Why is it so much harder to get into a top school now?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Like if a kid went into a Time Machine and went back five years, it seems with the exact same profile he or she would likely get into a more selective college. I understand kids are applying to more schools but that also means yield has to decline. But it seems there is a much larger pool of highly qualified applicants to top colleges or at least it is incrementally more difficult for a high stat kid to get accepted into his or her preferred school. Why is this?

Answer is in your question - there are more highly qualified candidates applying. Loads of them. In a few years, the applicant pool (US anyway) will decline.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Like if a kid went into a Time Machine and went back five years, it seems with the exact same profile he or she would likely get into a more selective college. I understand kids are applying to more schools but that also means yield has to decline. But it seems there is a much larger pool of highly qualified applicants to top colleges or at least it is incrementally more difficult for a high stat kid to get accepted into his or her preferred school. Why is this?

Making it easier for above average kids to 'appear' to be top HS students and operating Universities like a for profit business in general:

1) Eliminate or degrade objective factors such as SAT, ACT etc.;
2) Allow multiple re-takes of exams, no penalty for late HW, eliminate "0' for non-work etc.;
3) Pressure on teachers to artificially bring up grades of lower performing students and inflate GPAs in general to minimize accountability and blame;
4) Thus increase no. of applications to top 25 schools;
4) Increase the percentage of admittees consisting of legacies, recruited athletes, developmental cases, affirmative action cases etc. to vast majority of the class; (for example, if this % was about 45% 20 years ago, it is more like 65% now leaving fewer seats for those without any 'hooks'.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Test optional. Test optional allows kids with good grades but mediocre or bad test scores to apply to highly selective schools. Top schools want to take some of those kids because it fulfills their DEI and financial goals. At some better schools, test optional now accounts for 40% of applications and 25% of admits. If those applications didn’t exist, there would be more room for the kids that got admitted five years ago.

This. Schools know they need to drop their academic standards to maintain enrollment because of the demographic cliff. The trick was always going to be dropping standards without being called out on it or losing ground on the USNWR rankings. Along came COVID and an excuse to go test optional and they all ran with it. The bridge classes (after COVID and before the 2008 babies) are getting squeezed.

This implies it has become more difficult for high stat kids to get in because they are sort of arbitrarily giving seats to no stat kids.

Yes, this is exactly what's happening. With the usual woke/equity/you're more than your grades garbage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Like if a kid went into a Time Machine and went back five years, it seems with the exact same profile he or she would likely get into a more selective college. I understand kids are applying to more schools but that also means yield has to decline. But it seems there is a much larger pool of highly qualified applicants to top colleges or at least it is incrementally more difficult for a high stat kid to get accepted into his or her preferred school. Why is this?

Answer is in your question - there are more highly qualified candidates applying. Loads of them. In a few years, the applicant pool (US anyway) will decline.

This. Kids keep applying more and more broadly.

[Anonymous]

I was just listening to the Yale Admissions Podcast (highly recommend). They said that they shifted their entire admissions process because they were getting so many more applicants but they were also seeing more uncompetitive applicants than ever before. They said they shifted to a process where there is a "pre-reader" who gives an initial look over an application that can either be sent to the full review process or immediately dumped. The admissions officer explained that this wouldn't have been necessary 5, 10, 15 years ago because there were not enough uncompetitive applications that would make that pre-read necessary. So is it harder to get in or are there just a ton more uncompetitive applicants leading to a smaller admissions percentage?

[Anonymous]

Covid grading---massive school districts (DCPS for example) did not give any kid a grade lower than a B for any class for 2 years (by policy).
DCPS is just one example. Huge California districts are similar. MCPS increased every letter grade by a full grade (B-->A) during Covid.

That's a whole more A students dumped into the mix.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Test optional. Test optional allows kids with good grades but mediocre or bad test scores to apply to highly selective schools. Top schools want to take some of those kids because it fulfills their DEI and financial goals. At some better schools, test optional now accounts for 40% of applications and 25% of admits. If those applications didn’t exist, there would be more room for the kids that got admitted five years ago.

Ok but top schools haven’t really increased their URM allocations have they? I see stability there. This theory would imply blacks and Hispanics are being provided more seats

+1 and William and Mary is a good example. URMs represent 14% of the fall 2022 class. However, 34% of enrolled students applied TO. https://news.wm.edu/2023/03/01/wm-extends-test-optional-admission-process-indefinitely/?utm_source=facebookwm&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=03022023-test-optional&fbclid=IwAR3VXft4vCy2P9kfpkWJkL6KFBPabHklA3hg3DNT5fO8ka0LvVyJBErY738

Are there stats for FGLI?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Test optional. Test optional allows kids with good grades but mediocre or bad test scores to apply to highly selective schools. Top schools want to take some of those kids because it fulfills their DEI and financial goals. At some better schools, test optional now accounts for 40% of applications and 25% of admits. If those applications didn’t exist, there would be more room for the kids that got admitted five years ago.

