<p>I received this article from a friend. I guess this says it all as to why so many great students did not get into their choice schools.</p>
<p>Top Colleges Reject
Record Numbers</p>
<p>Schools Say Surging Applications Produce
Unusually Competitive Year; Stanford Admits 11%</p>
<p>By ANNE MARIE CHAKER
April 5, 2006; Page D1</p>
<p>Concluding one of the most brutal admission seasons ever, college officials say they are accepting an unusually low percentage of applicants.</p>
<p>Elite colleges including Brown University, Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania say they have accepted a smaller percentage of applicants than ever before. Brown admitted only 13.8% of applicants, down from the 14.6% of applicants it accepted last year. That is a record-low rate, says Jim Miller, dean of admission. It saw a record 18,313 applications this year -- up more than 8% from last year.</p>
<p>Other top colleges also say the huge surge in applications translated to an unusually competitive year. The number of applications to Dartmouth College rose 9.3% to 13,937 this year -- the largest pool ever, says Admissions Dean Karl Furstenberg. He admitted little more than 15% of those applicants for the 1,075 seats available next fall. That is a new low, down from around 17% at this point last year.</p>
<p>The University of Pennsylvania admitted 17.7% of the record 20,479 applicants -- down from around 21% last year. A surge in applications -- coupled with an expected increase in the number of students who will enroll if admitted -- has meant a stingier year in admissions, says Dean of Admissions Lee Stetson.</p>
<p>Stanford also reported its lowest-ever admit rate, with less than 11% of the 22,332 applicants admitted.</p>
<p>Several factors have shifted the admissions math in recent years. Students are sending out more applications to better their chances of landing somewhere. In a 2005 survey of more than 200,000 college students, over a quarter of students said they applied to six or more colleges, compared with 18% of students who did so a decade earlier, according to the UCLA Higher Education Research Institute.</p>
<p>In turn, colleges are becoming stingier with their admissions, with some leaning more on "wait lists" of students neither accepted nor rejected, as it becomes harder to know who will accept an offer of admission. Mr. Stetson at Penn, for one, says he expects about 800 students to end up on such a list, compared with 500 last year, to better able "control the class size."</p>
<p>"This year it's become really clear" how competitive the process is, says Bob Turba, chair of guidance services at Stanton College Preparatory School, a public magnet school in Jacksonville, Fla. He points to one student who was wait-listed at non-Ivies Johns Hopkins and Washington University in St. Louis -- but was admitted to the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell.</p>
<p>"I am beginning to believe that it is important for students to add a college or two" in their applications roster, says Mr. Turba, "because there is no way to know -- counselor or student -- from where the acceptances will come." Mr. Turba reports a few students this year who applied to almost 20 schools.</p>
<p>Online applications make it easier to apply to more schools. Roughly three-fourths of applications are online, estimates the Common Application, a Herndon, Va., nonprofit application provider. Swarthmore, for instance, attributes part of a huge surge in applications to the fact that it began this year accepting credit-card payments for the $60 application fee.</p>
<p>Another reason for the increase in applications at many schools is simply demographics, as the number of high-school graduates is expected to continue to rise: By 2012, that number is projected to have increased by 11% from 2000.</p>
<p>It's not just the sheer number of applicants that makes schools competitive. The colleges indicate that they are also seeing large numbers of highly qualified students. The University of Pennsylvania turned away 394 of the 1,045 valedictorians that applied. Also, about 70% of applicants who got near-perfect scores in the math and critical-reading sections of the SAT were turned away, says Mr. Stetson. At Brown, 94% of admitted students this year were in the top 10% of their class.</p>
<p>Some public universities are also seeing increases in applications. The University of California-Berkeley received 41,700 applications for the fall -- nearly 13% more than last year. It admitted about 24%, or about 9,800 students. That is similar to the number of students it admitted last year.</p>
<p>At Swarthmore, applications increased 19% to 4,850. The number of students admitted went down slightly -- to 897 from 900 last year -- for an admissions rate of about 18%. Part of the equation is a slightly smaller class size this year of 372 students, down from 383 last year. Also, a brand-new residence hall has meant an increase in the number of students who want to live on campus, causing the admissions office to play it safe and not over-enroll.</p>