<p>No. Most of the statistics and trends you cite are interpreted, at least within the academic community, quite differently than you do. Many schools are upping their acceptance rates significantly. Think about it like this: for schools with smaller endowments, a higher acceptance rate means more potential students paying them more money. Tight financial times mean they need more money. NYU in particular suffers from this. We have the smallest endowment for any Tier 1 school, period.</p>
<p>That’s where LSP comes in as well. Students who get deferred into LSP receive no aid whatsoever, with a flat tuition rate of $50,000. Basically, NYU gets 2 years of $50,000 from each kid that’s in the ‘oh-we-want-you-and-your-money-but-you’re-not-in-the-school-you-applied-to-yet’ program here. They’re even seriously considering expanding LSP to a 4-year program that you can actually apply directly to instead of keeping it as a 2-year deferral pool like it is now. All because our endowment is so small.</p>
<p>Falling a spot in the USNWR rankings isn’t the end of the world. When you’re a Tier 1 school, moving from 32 to 33 or whatever it did isn’t so significant. And there’s actually a lot of speculation the other way. NYU is considered to be one of the ‘New Ivies,’ along with schools like Duke, Carnegie Mellon, UVA, Northwestern, UChicago, and Tufts. They consider it to be part of a new breed of schools that are rising to the top of academic rankings, yet ones that don’t have the centuries of prestige, power, and reputation HYP and the other 5 Ivies do. I’m not making this up: [The</a> NEW Ivies: 10 Schools To Keep Your Eye On (PHOTOS)](<a href=“The NEW Ivies: 10 Schools To Keep Your Eye On (PHOTOS) | HuffPost College”>The NEW Ivies: 10 Schools To Keep Your Eye On (PHOTOS) | HuffPost College)</p>