<p>Some places are seeing the deluge of students coming and building new colleges and universities. UC Merced and CSU Monterey, and CSU Channel Island were started to help with the increasing number of California students.</p>
<p>Keep in mind, the elite colleges are getting more applications in part because of more publicity. As long as everyone has heard of Harvard they will receive lots of interest from students. There are many schools that provide good educations that are not filling up.</p>
<p>If I were a prestigious college or university, I wouldn't want to tinker with success. It's quite possible that if Harvard or Stanford doubled the size of their freshman class they would have problems hiring the top notch professors to teach all these new students and their quality of education would dive, and their reputation would suffer. They've spent decades, maybe even a century, building up this reputation.</p>
<p>Am I the only parent that thinks I wouldn't be admitted to my alma mater if I were applying today? I've talked with a number of other people that feel the same way. Average SAT scores have risen 200 points (CR+M) at the school I attended. The top-tier schools are getting more difficult to get into. The number of seats at HYPS are not growing nearly as rapidly as the the number of HS grads who elect to go to college and more international students are applying. The same is true for large state universities. After all, how much larger can UMinn get? Instead new universities, especially state universities, are where the undergrad seats are being added. For example, in terms of ugrad enrollment, Central Florida is larger than UF and Va Commonwealth is larger than UVA and W&M combined! As for private colleges, Liberty U was started in 1971 and now has more undergrads than Harvard. It is schools like UCF, VCU, and LU where supply is being expanded to meet demand.</p>
<p>While demographics say we are reaching a peak this year and next, the drop off is very slight in the years that follow. To say that admission should get slightly easier assumes that all other things remain the same. However, as we have seen, the scarcity of seats at the top-notch schools has changed the behavior of HS and middle school students and the secondary schools they attend. Students are more serious and are careful to craft their credentials for admission. High schools are offering more AP courses and I think the trend will continue. Does this behavior border on obsessive? In some cases, yes, but the behavior does have a rational basis: the hope of being admitted to a prestigious college.</p>
<p>And as the difficulty goes up, more people will be wanting to go to Harvard even more. The day will come when community college requires a 2000/2400 to attend o_o</p>
<p>"You freakin got in back in the day when harvard accepted well over 50% of its applicants, and when it's applicants had stats similar to maybe some students of the present classes of NYU or something."</p>
<p>I wouldn't underestimate NYU because as far as I'm concerned they're just as notorious for rejections as Harvard.</p>
<p>Its not underestimating. Im just saying back in the day, averages for Harvard was somewhere probably something around 1350 out of 1600, which is a little under the average for NYU. Same with GPA. A 3.7 would be a very solid appicant to harvard back in the day.</p>
<p>NYU is a great school, with many top undergrad humanities and liberal arts, as well as an excellent business school.</p>
<p>Im applying to NYU btw, and i greatly respect it. And NYU's competetion increasing greatly by the years. It is already ide say one of the top 50 most competetive schools to get into, and within the next 20 years, if its trends continue, top 15 would seem more probable.</p>