Sharp Decline in Early Acceptance at Elite Schools

Getting accepted into a top college has seemingly become even more competitive during the Covid 19 epidemic.

Colleges had already been posting extremely competitive acceptance rates, with eight percent, or fewer, applicants gaining acceptance to the top tier schools, according to statistics from U.S. News and World Reports. These institutions include Stanford, Columbia, Harvard, California Institute of Technology, Princeton, University of Chicago, Yale, Brown, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Pomona, Dartmouth, Duke, Julliard, U.S. Naval Academy and University of Pennsylvania. To increase their chances of acceptance, students frequently choose one university and apply early decision or restrictive early action. 

But the fall of 2020 saw a dramatic rise in early admission applications, making it even tougher to gain acceptance to these highly selective schools.  At Harvard and Yale restrictive early action applications rose by 57% and 38%, respectively, according to The Wall Street Journal.  The result is that, although both of these schools accepted 14% of their early applicants last year, only 7.4% were accepted to Harvard and 10% to Yale this academic year.

Students get a Second Chance at “Early Decision”

Students who have gotten bad news in recent days from their Early Decision college – either being turned down or being waitlisted – should know that all hope is not lost.  They still have another option, which could bring them exciting news and get them off the college application merry-go-round, early in the new year.

Many colleges offer Early Decision II, with a January application deadline and notification in February – close to two months prior to the typical April 1st college response date. The main advantage of applying early decision, in addition to getting an early response, is that colleges usually accept a much higher percentage of early decision applicants.  Because early decision is binding, colleges know that any students they accept will definitely attend – increasing their “yield” (percentage of accepted students who enroll). The main downfall of applying early decision is the fact that it is binding, preventing students from comparing different financial aid packages that they might receive from different colleges. 

Asking Questions to Best Identify Ideal College

Asking questions is the key to getting information in so many areas of life – including the choice of college.  The key to truly finding out what your college experience would be like at any given school is to carefully research the answers that are readily available, and then seek out the answers that may not be so obvious.

Every college hosts a website offering statistics in a wide range of categories including its number of students, the percent of students that live on campus, the most popular majors, and the sticker price to attend. The website bigfuture.collegeboard.org offers a gamut of additional information on almost every college in the country regarding average SAT scores and selectivity, diversity of the student body, sports and activities, learning support programs, and much more.

Online Surveillance in College Admission Process

While most high school students maintain an active online presence, they often have no idea that colleges are monitoring their actions and “scoring” them accordingly.  

The Washington Post reported that admissions officers at the University of Wisconsin installed tracking software on their school website that indicated when a student visited their site, which pages were viewed, and how long the student spent on each page.  Additional information profiling the student was provided, and the student was assigned an “affinity index” estimating his/her likelihood of attending the school, if accepted.

University of Wisconsin is not alone.  According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, “enrollment officers at Seton Hall University, Quinnipiac University, and Dickinson College know down to the second when prospective students opened an email from the school, how long they spent reading it and whether they clicked through to any links.”