Is this situation at Colgate common elsewhere?

Applying to College
1

Take a glance at Colgate. In the middle of that page, after pressing the + button next to International students, you can see that 5593 applied and 283 were admitted, for a ratio of 5%. Now, according to Colgate’s latest CDS, a total of 8583 applied and 2358 were admitted. We can easily calculate the number of domestic applicants’ admission ratio as ~70%.

Could you come up with reasons for this huge, 14-fold discrepancy between the treatments of domestic and intl at Colgate? And just as importantly, is this situation widespread among US colleges? Cause if it also applies to, say, Harvard, then an average intl student should not expect a 4% acceptance rate, but in reality it might be closer to 0.4%.

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I get the domestic admission rate to be 27% (2358/8583=0.274)

Yes, most schools in the US have a pretty low percentage of International students. Colgate may even have a lower percentage of internationals who accept and attend.

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Both of these statements are accurate. Domestic and international applicants are treated differently and accepted at vastly different rates AND this is true of US colleges and universities in general not just Colgate.

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4

You were mistaking the total number for the domestic number. In fact, Colgate has more intl applications than domestic ones (2990).

Could you or someone post a data list for top 200 colleges? Will be much appreciated.

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The included link provides all needed data for the class of 2025:

Applicants
Applications: 17,540
Admitted: 3,015

International students
Applications: 5,593
Admitted: 283

This makes the Non-international admission rate (3015-283)/ (17540-5593) = 22.9%

So an overall rate of 17.1%, an international rate of 5.1%, and a domestic rate of 22.9%.

This site has Class of 2025 data - I.e, Fall 2021 admitted student data. The latest CDS, with the 8,583 number, is from the Fall 2020 class. Subtracting numbers from different groups from different years won’t yield meaningful data.

To get the data corresponding to the 2020 CDS, the Wayback Machine provide the Class of 2024 detailed data: https://web.archive.org/web/20210417000333/https://www.colgate.edu/about/colgate-glance
Applicants
Applications: 8,582
Admitted: 2,345

International students
Applications: 2,283
Admitted: 193

So an overall rate of 27.3%, an International rate of 8.5% and a domestic rate of (2,345-193)/(8,582-2,283) = 34.2%

The domestic:international acceptance rate went from 4.02 to 4.49, relatively consistent and representative of what a Ikve seen from many schools. Yes, Harvard et al have international rates in the 1% range, corresponding to their 4-5% overall rate.

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Nice! My mistake of not scouring the whole site. So the discrepancy is corrected to 4.5-fold. Not as cold as 14, but still chilly. So… at 4.5, is Colgate at/near the high extreme of the spectrum, or there are (top 200) colleges that are even more biased?

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I added my last edit after your post. But to repeat, yes, an international acceptance rate at about 1/4 of the overall or domestic acceptance rate is consistent with what I’ve seen from the few very selective schools that publish that information.

MIT publishes their data and even breaks out domestic
Domestic: 5.2%
International: 1.3%

So a similar 4x ratio.

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8

As pointed out, the math is wrong. But yes, the international acceptance rate is much lower acceptance rates. And that is the case as most top colleges.

The reason is that colleges often have a cap on the percentage of international undergrad students. 10-12% is common. And international applications are higher than 10-12%.

Do while Harvard does not publish international acceptance rates, 1 or 2% is probably right.

9

Add to the fact that most of the internationals accepted are full pay. In recent years most schools have used internationals as a cash-cow.

If you’re international and need financial aid, the chances are even lower.

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You can look this up on each college website, and see if this info is there.

But MOST if not all colleges have a much lower acceptance rate for international students than domestic ones.

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Very very few colleges release domestic v international acceptance rates

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12

Colgate applications continued to soar this year. As a result their overall acceptance rate dropped to 11.8%.

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There is no issue here. This is the trend for most top colleges these days. You’ll probably find the same at almost all Top 30, maybe even top 50, universities and LACs.

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Thanks. I’m thinking that it’s still a good idea to check the % of international enrollment. Given that international students are accepted at a lower rate, the overall acceptance rate can probably be adjusted to be higher than it first appears. At least it can in some cases.

For example, University of Rochester has a very high enrollment of international students at 28%. Their overall acceptance rate has been around 35% in recent years, but if international students are being accepted at a lower rate, there are enough of them to suggest that US students probably have an easier time being accepted than might first appear - probably somewhere in the 40-50% range. In contrast, Villanova has an international enrollment of only 2%, suggesting that their 23% acceptance rate this year is probably pretty close to what US students applying their can expect.

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15

Why is this controversial? At least US private colleges do not differentiate between domestic and international and public i haven’t seen difference in OOS vs international.

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Some of the data does not include the internationals. Schools are required to report race/ethnicity to the federal government but not on international students.

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Colgate’s variable acceptance rates were the example used in this topic: Are Colleges Much Easier to Get Into for Domestic Applicants than General Acceptance Rates Suggest?.

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