How competitive will '14 admissions be?

Applying to College
1

<p>I'm sure many current juniors are wondering. </p>

<p>No one can predict the economic situation, and we don't know how people will react to it. However, there must be factual data about the number of people that will be graduating. Has the crest of the demographic bulge passed, or will it become even more difficult?</p>

<p>If the numbers are going down finally, I wonder if is there a past year that '14 can be compared to. It would be awesome to be able to use historical admissions statistics without having to try to adjust for the yearly increasing selectivity.</p>

2

<p>im interested in this too! anyone know?!</p>

3

<p>Very difficult probably, seems like the difficulty rate is increasing exponentially!</p>

4

<p>Yours should actually be a bit easier. In this economy, colleges need money and will most likely increase their acceptance rates slightly. I know stanford is working on creating more housing at the moment.</p>

5

<p>It’s time for the FAQ again: </p>

<p>DEMOGRAPHICS </p>

<p>Population trends in the United States are not the only issue influencing the competitiveness of college admission here. The children already born show us what the expected number of high school students are in various years, but the number of high school students in the United States, which is expected to begin declining in a few years, isn’t the whole story. </p>

<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/education/09admissions.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/education/09admissions.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p>First of all, if more students who begin high school go on to college, there will be more applicants to college even with a declining number of high school students. And that is the trend in the United States and worldwide. </p>

<p>Second, colleges in the United States accept applications from all over the world, so it is quite possible that demographic trends in the United States will not be the main influence on how many students apply to college. The cohorts of high-school-age students are still increasing in size in some countries (NOT most of Europe). </p>

<p>Third, even if the number of applicants to colleges overall stays the same, or even declines, the number of applicants to the most competitive colleges may still increase. The trend around the world is a “flight to quality” of students trying to get into the best college they can in increasing numbers, and increasing their consensus about which colleges to put at the top of their application lists. I do not expect college admission to be any easier for my youngest child than for my oldest child, even though she is part of a smaller birth cohort in the United States. </p>

<p>And now I would add to this that at the very most selective colleges that have just announced new financial aid plans, next year’s (and the following year’s) crush of applicants will be larger than ever. When colleges that are already acknowledged to be great colleges start reducing their net cost down to what the majority of families in the United States can afford, those colleges will receive more applications from all parts of the United States, and very likely from all over the world. </p>

<p>The Economist magazine published a brief article about these trends in April 2008. </p>

<p>[University</a> admissions in America | Accepted | The Economist](<a href=“Accepted”>Accepted)</p>

6

<p>Hard to predict. I sure hope it’s easier; some of the admissions statistics for 2013 have been crazy.</p>

7

<p>My guess, the better public Us and ivies will be tough. Even very good, but not top 50, privates will be very flexible to full pay kids. The Economist article in 2008 was before the current meltdown, affecting endowments, family money, state funding, etc.</p>

8

<p>I don’t see why the first two points really matter. Sure, a higher proportion of people are going to college, but were there really any top students who weren’t already doing so? Unless there are really tons of people with high SATs and GPAs going straight into the working world, these new graduates are going to second tier and lower schools.</p>

<p>If the current quotas for international students are maintained, it will continue to become more competitive for them. However, they won’t take up extra space here.</p>

<p>Now what you said on financial aid and the flight to quality, I can understand that. There probably are brilliant middle-class students who are now covered by the elite financial aid packages who would’ve went to a state university in the past.</p>

9

<p>lockn,</p>

<p>General trends don’t predict what will happen at any school. There is a lot of variability. Last year some schools experienced 20% increases in applications while others were unchanged. It’s really something you can’t control. Focus on the things you can control. That will give you your best shot regardless of what the trends are.</p>

10

<p>My guesses:</p>

<p>-Top colleges (ivies and equals) will continue to get more competitive
-State colleges will be increasingly popular and get harder to get into
-Full pay kids will have an easier time getting into all but the very top colleges
-Many privates will increasingly use merit “discounts” to make costs closer to publics
-There will overall be less aid for the low income</p>

11

<p>Scared wrote: “In this economy, colleges need money and will most likely increase their acceptance rates slightly”</p>

<p>Umm… it’s not as if top colleges have been sitting at undercapacity. Housing and spaces in freshmen classes is not very elastic. Plus, for most private schools, admitting more students means more COST to the university. For example, it costs my HYP alma mater about $90,000 per year to educate each student. Student fees are less than half. Therefore, for every 100 more kids admitted and all were full pay, it costs the school minimally $4,500,000 per year. Times four that’s $18M to graduate an additional 100 FULL PAY students. How about 'dem apples?</p>

12

<p>I think he means because of the economy, people may be less likely to accept an offer at an expensive elite institution versus a full ride to a state school. Lower yield = need to accept more people to ensure full class.</p>

13

<p>pyn: I see your point. The top schools just use their wait list more liberally in years where they foresee difficulty pegging their yield. But scared mentioned something about Stanford expanding housing – leading me to reply as I did.</p>

14

<p>A lot of second-tier (as in excellent but pricey because they don’t have Princeton-esque $$$) privates (think 10-30 ranked LACs and 20-50 ranked Universities) will become easier 0to make because of the combined effects of the reduced overall applicants following this baby boom and the recessed economy. The few exceptions will be schools that focus on more preprofessional/science-y training, like CMU and RPI. </p>

<p>I’m expecting a drop in competitiveness for the following especially:

  1. Oberlin, Kenyon: Pricey LAC’s that don’t quite have the name recognition; also in the rust belt
  2. NYU: Wall Street’s tanking, cost of living in the city, in that 20-50 ranking range
  3. George Washington: Flat-out expensive
  4. Syracuse, Rochester, Lehigh, Tufts: Beginning of a continued decline in the Northeast, plus the expenses when compared to top public schools</p>

<p>BC and Wake will not have the problem of losing applicants to public schools, BC because of its Jesuit identity (something no public can offer) and Wake because it’s in prosperous NC and has recently gotten rid of SAT score requirements.</p>

15

<p>Actually, he’s right. Many private colleges have recently announced that they will increase the size of the student body to help their budgets. There’s a lot of BS woven into the caims of “real costs” to the schools per student.</p>

<p>Good tag line for fund raising though.</p>

16

<p>

</p>

<p>I usually take going SAT-optional as a sign that a college is having trouble recruiting applicants. So I don’t read Wake’s situation in quite the same way. It has immense in-state competition from Duke and from two pretty decent state universities, UNC-CH and NC State.</p>

17

<p>True. It can be looked at as a sign of desperation, but on the other hand, look how many more applicants Bates and Bowdoin got after dropping their requirements, and both are still highly regarded schools.</p>

18

<p>Out-of-state admission to top publics with bad aid might also be easier.</p>

19

<p>In general, I’d say it will be relatively (in a very slight sense) easier and possibly more predictable (if U.S.'s economic health returns to normal or at least improves) than this year since this year’s applicants were faced with both a record number of applicants and of course the deepening recession of the U.S. economy.</p>

20

<p>Large state schools that have mostly instate students (Udub, UNC, UIUC, etc.) will probably all be significantly easier for OOS kids to get into this year. Especially for kids not displayng any need. With the way the economy is, they’ll practically be begging for people to pay the full OOS tuition.
Other schools will stay the same or get harder.
And I heard that the current senior class was supposed to be the most competitive, and that we’re on the top of the bell curve. Things should start lightening up. It’ll probably be similar to how it was 2-3 years ago.</p>