Isn't College Admission supposed to be Getting Less Competitive?

Parents Forum
41

The change was made in 1995 because they wanted to readjust the average which was actually below 900 from what I recalled from that period. More like high 800s.

Super scoring definitely makes getting higher scores easier than back when I attended when such a concept didn’t exist and some sections were eliminated(i.e. antonyms).

Whether students currently are smarter than previous generations or not is very debatable. Especially considering most faculty/TA friends I’ve talked with noted the marked uptick in higher SES students/parents initiating grade disputes compared to 2+ decades ago…sometimes with threats of lawsuits with high priced lawyers.

Maybe students…especially those from the higher SES get higher HS and college GPAs because they’re more willing to challenge grades they feel they “didn’t deserve”…sometimes to the point of threatening to escalating it into a lawsuit. And K-12 teachers and some college Profs/deans/admins feel it’s far less troublesome to appease such students/parents than it is to stand up and say NO.

42

Texas will have more high school grads and Texas schools, especially our reasonably priced publics, will get more competitive. http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/University-enrollment-is-declining-nationally-11265938.php

43

The overall market is not very competitive. But the top end of the market has become a lot more competitive.

The market for admission to the very top tier of colleges has become much more national/international than it used to be. Much less local/regional. Because of many factors – the internet, Common App, cheap airplane travel, college ranking services, and the overall increase in the percentage of the population attending college. So there’s a premium on, and increasing competition for, seats at the most selective colleges.

So even though the number of HS grads is flat and even though each kid can still only attend one college, there’s many more kids playing the game of attempting to gain entry to the same top 20-30 colleges. Which means those schools get a lot more applications than before. Then add the extensive use of binding ED by most of those top schools. Very common these days to see such schools filling 40-50% of their seats through ED. Which means the number of seats available to RD applicants is much smaller than it used to be. Which means increased yield to the schools, which means decreased admit rates to the increasing number of applicants.

Faced with the Powerball odds of the RD round, the increased number of kids chasing a top 20 seat are now typically sending in more applications than in the past. Which drives down admit rates further, which drive up applications even more. Rinse and repeat.

In the olden days, a high end HS applicant might apply to 5 high end colleges to gain admission to 2 or 3. Today, that kid (unless he hits the ED bulls eye) is probably going to apply to 10 high end schools in order to gain admission to 2 or 3.

My guess is that if you play the current game, a high end kid’s chance today to be able to attend SOME high end college is still pretty good. But your chances of gaining admission to any single particular high end college (absent the ED bulls eye) is much lower than before.

44

@northwesty, well, admissions isn’t random.

Plus, with greater competition due to more internationals, greater emphasis on taking in URM and first gen kids, as well as overall greater outreach, better fin aid, and the fewer slots in RD that you mentioned, high-end kids who apply during RD do face lower odds than the same kid if they attended a HS that was a top 20 feeder a generation or two ago.

45

I would agree that the top 15-20 schools have become more competitive each year. I think the reasons are the increasing number of academically high achieving students and decreasing number of slots for unhooked kids at the top schools. I heard from someone who knows a Princeton AO that their hooked admits were approaching 70% last year. If that is true it would reflect a recent trend at those top schools. Its quite plausible given that Princeton is on record saying they are on a mission to increase such numbers:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/30/opinion/princeton-takes-on-class-divide.html
Anecdotal evidence like increasing yield among all top schools and higher aid by schools seem to suggest more hooked kids are admitted each year. Whether such trend continues remains to be seen. But its unmistakable that admission to 15-20 schools which is an obsession on CC has gotten worse for unhooked kids in recent years.

46

“I would agree that the top 15-20 schools have become more competitive each year. I think the reasons are the increasing number of academically high achieving students.”

It’s not because there are more high achieving kids today than before. If the number of HS seniors is flat, then the number of kids comprising the top 1% of those seniors is also flat. Grade inflation and test score inflation (if they exist) don’t change the number of kids in the 1%.

What has changed is the percentage of top end kids who are playing this game has gone up. The number of overall kids with top stats is the same as before. But the number of kids with top stats who are seeking a seat in the top 15-20 schools is way up. Because of Common App, USNWR, improved information from the internet, improved financial aid, etc. etc. etc.

The world/market for admission to the top 20 schools has changed – it is much flatter than before. Kids, however, haven’t changed – they’re not smarter than before.

With so many more kids entering this market, then the game does become much more about the hooks – ED, legacy, URM, recruited athlete, mega-awesome ECs, donor family, Pulitzer prize level essays, etc. Which means unhooked RD applications become lottery tickets.

