[81alum]

Largest applicant pool in history was also a contributing factor in the lower rate. My big question is to what extent to students "at the top" is becoming a larger pool or whether it's just more kids applying who many not be qualified.  probably some of both, but certainly the ease of applying online to colleges in general is contributing to the lower admission rates across the board. I haven't done the research (yeah, shame on me) but my guess is the average number of colleges each HS student applies to has gone up and continues to rise.

Googling around, it does not seem like there is great data on this, but what there is indicates that application inflation (applying to large numbers of schools) is prevalent among the top 5% of applicants but not prevalent among the other 95%, who still average 2-3 applications.

But applying to 20 schools is not uncommon among elite students (the Common App limits you to 20), who seem to be more obsessed about where they get in than other students.

What this means, paradoxically, is that the feeding frenzy just gets worse and worse at the very top of the college foodchain, and the more selective the elite universities are perceived as being, the more fear among elite applicants is sowed and the more they increase the number of their applications.  Which of course drives down the acceptance rate, which increased fear.....etc.

I've posted many times about this, so won't repeat myself.  Suffice it to say that some sort of reform is needed or else this trend will eventually break the system.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/nyreg....html?_r=0
https://edreformnow.org/the-college-appl...the-top-5/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/...story.html

[81alum]

Largest applicant pool in history was also a contributing factor in the lower rate. My big question is to what extent to students "at the top" is becoming a larger pool or whether it's just more kids applying who many not be qualified.  probably some of both, but certainly the ease of applying online to colleges in general is contributing to the lower admission rates across the board. I haven't done the research (yeah, shame on me) but my guess is the average number of colleges each HS student applies to has gone up and continues to rise.

Googling around, it does not seem like there is great data on this, but what there is indicates that application inflation (applying to large numbers of schools) is prevalent among the top 5% of applicants but not prevalent among the other 95%, who still average 2-3 applications.

But applying to 20 schools is not uncommon among elite students (the Common App limits you to 20), who seem to be more obsessed about where they get in than other students.

What this means, paradoxically, is that the feeding frenzy just gets worse and worse at the very top of the college foodchain, and the more selective the elite universities are perceived as being, the more fear among elite applicants is sowed and the more they increase the number of their applications.  Which of course drives down the acceptance rate, which increased fear.....etc.

I've posted many times about this, so won't repeat myself.  Suffice it to say that some sort of reform is needed or else this trend will eventually break the system.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/nyreg....html?_r=0
https://edreformnow.org/the-college-appl...the-top-5/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/...story.html