The truth behind these new, incredibly low acceptance rates

In 1990, Harvard’s acceptance rate was approximately 15%. Highly regarded as one of the most desired schools, Harvard generally has the lowest acceptance rates - by far - of any college or university. Twenty-five years ago, 15% was considered ridiculously low.

Today, many colleges have acceptance rates below that mark, including some that are very good (Boston College, UVA, Michigan) but wouldn’t have been near 15% back in the 1990’s. So what happened - how did so many colleges get such incredibly low acceptance rates? And are these schools really that difficult to get into?

First, let’s look at Harvard. Their low rate (down to about 3% now) isn’t too surprising. Many students want to go there, parents push their kids to apply there (“why not? you’ll never know unless you apply”), so the large number of applicants driving their low rate seems logical. But what about all the other “very good but not Ivy League” schools sporting such low rates?

Part of the answer is the Common App. Back 25 years ago, nobody wanted to fill out paper applications and hand write or use a typewriter to answer individual essays for every college on your list. It was a long and somewhat arduous process. Because of this, most students would apply to 4-5 colleges (mailing each admissions office, asking for a paper applicaiton, carefully and neatly answering every prompt). Maybe add in Harvard as well, because “you never know'“. But if you chose your schools carefully, 4-5 applications would usually be enough for you get get into 1-2 colleges.

The efficiency of the Common app made it so much easier to apply to schools. Enter all your personal information just once, answer maybe one additional short essay per college, and just click (and pay). So students could apply to more colleges without too much extra effort. Now this is where it becomes cyclical.

• Applying to more schools (many of which you really have no intention of attending) leads to lower acceptance rates for those schools

• Lower acceptance rates at schools scare students into applying to even more colleges, as they appear more selective

• Applying to more colleges lowers acceptance rates

• Lower acceptance rates leads to applying to more colleges

You get the idea.

Colleges LOVE it. They get more application fees and, more importantly, a lower acceptance rate. But are they really getting better students? Maybe, yet for some schools they’re just getting a better rate, still accepting the same level of students they did 25 years ago. Colleges might brag about the lower acceptance rates and the higher SAT/ACT scores for their incoming class, but with standardized testing still optional at some places, many with lower scores aren’t submitting them (perhaps athletes), so the average score rises because there aren’t so many low scores in their pool of applicants.

Numbers (acceptance rates) don’t lie, but they’re not necessarily telling the whole truth, either.