I love the way you assume the kids with the low test scores are minorities.

Just wow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was just listening to the Yale Admissions Podcast (highly recommend). They said that they shifted their entire admissions process because they were getting so many more applicants but they were also seeing more uncompetitive applicants than ever before. They said they shifted to a process where there is a "pre-reader" who gives an initial look over an application that can either be sent to the full review process or immediately dumped. The admissions officer explained that this wouldn't have been necessary 5, 10, 15 years ago because there were not enough uncompetitive applications that would make that pre-read necessary. So is it harder to get in or are there just a ton more uncompetitive applicants leading to a smaller admissions percentage?

Unless they’re not admitting anyone at all TO, it must be both. And as this implies, I would expect the rise of mediocre full-pay students to happen earlier, and more noticeably, at schools that are not HYPSM. Yale can afford to discard full-pay students based on a pre-read. I’m not sure Rochester can.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Test optional. Test optional allows kids with good grades but mediocre or bad test scores to apply to highly selective schools. Top schools want to take some of those kids because it fulfills their DEI and financial goals. At some better schools, test optional now accounts for 40% of applications and 25% of admits. If those applications didn’t exist, there would be more room for the kids that got admitted five years ago.

This. Schools know they need to drop their academic standards to maintain enrollment because of the demographic cliff. The trick was always going to be dropping standards without being called out on it or losing ground on the USNWR rankings. Along came COVID and an excuse to go test optional and they all ran with it. The bridge classes (after COVID and before the 2008 babies) are getting squeezed.

This implies it has become more difficult for high stat kids to get in because they are sort of arbitrarily giving seats to no stat kids.

Yes, this is exactly what's happening. With the usual woke/equity/you're more than your grades garbage.

You are ignoring all of the medicore white people from suburban areas with "participation trophy" grade inflation. You hate towards people of color on this front is just astounding.

[Anonymous]

1) more kids applying to colleges in general
2) more international kids applying to US schools
3) grade inflation, which has been going on for years but was exacerbated by CovID
4) test opitonal - removes some sort of baseline understanding of how competititve kids are from "lesser" schools or school districts
5) for white kids, more emphasis on applicants of color and "first gen"

All of these combine to make it harder. It is what it is, and it will take some time for the schools to figure it out, so the key is to find a wide band of schools your kid likes and not focus on the same "T10" 'T25" or whatever. There shouldn't be people who want to apply to both Dartmouth and Columbia, wildly different schools and settings, same with Columbia and Brown, for example. Decide what you like about a school and then identify 10 others that have similar qualities but different variables to gain entry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Test optional. Test optional allows kids with good grades but mediocre or bad test scores to apply to highly selective schools. Top schools want to take some of those kids because it fulfills their DEI and financial goals. At some better schools, test optional now accounts for 40% of applications and 25% of admits. If those applications didn’t exist, there would be more room for the kids that got admitted five years ago.

Ok but top schools haven’t really increased their URM allocations have they? I see stability there. This theory would imply blacks and Hispanics are being provided more seats

+1 and William and Mary is a good example. URMs represent 14% of the fall 2022 class. However, 34% of enrolled students applied TO. https://news.wm.edu/2023/03/01/wm-extends-test-optional-admission-process-indefinitely/?utm_source=facebookwm&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=03022023-test-optional&fbclid=IwAR3VXft4vCy2P9kfpkWJkL6KFBPabHklA3hg3DNT5fO8ka0LvVyJBErY738

Are there stats for FGLI?

Anecdotally, our DC is FGLI and was top 10% of magnet class. Friend also FGLI was top 12%. Both with high SAT. FGLI does not automatically mean TO.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Test optional. Test optional allows kids with good grades but mediocre or bad test scores to apply to highly selective schools. Top schools want to take some of those kids because it fulfills their DEI and financial goals. At some better schools, test optional now accounts for 40% of applications and 25% of admits. If those applications didn’t exist, there would be more room for the kids that got admitted five years ago.

This. Schools know they need to drop their academic standards to maintain enrollment because of the demographic cliff. The trick was always going to be dropping standards without being called out on it or losing ground on the USNWR rankings. Along came COVID and an excuse to go test optional and they all ran with it. The bridge classes (after COVID and before the 2008 babies) are getting squeezed.

This implies it has become more difficult for high stat kids to get in because they are sort of arbitrarily giving seats to no stat kids.

Yes, this is exactly what's happening. With the usual woke/equity/you're more than your grades garbage.

Oh, God. Hardly.

[Anonymous]

PP SAT of 1500+

You will find FGLI in all ethnic groups.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Test optional. Test optional allows kids with good grades but mediocre or bad test scores to apply to highly selective schools. Top schools want to take some of those kids because it fulfills their DEI and financial goals. At some better schools, test optional now accounts for 40% of applications and 25% of admits. If those applications didn’t exist, there would be more room for the kids that got admitted five years ago.

I love the way you assume the kids with the low test scores are minorities.

Just wow.

Exactly