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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b]The better indicator is probably in-state acceptance rate[/b], which averaged about 45% from 2005-2017 and never dropped below 40%, but hit 38.4% in 2018.  So UVA is now at a historically low level, and rates in Nova are also lower.  Virginia Tech has never been below 60% in-state admission rate in that period, but is also trending down at 60.2% in 2018.  With VT, engineering and the rest of the university diverge in selectivity.   W&M averaged about 43% from 2005-2017 and had sub 40% admissions rates in 2009 and 2010, but was at 45% in 2018, so is still selective, but not trending down.[/quote]
Why would the in-state acceptance rate be a good (or better) indicator? For what? It's merely a reflection of how many applicants the school gets, and not of how difficult it is to get in.
We know VA high school graduates are declining, we know now in-state acceptances and attendances are not declining (in fact slightly increasing); so the obvious conclusion is that overall that the top public VA schools (UVA, W&M, VT) have not gotten more, but less selective at least as far as VA residents are concerned.

The number of applications they get is probably just a factor of how much self-selection is taking place but doesn't reflect the true selectiveness of these in-state schools.[/quote]

Well, I did say better, not good.  Rising GPAs aren't necessarily meaningful due to grade inflation in high school, which is highest in the most affluent schools.  In-state acceptance rate is more meaningful than overall acceptance rate (OOS + in-state) for an in-state applicant for obvious reasons.  A lot of people cite overall acceptance rate for UVA on this board, but it doesn't apply to most of them and OOS has a very different dynamic and cost structure (which leads to pretty low yield).  In-state admission rates have declined to below 40% for UVA very recently, which is historically low.  This could of course be due to more unqualified kids applying (which means it isn't reflective of actual selectivity), but it might not be as well.  I agree with you that overall colleges are becoming less selective due to the demographic changes.  [/quote]

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