CHAPTER 1
Why Has College Admissions Become So Competitive?

For members of the baby boom generation born between 1946 and 1964, now in their sixties or seventies, applying to college was a gentle, low‐key rite of passage. Those bound for four‐year colleges usually planned to go to a school in their home state or one fairly close by; many considered a college even 300 miles from home to be far away. Few students felt the need to apply to more than two or three colleges, and many applied to just one. They chose their colleges based on location, program offerings, cost, and difficulty of admission, with a parental alma mater sometimes thrown in for good measure. If students did their homework carefully before deciding where to apply, the outcome was usually predictable. Of course, there were surprises—some pleasant and some disappointing—but nothing that would raise the subject of college admissions to the level of a national obsession.

IT USED TO BE SIMPLE … BUT NOT ANYMORE

Fast‐forward to the second decade of the twenty‐first century, however, and media headlines tell a very different story: “Record Applications, Record Rejections,”1 “Ivy League Acceptances Drop to a New Low. They're Not Alone,”2 “This Year's College Admissions Horror Show,”3 “The College Admissions Process Is Completely Broken,”4 “Selective College Admission Is March Madness,”5 and “CEO Who Bribed Kids into USC, Harvard, Stanford Tries to Delay 15‐Month Prison Sentence.”6

Some well‐known colleges made equally jarring announcements. For the class of 2006, Harvard accepted 10.5 percent of its 19,600 applicants. Twenty years later, Harvard announced that just 3.2 percent of those who aspired to be part of the class of 2026 had been accepted from an applicant pool that had ballooned to 61,200. And Harvard was not alone in admitting 5 percent or less of its applicants for the class of 2026—it was joined by at least 10 others. Another school reporting even more striking changes over the past two decades was the University of Chicago. It admitted around 42 percent of its applicants for the class of 2006 from a pool of about 8,200. Twenty years later it admitted 5 percent of applicants from a field of 37,500.

Many public universities, particularly state flagship campuses, have also experienced dramatic growth in applications as well as falling admission rates. For example, UC Berkeley received 128,200 applications for the class of 2026 and admitted 11.4 percent. Twenty years before, the campus received fewer than 37,000 applications and admitted about 24 percent.

These are just a few of the many colleges reporting record‐breaking numbers of applications and record‐low rates of admission, continuing a trend that began in the 1990s. What happened to change the college admissions picture so dramatically in such a relatively short time?

Population Growth

The simple explanation is supply and demand: more high school graduates have been competing for seats in the freshman class. In 1997 there were 2.6 million high school graduates. By 2013, the number had grown to almost 3.5 million, with the number of graduates projected to peak at around 4.0 million in 2025 before declining to 3.5 million in 2037.7 The COVID‐19 pandemic may lead to small changes in these long‐range projections, but population growth has clearly been a driver of increasing demand for a college education over time.

I don't think anyone is complacent about getting a high‐quality applicant pool.

Harvard University Admissions Officer

Social Changes

It turns out that the increase in applications is due to more than simple population growth. Not only have more students been graduating from high school each year but also a greater percentage of them have been interested in going to college. Studies confirm that a college diploma increases lifetime earnings, and many desirable careers require education beyond the bachelor's degree. Over time, this has led to more students seeking to attend college, including students from underrepresented minority groups who previously attended at much lower rates. Although disruptions caused by COVID‐19 as well as recent discussions discounting the value of a college degree have slowed demand somewhat, potential economic benefits remain an important incentive for attending college.

Colleges themselves have also contributed to demand by increasing their efforts to attract large, diverse pools of applicants. Over the past two decades, many mounted aggressive programs to spread the word about their offerings. Through mail and email, social media, creative advertising, virtual or in‐person visits to high schools, and information booths at college fairs, colleges are reaching out to prospective applicants in the United States and abroad with unprecedented energy and at great expense.

Sophisticated marketing techniques are used not only by colleges having problems filling their classes, but also by colleges with an overabundance of qualified applicants. And it works! As a result, more and more college‐bound students are aware of and are willing to seriously consider colleges far away from home. Rising standards of living across the globe also contribute to increases in the number of students from abroad, particularly from Asia, choosing to study in the United States.

The Role of the Internet

The Internet now plays a major role in how students approach college admissions. Although printed material and virtual or in‐person presentations still help students learn about different colleges, the web and social media have become primary sources of information for students. Students can visit campuses at any time of the day or night through sophisticated online virtual tours or videos on college websites and find answers to many of their questions via Facebook, Instagram, or even TikTok. Colleges have invested heavily in technology to make themselves easily accessible to students anytime and anywhere.

The Internet has also made it easier than ever to apply to college. At the time of this writing, more than 1,000 colleges accept the Common Application, a standardized online application students use to enter basic information and then submit to up to 20 of those colleges. Online applications are now the norm. Long gone are the days when applications were completed on paper, by hand or on a typewriter.

With outcomes harder to predict, individual students are now submitting more applications, on average, than ever before. Improvements in technology have made it relatively easy to submit multiple applications. College costs have also contributed to an increase in application numbers as students seek the best financial aid packages they can obtain. As a result, it's not unusual for students at many private schools or high‐performing public high schools to submit 15 or more applications, with a small percentage of students across the country submitting even more.

All of these factors taken together—growth in the population of 18‐year‐olds, greater interest in college, sophisticated marketing efforts, ready access to information, and ease of applying—help explain why it seems harder to get into college than it was a generation or two ago.

But that is not the whole story.

The Rest of the Story

Many people are quite surprised to learn that with some exceptions, most four‐year, nonprofit colleges in the United States still accept well over half of their applicants. In fact, each spring, the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) posts on its website a list of hundreds of colleges still seeking applicants for the fall. Many have vacancies in their freshman classes and financial aid available well into the summer. How can this reality be reconciled with media headlines like the ones at the beginning of this chapter, not to mention firsthand reports from students and parents, about a crisis of hyperselectivity in college admissions?

As word spreads about the competition for college admission, students respond by applying to even more colleges to increase their chances of acceptance. In so doing, they end up unwittingly contributing to the very problem they are trying to solve for themselves.

High school counselor concerned about the trend

It turns out that the real crunch in admissions—the crunch driving newspaper headlines and the anxiety afflicting many families at college application time—applies to only about 200 of the most selective colleges, which attract applicants from all over the country and the world and admit less than half of them. What's wrong with all the rest? Nothing, of course, except that they aren't on that list of 200. Bill Mayher, a college advisor, summarized the problem succinctly: “It's hard for kids to get into colleges because they only want to get into colleges that are hard to get into.”8

WHAT IS SELECTIVITY ALL ABOUT?

The percentage of students offered admission to a college is a major factor in determining its selectivity. As the number of applications to a college increases, its admissions rate decreases unless the college is able to increase the size of incoming classes. Another key factor affecting selectivity is...