Acceptance rates at top colleges have fallen starkly, and seem to be getting lower with each year that passes. While there is an understanding that college admissions will have a degree of competition, this never ending growth of applicants and drop of admit rates makes many students incredibly anxious, especially younger students looking ahead to their own college admissions journey.
But why is this happening? Is it inevitable that acceptance rates at top colleges will continue to fall? Can they even get any lower? In this article we’re going to look at why acceptance rates have fallen, year after year, and whether or not these trends will continue. Let’s get started!
Demographics: More Students than Spaces
The first, and simplest, explanation for why college acceptance rates have fallen over time is demographic. There are simply more students applying to college now because there are more high school students in the US now than there were twenty or thirty years ago. As the total number of high school students increased, the number of spots available at top colleges remained more or less consistent.
This increase in demand without an increase in supply created an ever greater competition for spots, and was the major driver of falling acceptance rates in the 1990s and early 2000s. This has changed however.
Post pandemic, college enrollments declined in aggregate. Further, demographic trends have shown that the high school population in the US is no longer increasing. There are going to be the same number of students graduating high school, and fewer of those students are choosing to apply to and attend college.
Thus while demographic trends explain much of the past drive of falling acceptance rates, they do not explain more recent trends, and indeed seem to predict that acceptance rates at colleges should be increasing. Indeed, acceptance rates are increasing at some schools, but not at the most competitive and prestigious. Something other than just demographics is driving an increase in applications to these top colleges.
The Common App
Application trends suggest two apparently contradictory points; that fewer students are applying to college overall, and that more students than ever are applying to the nation’s top colleges. These are both correct, and explained simply; fewer students overall are applying, but of those who are, many more are applying to significant numbers of colleges.
There was a time when students would only apply to one or two colleges. I personally only applied to two, but that was mostly due to a lack of planning on my part; most of my classmates applied to five or so. Now? Most of the students we work with are applying to fifteen or more colleges, and more than ever many of them are applying to the full 20 permitted by the Common App.
In some ways, this growth in application numbers has been driven by the Common App itself. It has made it easier than ever for students to find and apply to colleges, and adding another one to apply to can be done with the click of a button. This isn’t the 80s, when you had to mail applications to each college separately, or the early 2000s, when each college had their own web portal, and you needed to fill out the same information for each.
On the one hand, this is great for students, and takes a lot of work off their shoulders. On the other hand, once applying to multiple colleges becomes so much easier, is it any surprise that top students are applying to so many? The Common App is a double-edged sword, easing the amount of work you need to do on the one hand, while encouraging more work from applying to more colleges with the other.
This isn’t the only cause, but does explain in part why we see the number of applicants to top colleges continue to rise, and the corresponding sinking in acceptance rates at those schools.
Test-Optional Policies
Test optional policies are interesting, as they make admissions more competitive twice over. First, as we have observed, when colleges become test optional, more students apply. This is often due to a mistaken belief that test scores were all that were holding back an application, and that without those, an academically weak application has a better shot at acceptance. This is not true, but it is a powerful belief, and drives an increase in applicants, which in turn lowers the acceptance rate.
The other factor is more surprising at first; colleges which go test optional generally see the average test scores of accepted applicants increase, sometimes by a significant margin. This is because when a college doesn’t require submitting test scores, only those students who have truly exceptional performances will submit their scores for consideration. Average performance on these tests is not increasing significantly, but the average scores of students accepted to top colleges are.
This makes admissions more competitive, especially as many colleges end their test optional policies, but want to keep their newly high average test scores. This makes your performance on these tests all the more important for your college admissions journey. For advice on how you can maximize your own score, check out our test prep service today. Students we work with see an average score increase of 180 points on the SAT, and master skills that will serve them long-term.
The Extracurriculars Arms Race
Admissions officers frequently repeat the refrain that students are not competing with each other for admissions; that each applicant is reviewed on their own merits, and the acceptance of one does not necessarily require the rejection of another. While they repeat this frequently, it is not entirely true.
Colleges do not admit one student and reject another, and you are only compared against the standards universities have for applicants. Those standards are, however, set in large part by the totality of the pool of applicants they receive. Once grade inflation becomes endemic, then getting straight As is not exceptional, but expected. Extracurriculars have fallen into a similar pattern.
As high school students strive to stand out in the sea of their fellows, they turn to extracurriculars; trying to find the exact combination of impressive achievements that will make admissions officers sit up and take notice. We’ve written about this before, sharing extracurriculars that stand out, and explaining how to make the most of your opportunities.
The problem comes with scale. One student doing something remarkable stands out; once everyone is doing it, then exceptionality is no longer exceptional, but expected. This means the achievements that greatly increased your chances of acceptance a decade ago may barely move the needle today.
This also comes with oversaturation. For example, there was a significant period where many high school students were forming nonprofits. For the first few students who did so, this was exciting and new, and admissions officers took notice. Once it became a trend however, admissions officers looked harder at what these nonprofits were accomplishing, and they became less of a boon to applicants.
Each student acts in their own best interests, to maximize their own chances of success in the admissions process. This is logical, but in their competition with each other, the amount of pressure students are under overall simply increases, as there is the impression that you must do truly incredible things to have a shot at acceptance at a top college.
Is there any way to fix this?
So this is a lot of different factors all contributing to make college admissions more competitive each year. This leads to the important question: is there any way to fix this?
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to do this. Every actor in this is acting in their own best interests, but in so doing the system as a whole becomes further stretched. Students want to get into top colleges. Top colleges want to recruit the best and most qualified students. Everyone wants the system to be fair. None of these things seem to be happening, or possible with the way it currently works.
A further problem is that any “fix” would require disrupting the entirety of how colleges review and admit students, and doing that would just create even more of a headache for students and colleges. Add in the fact that colleges each have their own policies for how they approach admissions, and you can begin to see the scope of the problem.
Final Thoughts
Admissions to top colleges is always going to be competitive to some degree; more people want to attend these schools than there are places for them. That said, the level of competition, and the growth in that competition over time, are startling, and show no signs of stopping. We hope this article has given you a sense of the varying contributing factors, and how each contributes to the trend as a whole.
If you are looking for help with your own applications, or want advice on what these colleges actually want to see from applicants, schedule a free consultation today. We have a long experience helping students get into the country’s most competitive colleges, and are always happy to hear from you.
