REALLY low acceptance rate?

<p>In the letter I received from Macalester this afternoon, it says that they reviewed 4,562 applications for 480 open spots in the freshman class (which would be about an 11% acceptance rate). Is this even possible? Hasn't it been around 30-40% in the past? I must be missing something...</p>

<p>Only a portion of people that get into any college actually go. At the top, Harvard gets something like 80% of admits to attend. 30% or so is average.</p>

<p>So Macalester lets in 1000+ people so a little under 480 will probably accept the offer (if they have spots let over, they use the waitlist).</p>

<p>They over accept. They, to make their admission letter seem better, will say however many spots they have.</p>

<p>schools do have a specific number of spots to fill but they always accept a higher percentage of people because obviously not everyone will choose to attend their school. There tends to be a pattern of the amount that choose to enroll from the pool of admitted students. so schools will determine how much they want to overshoot - but with a fairly accurate estimate of the amount the will eventually decide to enroll.</p>

<p>for example: let's say that of the people admitted, usually 50% choose to enroll (this is NOT necessarily an accurate statistic ...I just chose that number randomly) so in attempt to hit the mark of 480 spots, Mac might admit 960 (21%) - this would still no doubt be low...but remember that this is just an example and I don't actually have real information to base this on yet</p>

<p>The question is, will schools accept more than is typical knowing that some who would normally attend will not be able to due to financial worries in this economy - more than would be typical if you're looking at aid.</p>

<p>The conjecture is that schools will probably admit a few more than normal, but since things are so unsure they will use the waitlist extensively. That way, if more than expected come they won't be overcrowded but if fewer enroll they will be able to fill the spots.</p>

<p>Okay, that makes sense. I didn't consider that not everyone will enroll.</p>

<p>I was looking at the list of admitted students on the Macalester Forum and there are 1896 students. So with 4562 total applications, the acceptance rate is about 41.6%.</p>

<p>Some schools are very confused about how many students they should accept because of the financial constraints. They don't know what the effect will be.</p>