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<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>
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<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>