College admission rates are at an all time low, and the probability of getting into the top schools has been drastically decreasing each year.
Colleges and universities such as Harvard, MIT, Princeton and even public universities such as UCLA and Berkeley have become increasingly selective in their admissions processes. One of the reasons behind this is the significant increase of applications they’re receiving each year.
According to Research.com, the most popular schools get tens of thousands of applications each year. In 2019, the schools which received the most student applications were UCLA at 102,225 applicants, University of California San Diego at 88,446 applicants, and more.
Although there are many applicants, there aren’t as many enrollments. In fact, there are actually less students enrolling into the colleges they apply to.
“Even though students are applying to twice or even more times the schools they did just a few years ago, the basic math of this hasn’t changed from 2018 to 2022,” a parent on a college community website said. “There are still about the same number of students competing for about the same number of slots.”
According to Transfer Goat’s website, around 57,000 applicants applied to Harvard University but only around 1,968 were accepted. Another example would be Stanford University, which received over 55,000 applications but only accepted 2,190 students.
Because of the increased number of applications, and the limited number of seats available in each university there’s an increase in the competition among the students applying. This is making it harder for individual students to stand out to the schools that are more selective.
“Many students are taking a more strategic approach to college applications,” a writer on the Transfer Goat website said. “They’re applying to a larger number of schools, including “reach” schools that may have been out of reach in the past. This means that even highly qualified students may be rejected by some schools, simply because of the sheer number of applications they receive.”
Standardized testing also plays an important role in increasing applicants. USA Today reports that since the majority of the schools have removed the SAT/ACT testing requirements, it has led to “a spike in applications especially among the nation’s most selective universities that adopted a test-optional stance.”
A journalist on the Socrates Post says that lower acceptance rates and individual reputations give colleges higher rankings on publications such as Forbes or the Wall Street Journal and more.
“Reputation is just a peer survey from other schools, so it’s likely that a college’s exclusivity is considered because humans covet things that are hard-to-get.” the Socrates Post said.
Nevertheless, keep in mind that if a certain school has a low acceptance rate, it doesn’t mean the chances of each individual getting in is the same. Each individual student has different statistics and their own unique activities and achievements. As these details vary, it changes the probability of each student getting into their top school.
