<p>I used to consider a school really selective if it had a 25% or lower acceptance rate. However, the number of such schools has more than doubled over the course of this decade. </p>
<p>25% or below acceptance rate at start of decade:</p>
<p>Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Stanford
MIT
Cal Tech
Dartmouth
Brown
Columbia
Williams
Amherst
Swarthmore
Georgetown
Rice</p>
<p>25% or below acceptance rate for most recent class:</p>
<p>Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Stanford
MIT
Cal Tech
Brown
Columbia
Dartmouth
Penn
Williams
Amherst
Swarthmore
Pomona
WUSTL
Middlebury
Bowdoin
Claremont McKenna
Cornell
Georgetown
Duke
Cal/Berkeley
Colgate
Notre Dame
UCLA
Rice
Haverford
Vassar
USC</p>
<p>Is it the common app, more high school seniors (although college class sizes have increased slightly too), less high schools having class rank making students think they have a better chance, these colleges becoming better marketers or something else?</p>
<p>Colleges are basically a business. How else do they earn money other then endowments? </p>
<p>The problem with the selectivity is that America has seen another “baby boom”. Therefore now there are more teens applying. Then there are candidates who apply to some of these schools for the heck of it? Everyone has dreams. </p>
<p>Also, American standards have lowered compared to competing nations. </p>
<p>Overall, there are so many reasons for such a low acceptance rate but if you believed you are qualified then don’t think too much about numbers and apply. You may get lucky.</p>
<p>I think the common app has made a big difference. What would be interesting to know is average number of applications per student. Also, related, is what will common app mean for the SUNY schools. 2008-2009 marked many SUNY schools joining common app. I tend to think that for many students applying to selective schools, it is much easier now to add 1 or more SUNYs. I dont know how admissions can even predict how many will show up if admitted.</p>
<p>I agree with kayf about the common application adding to the issue. I also think that people are more “brand” conscious than they used to be. Students want to apply to schools with perceived prestige rather than less well known schools. They fail to realize that there are a lot of excellent schools where they could get a great education even if the school is not as well known. Finally, you will notice that the vast majority of these schools are in CA and the northeast where the population is significantly higher. Given that most students attend school within 300 miles of their home, it is going to increase th number of applications to schools in high population areas.</p>
<p>As with all things, Dumbing down. Nobody knows why people believe the things they do–it’s just gravity and the second law of thermodynamics. Have you read a fair sampling of the posts on this web site? And what about the people who live here!</p>
<p>-The internet making info easily available, people more aware of schools not near home
-publicized rankings
-improved financial aid at top schools
-immigration/visas, education oriented immigrants
-globalization; people are more willing to move and see the world as one
-worldwide competition-awareness that a top education gives an edge in the marketplace
-schools beefed up efforts to seek kids from all corners, especially internationals,URMs and low income
-increasingly low acceptance driving kids to apply to more schools</p>
<p>Yes, but why should there be more of this than eight years ago? I guess some others have touched on the brand consciousness, but it’s strange that it could change so much so quickly. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Did people not think this eight years ago? Do international students really comprise a noticeably different % of the class than at the start of the decade?</p>
<p>I think recentering the SATs starting with the Class of 2000 has changed a lot of things as now everyone feels they are closer to the top. In the early '90s, there were ~ 12 schools with an SAT avg > 1300; now there are probably over 75. The same concept applies for the onset of grade inflation, where the avg hs GPA has gone from 2.4 to 2.8 over the last 15 years, which has coincided with a much lower percentage of high schools reporting class rank, somewhere in the vicinity of 70% in the early '90s to ~ 40% now from what I can gather. This has probably caused admissions to become more random than they were, which has maybe, in turn, resulted in candidates applying to more schools for extra protection; causing the acceptance rates to drop further - a viscous, self-perpetuating cycle.</p>
<p>I have seen a dramatic shift in people understanding that there will be increased competition from around the globe for our children. We’re watching lower level engineering and legal jobs go overseas and expecting this to just keep growing and effect more and more careers.</p>
<p>Another thing I believe the internet information explosion has caused is many unrealistic applicants. Lots of kids believe the holistic message colleges use to draw in applicants. They believe an essay will compensate for low stats or ECs will and apply in droves where they have zero chance.</p>
<p>I think a large percentage of the increased applicants at top schools are unrealistic candidates. I’m not sure the qualified are getting in at much lower perventages.</p>
<p>Why would the Internet make candidates think this anymore than the old-fashioned viewbooks they send out? The content hasn’t really changed, has it?</p>
