I noticed some parents commenting in other threads that 2017 was a brutal admissions year. Is this really true? We’re there any recent years that were less competitive?. In the northeast we’ve heard steady news that the number of 18 year olds graduating from high school has been dropping since approximately 2008-2010, but there don’t seem to be any news stories about college admission getting any less selective anywhere. Even if you take into account the fact that each student may be applying to more places, you would think the colleges would have to compensate for this on their end by admitting more applicants. Would appreciate any thoughts.
Less competitive overall, but increasing interest in elite schools may be making those schools more competitive.
But less selective schools are not the ones that posters here tend to focus on.
The number of high school graduates nationally is dropping slightly (expected to pick back up again—once again, slightly—soon, though); the precipitous decline you’re seeing in the Northeast isn’t matched elsewhere. However, balancing this is the fact that a higher proportion of high school seniors are heading to college, so the overall number of applicants is steady to slightly higher; also, since the number of applications per applicant has edged higher (though not by as much as scaremongering stories in the papers might lead you to think), the number of applications has gone up.
As for whether it was a brutal application year (and I say this as the parent of a 2017 high school graduate), it depends, of course, on what colleges you’re talking about. The colleges so many people here on CC salivate over? Yes, by virtue of them getting more applications. The colleges most people attend? No, simply because most people attend non- or minimally-competitive-entry colleges.
But brutal? From my observation—and it’s only my observation, which is admittedly a skewed sample—it wasn’t any worse or better than any other year.
I think a main change has been in top colleges that used to draw largely from a regional applicant pool but that are emerging as “elite” players on the national scene—Chicago, Northwestern, WUSTL, Duke, Vanderbilt, Rice, Emory, etc. I’d even put some of the Ivies in that category and lots of the more prestigious LACs, especially in the northeast, but also increasingly in the midwest as well. Some of the most prestigious public universities are also increasingly pulling from a national or even international rather than a state or regional pool of applicants—UNC, UVA, UMich, UIUC (engineering), and UCs even beyond UCLA and UCB. I don’t see an end to that trend, which will probably lead to a growing divide in the perceived prestige between those universities that are considered “national” vs. those that continue to draw applicants primarily from a “regional” pool.
The Common App makes it easy for students to throw applications at a lot more schools.
I have wondered for years how much of the applicant pool for brand name schools is international. I have the impression that the number of international applicants has been growing steadily. This probably accounts for at least some of the growth in the applicant pool. Most schools limit the number of slots set aside for international students, but they don’t give statistics on how many of their applicants are foreign. If large (and increasing) numbers of international students are vying for a small number of seats, this could have the effect of making the admit rate look lower than it really is for US applicants (and higher than really it is for foreign applicants).
This is from 2014 Brown Daily Herald:
"International students made up only 8 percent of applicants to the class of 1988, according to the data. By 1999, these students constituted 13 percent of the pool.
This year saw the highest-ever number of international applicants, as students from foreign countries made up 17 percent of the total pool, The Herald previously reported."
Looks like the raw # of high school graduates is expected to drop in 2017-2018:
But I imagine that for the tippy top schools, this is a relatively small % decline in the number of students.
IMO, the biggest problem is that students are simply applying to too many colleges. This is due to two factors: The Common App makes it very easy for students to apply to many colleges, and students believe, wrongly, that if they apply to more top schools, their chance of getting into one of them increases. Do a little research and you will probably see that the most selective colleges had more apps than ever and got a little more selective than last year. Meanwhile, there were some excellent schools this year that had empty seats to fill on the NACAC list. HS guidance counselors need to emphasize to their students that there are plenty of great colleges that aren’t HYPSM, and try to help them discover the many great colleges out there.
This is perhaps totally unrelated, but I really wish that CC would get the Supermatch tool back into action. It is a great way for students to discover many excellent colleges that fit their stats and pocketbooks, as well as helping them to narrow down fit. It’s probably not likely, but I can’t help wonder if perhaps Supermatch not being available this past cycle might have been a part of kids not knowing about a lot of good colleges. No idea how many students actually used Supermatch, but schools with Naviance had access to it.
In the quest for tuition dollars, it will mean more international admits of increasingly questionable quality. Some metrics you can be assured of in the foreseeable future, tuition rates will continue to rise at a rate greater than inflation, student debt will continue rise and admission to certain schools will stabilize in the 5-7% admit rate. There is no desire to change these metrics either politically or from the colleges themselves.
@EllieMom: UChicago has been drawing nationally for generations now. Actually, most of those schools you listed have been drawing nationally for generations now.
