Why is college admissions so competitive

Through a holistic admissions process, the university gives weight to extracurricular activities and personal essays, both of which allow students to illustrate their individual backgrounds and experiences. These components also give admissions officers a better sense of how a student might uniquely contribute to the school. With an admission rate of 4. This rate reflects admission into Harvard's undergraduate school, Harvard College.

Some schools at Harvard are even more competitive, such as Harvard Medical School. During its undergraduate admissions process, Harvard aims to assess each student as a whole person , considering their personal character and their academic potential.

The school makes a concerted effort to give each application careful attention in order to fully understand a student's academic interests, personal background, and extracurricular talents. Since most students who apply to Harvard are highly qualified, admissions officers rely heavily on letters of recommendation, interviews , and extracurriculars to identify outstanding students.

The leading technical school in the nation, MIT's undergraduate rate of admission was just 4. An applicant's overall fit with the school is the primary criterion for admission to MIT, though grades and test scores are also important. MIT aims to admit students who possess a cooperative spirit and who will lift up their peers. In addition, those applying to MIT should feel comfortable working in team settings; most courses and labs are designed to be collaborative in nature.

As the school has cultivated a community of curious, driven individuals, MIT's admissions committee prioritizes students who display a willingness to take risks and accept failure. Down from its previous admission rate of 5. The Ivy aims to identify students who will positively contribute and bring a unique perspective to its community.

Rather than looking for a specific set of academic criteria, Princeton prefers applicants who have challenged themselves with rigorous honors and AP courses. In addition to a rich academic record, Princeton looks for students with strong extracurricular achievement and a deep intellectual curiosity. This is primarily assessed through a combination of personal essays , short answers, and interviews. Down significantly from its previous rate of admission of 6.

Yale differs slightly from other Ivies regarding the factors it considers during the admissions process. The university looks for two main components to help inform its decision : a student's ability to contribute to the school's community and a student's ability to make the most of the school's resources. These are typically identified by the applicant's personal essays and letters of recommendation. While Yale evaluates nonacademic factors as well, it remains a highly competitive academic institution.

And last year, many college-bound students decided to hedge their bets and apply to as many schools as possible to secure sufficient offers of admission.

In the Washington Post reported that seniors at a New Jersey high school applied to, on average, 45 colleges each, with one student applying to as many as 70 schools. Using the Common Application makes applying to colleges even easier: www. It includes a single essay, is filled out online and students check off the colleges that they would like to receive their application.

Beware, there are often supplemental essays for many colleges as well. And they do. More than 75 percent find that they have many choices, including their first choice school. Bierer is an independent college adviser based in Charlotte. Send questions to: lee collegeadmissionsstrategies. Schedule Consultation. From to , the fraction of students with A-averages went from This inflation at top schools has compressed a majority of students into a very narrow band of grades in which most of them have relatively the same grades.

This compression of grades has put increasing pressure on those students in particular to get almost flawless grades if they want to not only stand-out but, in many cases, just stay on-par with their peers. Now all exams are open-note. Cheating has become so widespread that the schools have redefined cheating to be not cheating so as not to disadvantage students who were not cheating.

The variance between grades at the more than 40, high schools in the U. Most of the top public and private high schools have eliminated class rank. But that elimination of class rank has taken away yet another data point that colleges can use when evaluating applicants. Only roughly the top 50 colleges were still using SAT subject test scores, but now those colleges will be looking elsewhere to replace the standardized metrics they just lost.

Where will they look? The trend: More students are achieving top scores from 30 to 36, there are fewer students in the middle with scores from 18 to 29, and more students are scoring at the low end of the score range from 1 to And, within the top score range from 30 to 36, the higher scores had larger percentage increases in the number of students achieving those scores.

And this increase in top scores is accelerating. The result: With more students with more top ACT scores, students are competing for ever higher scores to maintain an advantage in college admissions. As with all the other metrics, those doing better are doing even better; those doing worse are doing even worse. Because selective schools do not increase their class sizes with more applicants, more applicants just means the same number of admitted students and dramatically more rejected, which has further spiked competition to get into elite schools.

But who is choosing to still submit scores? According to the Common App, score submitting students are disproportionately from wealthy families.