47

@northwesty If you go by an observable like ACT score as a proxy for academics you will find the top 1% is indeed increasing in quality. From 2005 to 2014 (last year number is available) ACT average score has barely changed yet the percentage of 36 has increased every year. In 2014 there are five times as many ACT 36 in every million test takers as there were a decade ago. So, stiffer competition at the top 1% each year should not come as a surprise.
(you can google ACT test on wiki)

48

The smartest girl in my HS class ended up commuting to a local U and studied elementary Ed.

The next smartest girl (the only girl in AP Chem and physics that year) went to a junior college and became a nurse.

I cannot imagine a scenario nowadays in a highly ranked suburban HS where a GC or a teacher or SOMEONE didn’t encourage either of these young women to reach higher. This HS had been sending kids to MIT, Harvard, Yale, et al for decades. Yale was still all male when I was a senior. So was Princeton. And really smart, highly intellectual young woman still went to junior college or commuted to a teacher’s college and nobody blinked.

So yes-- the crush at the top is tough. But was it better to have high potential humans reaching too low, especially if their parents were afraid of a girl leaving home at 18? (both of the women I’ve mentioned were children of immigrants).

49

Maybe they really, deeply wanted to be a teacher and a nurse?

Also, nothing non-“high” about either of those occupations, actually.

50

Brown has some of the information juillet mentioned.

One key takeaway is the majority of both applicants and accepted students come from high schools, which no longer provide class rank. If your school does rank, you need to be in the top 10%. I’m not sure how useful GPA would be if colleges calculate weighted GPAs according to their own proprietary formulas.

https://www.brown.edu/admission/undergraduate/explore/admission-facts#distribution

51

It is wonderful when a smart, academically successful person (of either gender) decides to become a teacher or a nurse. Win for society.

Both of these young women were ranked in the top ten of a HS where the other 8 ended up at Yale (he’s now a judge), Harvard (CEO of a multinational corporation), MIT, etc. it’s a bit of an outlier when the Val and Sal (both female) end up commuting to get a degree in elementary ed, and certification as a nurse (no BS even- just her certification).

If the number 4 in the class (white male, Dartmouth, he’s an anesthesiologist) had really, really wanted to become a nurse-- and had been encouraged to do so- THAT would have been a man bites dog story. But the Sal didn’t want a college degree and chose a nursing program? That wasn’t news worthy back in the day. Even when she aced AP Physics and Chemistry.

And yes- now that young women are being encouraged to reach higher- that has created more competition at the top for college admissions. My point was- how is this a bad thing???

52

The top students in my kid’s class that want to be teachers and nurses still apply to Tufts, BC, Penn our flagship and/or other colleges depending on financial situation (merit seeking etc). But they aim as high as possible even for “those” careers. Besides to get accepted to a good nursing school you need high ACT/SAT and GPA nowadays. Girl ranked 8/300 with average SATs did not get admitted to several nursing schools last year.

53

I agree. I think med, law schools are almost half women now. Women certainly have more options than the traditionally female nursing and teaching (good jobs that require college degrees and more, usually, but don’t have to be prestigious schools) and that may lead to different college choices.

Back in the 80s, my (female) friends and I applied to top schools, so I don’t know how new this is.

54

“If you go by an observable like ACT score as a proxy for academics you will find the top 1% is indeed increasing in quality.”

Sure test scores at the top end are going up. Because more kids are taking the tests more often. And also spending more time prepping. And they are also picking between ACT and SAT in order to max their score. The test phase, like all other parts of high end admissions, has more kids entering the game and competing. In the olden days, we all took the SATs only once and usually didn’t prep. So of course our scores were lower.

But the top 1% is still the top 1%. ACT 35 is the new 34. 4.75W is the new 4.0UW. The kids aren’t getting any smarter, but I agree that they are playing a sportier game. Mostly because more kids are playing.

55

“I heard from someone who knows a Princeton AO that their hooked admits were approaching 70% last year. If that is true it would reflect a recent trend at those top schools. Its quite plausible given that Princeton is on record saying they are on a mission to increase such numbers: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/30/opinion/princeton-takes-on-class-divide.html. Anecdotal evidence like increasing yield among all top schools and higher aid by schools seem to suggest more hooked kids are admitted each year. Whether such trend continues remains to be seen. But its unmistakable that admission to 15-20 schools which is an obsession on CC has gotten worse for unhooked kids in recent years.”

I’ve posted the following elsewhere but worth repeating here: In the book, The Price of Admission, its author Daniel Golden estimates that at elite schools, URMs make up 10 to 15% of students; recruited athletes, 10 to 25%; legacies, 10 to 25%; children of people who are likely to become generous donors, 2 to 5%; children of celebrities and politicians, 1 to 2%; and children of faculty, 1 to 3%. A former chancellor of Cal-Berkeley, Robert J. Birgeneau, once estimated that roughly 60% of admitted students at elite schools are comprised of these hooks.