With one in five taxi drivers nowadays being college graduates more and more people are realizing that only college degrees from smaller number of schools matter. And therefore more intense competition each year to get into fewer and fewer selective colleges. Here is a Wall Street Journal article that explains such dynamics:
http://opportunityamericaonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/THE-DIMINISHING-RETURNS-OF-A-COLLEGE-DEGREE.pdf
@elguapo1: “In the quest for tuition dollars, it will mean more international admits of increasingly questionable quality.”
Only if the quantity and quality of international applicants stays constant. At the high end (at any rate), we’ve seen both increase dramatically in recent years. With the Ivies/equivalents capping Internationals at 10-15% of the student body, that means that it has been increasingly more difficult for Internationals to get in to those schools.
Granted, what you say may apply to those schools well outside the Ivy/equivalent tier.
Anecdotally, it seemed like there was less wait list movement at top schools this year, which adds to the perception of it being a tough year. And agree with the other posters who point out, that an influx of International applicants, offsets the decline in U.S. High school seniors.
And at many schools, it is indeed easier now to get in than before (referencing an article linked to on CC before): https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/06/29/many-small-colleges-face-big-enrollment-drops-heres-one-survival-strategy-in-ohio/?utm_term=.fedfbd63f71e
But many people in the CC crowd, when they discuss admissions difficulty, aren’t thinking of the Ohio Wesleyans of the country.
Even Kenyon, though, saw a big increase in acceptance rate this past year. Other high-end LACs like Grinnell as well.
Yes, @PurpleTitan , and it’s really puzzling. Kenyon and Grinnell are not suddenly less prestigious or worse at what they do. I think if anything, it just shows how truly unimportant acceptance rates are when compared to more tangible criteria, because they can vary a lot from year to year. I will be interested to see if the acceptance rates this cycle affect their silly USNWR rankings.
@Lindagaf : Well, it’s not puzzling in that both are small rural LACs in states that voted for Trump (in a year when many people in metropolitan areas, for the first time, realized that many people in rural areas hold different values and beliefs from them).
But yes it does show how misguided it is to judge colleges by admission rate.
I think that there are a variety of factors.
Certainly today a far higher percentage of high school students have straight A’s or nearly straight A’s, compared to when I was in school. When I was in high school my reaction to a B in a subject that I am bad at would have been “great!”, and multiple B’s didn’t stop a student from being #1 in the high school. Now I hear reports of kids freaking out because they only got an A and not an A+ in a class. Today over 4 years of high school having about 48 A’s and 2 B+'s might or might not even get a kid into the top 10% of their high school. The papers that I saw coming off the printer at midnight when my kids were in high school (something that ended just over a month ago) are at a far higher quality level than anything I ever saw from anyone back when I was in high school or even when I was in university.
The “elite” schools seem to be admitting an increasing number of international students and an increasing number of students with “hooks”, to the point that kids whose only actual strengths are high grades, high SAT scores, and a very kind helpful and responsible personality, get squeezed out from the “elite” schools by kids who have some other “hooks” that give them preference.
For an “ordinarily excellent” un-hooked straight A 1500 SAT student who is willing to go to an “ordinarily excellent” university there are LOTs of options and no problems getting accepted. For most ordinarily excellent students the honors program at their in-state public university is a very good choice and is an easy admit. If students are hung up about going to an “elite” university in the USA then the ordinarily excellent unhooked student might have a tough time.
I strongly challenge the grounding in reality of the bit where I added emphasis.
I also challenge, though less strongly, whether there’s really such a perception, anyway. I’ll agree, certainly, that such a perception exists among a certain part of the population, but I rather expect it’s not actually a very widespread one.
Also: I looked it up, and it isn’t 1 in 5 taxi drivers who hold a college degree, it’s 1 in 7—still more than one might expect, but a lot fewer. Interestingly, the taxi drivers with a college degree out-earn those who don’t have a degree by more than 15%, so even there there’s an advantage to college. (I couldn’t find how many of those degrees are from unaccredited colleges or for-profits or such, though, which would have been useful information for this analysis.)
@DadTwoGirls I hear you re scores. There is no question of grade inflation, but I also believe students are much more accomplished than they were in our generation. D1 sent me one of her graded essay’s, it about knocked me out of my chair, the scholarship involved was mighty impressive with more reading for that one essay than I can remember doing in an entire semester. Second anecdote, good friends son attended one of the most prestigious east coast boarding schools, back in his fathers generation it was a question on pointing to the pennant of which Ivy league school they wished to attend and that was about it for college selection.