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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I hear from my friends and colleagues who have high school age kids that getting into selective colleges has become much more difficult than when we were applying for college.  I finally came across the following article which seems to argue that while statistically this may be true, among truly qualified candidates this may not necessarily be true.  I'm curious to hear the opinions of other parents with kids applying to college.

http://ideas.time.com/2013/03/20/college-admissions-the-myth-of-higher-selectivity/[/quote]

This is leaving out a few things:

1.  Increased international applications.  When I was in college at a very good school in the 1980s, I would say only 1% of the class was international and there were only a handful of international students from China.  Now a school like Harvard or Yale has hundreds of foreign students applying for the undergraduate program (hundreds just from China), and many of those indeed fall into the "truly qualified candidate" pool.  (International students now make up approximately 10% of the undergrad class at Harvard and Yale.)

2.  Colleges have internally made a commitment to more geographic diversity within the USA, which does cut down somewhat on the number of students who will be admitted from East Coast feeder locales like DC, New York, and Boston.

Any college counselor of long standing at an independent school or boarding school will tell you that the number of kids admitted to the most highly selective schools has gone done precipitously since the 1980s.  Pick up a yearbook from the mid-1980s at Sidwell, STA, NCS, or Andover and Exeter, and you will see the difference.  Lots of kids still get in -- no doubt -- but nothing like 30 years ago.[/quote]

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