Why Those Super Low College Admissions Rates Can Be
Misleading
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/22/opinion/college-admissions.html
Since applying is easier (or at least involves fewer postage stamps than it did back in the day), does this mean more students who have relatively little chance of getting into these selective institutions, based on their grades and résumés, are applying? Connie Livingston — who was an admissions officer at Brown for 14 years and is now the head of college counselors at Empowerly, a private counseling company — told me that before the pandemic, qualified applicants made up around 75 to 85 percent of the applicant pool.
Now she thinks there are some students who are “throwing their hat in the game just to see what happens” and that “the number’s probably down to about 60 percent, 65 percent of applicants,” who meet the recommended standardized test scores and grades of the schools they apply to. Livingston cited the common app as a reason for the influx of applications, but she also noted that the loosening of standardized testing requirements played a potential role as well.
The College-Admissions Process Is Completely Broken
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/change-college-acceptance-application-process/627581/
"Although the average four-year college in the U.S. accepts nearly 60 percent of applicants, many schools indicate they are more selective than they are by telling prospective students that they practice “holistic” admissions, considering factors beyond grades and test scores. This approach, which attempts to measure qualities that aren’t quantifiable and are usually gleaned from an applicant’s extracurricular activities, essays, and recommendations, is loved and hated in equal measure by parents and students. Both favor a method that focuses on the “whole student” until they discover that applicants who had lower GPAs or test scores were accepted.
Holistic admissions may sound great, but many admissions offices at less-selective colleges make the bulk of their decisions by assessing the rigor of an applicant’s high-school courses and grades".
A majority of U.S. colleges admit most students who
apply
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/04/09/a-majority-of-u-s-colleges-admit-most-students-who-apply/
The extremely competitive schools amounted to 3.4% of all the colleges and universities in this analysis, and they accounted for just 4.1% of total student enrollment. By contrast, more than half of the schools in our sample (53.3%) admitted two-thirds or more of their applicants in 2017, including such well-known names as St. John’s University in New York (67.7%), Virginia Tech (70.1%), Quinnipiac University (73.9%), the University of Missouri at Columbia (78.1%) and George Mason University (81.3%).
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/22/opinion/college-admissions.html
Since applying is easier (or at least involves fewer postage stamps than it did back in the day), does this mean more students who have relatively little chance of getting into these selective institutions, based on their grades and résumés, are applying? Connie Livingston — who was an admissions officer at Brown for 14 years and is now the head of college counselors at Empowerly, a private counseling company — told me that before the pandemic, qualified applicants made up around 75 to 85 percent of the applicant pool.
Now she thinks there are some students who are “throwing their hat in the game just to see what happens” and that “the number’s probably down to about 60 percent, 65 percent of applicants,” who meet the recommended standardized test scores and grades of the schools they apply to. Livingston cited the common app as a reason for the influx of applications, but she also noted that the loosening of standardized testing requirements played a potential role as well.
The College-Admissions Process Is Completely Broken
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/change-college-acceptance-application-process/627581/
"Although the average four-year college in the U.S. accepts nearly 60 percent of applicants, many schools indicate they are more selective than they are by telling prospective students that they practice “holistic” admissions, considering factors beyond grades and test scores. This approach, which attempts to measure qualities that aren’t quantifiable and are usually gleaned from an applicant’s extracurricular activities, essays, and recommendations, is loved and hated in equal measure by parents and students. Both favor a method that focuses on the “whole student” until they discover that applicants who had lower GPAs or test scores were accepted.
Holistic admissions may sound great, but many admissions offices at less-selective colleges make the bulk of their decisions by assessing the rigor of an applicant’s high-school courses and grades".
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/04/09/a-majority-of-u-s-colleges-admit-most-students-who-apply/
The extremely competitive schools amounted to 3.4% of all the colleges and universities in this analysis, and they accounted for just 4.1% of total student enrollment. By contrast, more than half of the schools in our sample (53.3%) admitted two-thirds or more of their applicants in 2017, including such well-known names as St. John’s University in New York (67.7%), Virginia Tech (70.1%), Quinnipiac University (73.9%), the University of Missouri at Columbia (78.1%) and George Mason University (81.3%).