“But: Are the increased stats due to a widening of the applicant pool (after all, it wasn’t all that long ago that the Ivies were effectively regional institutions with a scattering of students from elsewhere), which thus allows a school to choose from a larger number of high-stats applicants, thus increasing the entering class statistics, or is it an actual tightening of the requirements?”
Really no direct data on this, but I think the widening of the applicant pool is THE #1 driver of the increased stats/competitiveness. IMO, much more significant than the addition of internationals to the pool. Although both are related and do the same thing – adding more qualified applicants to the pool chasing a fairly static number of seats.
The market for admission to these schools used to be very local/regional. It is now much more national/international than before. The smart kid in Kansas used to apply to just a few schools and rarely outside of his region. Today he applies to many top schools from coast to coast.
Facilitated by cheap jet travel, Common App, increased financial aid, more kids going to college overall (flight to quality), USNWR and other rankings, and especially the prevalence of standardized tests.
Harvard invented the SAT, after all, because it needed a tool for its scholarship programs to identify smart kids who didn’t come from its traditional northeast feeder boarding schools. Without standardized tests, it is much harder to evaluate kids coming from all different kinds of places and high schools. Now, every adcom knows what a 34 ACT means regardless of where it comes from.
My guess is that the domestic pool isn’t going to widen much more much. So if internationals stay flat, the stats should level off over the next few years. Even though the number of apps may continue increase for a while. It is hard to break the ED-fueled cycle of more apps/ lower admit rates/even more apps/even lower admit rates/even more apps…
I’m sitting here cracking up as I just got the mail and received, along with the usual slew of glossy postcards from reasonable schools, a 100-page promotional book from Yale. My daughter couldn’t get into Yale if her life depended on it, and this is not the first item we’ve received from an Ivy (although it is the largest). If their requirements have dropped this low (she has a 31 ACT) there is definitely an enrollment problem! Lol
All of these schools want the largest applicant pool they can get so the can cherry pick there incoming class from it. Also with most of these colleges meeting demonstrated need, a ton more applicant think they can afford it which may or may not be the case. This wasn’t the case 20-30 years ago when everone just thought (or had the impression) it was too expensive except for the wealthy.
I wouldn’t read too much into ACT scores without more information. If more high scores happen on the ACT nationally, maybe the kids are smarter or at least devote more time to test prep? Or maybe the test has gotten easier over time? Or maybe the raw to scaled conversion was changed to produce a different distribution?
“I wouldn’t read too much into ACT scores without more information.”
No matter how much kids prep or what the test asks for, isn’t a percentile always a percentile?
As noted above, the top 15-20 USNWR schools now have their 25th ACT percentile around a 32 or 33 composite and their 75th percentile up at 35. [Some of the Ivies are a smidge lower actually.] 33 is the 99.0 percentile. 35 is like 99.5. 36 is like 99.9. So as a math matter, those ranges really couldn’t be much higher.
The only things that I can think of that could be inflating those numbers a bit would be (i) use of super-scoring and (ii) kids only sending (and schools only reporting) the single highest score received from multiple sittings.
Some of the score to percentile conversions change over time. A 36 ACT used to represent the top 0.01%. Now, it’s the top 0.1%. Add in super-scoring and it’s higher still. A 25% by definition has 25% of the students scoring below it.
% is always a %. Question I would have is how much of the increase in ACT is due to kids who previously only took SAT now “test shopping.” (I have no idea.)
But basically, if the # of US kids 18-24 attending college has flatlined or even decreased a bit, the increase in competition, at least at the tippy-top (where you can’t produce more #1’s), should have flatlined or even decreased.
Internationals obviously can continue to contribute to increased competitiveness.
The “next level” schools could be seeing more competitiveness if students who normally would stay near home and go to “3rd level” schools suddenly started going to “2nd level schools” in great numbers, but then 3rd levels would see drop off.
Basically, if raw # of kids going to college is stagnant, unless only “other people’s” kids are getting smarter, the (domestic sourced) competition can’t be increasing by much.
Internationals are another story. I’ll try to find more concrete #s on those applications.
@CaliDad2020 - “Internationals obviously can continue to contribute to increased competitiveness.”
After a certain flat percentage of international students at top US schools over the past decade or so, I’m not sure how much “increased competitiveness” we can expect them to contribute other than competitiveness among themselves. Beyond the flat percentage of international students, do they pose competitiveness for domestic students? Harvard, for example, has had a steady international undergrad population between 700-750 since 2010-11. I don’t expect that to change any time soon at Harvard or any other top schools.
“But basically, if the # of US kids 18-24 attending college has flatlined or even decreased a bit, the increase in competition, at least at the tippy-top (where you can’t produce more #1’s), should have flatlined or even decreased.”
True for colleges overall. But not true for the top colleges.
Overall, getting into college is less competitive. Pretty much any high school grad can get admitted. Since the number of kids entering college has already peaked.
But the number of highly qualified (say the top 1-3%) HS grads seeking a spot at a top college can still be growing. If more of those top kids today are playing the USNWR 1-20 game than before.
