Undergrad applicants at record high

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Minnesota
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<p>Why is that? If the U accepts 15K of the 33K applicants, that’s a 45% acceptance rate. And I doubt they even accept 15K, because that’s a pretty generous number considering the size of the freshman class. My bet is that they accept about 12K-13K students per year… which would be a 36%-39% acceptance rate. So if the U continues to grow in popularity and applications continue to increase, the acceptance rate could get even lower. And if popularity does increase, you can bet that the yield rate will also increase… which means less acceptances, and even lower acceptance rates. </p>

<p>eeeeric, in order to have a 45%+ acceptance rate, they would have to accept about 16,000 students per year, which is a little high, I think (that would be a yield rate of approximately only 32%) . Granted, my estimations are probably a little low, so I’d bet that the acceptance rate this year was probably between 40% and 45%. </p>

<p>But if I could predict a little further than this year once again, I expect the U to have an acceptance rate in the 30’s in the next few years, if it isn’t already there. </p>

<p>Finally, if the economy continues to spiral down, you can bet that applications to such an in-expensive institution will increase over the next few years. Probably not as much as it did this year, but it will increase nonetheless.</p>

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<p>Sorry for chiming in again. So is the acceptance rate actually higher than the actual number of people who go to the U as freshman?</p>

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<p>Yes. They accept far more students than actually attend. Many choose to go elsewhere.</p>

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<p>Ok… </p>

<p>I found some stats regarding the yield rate, but I’m not sure how up to date those numbers are. But since they’re the only ones I found, I’ll use them. At the time this data was taken, they had about 18,000 students apply, and about 13,700 accepted… which equates to about a 76% acceptance rate. Also in this data, the freshman class was roughly 5,500. </p>

<p>Now, the freshman class is close to the same, but slightly smaller (~5300). So I’m assuming that they accept a slightly smaller number of students, probably about 13,200. And with 33,000 applicants, that gets you a 40% acceptance rate. </p>

<p>Assuming the U does not reduce the freshman class size and the yield rate stays the same (which is a risky assumption), they should have an acceptance rate in the 30’s very soon. In fact, if the U gets only 500 more applicants next year to a total of roughly 33,500 applicants, that would get them into the high 30’s. </p>

<p>And if you’ll allow me to speculate further, let’s say the yield rate increases with the U’s popularity (which is usually a given). This is my prediction for the class of 2015 (current high school sophomores). The yield rate has increased because of growing popularity and personal financial woes to about 50%. The freshman class is still the same size- 5,300 students. That means that the U accepts about 10,600 students. And if applications steadily increase, we’re looking at about 35,000 applicants. So if those numbers become a reality, we could very realistically be looking at an acceptance rate of 30% in the next few years. </p>

<p>This is great news to me, because it means that the quality of the freshman class will be higher, and that fact coupled with the U becoming more competitive will have a domino effect on the university to increase it’s reputation and quality… I hope. </p>

<p>Go Gophers!</p>

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<p>AT9,</p>

<p>You can view all of the U of M’s common data sets, from 1996-1997 to 2008-2009 here:
[OIR</a> - Standard Survey Response](<a href=“http://www.irr.umn.edu/stsur/]OIR”>http://www.irr.umn.edu/stsur/)
They have tons of information about admissions, both first-year and transfer.</p>

<p>If you look at the most recent one, you can see that a total of 29159 students applied for first-year admissions, of which 15322 were accepted. That means an acceptance rate of 52.5%. Hope that helps. =)</p>

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<p>wow that is so interesting. I’m glad it looks like the U will be getting higher up in the rankings!</p>

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<p>Thanks for the link, Maebee! </p>

<p>So for this year’s class (2013), we’re looking at an acceptance rate probably closer to 45%, instead of my original estimation of 40%. </p>

<p>But to provide some perspective on the U’s increasing competitiveness… In 1999, the overall acceptance rate was 77%. In the latest class (2012), the acceptance rate was 52%. And now with a record number of applicants, we’re almost assuredly in the 40’s. So let’s say that the acceptance rate this year (just to make the math easy) is 47%… that’s a 30% drop in acceptances to the U in only 10 years! </p>

<p>This is one of the many reasons I chose the U. It’s reputation and quality are on the rise, and it seems like the president of the university and the administrative staff are ambitious and competent enough to turn the U into a top 50 university. I wanted a University that was forward thinking and ambitious, and I’m confident that I found it!</p>

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<p>One more thing… I was looking at the USNews rankings to look at acceptance rates, and even though I don’t really trust those numbers, the U could be the most difficult school to get into in the Big 10 this year (with the exception of Northwestern, of course). </p>

<p>I’d be willing to bet that the U is definitely in the top three with UMich and UW-Madison, with a high possibility of winning the number one spot.</p>

<p>Once again, that’s based on USNews numbers… so that’s a big “IF.”</p>