My S was admitted to Vassar-he is very excited and is planning to commit soon. We attended the admitted students day last Tuesday, and we both came away very impressed with all aspects of the school. But-I have been looking at the statistics for the admitted class and the stats of prior years, and am just a tiny bit concerned that the number of applicants seems to be declining a bit and the admit rate is rising (although the stats for the admitted class seem every bit as strong if not stronger than prior years). Should I be concerned that Vassar is waning in popularity a bit compared to the other elite LAC’s?
My DS has had an amazing first year at Vassar, and I doubt the small change in acceptance rate means much. As someone who works in higher Ed I know that the admissions game (and it is a game) has more to do with the efforts of admissions staff and strategic planning than the actual merits of the institution. Vassar’s application numbers haven’t changed much, and remember that it’s larger than many of its competitors. I’m quite sure that if the powers that be at Vassar made a decision to increase application numbers they would and could. Grinnell is a case in point; the huge increase in applications surely isn’t because they’ve suddenly been discovered 
Vassar has a strong place in the firmament of top-tier schools and a strong endowment (not Pomona strong but good enough that they can afford financial aid packages that earned them the distinction of school with best financial aid [!!!]–that’s not a trivial honor). I have friends who graduated from there and a close friend who is a tenured professor there. All have only positive things to say. Except, perhaps, for the Israel/BDS thing, but honestly that’s a contentious issue on any left-leaning campus and a real human-rights issue (and I write this a Zionist who flirts with supporting BDS–when you grow up, ambivalence often takes the place of fiery polemicism).
The BDS issue is hot across the LAC spectrum-I think the high level of political activism at Vassar has pushed them to the forefront of the public discourse. It is indeed a very complicated issue…
I think the forecast for the next few years is for the college age population to decline. Also liberal arts colleges have faced a strong headwind against technical schools and large universities. I saw that Vassar’s acceptance rate went up but suspect if you researched that this might be true across the liberal arts college spectrum. Vassar is still ranked 12 in World report college rankings.
It’s not true, this year at least, among many other elite LAC’s. Midd, Wesleyan, Davidson, etc., all had record or near record applications and low accept rates. Wesleyan was down to about 14% for RD (17% total). Mid was somewhere around there too but don’t recall off-hand. Davidson called it their most competitive year ever.
Admission rates have been going down at many colleges as students apply to more and more schools (via the Common App, in particular). This includes top LACs. Latest data for some LACs from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/04/01/applied-to-stanford-or-harvard-you-probably-didnt-get-in-admit-rates-drop-again/ :
<h2>School Applicants Admitted 2016 Admitted 2015</h2>
Pomona 8,104 9.2% 10.3%
Claremont McKenna 6,342 9.4% 11.0%
Swarthmore 7,717 12.5% 12.5%
Harvey Mudd 4,180 12.6% 13.0%
Pitzer 4,142 12.9% 13.5%
Amherst 8,406 13.8% 14.1%
Bowdoin 6,799 14.3% 14.9%
Middlebury 8,820 16.0% 17.4%
Williams 6,982 17.3% 17.6%
Davidson 5,614 19.6% 22.1%
Carleton 6,470 22.6% 20.6%
Smith 5,252 37.2% 37.9%
Interestingly, I just noticed that while the acceptance rate for Vassar went up a percentage point, SAT and ACT scores also went up noticeably for the class of 2020. So more acceptances but with better stats. Admissions offices also have different approaches to recruiting. Sadly, many colleges are investing resources to recruit more applicants – so that they can reject them and drive acceptance rates down (and perhaps USNWR rank up?). Wouldn’t it be nice if they invested more in say, financial aid?
Agreed. Vassar is an extremely socially conscious school, that’s why it is a leader in diversity among elite liberal arts colleges and has been a pioneer in veteran outreach and is why the president of Vassar has been invited to the white house a couple of times. The trending topic is how colleges inflate the denial rates to appear more desirable, u of Chicago is notorious for this. But every denial is burden of rejection for the students involved. If Vassar were to do the right thing it would reverse this trend by only targeting people who they thought were really a good fit which would be in line with Vassar’s philosophy
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in our experience, that is what Vassar does- they don’t do the sort of broad outreach / targeting / marketing that is designed to drive up applications. In fact, they have been very very understated in the whole process, from no unsolicited mail to a low-key Admitted Students day.
Vassar IS doing the right thing, and being noted for it. Note this from the CNN Homepage http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/20/opinions/college-merit-aid-steals-from-low-income-students-levy/index.html (Vassar is highlighted later in the article).
Just to note - acceptance rate accounts for 1.25% of the US News methodology (and probably even less for other rankings). Colleges aren’t trying to drive down acceptance rates for ranking purposes, at least directly. The argument could be made that a larger pool might result in a higher average SAT/ACT, which accounts for 4-5x the weight of acceptance rate. Also, a lower acceptance rate may induce stronger students to apply. But acceptance rate on its own doesn’t directly factor into rankings all that much. I would imagine Vassar having a slightly higher acceptance rate but a stronger class would be either neutral or a net benefit, at least for the US News methodology.