@ItsJustSchool, year-to-year variations aren’t that big. No school has seen it’s acceptance rate drop from 50% to 10% in one year.
Over decades, the lower-end LACs and Catholic schools have certainly seen their popularity drop while the top research universities (some publics as well as privates) have seen their popularity rise.
However, the LACs are tiny, while universities like USC, NYU, UMich, the UC’s as well as BU, Northeastern, and GWU are definitely harder to get in to compared to 3 decades ago yet these are all big schools. Giant schools, in fact. UMich takes in more freshmen than 10 LACs added together. So there are more kids who want to go to college now.