<p>Interesting article in today's Boston Globe reporting on the surge of applicants and the resulting plunge in acceptance rates.</p>
<p>Some excerpts from the article:</p>
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The Bay State schools are becoming more selective because their applicant pools, like those at the elite colleges, are swelling from a population boom of high school students. And the caliber of the applicants for schools like Boston College, Northeastern University, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst is rising as Ivy League schools become ever more competitive.</p>
<p>BC accepted only 27 percent of its 28,800 applicants this year, compared with 39 percent a decade ago, when roughly 12,000 fewer students applied.</p>
<p>UMass-Amherst accepted 62 percent of 28,000 applicants this year , compared with 73 percent of 18,000 applicants 10 years ago.</p>
<p>And Northeastern said yes to only 39 percent of its 30,000 applicants, compared with 85 percent 12 years ago.
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At UMass-Amherst, the average grade point average of the admitted students this year is 3.6, compared with 3.1 a decade ago. Amherst, the flagship campus of the UMass system, is trying to bolster its national reputation to compete against other big state universities, such as Michigan and Texas.
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At Boston College, the SAT scores of freshmen have climbed an average 20 to 30 points during the past decade, with students now scoring into the 700s on math and the verbal sections. An 800 is a perfect score on each section. BC is rejecting many students who achieve scores in the 700s. It has kept its freshman enrollment at about 2,200 through the decade.
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"We are seeing a trend that schools once considered 'safety' schools are no longer safety schools, particularly UMassAmherst," said Stephen Hitzrot, chairman of the counseling department at Acton-Boxborough Regional High School, where 96 percent of students go on to college.
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<p>I was just reading about Northeastern yesterday:</p>
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One thing that has changed in recent years is that the applicant pool of the university has gone from being one of the "underdogs" of colleges in the Boston area, to a competitive and highly regarded institution.</p>
<p>As Northeastern's reputation strengthens, the number of freshman applicants has grown dramatically causing a more selective admissions process and higher competition for scholarships. This year applications topped 30,000, doubling the number of applicants in 2000, said John Natale, media relations and public relations (PR) specialists of the PR department....
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<p>Interesting article: Expansion is an answer, but is the problem purely one of lack of space - seats, and brick and mortar - or that students vie to get into those colleges with elite "appeal and reputation"?</p>
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[quote]
Seizing an opportunity, some new private colleges are opening. At the college fair at the Bayside Exposition Center in Boston this week, Founders College of Virginia, which will hold its first classes this fall, was trying to attract students with promises of textbooks delivered to students' doors and dorm rooms with their own bathrooms.
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<p>"is the problem purely one of lack of space - seats, and brick and mortar - or that students vie to get into those colleges with elite "appeal and reputation"?"</p>
<p>It's hard to imagine that the rise in applications to UMass/Amherst and Northeastern are due to the desire for prestige. I have nothing against either school, but I wouldn't call them elite or prestigious. I imagine their rise in applications come more from the more applications/kid phenomenon and the baby boom echo demographic reality.</p>
<p>Articles like this will serve to instill even greater fear in the hearts of high school juniors. Hopefully it will also inspire them to have a realistic list of colleges they are applying to.</p>
<p>In urban schools, there's definitely a space issue - there's only so much real estate available (and even less if you're hoping the neighborhoods won't scream).</p>
<p>NEU has done a lot in the past couple of decades to become more selective (as has BU). NEU has tried to transform itself from being primarily a commuter university to a residential one. It has some stellar faculty and its Coop program continues to be a major draw. </p>
<p>From the article, it appears that NE students continue to be reluctant to move away from the region, while applicants from other parts of the country are also drawn to Boston-area colleges; hence the press of applicants to local institutions.</p>
<p>more important than the mere number of applicants is the quality of those that apply. The BC admissions spokesman noted that SAT scores increased by 20-30 points over the past 10 years. If that was a somewhat uniform increase, the surge of recent applicants is somewhat underwhelming. If the bulk of the increase has come in the past several years, that is indeed meaningful.</p>
