Recently, for instance, only 9% of applicants managed to charm their way into Yale University, while three years earlier 11% received
fat acceptance packages. During the same time period, acceptances
dropped from 16% of applicants to 13% at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology and from 13% to 11% at Stanford. In illustrating just
how ridiculously impossible it is to impress the admissions gods, journalists
invariably find an Ivy reject who is a student body
president/valedictorian with perfect SAT scores and is on the verge of
discovering a cure for some horrible disease.
Reading these annual dispatches is enough to make any parents
think that their children need to be darn near perfect to have any
chance of spending four years at a first-rate school. But that’s nonsense.
In UCLA’s latest annual survey of college freshmen across the
country, more than 67% of students were attending their first choice
school. So for the vast majority of high school seniors, creeping exclusivity
is not an issue.
Even those who regrettably believe that their young lives would
end if they can’t attend one of the most selective schools on the planet
shouldn’t be discouraged. In reality, the academic bar isn’t being
raised as much as the media dispatches insist. The source of this happy
news bulletin is the Education Sector, which is a nonprofit education
policy think tank.
In examining admission statistics, Education Sector acknowledged
that the number of high schools graduates banging on college
doors has been increasing. But here’s the comforting part: The most
competitive schools are accepting more students. The Ivy League
schools, for instance, increased the number of acceptances they extended
by almost 11% between 2002 and 2006, which was greater
than the growth of high school seniors. Education Sector also looked
at roughly 60 institutions considered “most competitive” by Barron’s
Guide to Colleges and noticed the same trend. These schools accepted
199,821 student in 2002, but the number jumped by 8% to 215,738
four years later.
The increase in acceptances among select schools has been overlooked
because of the media’s fixation on applications rather than applicants.
The acceptance statistics look worse because they are
dependent on the number of applications that schools receive not the
number of applicants, which is dramatically lower. Suppose that a student
applies to five schools and gets into three. If he applies to 15
schools instead and gets into three, the result for this child is the same.
He earned an acceptance into three schools. But all the applications
he sent in made the competition look worse than it actually is.
One reason for the application creep has been the growing number
of high school graduates. In addition, more kids are applying to
more schools. In the 1960s, less than 2% of high schoolers applied to
six or more colleges, but today more than 2% are applying to at least
11 schools.
Another culprit is the number of students applying to more competitive
schools. Kevin Carey, the Education Sector’s research and
policy manager, suggests that more kids who have no chance of getting
in are knocking on the doors of the nation’s most select schools.
“There has likely been an increase in the number of unqualified students
treating the Harvard application like a Powerball ticket,” Carey
wrote in an article in The American Prospect. “An Ivy League education
can be worth millions of dollars over a lifetime. To take a shot at
one, all you need is $65 and a dream.”
Action Plan
Stay calm. The vast majority of students get accepted by their No.1 academic choice.
Source: The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price
