These are the acceptance rates for Stanford for the last five years. The quickly declining numbers are nothing to brag about. The current state of college acceptances is alarming.
At the very shallowest level, these numbers are sort of a way to broadcast a school’s “eliteness.” Along with US News College Rankings, lower acceptance rates always correspond to the quality of an education, right?" …
Declining acceptance rates are a reflection of desirability.
My mother used to say, when I made a juvenile plea to do or have something because everyone else did or had; “If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you want it too?” . Low acceptance rates do not “always” correspond to quality, usually though. But, just because everyone else wants it doesn’t mean it is the right choice unilaterally.
The answer has nothing to do with changing the admissions policies of the 5-10 super elite schools. No matter how you tweek them, there are still an order of magnitude fewer spots than qualified applicants. That isn’t going to change. In fact, if we are looking for a more egalitarian society, the fact that more high achieving students are being spread over a vastly wider array of universities is a positive development. An entire generation of kids and their parents will soon be forced to stop looking down at the wealth of educational opportunities available in this country. Since the vast majority of students of all races and socio ecomonic classes will be educated at “lesser” schools, the best way to actually level the playing field is for employers, graduate programs and society at large to recruit outside the top ten. From all reports, this is happening already.
The real problem is that those top schools are some of the only ones that give decent financial aid. The problem for economically disadvantaged students is not that they have to go to State U, but that they can’t afford it. We need to make public education truly accessible to all income levels. Then, we can stop caring about who gets into Stanford.
It is the commercialization of tertiary education. Branding, marketing, cost of education linked to prestige and elite status. It leads to the absurd situation where on another thread a presumed 18 year old is considering Georgetown at 300k and 80k in debt vs zero cost and no debt at Ohio State. To even contemplate that question is in its self a sad indictment on the state of US education.
Prestige is an emotion that has no rational or financial basis to justify its existence. The more and more people apply to elite colleges, the more stagnant they become with their capacity. This make the college look more “selective” by taking only the “brightest” students, which leads to research grants. In reality, they’re getting paid for doing literally nothing. In fact, these schools have been following a very archaic outdated business model for decades. In the 21st century, the vast majority of employers are small to midsize companies. It’s more cost-effective to hire locally and regionally. That’s why state schools have grown at the rate they have. With bachelors degrees pretty much standardized, it make no rational sense to pay 250k for it.
Stanford is increasing class size to 2200 per class and the only selective colleges with larger freshman class sizes are U of Chicago and Penn.
Stanford also has required application supplemental essays that many schools do not and the highest app fee in the US that limits app numbers.
Hard to believe but Stanford’s admit rate would be lower without these mitigating factors.