<p>But irregardless, this phenomenon of declining acceptance rates creates a reinforcing mechanism that causes more hs students to apply to more colleges. I find it amazing that admissions offices are able to predict freshman enrollment accurately in such a dynamic admissions atmosphere. It may require them to rely on waitlist more heavily in order to be faced with the dreaded over-enrollment situation which strains housing and freshman scheduling.</p>
<p>good points- of course, the ground swell of apps or the fierce competition to get into BC isn't much of a surprise or news- after all, it has been "hot" for quite a while and was even dubbed a "new Ivy" by media admissions gurus. The gist of the article, and so many others in the media these days, is that there is a real shift taking place in higher ed because of a trickle down effect- that higher selectivity is bringing enough high scoring, extremely talented students into certain institutions causing a de facto change in the status of many colleges. BU and Northeastern certainly draw a respectable number of OOS and international applicants - in part because of the lure of the Boston area and in part because of reputation. There is an increasing sense of dismay because the "order of things" seems to be topsy-turvy and unpredictable- and that includes the notion of what is elite and what is not.</p>
<p>Given all the self-reporting on CC regarding the schools that many NE'ers are considering as alternatives, I agree with post #7: these alternatives tend to be in a much narrower geographical range than is true for families from other regions, even from supposedly desirable CA. Just my impression, after a lot of reading.</p>
<p>I don't know about that, epiphany. I've seen just as many midwesterners posting that they want to stay in the midwest, or kids looking for schools in the south, as I have for kids who want to stay in the northeast. Most kids stay close to home; why should New Englanders be different?</p>
<p>I don't think that NE kids are necessarily different from kids from other areas in wanting to stay close to home. But they have fewer incentives to leave home in favor of colleges farther afield. It costs almost the same for an OOS student to study at Berkeley as it does to study at Harvard or MIT; but Berkeley is substantially larger than either. If NE kids are used to certain size campuses as being the norm, they may be less attracted to Berkeley or UCLA or UMich. On the other hand, CA students wishing for smaller campuses and having the means to attend more expensive colleges (whether thanks to finaid or higher familial income) have fewer options if they stay in CA.</p>
<p>For as long as I can remember, the greatest proportion of students at Harvard has come from NE, Mid-Atlantic and CA; and the three top destinations for Harvard graduates have been Boston, NYC and San Francisco.</p>
<p>I don't know about other schools, but in the case of Northeastern there is more going on than just the echo boom. The school has made a concsious decision to expand - I believe they added over 50 tenure-track or already tenured positions in the past few years; the goal announced in 2004 was to add 100 professors by 2007. Most of the new hires are from top-notch universities including the Ivy League. The school is adding dorms, class rooms, new facilities - and generous FA packages and merit awards to attract top students. My D -- from Colorado -- chose Notheastern over other, arguably more prestigious universities for these reasons (and being in central Boston didn't hurt :)) a classmate of hers turned down Dartmouth and another elite LAC for the full ride Northeastern offered her. The rise in status of NEU is I think the result of a happy "coincidence" between an ambitious administration and favorable demographics.</p>
<p>There is a good chance my son will attend NEU (why? because he likes it) but I am still trying to get over his not getting into their honors college with better than 1400 SATs and 3.9 wgpa. (They recalculated it down to 3.5 :( )</p>
<p>Once again, I agree with post #12. I think another factor, too, may be "deeper roots," comparatively speaking. Yes, there are exceptions. Not everyone from the NE has been there "forever," (certainly in more recent years there has been significant immigration, for example) , nor is every Californian a transplant, but overall, there has been historically, and continues to be, a lot more mobility in CA -- both from & into other states, and within the state. It tends to be the exception in the west that you find an extended family situation which has remained "exclusively" or even mainly within the region, and with a continued expectation of physical proximity.</p>
<p>so, once the demographic boom subsides say in 10 or so years (just guessing, haven't read much about numbers predictions lately), will the new elites stay elite or will their new-found prestige recede along with the number of applicants?</p>
<p>I had the same thought, Papa. My other thought - regarding NEU - is "where is the money coming from?" -- probably loans. Risky: the school could be in deep financial doo-doo one day...</p>
<p>I believe that NEU benefitted from the Big Dig and from the biotech industry in forging closer links to industry and being able to place its students.</p>
<p>Good point, Marite. The industry/academic partnerships that are cultivated have as much to do with proximity as prestige. Here in NJ, pharmaceutical cap of the world, there are amazing opportunities for students at Stevens, NJIT, Rutgers.</p>
<p>people that used to use a school such as northeastern for safties now have to apply to schools like umass, driving up numbers everywhere</p>