@hzhao2004 a large part pf those 50,000 slots are set aside for hooks, though. And this was not always the case. To say “if your stats are good enough you should be ok”, you would need more than top 25 I would guess?
Maybe the increase in apps is a combo of the increase in aid for lower SES, URM development, the internet making all this easy to know or find out, common app and the increase in population? Personally, I’d bet more on the Internet. When I was a kid, if the college did not leave a pamplet at your school, (or you didn’t see it in a movie or book), it didn’t enter your college search thoughts.
I bet if someone did research on average numbers of schools kids applied throughout the years, we will see the numbers go up. Kids apply to more schools, drive the total applications up. I doubt back in 80s or 90s, people knew safety, match or reach. Come to think of it, maybe CC contributed to the low acceptance rate?! We can only pick up a random chance thread and see how many additional school recommendation we are always helping to suggest. And CC gives you the sense that there are so many good kids out there, you need to apply more to increase your odds
Note that enrollment in “Degree-granting postsecondary institutions” goes down for 5 years from 2010 and is not expected to hit that number again until 2018; so enrollments were going down while acceptance rates at the elites were also dropping.
Demand overall at colleges has not increased. Demand at elite universities has dramatically increased. Seems like a fairly easy to guess compliment of reasons why.
(ps thanks for that link to the poster who originally showed it to me here)
Back in the 80’s, we might not have used the terms “reach, match and safety”, but we definitely had the same strategy. I would say that one thing deterring us from additional applications was typing each one separately on a typewriter with White-out. Ugh…
Of the documented 2014 college-bound seniors, approximately 64,000 had combined SAT scores (CR+M+W) >= 2100. Let’s say the typical top ~50 college has about 1200 freshmen seats. That would make about 60,000 seats at the top 50. The number of acceptances would be much greater than that. Keep in mind that not every high-scoring student even wants to attend, can afford to attend, and has grades and ECs adequate for admission to, a top 50 college.
Count up all seats at the top 20 universities plus top 20 LACs, and I suspect you’d have nearly enough to accommodate interested students who qualify with >=2100 SAT scores, rank in the top 10%, and a few interesting ECs. HYPSM may be crap shoots, but collectively, the rest of the top 40 or 50 are not.
The ease of applying now is a big part of the application explosion and therefore acceptance rate drops. Another part is the perception that someone with marginal grades/scores (i.e less than 3.9/1550) has meaningful chance of getting accepted. Tons of marginal candidates apply to the super-selectives with the hope that a great essay will save the day. Sadly, CC is part of the problem as many post will offer the advise to try and see what happens. In the 80s, students with marginal stats wouldn’t have wasted their time and money but rather focus on schools with a better stats match.
@Corbett So you’re suggesting that there be a limit on the number of schools you can apply to, just so schools can have higher acceptance rates? That’s a horrid idea. If people want to apply to 100 schools, so be it.
Over the years, CC has hosted many debates on the qualities that schools should look for in the admissions process. For example, there have been arguments about whether the process should favor those with high test scores vs. those with high GPAs, or those with single-minded passions vs. those who are well-rounded.
But this is something new. Never before have I seen the suggestion that the college admissions process should favor those students with innate spamming ability.
@Postmodern - but the main comparison is not with 2010 to the present, but 1990 to the present, - and there we see that enrollment has increased 50%. There was a 40% increase in the decade of 2000 to 2010 alone.
Growing up in the San Francisco bay area I have certainly noticed a significant increase in ultra-competitive, high performing Asians in the local schools.
It is extremely common for (Asian) students to be in AP Calculus freshman year in high school.
There are probably 2-3 million Asian and Indians in the Bay Area alone.
This fact is what drives the ridiculous admission standards in Ca public universities and even community colleges.
In any case, it certainly raises the bar at ALL the local private schools as well as many public high schools, many of which have added post Calculus BC math courses.
It certainly has changed the game for National Merit!
My younger kids went to a middle school that is 80%+ Asian–mostly foreign born parents.
We felt quite sorry for the kids-kind of caught between two worlds.
Rather hard for a bright but not obsessed kid to feel smart in this group.
All of my older kids have gone to great colleges without this forced intellectual acceleration and ridiculous academic pressure.
Both of my younger two opted out of that school for high school.
Reading the results threads at some of the tippy top schools at first had me sad for all these students who worked so hard (great stats, EC, etc), yet were not accepted when others with similar criteria were. Yes, admissions is “holistic”, but it does seem like a “crap shoot” as well. Now, my sadness has been replaced by hope. Hope in that these kids who do not gain acceptance to the HYPMS’s of the world will go onto great schools and thereby help make their selected schools that much better. After a while, there will be more and more great schools and the definition of tippy top schools will be much broader in the minds and hearts of everyone. Hopeless optimist here!
I don’t really buy this as being prevalent on the national level.
S is a freshman, and by a couple of different metrics he is one of the top 500 math kids nationwide, but he won’t formally have Calculus until junior year.
To compare apply to colleges as “spamming” is patently ridiculous. Would you agree to the same qualification for jobs? Is someone who applies for many jobs “spamming” or trying to find the best possible job? And if you think it is different, please tell me why.
Respectfully, the quote I responded to said " seemingly inevitable, perpetual population growth". I think the data shows it is neither inevitable or perpetual, and that was my point. Rates at elites still declined during periods of enrollment decline, that was a second point.
Selectivity or Acceptance rate is a lagging indicator of the perceived value of a university to students. It doesn’t really speak to why those universities are valued or the validity of the values. Most of the reduction of selectivity at most universities can be attributed to two things, the increase in the number of schools each applicant applies to (the better known the school is the more this affects them) and the increase in the number of international applications. The first is a result of the ease of applying, the perceived importance of prestige and the general cost of college and the fact that it’s often financially important to apply to a large number of schools. What selectivity alone does not indicate in isolation is the inherent quality of the education you will receive, good or bad.
“It is extremely common for (Asian) students to be in AP Calculus freshman year in high school.”
"I don’t really buy this as being prevalent on the national level.
S is a freshman, and by a couple of different metrics he is one of the top 500 math kids nationwide, but he won’t formally have Calculus until junior year."
I would say it is not uncommon. My S’s (AA) last math class at HS was Cal B/C and was done several years ago when he was a sophomore. At the same time, he has another female AA sophomore classmate doing Cal B/C. My local HS is a rather small HS in a rural state that has an Asian population like only 1-2%. The HS class size each year is about 150-200. Among them, about 5-10 (so 5% of student population) are AA.
My D is now a HS sophomore, in her Cal B/C there are 2 sophomores and 1 freshman. All 3 of them are AA.
Note that our local HS has a much lower level of competition (being in a small rural state) compared with those big cities (LA, SF, NYC) where the competition is much intense.
