<p>This year just 7.1% got into the class of 2012. People compare that to last year's stat and think, "ooh, Harvard is really selective now" but my question is: isn't it just attributable to the increase in applicant pool, not a decrease in spots available?</p>
<p>yes. The selectivity does indeed reflect the growing number of applicants trying for the constant number of spots.</p>
<p>Indeed. When Columbia is more selective than Princeton, you have to wonder.</p>
<p>The Ivies have always been "selective" but I guess it's all relative. All of the top colleges have been inundated with more apps whereas only very few have been able to expand their admit pool. Therefore, the admit rate has plummeted.</p>
<p>It may be the case that the applicant pool in terms of numbers of apps per school goes up due to the increased number schools each person is applying to. I think it is heading toward an average of 10 or more for good schools.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>...isn't it just attributable to the increase in applicant pool, not a decrease in spots available?<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>Correct. Harvard admits about 2000 freshmen year in and year out, and about 1650 of these enroll every year. But in the past 5 years the number of people applying has grown from 20,000 to 27,000.</p>
<p>The increase in the applicant pool has been driven largely by two factors: 1. Harvard's much-publicized finiancial aid initiative making it affordable to a wider group of students, and 2. A simple increase in the college-age population. The population peak in the baby-boomer's kids will apply this year.</p>
<p>In addition to coureur's two, the Common App has brought tons of "super reach" applicants and also the increased number of international applicants.</p>
<p>All four have contributed to to the 7000 growth</p>
<p>^^Harvard was using the Common App 5 years ago, which is why I did not include it as a reason for growth since then.</p>
<p>Harvard was using the Common App years ago, but fewer students were using it then. It's much easier to apply to 10-12 schools now.</p>
<p>It's time for the FAQ again. It's a fallacy to assume that base acceptance rate is the only statistic to look at when describing a college as "selective." </p>
<p>SELECTIVITY </p>
<p>It's NEVER a valid procedure to compare base acceptance rates alone to derive an inference about selectivity. That's because different pools of applicants apply to different colleges, based on their own estimates of their chances. I'll repost here an example I have posted earlier.</p>
<p>If Podunk Community College started a more vigorous marketing campaign, and encouraged many more applications than it has received before, it might find that the number of applications submitted was far above its capacity to enroll students, and thus find, even taking into account less than 100 percent yield of admitted students who actually enroll, that it could not admit all applicants. If Podunk has a 10 percent yield, a new first-year class size of 1,000, and receives 200,000 applications, it might issue a press release, after it admits 10,000 applicants, saying "Podunk admission rate down to 5 percent, lower than any Ivy League college." But a thoughtful reader of that press release, even one who believes everything that Podunk reported, might still have genuine doubts that Podunk is more selective than Columbia, not to mention Harvard. Base acceptance rate is one interesting statistic about a college's annual admission cycle, but it is not the sole competent evidence about which college is most selective. Scholars of the college admission process have some genuine disagreements about how to show which college is most "selective," but NO ONE thinks that base acceptance rate is the last word on that subject.</p>
<p>And because this issue has been put into play in this thread, here is the FAQ about demographic trends: </p>
<p>DEMOGRAPHICS </p>
<p>Population trends in the United States are not the only issue influencing the competitiveness of college admission here. The children already born show us what the expected number of high school students are in various years, but the number of high school students in the United States, which is expected to begin declining in a few years, isn't the whole story. </p>
<p>First of all, if more students who begin high school go on to college, there will be more applicants to college even with a declining number of high school students. And that is the trend in the United States and worldwide. </p>
<p>Second, colleges in the United States accept applications from all over the world, so it is quite possible that demographic trends in the United States will not be the main influence on how many students apply to college. The cohorts of high-school-age students are still increasing in size in some countries (NOT most of Europe). </p>
<p>Third, even if the number of applicants to colleges overall stays the same, or even declines, the number of applicants to the most competitive colleges may still increase. The trend around the world is a "flight to quality" of students trying to get into the best college they can in increasing numbers, and increasing their consensus about which colleges to put at the top of their application lists. I do not expect college admission to be any easier for my youngest child than for my oldest child, even though she is part of a smaller birth cohort in the United States. </p>
<p>And now I would add to this that at the very most selective colleges that have just announced new financial aid plans, next year's (and the following year's) crush of applicants will be larger than ever. When colleges that are already acknowledged to be great colleges start reducing their net cost down to what the majority of families in the United States can afford, those colleges will receive more applications from all parts of the United States, and very likely from all over the world. </p>
<p>The Austin American-Statesman newspaper in Texas published news about these trends in an article about a particular applicant in April 2008. </p>
<p>The Economist magazine published a brief article about these trends in April 2008. </p>
<p>University</a> admissions in America | Accepted | The Economist</p>
<p>
[quote]
People compare that to last year's stat and think, "ooh, Harvard is really selective now"
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Harvard has been really selective for a very long time.</p>
<p>I agree with much of what tokenadult says, with a couple of caveats. First, the "flight to quality" tokenadult describes also affects yield rates, another factor pushing down overall acceptance rates. More kids than ever who are accepted to HYPSM end up going there, and the generous no-loan financial aid packages some of these schools now offer will likely only further increase their yields. </p>
