Ben Nikpour - Week 5: Are You Getting into College?

    Every year it seems like getting into college is becoming harder and harder. Colleges have become more selective and It seems like it is near impossible to get into a college. The stress of navigating through college admissions has been put on high schoolers nationally. I took a deeper look into the statistics behind the admissions and found a couple of things interesting. 

    The first thing I found, as stated before, is that colleges are becoming more selective. Based on the ranking from US News: Best National University Rankings, all of the top 10 universities in the United States have seen a decrease in admission rate over the past 10 years. For example, Harvard University had a 9.3% acceptance rate in 2010 but only a 4.3% acceptance rate in 2020. This trend is occurring not only in these top schools but also in schools around the country. This is due to many factors, one of them being the number of applications received. While it may seem like these colleges are accepting fewer students, they are just receiving a lot more applicants.

    Colleges are seeing more applicants than ever before. This is the second thing I noticed when researching. More people are applying to colleges compared to prior years but the class size of the universities is staying relatively the same. This means students have to work harder and become more qualified for a spot at a school they want to go to. Going back to the Harvard example, Harvard received 22,753 applications in the year 2010. In the year 2020, Harvard received 40,248 applications and 57,435 applications in 2021. Harvard is receiving more than double the amount of applicants than in 2010. This is a trend that is seen in many colleges but is intensified for selective colleges like Harvard. 

    Why is this, you may ask. My best guess has to do with schools becoming test-optional. For a high school student applying to colleges, standardized test scores are very important. Students with a higher score on a standardized test are more likely to get into a selective school than someone without a high score. Schools becoming test-optional threw a curveball into this common rule of law. Students do not have to submit their scores to colleges. This means if you don’t have a great score you are in luck. Colleges cannot see that someone did score high making students much more confident in themselves getting into a selective college. I think this is causing a surge in applicants and decreasing admission rates. 

    Many schools remain test-optional and will continue for the upcoming years. Hopefully, this only helps not harm us in our stressful admission process.

3,746 College Application Form Stock Photos, Pictures & Royalty-Free Images - iStock

    Do you think schools being test-optional is to blame for the decrease in admission rates?




https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities 

https://www.ivycoach.com/2010-ivy-league-admissions-statistics/ 

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/04/harvard-college-accepts-1968-to-class-of-2025/


Comments

  1. AnonymousOct 24, 2021, 7:11:00 PM

    I think the decrease in admission rates is very worrying. While test optional might be a cause for this, I also believe that it could be because more people are applying to a greater number of colleges, so the total number of applications is increasing. Additionally, there has been a significant increase in the population, but not a large increase in the number of colleges. The decrease in admission rates makes today's students lives infinitely more stressful.

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