Top Universities are becoming more difficult to enter.

[Anonymous]

http://nation.time.com/2013/04/02/ivy-league-schools-accepting-even-fewer-kids/

[Anonymous]

And in other news . . . apparently tomorrow morning a giant yellow orb will appear in the sky.

[Anonymous]

becoming...??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And in other news . . . apparently tomorrow morning a giant yellow orb will appear in the sky.

Ha Ha. You made me laugh. Now I can go to sleep.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And in other news . . . apparently tomorrow morning a giant yellow orb will appear in the sky.

Ha Ha. You made me laugh. Now I can go to sleep.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And in other news . . . apparently tomorrow morning a giant yellow orb will appear in the sky.

Ha Ha. You made me laugh. Now I can go to sleep.

+1

+2 Too funny.

[Anonymous]

Frankly don't think that is anything new, since application numbers rose dramatically about two decades ago this has been increasingly the case.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Frankly don't think that is anything new, since application numbers rose dramatically about two decades ago this has been increasingly the case.

Phew. I got in just in time.

[Anonymous]

Top colleges aren't accepting fewer students -- e.g. my college's current freshman class is a bit larger than it was when I matriculated. And my cohort of HS seniors was larger than last year's.

What's changed is the size of the applicant pool -- how many apply to college and how many colleges each applies to.

Whether that makes it harder to get in depends on whether the additions to the applicant pool are highly qualified (vs. long-shots who are, essentially, buying a lottery ticket now that the Common App makes it less work to apply to more schools).

At internationally-prestigious schools that have need-blind admissions and lots of financial aid $$, part of the story probably is that highly qualified kids who previously would have been priced out are now applying in greater numbers. Elsewhere, my guess is people are playing the lottery -- in which case, whether it's harder to get in depends on whether the admissions office knows what it's doing or whether getting in really is a crapshoot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And in other news . . . apparently tomorrow morning a giant yellow orb will appear in the sky.

Yup, the sun is in the sky here in Bethesda.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Top colleges aren't accepting fewer students -- e.g. my college's current freshman class is a bit larger than it was when I matriculated. And my cohort of HS seniors was larger than last year's.

What's changed is the size of the applicant pool -- how many apply to college and how many colleges each applies to.

Whether that makes it harder to get in depends on whether the additions to the applicant pool are highly qualified (vs. long-shots who are, essentially, buying a lottery ticket now that the Common App makes it less work to apply to more schools).

At internationally-prestigious schools that have need-blind admissions and lots of financial aid $$, part of the story probably is that highly qualified kids who previously would have been priced out are now applying in greater numbers. Elsewhere, my guess is people are playing the lottery -- in which case, whether it's harder to get in depends on whether the admissions office knows what it's doing or whether getting in really is a crapshoot.

Actually, this year's cohort of seniors is smaller than last year's. The number has been going down each year for the last few years. Next year's will be the smallest. After 1997 the number of babies increased significantly, and the mini-baby bust ended.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Top colleges aren't accepting fewer students -- e.g. my college's current freshman class is a bit larger than it was when I matriculated. And my cohort of HS seniors was larger than last year's.

What's changed is the size of the applicant pool -- how many apply to college and how many colleges each applies to.

Whether that makes it harder to get in depends on whether the additions to the applicant pool are highly qualified (vs. long-shots who are, essentially, buying a lottery ticket now that the Common App makes it less work to apply to more schools).

At internationally-prestigious schools that have need-blind admissions and lots of financial aid $$, part of the story probably is that highly qualified kids who previously would have been priced out are now applying in greater numbers. Elsewhere, my guess is people are playing the lottery -- in which case, whether it's harder to get in depends on whether the admissions office knows what it's doing or whether getting in really is a crapshoot.

Actually, this year's cohort of seniors is smaller than last year's. The number has been going down each year for the last few years. Next year's will be the smallest. After 1997 the number of babies increased significantly, and the mini-baby bust ended.

This is true. But the number of schools each kid applies to seems to rise each year. It's because of the common app and a cycle of anxiety whereby kids get anxious and apply to more schools, which makes getting into a given school even harder, so the next kids apply to even more schools, and so it goes....

[Anonymous]

OP -- unless someone has been living under a rock -- this is not a new phenomenon as others have mentioned.

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure that applying to more schools creates a lower admission percentage.
Each student can still only attend one school. If the trend is to apply to more, it will increase the number of applications that a school receives (denominator), but schools would need to offset this by accepting more students (numerator) in order to end up with the same number matriculating.

The effect of this will be different at each school. Schools likely to be a first choice school for most applicants will not need to increase acceptances nearly as much as schools that are less likely to be a first choice. So this probably has artificially decreased the admit rate at a school like Harvard, but probably not at a school like GW (sorry Colonials).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure that applying to more schools creates a lower admission percentage.
Each student can still only attend one school. If the trend is to apply to more, it will increase the number of applications that a school receives (denominator), but schools would need to offset this by accepting more students (numerator) in order to end up with the same number matriculating.

The effect of this will be different at each school. Schools likely to be a first choice school for most applicants will not need to increase acceptances nearly as much as schools that are less likely to be a first choice. So this probably has artificially decreased the admit rate at a school like Harvard, but probably not at a school like GW (sorry Colonials).

An increase in applications surelyreduces the admissions percentage. But I don't think it makes schools any more difficult to enter - which must be your point.