NY Times Upshot Blog: International students make it much harder for U.S. students to get into Ivies

Applying to College
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<p>Getting Into the Ivies
Why is it harder than it used to be? Colleges are globalized.
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/upshot/getting-into-the-ivies.html"&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/upshot/getting-into-the-ivies.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>So this explains why it’s getter harder even though the number of US high school grads is actually going down.</p>

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<p>Someone help me out: that graph – Percentage change from 1994 to 2012 in the number of spots for American students at each college, per every 100,000 Americans aged 18 to 21 – seems like BS to me. I know for a fact that the aggregate no. of slots afforded to non-US students at Yale has remained more or less the same during that time period. But the article writer inserts this graph that, with the injection of the adjusted numbers for US population growth, imply that Yale et.al are ceding slots to international students at an alarming rate. That’s just not the case ASFAIK. Please someone correct me if I’m wrong…</p>

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<p>Yes, it’s very odd indeed.</p>

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<p>Did anyone comment on it? I mean in the comments section of the web page.</p>

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<p>I’ve looked at that graph again. It’s total baloney and tosses the blog title, “International students make it much harder for U.S. students to get into Ivies” on the trash heap.</p>

<p>I can’t believe no one challenged the whole underyling premise of this alarmist article? Garbage! (edit: there were one or two comments in the NYT comment section but any time Ivy admissions is discussed, tons of remarks get generated. The ones questioning the graph got lost in the stream)</p>

<p>The huge uptick in international apps has made it near impossible for fellow internationals to get into Ivies, and according to my knowledge of the static slots set aside for them, MAKE NO DIFFERENCE to domestic students’ rate of acceptance. The plummeting rate of acceptance of domestic applicants is the huge uptick in domestic apps. DUH</p>

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<p>Your argument is incorrect as well as your assertion that that the number of international students has remained unchanged at Yale from 1994 to 2012. A simple Google search would show that.</p>

<p><a href=“http://oir.yale.edu/yale-factsheet”>http://oir.yale.edu/yale-factsheet&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://oir.yale.edu/node/149/attachment”>http://oir.yale.edu/node/149/attachment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Quick summary:</p>

<p>Fall 2013 Total Enrollment Yale College - 5,409
Percentage of International Students - 11%</p>

<p>Fall 1994 Total Enrollment Yale College - 5,166
Percentage of International Students - 4%</p>

<p>Also note that total enrollment in Fall 1994 was a bit of an outlier on the low side. Fall 1993 and Fall 1995 were 5,217 and 5,236 respectively. </p>

<p>Another two points of reference:</p>

<p>Fall 1987 Total Enrollment Yale College - 5,165
Percentage of International Students - 2%</p>

<p>Fall 1999 Total Enrollment Yale College - 5,266
Percentage of International Students - 7%</p>

<p>Using the two extreme endpoints of the data (1987 to 2013), we can see that Yale increased the total number of slots at the college by 244 (4.7%) while increasing the number of international students by 470 (376%). The total number of slots available to domestic applicants fell by 226 (4.5%), without taking into account an increase in either the U.S population or the number of U.S. applicants.</p>

<p>This pretty much confirms the premise of the article, at least for Yale. Sorry to disturb your worldview, but it appears the article is correct.</p>

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<p>So let’s look at the numbers MrMom62 cited again.</p>

<p>1987: 5165 - 125 = 5045 domestic
1999: 5266 - 356 = 4910 domestic
2013: 5409 x 89% = 4814 domestic</p>

<p>That’s 5% reduction of the spots over 25 years. I don’t think that’s going to make a difference for most of the people who are applying.</p>

<p>Or put it another way, if those 5% are put back into domestic pool, Yale’s 2013 acceptance rate may go from 6.72% to 7.05%. I don’t know what Yale’s acceptance rate is in 1987. But I bet it’s much higher which would imply that the reduction in the acceptance rate is mostly caused by increasing number of applicants.</p>

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<p>That’s true, but there’s another problem that’s unrecognized here, the 6.72% includes international applications, not just domestic ones. The domestic acceptance rate is higher than the international one, I’m pretty sure we can agree that’s true, even if we don’t have hard data - so in some respects, it’s actually easier to get in than the popularly tossed around numbers, although it’s still tough by any measure. Increasing domestic applications are certainly a factor, although how many are truly qualified is another question. The NYTimes chart is still valid, however, from everything I’ve seen.</p>

<p>I think I calculated what I estimated to be the true Harvard acceptance rate for highly qualified US applicants based on our HS Naviance data a few weeks ago and came up with a number of 15-17%, or roughly 1 out of 6. Daunting, but not impossible.</p>

<p>One could also make the argument that HYPSM are being irresponsible by not increasing the size of their colleges as population rises, especially given the size of their endowments. Yale has been practically stable in enrollment over the last 25 years while their endowment has increased how many times during one of the great economic booms in history? I’d really love to hear a defense of that - and I really doubt it would start with “We’re greedy bastards…”</p>