U.S. News & World Report College Rankings: the shining light of college lists. For many students, U.S. News may be not only a resource for the college process, but as of late, a source of stress and anxiety towards the imminent college search.
U.S. News takes into account a variety of factors and statistics, but a good deal of their rankings have to do with acceptance rate. How many students a college rejects and how many students a college accepts, all wrapped up into a neat little percentage.
By nature some schools are more selective than others. For whatever reason some accept 10 percent while others accept 50 percent. But, in the last 10 to 20 years the trend of declining acceptance rates has become alarming, if not terrifying, for some students. Yale University’s acceptance rate, which 30 years ago was about 26 percent, is now down to about 7 percent. Stanford University now accepts a measly one out of every 20 applicants.
What’s causing these plummeting acceptance rates? There are more slots available now for those who want to go to college than ever before. The rationale lies in the number of schools students are applying to, and the nature of how most students are submitting their applications.
The entirely online application process is a recent development. Years ago, each school had its own application and everything was done by mail. With the ease and accessibility of an online web based application, students can apply to significantly more schools than they could have in the past.
In the 70s or 80s, students would apply to less than a handful of schools, with only the top students applying to five or six schools. Nowadays, 10 schools is average. For a pupil applying to the most prestigious of universities, a list of 15 or 20 schools is not unheard of.
Colleges also attempt to garner as many applications as possible through absurd amounts of online and snail mail outreach. This, as well as the increase in the number of schools each student applies to has dramatically driven up the number of applications per university. More applications means fewer students accepted per school.
But declining acceptance rates are not just an issue of how many applicants there are per school, but how many students each school needs to accept to fill their class. The almost universal usage of early decision applications has not always been a mainstay of the college application process. Only recently has it become the norm for all students to apply early decision to their top choice or reach schools.
Because of the binding nature of early decision, the more early decision applicants you have and accept, the fewer spots you have to fill with your regular decision pool, and the fewer people you have to accept overall. The more of your applicants who are bound to go if admitted, the less applicants you must accept to compensate for those who will not attend despite admittance.
Acceptance rates are going down, and it is quite difficult to get into an elite college. But when U.S. News publishes their yearly list, keep in mind that there is more to the percentage of students admitted than just a number.
Those numbers create a vicious cycle. Acceptance rates keep going down, and out of the fear those declining percentages create, students are applying to more and more schools. This artificially drives them down even more. So, if you want my advice and if you want to save yourself some pain and suffering and save others from some stress down the line, don’t apply to so many colleges.
If more people applied to five schools rather than 15, it would break the cycle and stop the oh-so-important acceptance rates from plummeting down even more. Remember that applying to more schools doesn’t necessarily mean a better chance of getting in. The only thing it really guarantees is that the next year, acceptance rates will be even lower.
Want to write for Opinions? Contact us at bhs.sagamore@gmail.com.
