about college admissions

“I’ve heard that it’s harder to get into college now than ever before.  Is that true?”

The college admission landscape has changed substantially over the past few decades.  Almost every college has reported a surge in applications.  While the application pool has become deeper, most colleges have not dramatically changed the number of students they accept, resulting in a much more selective admission process.

So why are colleges getting so many more applications than twenty years ago?  You could say that we hit a “perfect storm” in the world of college applications.  For one, the number of high school graduates blew up over the past decade as we grew to a demographic peak for that age group.  According to the National Association of College Admission Counseling (NACAC), in 2008-2009 the number of high school graduates soared to 3.33 million.  While that number decreased to 3.29 million for the 2009-10 year, the number of high school graduates is expected to rise through 2018.

Beyond the surge in high school graduates, many more of these graduates are being encouraged to apply to college compared with that of 20 years ago.  Historically, high schools tracked students for different post-graduation outcomes, segmenting certain students for a vocational path that did not require a college degree.  In the mid-1980s this began to change as many began to question the equity and efficacy of the tracking system. By 1997, 45% of public high schools reported integrating traditional academics into their vocational requirements with the intention of giving many more students access to a bachelor’s degree.

It’s not a difficult jump to see how more college-bound students would lead to more applications to college.  But these effects are significantly amplified by the fact that the individual student applies to more colleges than ever before.  NACAC attributes this trend to “real and perceived increases in competition and the increased ease of applying online.”  Additionally, with over 400 colleges now accepting the common application, submitting to multiple colleges does not even require logging on to unique websites.

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