Assume there’s 60k “top” kids applying to college in 1997 and also in 2017. In 1997 only half of them applied to a top school (or a top school beyond their home region. In 2017, 80% do that. Huge increase in the size of the top college pool (30k to 48k).
The smart kid from Kansas who just applied to KU in 1997, but who in 2017 applies to six or seven top 20 schools.
I think what is happening is when Calidad wrote “but then 3rd levels would see drop off” is that they have, maybe covered some by an overall increase in the fraction of college age kids going to college. The test score percentiles of those places are flat, while the top has risen.
@northwesty The top 1-3% in raw numbers can’t be growing if the population as whole is not growing
So the only possibility is that a significantly greater number of 1-3% student apply to “top 5?” “Top 8?” colleges every year from 2009-10 to now. I don’t know what the reserch says, but my gut is that is not likely.
I still think, if international admits as % of class have not increased in any meaningful way, then college admissions at the top 10 schools has likely not gotten significantly more competitive.
(as an aside I’d love to see an analysis of test shopping as well. # of kids now taking both ACT and SAT, How many times etc. Changes in SAT scoring make long term comparrisons pretty difficult.)
@CaliDad2020: regardless of what your gut says, a far greater percentage of the student body at Ivies/equivalents have test scores in the top 1% compared to 10 years ago.
“Really no direct data on this, but I think the widening of the applicant pool is THE #1 driver of the increased stats/competitiveness. IMO, much more significant than the addition of internationals to the pool. Although both are related and do the same thing – adding more qualified applicants to the pool chasing a fairly static number of seats.”
I can tell you in California that the increased stats over the last 30 years is the Asian immigrant population and their children applying. There’s anecdotal and statistically significant data from college board that shows this. As one anecdote, at a local HS with 80% Asian I think, maybe more, a 1530 (new scoring) was 86th percentile.
Now each reason why Asians do better can take up a 50-page CC thread but if colleges take more Asians, their averages will go up, now will the 25-75 tighten to 34-35? That I’m not sure, possibly Cal Tech and Chicago.
Not doubting you (and, fwiw, 10 years is just outside the window of when # of 18-24 yo flatlined) but wondering where you are getting those figures and what those figures are.
The other issue that would interesting to know is how much any increase in scores is due to multiple test taking and score shopping. It’s very difficult to compare SAT raw scores due to change in test, but you can compare percentiles.
Also there has been a marked increase in “test shopping” (taking SAT and ACT to see where you perform better.) In 2012 ~1,700,000 kids took ACT. In 2016 ~2,100,00 took it. Some number of those test takers would only have take the SAT in the past, so the ACT #'s of a school might rise due to rolling in those additional scores.
(For instance, my kid did not plan to take ACT but one school she was applying to required either an SAT Subject test she had not taken, or a minimum ACT score. Rather than just taking a one-off SAT Subject test, she decided to take the ACT - and scored a 33, which was, ironically .5% or so percentile points higher than her best single sitting SAT. So her school’s ACT average rose slightly, when otherwise she would never had an ACT to report. Now, how widespread test shopping at the top end is, I don’t know, but 400k more students took the ACT in 2016 than 2012, At the same time the number of students taking the SAT jumped by 180k in the one year of the redesign (2015 to 2016) So, over the years from 2012 - 2016 the number of students taking ACT and SAT has jumped. What affect that has on the top end of the test, I don’t know.)
People always look to race/ethnicity first without considering other factors. The reason for Asian American educational achievement is due to how the immigration system works. 70% of Indian and 50% of Chinese immigrants to the US have bachelor’s degrees, far higher than in the source countries (under 10%) or among non-immigrant Americans (around 30%), due to so many coming in on skilled worker or PhD student visas. US-born children of such immigrants have both nature and nurture advantages in educational achievement, so it is not surprising to see high levels of educational achievement among Indian and Chinese Americans of recent immigrant heritage, considering that they are relatively numerous compared to those not of recent immigrant heritage, or of other Asian ethnic Americans (some of whom have significantly lower levels of bachelor’s degree attainment at immigration).
Note that black African and white European immigrants also have high levels of bachelor’s degree attainment (around 40% for both) compared to non-immigrant Americans, but they and their US-born kids do not stand out as representatives of their race/ethnicity (like Asian Americans of recent immigrant heritage are seen as) in educational attainment when seen as part of the far more numerous African and European Americans not of recent immigrant heritage.
Note also that this immigration effect is reversed for immigrants from Mexico, only 13% of whom have bachelor’s degrees (though up from 6% at the turn of the millenium), significantly lower than Mexicans overall (17%) or non-immigrant Americans.
Take Yale for example and the SAT, which has been a much more stable test than the ACT. For the 2007-2008 CDS, the 25% was 700 in each area. In 2016-2017, the 25% was 710 in each subject area. Was a 700 the same percentile in 2007 as 2016? Even if it was, does that mean Yale is significantly more competitive or instead could it mean they tweaked their admissions standards to be slightly more stats based and slightly less holistic? In 2007-2008, 92% submitted SATs. In 2016-2017, 69% did. That looks like more test shopping to me. Top students probably are casting a wider net, but it’s difficult to infer too much from the publicly available data.