late 90s baby here. When my HS teachers talk about how easy it was to get into certain schools, it leaves me in shock. My geometry teacher frosh year got into SDSU with a 2.4 GPA, no athletic scholarship or anything special. Nowadays kids with 3.8 UW are rejected from the same school.
From the various threads I have been reading, it seems there’s a perfect storm of increased numbers of applications per student and schools going deep on the ED acceptances—this is of great benefit to the schools because with ED’s it means less aid to award, perhaps, less guessing how many accepted students will attend, and very low acceptance rates, to boot. It’s becoming “pay to play” out there, I fear.
It has always been pay for play. When in history with the exception of men returning from WWII not been pay for play? The only difference I can see now is a thinking that cost for some reason should not be a determinate factor.
Its very helpful when the schools are forthright about this information. At the BU info session stated up front that you had a far better shot with ED. They also explained that they were not need blind and that yes, a full pay applicant had a better chance. I believe this is true at nearly all schools. It was refreshing to have it explained.
Early 80’s high school grad. Michigan was my safety and I got into the Honors College. Never even considered it, nor did I even visit. My son was shocked when I told him. I had no idea it was so hard to get into now!
Back in the dark ages I was accepted to Berkeley, George Washington, and Santa Clara. None of them would have been safeties today.
Had the kid applied to any of the 3, he would have been rejected by Cal, waitlisted by Santa Clara, and maybe accepted by George Washington. Which made the family shocked by where he’s going to school now.
Just after WW2, there was the idea that improving the education of the people in general would pay back dividends many times over in economic growth and tax revenue, so there was the expansion of state universities that were low cost to the student as well as programs like the GI Bill. So college education shifted from being largely for those from wealthy families to being accessible to a much larger share of the population in terms of parental SES (although there were still educational access and opportunity limitations based on racial segregation that would take considerable action to remove).
Actually, it seems to be a common opinion around these forums that cost should be a flat fee for all without financial aid discounting, which would make college inaccessible to those from lower income parents, but probably cheaper for those from “upper middle class” and wealthier parents, returning to the pre-WW2 state of college being largely for those from wealthy families. Even some states’ public universities (e.g. in Pennsylvania) are moving toward this model, with list prices discounted relative to private universities’ list prices, but not much financial aid, rendering them unaffordable to many with lower income parents. But that may result in lower future economic growth and tax revenue, as many with lower income parents are unable to develop their talents through college education.
@deb922 agreed about Ohio State. Back in the 80s you just had to be an Ohio resident and you were guaranteed admission. Now it is very competitive. Both of my daughters were offered scholarships there, but chose other schools.
I’ve heard that someone gave the school a ton of money a few years back with the stipulation that they up the admission requirements, in an attempt to become the “MIT” of the midwest. I don’t know how true that story is but I know a bunch of high achievers from my kids high school were denied.
In 1980s, I got into Cornell with 3.0 GPA and 99.9% percentile SAT score. Back then, my safety was U of MD (got in) and even UVA (didn’t apply because many kids I knew and didn’t think too highly of their intelligence — I was foolish and cocky then— went there). I managed to get 2.9 GPA at Cornell and still somehow got into top 5 law school. And you can guess what my GPA was at law school by now. Lol. I couldn’t wait to get out of law school and set up my own law firm.
I know a couple of kids whose parents are physics professors and doctors. We all thought they are ivy-caliber kind of kids, and they both end up at OSU this season. So I am not surprised that OSU is not a safety anymore for many other kids.
We recently went to Villanova where I had read that the acceptance rate was 40 something percent. According to the woman who did the info session, the recent acceptance rate was 20 something percent.
@citymama9 Class of 2020 the rate was in the 40s, class of 2021 was in the 30s, and this year was around 28. The drop from 2021 to 2022 was due in part to app numbers rising - as was common with almost all selective colleges this season - but very significantly, note that Villanova added ED for this most recent admissions season, so its RD rate would naturally be lower than in prior years.
@evergreen5 Thank you. Do you have an idea what the ED rate was this year? I vaguely remember the admissions person saying it wasn’t that much higher than RD, but I could be wrong.
@citymama9 I can’t find the ED rate. All I can find is one news article with the overall acceptance rate of 28.8, with 22,727 total apps, of which 12,677 were EA apps, and a target class size of 1,670, 24% of which were ED. So, 400 accepted ED, though we don’t know how many kids applied ED. (I wonder about the accuracy of the news article, whether perhaps the EA figure was intended to include ED.)
I’d agree with CSU Long Beach. I grew up in SCal and no one went to LB unless they HAD to, This year, I had 3 friends whose kids were rejected at CSU LB. What I’m amazed at is that at least 2 of my son’s friends didn’t get into ANY of the schools they applied to. My husband and I said to each other “where are the parents? How did they make them apply to safeties?” Maybe the parents thought they DID have safeties
@overbearingmom I guess that Steven Spielberg had to go to CSULB.
@TomSrOfBoston His Wikipedia page says he wanted to go to USC film school, but had a C average, so he DID have to go to Long Beach or some other “safety” school
He only completed his degree in 2002 because he dropped out and after that, was a little busy 
@overbearingmom Didn’t seem to hurt his career!
^^The point is that Steven Spielberg would NOT be able to get into CSULB now with the grades he had in high school…