That was 10 years ago. As far as these hooks go, nothing much has changed since then. What’s missing back then and has been steadily added since is a newer yet significant hook: FLI, First-Generation, low-income, to address the class divide that the above linked article discusses. At Princeton, the share of FLI among the class of 2017 is 14.9 percent and very likely to grow even more in the future judging by the university’s president Eisgruber’s proactive stance on this.

If Birgeneau’s 60% estimation at elite schools was correct a decade ago and that percentage has held steady to this day, the aforementioned Princeton AO’s statement that the university’s hooked admits, including FLI, were approaching 70% in the latest admissions cycle, shouldn’t shock anyone. That leaves the unhooked applicants a very very tiny window of opportunity.

So, to return to the OP’s question, “Isn’t College Admission Supposed to be Getting Less Competitive?,” the answer is exclamatory NO as far as elite schools go. It’s become extremely more competitive for unhooked applicants AND, to a lesser extent, for hooked applicants, as well, since the number of applicants aiming at these schools has grown larger as the pool of super-wealthy, URMs, legacies, etc. has also increased significantly and will increase even more so into the future.

56

Note that size of the college matters.

Of the big hooks, the number of recruited athletes is a bigger percentage of a small college than of a big college.

The number with relationship to donor, politician, celebrity, etc. also may not scale like college size.

57

I take issue with what I feel like is the subtext of some of the discussion of “hooked” applicants.

There are a good number (a very good number, in fact) of URMs, recruited athletes, legacies and so on who would have gotten a closer look at the elite colleges they applied to without their particular hook(s). Claiming that because, f’rex, 10–15% of admitted students are URMs reduces the number of spots for everyone else by that amount both overstates the competition and understates the qualifications of (at the very least a large proportion of) those URMs.

Claiming, even without stating it directly, that hooked applicants are taking slots away from the unhooked applicants simply feeds into the very, very ugly assumption that every admit with a hook got in because of their hook, not because of their academic qualifications.

58

“So, to return to the OP’s question, “Isn’t College Admission Supposed to be Getting Less Competitive?,” the answer is exclamatory NO as far as elite schools go. It’s become extremely more competitive for unhooked applicants AND, to a lesser extent, for hooked applicants.”

I think the answer has to be yes for all – hooked or unhooked.

As the overall student stats continue to rise, the stats needed by, for example, a hooked athlete also rise. The Ivies, of course, have this process formalized with their AI system. Same dynamic presumably would apply to other hooks like legacies. Yale legacy George W. Bush probably had a less impressive record when applying to Yale than his daughter Barbara did years later.

Presumably, there is an increasing number of high stat URM and FGLI kids who now know about Princeton and aspire to go there due to the efforts described above. So as the number of kids in the Princeton-seeking URM/FGLI pool increases, the competition to actually get picked by Princeton out of that pool becomes keener.

The low odds/high stats spiral from the unhooked pool would seem to also drive similar effects in the hooked pools, even though the unhooked pools are easier.

Add in ED as an additional hook, and the number of seats available to the unhooked RD masses gets squeezed even smaller.

59

In the 70’s about 25% of US 18-24 yo were enrolled in college. In 2009 that peaked at about 41% and has bumped along at that percentage +/- for 8 or so years now. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_302.60.asp

LIkewise, the # of Americans 18-25 has risen in that time. (so greater % of more potential students attending college.)

LIkewise, # of international students has been steadily increasing: Over 1 million in 2015 - (the number in CA rose 10% in 2015 according to LA times. VOA reports 1.2 mill in 2016, a 6% increase nationally from 2015 according to VOA)

So: More 18-24 yo-olds + great% going to college + more international students = steady rise until 2010.

Seems now it has flatlined. A slight dip in % of 18-24 somewhat make up for by increase in international students. But the VOA article and others suggest international apps will flatline or decline in the short term.

So 2018, 2019 and 2020 should see a slight overall reduction in selectivity, at least on the margins.

But I doubt it is the kind of change that many kids applying to competitive schools notice.

60

^^ I stand by my statement, “to a lesser extent, for hooked applicants.” When you take a look at the CDS at elite schools, there’s NO WAY that unhooked applicants could make up the bottom 25th percentile. That percentile is made up largely of hooked applicants. I personally know of kids who got into Harvard and Princeton with unimpressive records and even less impressive work ethics by the sheer birth luck of having parents who attended these institutions. On the other hand, I also know of kids with brilliant records and extremely hard work ethics, yet rejected from all Ivy League schools. No competition between hooked and unhooked.