Colleges Becoming More and More Competitive

January is a great time in college admissions. Most of the Early Decision and Early Action decisions have come in, and seniors’ college landscapes are starting to be filled in. The majority of students have finally finished all applications, and will be patiently waiting for those regular decisions to come in, most likely in March or April. Many students are receiving many acceptances, academic scholarships, and students are finally starting to see themselves at one or two specific colleges…reality is beginning to set in! However, even though there is a ton of good things happening now, many students also received unpleasant decisions from colleges in the early round with either denials or deferrals. From my desk, I have seen a trend lately of schools becoming more and more difficult to get into, even for the most competitive students. With more and more students applying to college with our country and across the world, many college application numbers are going through the roof, meaning more students will be denied or deferred than ever before.

In addition to colleges being blessed with more students applying to college in general, the business of college has become increasingly focused on creating ways to bring in applications. Different marketing approaches have made the popular colleges even more popular, and have put the less known schools on the radar for many students. I have seen students this year who were deferred or denied from colleges that I know would easily have been accepted just 2 or 3 years ago. My hope is that students and parents understand this, in order to not get too disappointed if they do not hear positive news from every school! Many schools that would have been a target for a particular student may very well be a reach school now. The need to find schools that students are very likely (safety) to get into, and are happy with, is more important than ever in today’s world of college admissions.
To get a true understand of the increase of applications and the selectiveness of colleges, I have three schools and their admissions numbers that I want to show everyone:

Northeastern University: NU received over 21,600 applications for Early Action, which was an increase of 7% from the previous year. Also, like many schools, NU has a desire to balance their admission opportunities for Regular Decision applicants, so they had to offer a small percentage of acceptances to Early Action applicants. Because of this, many capable and strong applicants were deferred to regular decision. Also, for Early Decision, NU received 775 applications and accepted 240 students (31%).

Dartmouth College: Dartmouth only has an Early Decision or Regular Decision option for their applicants. This year’s early decision pool was the largest in their college’s history. Their admissions received 1,859 ED applications, which was a 10.7% increase from the previous year. Of the ED applicants, only 483 were admitted (25%).

Boston College: Boston College had a tremendous increase in Early Action applicants this year from the previous year. This year, BC had nearly 9,800 applications, as opposed to 5,500 the previous year, a 56% increase. BC almost always tries to limit their Early Action incoming class to 30% of the total amount of students matriculating in the fall. Because of this and their increase in applications, they obviously became even more selective this year. BC went from a 40% acceptance rate for Early Action candidates last year to 27% this year…quite the difference!


Hopefully this gives some perspective to students and parents out there who were disappointed with early decisions. It is definitely competitive out there, but keep your head up…as long as you put effort into this process, you will end up at the right school; and as always, happy searching!

Joseph D. Korfmacher, MA

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