<p>Second, I think you need to dig a little deeper than overall numbers of HS-age kids to get at what the demographic trends foretell. Most state universities, and even the very best LACs, tend to draw heavily from a regional applicant pool. But projections on the number of HS graduates vary widely by region, with most of the Northeast and parts of the Midwest expected to see a sharp drop in HS grads, while parts of the South and Southwest will experience sharp increases, potentially affecting application and acceptance rates at regionally-skewed schools.</p>
<p>For example, Haverford gets almost 2/3 of its entering class (64%) from the Northeast (New England and and Mid-Atlantic). Similarly, Wesleyan gets 61% of its entering students from the Northeast. Most public universities in the region draw 75% or more of their students from in-state. Unless the LACs aggressively expand their recruiting in the growing areas of the Southeast and Southwest (which they will surely try to do, but with uncertain prospects of success), they could see real shrinkage in their applicant pools. As might public institutions in the Northeast and Midwest.</p>
<p>Second, college participation rates vary widely by race/ethnicity and by income. Generally, Asians are the most likely to attend college, followed closely by middle- and upper-income whites. African-American, Hispanic, and Native American college participation rates lag considerably, as do rates of college participation among lower-income families of all racial and ethnic groups. But the number of white middle- and upper-class HS graduates is expected to fall sharply in most of the country, while Asians, African-Americans, and Hispanics will make up a much larger proportion of a generally declining pool of high-school aged students. Given lower rates of HS graduation and lower rates of college participation in these groups, the size and composition of the college applicant pool could change considerably in the years to come, again with a heavy regional skew.</p>
<p>Some illustrative figures:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>According to one widely cited study, the overall number of HS grads nationally is expected to decline only modestly from 3.34 million in 2008 to 3.19 million in 2014 (-4.5%), but the decline in the Northeast (New England & Mid-Atlantic) will be much sharper, from 625,000 in 2008 to 552,000 in 2014 (-11.7%), potentially enough to shrink applicant pools at state universities and LACs in the region.</p></li>
<li><p>In the Northeast, the number of non-Hispanic whites graduating from HS---the group statistically likeliest to attend college---is expected to decline from 380,000 in the peak year of 2008, to a projected low of 293,000 in 2022, a rather substantial 22.9% drop. This will be only partially offset by a modest increase in the region in Asian HS grads (also highly likely to attend college), from 28,000 to 45,000 over the same period. Thus the Northeast region will not only experience an overall decline in HS grads in this period, but it will also see a dramatic change in the racial/ethnic composition of the HS grad pool, with Hispanics comprise a significantly larger share and non-Hispanic whites representing a much smaller share. Unless Hispanic college participation rates increase sharply, it appears very likely that the pool of college applicants from the Northeast will decline, perhaps substantially, and possibly to the detriment of public universities and LACs drawing mainly from this regional applicant pool. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>This doesn't necessarily imply a significant easing of competitive pressure for college admissions. HYPSM will probably be harder than ever to get into. Schools in the South and Southwest will likely be bursting at the seams will applicants from regional and state-specific growth in their applicant pools. But Northeastern LACs will need to beat the bushes to find replacements for a shrinking pool of Northeastern applicants, and many state schools in the Northeast and Midwest may see declines in the absolute numbers and quality of in-state applicants. The elite publics will need to be more open than ever to OOS applicants to maintain the caliber of their student bodies, and more state schools may need to consider a less discriminatory posture toward OOS applicants.</p>
<p>I think if you look at public universities in the Northeast now, the last thing you will notice is discrimination against OOS applicants. It's more like very active marketing to them! For precisely the reason bclintonk gives.</p>
<p>Acceptance rate is a function of two things, and two things only:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>How many applicants does it get for each slot it has to fill?</p></li>
<li><p>How likely is each accepted applicant to matriculate?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>If college "H" gets 20 applications for each slot available, and every applicant accepted is certain to matriculate, College H is going to accept 5% of its applicants, and no more.</p>
<p>Harvard is not quite so bad as College H. It only gets about 17 applications per slot, and its acceptees are only 80% likely to enroll. So it accepts a little more than 7% of its applicants.</p>
<p>If College X got 10 applications/slot, but accepted students were only 10% likely to enroll, College X would have just about a 100% admission rate.</p>
<p>I also think that as students see the declining acceptance rates (due to increase number of applicants) they panic, apply to more colleges in order to get in somewhere and the number of applications in each school skyrockets. I read somewhere the average high schooler applies to somewhere between 8-12 schools. Thus adding to the craziness.</p>
<p>JHS is correct about what influences base acceptance rate. I just want to comment that the term "selective" has been used in this thread, and if students who are less outstanding apply to Podunk Community College than to the University of Chicago, we don't look only at base acceptance rate to decide that the University of Chicago is more "selective" than quite a few other colleges. At some colleges, the pool of applicants who come forward to apply are much more self-selected by strong academic credentials than at other colleges.</p>
<p>I would like to know what the acceptance rate was this year for "standard strong" candidates (high sats, good grades, solid ec's, but no distinguishing excellence).</p>