you suggest.
Having watched the process and knowing a lot of high stat kids applying, I think it’s more an affect of applying to a school without visiting and/or contacting admissions to express interest. Not all schools take interest into account during the application process, but you can find out in the common data set if it is considered and if you should jump through those hoops. Yield protection is a real thing. I’ve especially seen this affect private schools a step or 2 down from elite privates. Applying even early action I think does tend to show greater interest than an application dropped in last minute with no visit or contact.