<p>Just look at CC, thread after thread of kids telling other kids their essays can make up for poor stats and SATs don’t matter much. Then look at college web sites, you no longer have to send for view books, the messages get to many, many more.</p>
<p>College also tour schools much more than they did in the past in their effort to improve diversity. They are also aggressively touring international high schools, something they never did until just a few years ago.</p>
<p>The former, most certainly, to the extent that a great number of special and talented applicants are overlooked and denied admission because their numbers are not up to par.</p>
<p>As one of those semi-deluded students, I can attest to hmom5’s opinion. School make it seem like you may have a better chance with good recs, essays and ECs. In addition, the common application made it much easier to apply “for the heck of it”. Now that there’s no need to re-write your personal information countless times and you can just apply with a single click, it’s certainly easier and somewhat painless to apply to more reach schools (disregarding the application fee, of course). I know I applied to several school where I had little to no chance of being accepted just to see if maybe, for some reason, I’d be the exception.</p>
<p>It may sound silly or cynical, but in the end, it gave me much more options to choose from.</p>
<p>Are the schools winning here as well? I mean, it obviously raises prestige and they probably make some money with all those lost application fees, but I would think it really messes up their predictions for the number of students that will matriculate. I understand they accept two times as many students as they have room for…</p>
<p>-population growth
-more prestige driven, low acceptance rate drives lower acceptance rates
-increased financial aid availability, many top schools used to be much less affordable. as a result, more schools near the top also boosted their financial aid.
-college admissions is getting more random and as it gets more competitive, you don’t know where you can get in, for the top schools, and as a result, students have to apply to more schools, to be “certain” they can end up at a top school. </p>
<p>I don’t really think today’s applicants are any smarter/more capable than the applicants in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Too many people today spend money/time on prep for everything. I probably wouldn’t have gotta into many of the schools today, compared to when I applied 6 years ago, but I don’t think that’s fair, because even compared to a few years ago, kids today are more focused on the “getting in” part versus the idea that college is an opportunity for education, and not just a prestigious affiliation.</p>
<p>My town along with towns in my county are part of the problem. 60 dollar application fees are chump change to what many parents pay to educate a K12 child. So, applying to many colleges is an easy a decision as spending an additional 30 minutes (with 5 of those minutes spent Googling relevant facts about school so that a kid can answer the supplemental ‘why X school’ and be done). You can hardly blame a kid for taking a flier at a school but now they take fliers on 10-12 with their parents encouraging them or even helping filling out their applications. Many are drinking the college Kool-aid believing that the ADCOM at the highly selective school will discover the hidden shining jewel that the kid really is. </p>
<p>Parents and kids are scared alike. When a kid gets rejected by a school, that sad news travels at the speed of the Internet. Being scared they talk their kid into applying to schools he/she would not even want to visit. Our high school is highly competitive even if it is a relatively small town. So, what you see is the same thing every year. For many kids his or her reach is a school like Brown, his meets may be Tufts or BC and his safety is BU. So, every year easily over 10 percent of the senior class applies to BC and BU with virtually the same SAT and G.P.A. so you know many are the same kids. So, each year around 30 kids apply to BU, they accept around 12 and on average one kid actually goes there. So BU throws a bunch of merit money at kids that still don’t want to go there while ignoring kids that would go there and are much more capable of doing the work than top kids at another school AND would pay more out of pocket to do so. Crazy? You bet. This is also a bit of a commentary on how well some colleges really know what should be key feeder schools in their stomping grounds. </p>
<p>I’m sure that Brown’s decision to go to the common app was partially driven by Alums upset about their acceptance rate versus peer schools. Problem solved but at what cost and what real benefit?</p>
<p>This whole thing has become a circus and I blame the schools for it from their relentless fight to move up in the ratings. Use of the common application its the biggest culprit. </p>
<p>What end is really achieved in stimulating the growth of an applicant pool through the common application, when you are not then going to then take the time to really assess the fit of the student with the school through interviews, essays and SAT II exams? Washington U and Notre Dame, (since there is a need to pick on some guilty parties here), have just become application harlots. How serious can these schools be in evaluating their applicant pools when there are no evaluative interviews or SAT II exams involved in their admission processes? All they want are larger numbers.</p>