<p>I was reading a couple article from last year about the dramatic drop in acceptance rates and i got to thinking....I think the schools have stayed just as competitive, just the same students are working harder to get into the schools. If you were wanted to go to Harvard lets say 30 years ago, you wouldve put in the amount of work necessary 30 years, and if you wanted to go to harvard now..you would put in how much work you need now. Even though acceptance rates are dropping and stats are going up its all relative. Everyone is getting higher scores on their SATs, doing more ecs- to combat the drop in acceptance rates- applying to more colleges (which in it self drops the acceptance rates, since colleges are receiving more applicants).</p>
<p>This is just what i thought i was interested in what you guys had to say, so discuss :)</p>
<p>I think it is primarily driven by people sending so many more applications. Instead of sending 5 applications, people are sending 15. So the number of applicants per school is going up way faster than population of college-bound HS seniors. Certainly the meteoric rise in the number application at UChicago when they shifted to the Common App is consistent with that explanation.</p>
<p>So you get a top kid 4.0/2400/2400 who gets into 4 Ivies. Since she can only go to one, she now turns down three. They have to go to their waiting lists. It creates a cascading musical chairs.</p>
<p>All indications are that ED/EA applications are up noticably this year. That means more people are playing the system, not that there are that many more HS seniors.</p>
<p>Regular people got into H 30 years ago, today you need to be a superstar. I think it’s a matter of the Internet spreading the word and schools like H seeking out applicants from all corners of the planet rather than just sitting back and watching the usual suspect prep school applications roll in.</p>
<p>I think it’s a combination of what UT4321 and 2college2college are both saying. I also think that the influx into the US of Asians, Indians, and others over the past several decades that has really raised the academic bar.</p>
<p>this is my incomplete list of what i think contributes to this:</p>
<p>-rising international competition
-increasing population and consequently larger pool
-increasing app sent per student mainly caused by increased competition; positive feedback system.
-the growing need of higher education degrees to compete in global and domestic job markets which leads to…
-government and cultural pressure on advancing “world class” education
-mostly static selectivity despite increased apps received</p>
<p>the next couple decades will be interesting</p>
<p>NUMBER 1 reason: HYP dropped ED. Competition explodes exponentially as a result.</p>
<p>This forces kids USAMO kids who 2600 SAT scores and a 4.3 UW GPA to apply to 20 schools and driving down the yield. The smart kids can no longer depend on the ED accept at Harvard. Now you have these kids in the application pool against normal kids.</p>
<p>Its not the influxes of Asians. Its not the SAT test scores going up (its curved every year to ensure the same percentile of people get the same scores).</p>
<p>I think Michelle Hernandez explained this pretty well.</p>